Which European countries publish religion-based prison statistics and for which years?
Executive summary
Public reporting on prisoners' religion in Europe is patchy: England and Wales publish a time series by religious faith covering 2015–2024 (House of Commons / Statista) [1], Scotland includes religious breakdowns in its recent 2022/23 prison statistics [2], and academic studies or edited volumes document religion-specific figures for certain institutions or periods (for example German youth prison figures for 2009–2019), but no single pan-European dataset of religion-by-prisoner exists in the official EU compilations [3] [4] [5].
1. National transparency: England & Wales lead with a decade-long series
The most explicit and continuous public series found in the reporting comes from England and Wales: a House of Commons dataset reproduced by Statista lists the number of prisoners by religious faith for each year from 2015 through 2024, showing counts for Christians, Muslims, those with no religion and other faiths [1]. This dataset is presented as an official chart drawn from Ministry of Justice / Parliamentary sources and therefore represents the clearest example of a national authority publishing religion-based prison counts over time [1].
2. Scotland and Northern Ireland: snapshots rather than long runs
The UK parliamentary research briefing notes that Scotland produces prison population statistics that include religious affiliation (citing Scottish Government statistics for 2022/23) and gives percentage breakdowns such as a large Christian share and a 4.4% Muslim share in the Scottish imprisoned population [2]. The same briefing enumerates average annual populations for England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, implying that devolved jurisdictions collect religion information at least intermittently, but it does not present a continuous cross-year series for Scotland or Northern Ireland comparable to the England & Wales time series [2].
3. Academic and book-based country chapters: selective years, local institutions
Scholarly work and edited volumes assemble religion-in-prison data for many countries, but often at the chapter or case-study level rather than as official national time series: the edited volume Religion and Prison: An Overview of Contemporary Europe contains chapters on 23 countries with country-specific descriptions [4] [6], and academic articles report institutional case studies — for example, a German youth prison where Islamic affiliation rose from 27% in 2009 to 47% in 2019 [3]. Such sources demonstrate that researchers can and do compile religion-based counts, but they do so unevenly, with varying years and scopes [3] [4].
4. Pan‑European compilations do not standardly include religion
Eurostat and Council of Europe (SPACE I) aggregation efforts focus on population totals, citizenship, sex and similar variables, and do not offer a harmonized Europe-wide series of prisoners by religion; missing or heterogeneous national reporting is a recurring caveat in those datasets [5] [7]. The Prison Observatory report and SPACE I metadata explicitly warn that comparability and coverage across countries are limited, which helps explain why religion — a sensitive and differently legislated attribute across states — is not part of routine pan-European tabulation [7] [8].
5. Legal and political constraints shape what is published
In some countries the absence of religion statistics is a legal or administrative choice: Norwegian law on individual registration historically requires a licence to register religion and similar attributes, and scholars note that no statistical information on the number of Muslims in Norwegian prisons is therefore available [9]. This illustrates an explicit policy boundary that produces data gaps; where national authorities do publish religion-by-prisoner counts, scientists and advocates can analyze trends, while in other jurisdictions researchers must rely on fragmentary case studies or omit religion entirely [9] [4].
Conclusion: a fractured map, not a catalogue
The available reporting identifies England & Wales as the clearest national publisher with an annual series for 2015–2024 and shows that Scotland publishes religion breakdowns in its 2022/23 statistics; beyond those examples, evidence comes from academic case studies, country chapters and partial national reports rather than comprehensive, comparable European time series, and pan‑European datasets like Eurostat/SPACE I do not fill the gap because of missing or non‑homogeneous national submissions and legal constraints on registering religion [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [7] [9]. Where claims of broad European trends are made, readers should note whether they rest on national official series (England & Wales), dispersed academic studies, or on compilations that flag major gaps [1] [3] [7].