Last year, Switzerland imprisoned 9,297 people, with 67 percent of them foreigners, according to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office.
The number of foreigners in the prison population has tripled since the 1980s.
Men still account for the vast majority of offenders, accounting for 90.6 percent of all prisoners, while 9.4 percent of all prisoners are women.
The rate of foreigners in Swiss prisons has remained relatively stable over the last 10 years, but the overall number of prisoners has also jumped significantly.
The vast majority of prisoners are incarcerated for minor offenses, such as petty theft. In some cases, if offenders are unable or unwilling to pay a fine, they can be incarcerated in Switzerland. Many prisoners are serving sentences between five and 90 days.
It is unclear the exact breakdown of the foreign prison population in 2023. Switzerland has many foreign European nationals residing in the country, but many of those arrested and imprisoned are non-EU nationals.
🇩🇪 In many German states, half the prison population is now made up of foreigners.
🔺Germany spends €1.8 billion a year on its exploding foreign prison population, out of a total of €4.1 billion.
🔺Foreign national prisoners are mostly from Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan,… pic.twitter.com/XBA4XpV7UQ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 9, 2024
In 2020, the greatest share of foreigners in Swiss prisons were Algerians. In second place were Romanians.
In Germany, over half of the prison population is made up of foreigners, and they are costing German taxpayers nearly €2 billion per year.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/14/2024 – 03:30
