Authors: Janine Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios, Kostas Zafeiropoulos (MIIR)

Data Analysis – Visualisations:  Thanasis Troboukis (iMΕdDLab)

Illustration: Louiza Karageorgiou

Visualisations: Corina Petridi

On January 22nd, the first femicide for 2023 took place in Nikaia. A 50-year-old man killed his 54-year-old wife by strangulation, after first beating her up. He then called the police to tell them what had happened, uttering the aforementioned phrase on the phone. According to witness accounts and what became known after the murder, the perpetrator had been arrested by the police following domestic violence in the past, in 2017 and 2019. However his subsequent treatment by the justice system is not known. Could this crime have been avoided?

This question comes up again and again after the news of yet another femicide. Is there anything more the authorities could have done to protect the woman before she lost her life?

Apostolos Tsapas strongly voices his disappointment for the failure of law enforcement to protect his own children. 28-year-old Konstantina Tsapa, along with her 29-year-old brother Giorgos Tsapas were murdered on 5 April 2021 by her estranged husband in the village of Makrinitsa in Pelion. The double murder dominated the news at the time. It was during the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, a period in which a number of restrictions were still in place. Four days before the murders, the estranged husband had violently attacked the mother of his child and her parents in the same house.

Apostolos Tsapas describes his devastation to MIIR: “During the fight in Makrinitsa, before the murder, he had come to the house and beat all three of us: me, my wife and my late daughter. Then the police took him away, and detained him for two or three hours. But they let him go, saying to me, ‘We can’t hold him any longer’. They kept calling my daughter and asking her, ‘What should we do with him? We can’t keep him any longer’. And so he was released. We filed a complaint, but they didn’t arrest him. As for the blame… The harm has been done, my children are not coming back.” He adds that his daughter had filed an injunction against the perpetrator, but it was not heard in time.

“The injunction was scheduled to be heard the day after the murder. And of course he killed her in the meantime, so there was no time for them to be heard”, laments Anthoula Anasoglou, a lawyer for the victims’ family. “He had been accused of domestic violence in 2021, but was never arrested in the context of self-incrimination. The police forces had a tolerant attitude towards the perpetrator. In fact, in the courtroom at the trial, a police witness admitted having told the man’s wife, on his release, ‘It’s okay, he loves you, he won’t hurt you’. And ‘It’s okay, they’re a couple, they’ll get back together’. The police witness said this in court and it caused a lot of tension”.

In small places where everyone knows each other, as in the case of Makrinitsa, police officers often go beyond their duties in domestic violence cases, explains the lawyer of the Tsapas family: “The police officers play the role of psychologists and try to reassure the woman, without understanding the seriousness of the situation. And for Konstantina it was just an inevitable spiral towards the void, like a thriller where you already know the ending. Photos in the days leading up to the killing showed her having been abused, she had a black eye. He had been cursing her, locking her up, there was endless violence. This had been going on for two years. He had beaten the brother and the parents before. For two years there was a systematic cover-up. It all pointed to a tragedy, and that’s what happened…”

The causes of a predictable crime

As shown in the cross-border investigation the Mediterranean Institute of Investigative Journalism (MIIR) coordinated in the context of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet) along with 18 media partners in order to gather updated data on the extent of gender-based violence in Europe, in Greece the pandemic period was characterised by a frightening increase of 110,2% in victims of physical violence in 2020 and 90,4% in 2021, after 3,609 victims of physical violence were recorded in 2020, reaching 6,873 in 2021. Incidents of psychological violence in Greece increased from 2,906 to 5,350 during the period in question, and those of sexual violence increased from 69 to 141. Similar acts of physical, sexual, economic and psychological violence were experienced by thousands of women across Europe.

In Greece, the rise in domestic violence and femicide led the supreme court prosecutor Vassilis Pliotas to issue an encircular in November 2021. It called on prosecutors to intervene imminently, to further the process of arresting the presumed perpetrators of such crimes and for the related criminal cases to be heard as a matter of priority in court, so as to avoid all delays in delivering justice. 

Despite the Pliotas initiative, in practice the issues of both police protection and the administration of justice are not moving as fast as they should.

In domestic violence, most crimes – apart from rape and homicide – are misdemeanours, explains Kiki Petroulaki, which means that short suspended sentences are given. “This should be about the police arresting the perpetrator and the authorities punishing him immediately. Not the police arresting the perpetrator, the prosecutor letting him go and within two hours the perpetrator being able to return back home. The system has a big responsibility when it sees that there are older complaints against a perpetrator, and it does not take any action. Domestic and sexual violence is never an isolated incident, it repeats itself, with the same victims and different ones. This is an issue that has been discussed across Europe in recent years – the recurring pattern as a risk factor. It is also present in the Istanbul Convention, which aims to prevent violence against women and domestic violence. Having a previous record is an aggravating circumstance and should ring bells for the police and the public prosecutor’s office and make them respond more quickly. Putting someone in jail for a misdemeanour is almost impossible, even if they have four convictions in a row. But even if they were put in jail, I don’t think it would solve the problem of domestic violence.”

