French prisons reach a new record with 90,020 inmates

French prisons had 90,020 inmates on September 1, a new record, in a context of chronic prison overcrowding, according to official statistics from the Ministry of Justice.

The number of prisoners increased by 6.8% over one year, while the number of operational places stood at 63,348 on September 1 (+1.2% over one year) and that of mattresses placed on the ground, due to lack of beds, stood at 8,347, an increase of 51.8% compared to September 1, 2025.

Prison density reached 176.1% on September 1 in remand centers, where people sentenced to short sentences or those awaiting trial and therefore presumed innocent are detained. The overall over-occupancy rate was 142.1%. The Council of Europe denounced the state of French prisons at the beginning of the year, warning in a report of the risk of an evolution towards a “human warehouse”. Overpopulation, unsanitary conditions and violence are particularly singled out there.

The general controller of places of deprivation of liberty, Dominique Simonnot, deplored the absence of “national-scale measure” to curb prison overcrowding, in a notice published in the Official Journal at the beginning of July. The Ministry of Justice intends to open 3,000 additional places in modular prisons, deemed cheaper and quicker to build, half of which from 2027, while less than a third of the 15,000 additional prison places planned in a national plan launched in 2018 have been delivered.

“The construction of new establishments cannot constitute a relevant response: given the current rate of increase in overpopulation, it would be appropriate, to absorb it, to put a penitentiary center into service every six weeks,” however, warned Dominique Simonnot in his opinion. “Sentence adjustment measures and alternatives to incarceration, although essential, remain underused or hampered by restrictive implementation conditions,” she added. France is one of the worst performers in Europe in terms of prison density, tied with Turkey (131 people detained for 100 places), ahead of Croatia (123) and Italy (121) in particular, according to 2025 figures from the Council of Europe.