According to this experienced psychologist, who has been called upon to advise many female victims of domestic violence in Greece, it is clear what is needed: strict measures that will immediately remove from the perpetrator the ability to control the life of his victim, combined with systematic monitoring of the safety of victims and their children.

The Istanbul Convention includes many such provisions for the protection of domestic-violence survivors and children who are directly abused and/or exposed to their mother being abused. Unfortunately, our country chooses not to apply them, or even violates them in law. Examples include Articles 26, 31 and 45 of the convention, which aim to protect children, and Articles 48, 51, 52, 53 and 56, which focus on risk management to prevent recurrent victimisation. 

“The effective implementation of these and other provisions of the convention requires, for every reported case of domestic violence, an honest, immediate, coordinated, cross-sectoral response by police, justice and support services, both specialised and general. The European Anti-Violence Network is attempting to design this, alongside the authorities and using an exchange of good practices between Greece and Iceland within the framework of the “ACF project GR_IS_UnitedForDVSurvivors”, explains Kiki Petroulaki. She adds: “At the end of 2023 we will see whether the protection of women and children and the reduction of femicides is indeed a political priority – or whether the only thing that interests our country is not to ‘sound’ like we are violating European and international legislation and the human rights of survivors of domestic violence and their children.”

Among the data analysed as part of the MIIR-EDJNet investigation was the number of prosecutions, convictions and imprisonments of domestic violence perpetrators. This enables a relative estimate of the relationship between prosecutions and imprisonment for male perpetrators of domestic violence against women. From the available data collected in Greece for 2020 it is estimated that, relative to the number of perpetrators of domestic violence against women (4,436), the prosecution rate was 70.6% (3,132). Convictions account for 20.9% of these prosecutions, while imprisonment was a penalty in an estimated 13.7% of these convictions. However, comparing the number of offenders with the number of men imprisoned, it is estimated that for every 100 offenders recorded in 2020, only two were imprisoned. So overall, just 2% of perpetrators who used violence against female partners were imprisoned. 

It is worth noting that there are likely to be discrepancies in the data and that these percentages are entirely indicative. Indeed they may be overestimated, as the prosecutions brought in 2020 also relate to cases reported in 2019 or even 2018. However, they are a relative estimate of the relationship between prosecutions and imprisonment of male perpetrators of crimes of violence against women over a given period of time and they indicate a trend. Similarly, it is interesting to note the percentage of cases where prosecutions ceased due to a process of pre-trial agreement (21.7% and 33.4% of cases in 2020 and 2021 respectively), as well as the percentage of cases in which restraining orders were issued (from 0.6% to 1.6% of cases in 2016-2020).

On average, therefore, only 3% of men charged with domestic violence in Greece and 5% in Slovenia ended up in prison annually in the period 2016-2021. In contrast, in Spain the equivalent annual average figure for men prosecuted for domestic violence and ending up in jail was 30%.

Sentences and recognition of femicide

The Greek government recently moved to toughen up the penalties for perpetrators of domestic-violence crimes. But is this the solution?

“Tightening up sentences not only is not a panacea, but it seems ineffective. This does not mean that the punishment should not be proportional to the gravity of the act. But, in itself, a strict sentence is not enough to deter the perpetrator or to reaffirm citizens’ trust in institutions and the administration of justice”, says Chara Chioni-Chotouman, a lawyer at the Diotima Centre for Gender Rights and Equality. She also stresses that the failure to properly implement the law risks renders “the response to crime meaningless”, and adds that the frequency of violence against women shows that Greece needs to reassess its attitude to such crime, by recognising femicide. However, she points out that the most immediate need is to “update the protection tools by, for example, tightening rules for those who violate decisions which are intended to protect the victim and prevent crimes of violence“.

In an article last October, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made it clear that he had no intention of legally recognising femicide in Greece, but promised to do everything possible to restrict the phenomenon. Among other things, he referred to the establishment of 18 police “Domestic Violence Offices”, charged with managing incidents and providing information to victims. However, cases of understaffing have been reported in those offices, as well as behaviour by officials that discouraged women from reporting.

“There are ongoing trainings for police officers to better manage incidents of gender and domestic violence,” argues the deputy minister for Demography, Family Policy and Gender Equality, Maria Syrengela, adding that the legislative framework can only partly contribute to the prevention and deterrence of violence against women. However, when it comes to the legalisation of femicide, she says that “it is not a question of what to call these crimes against women but more importantly to focus on prevention and to put an end to the attitudes that allow abusive behaviours”. 

The picture is very different in Cyprus where femicide was recognised in July 2022 as an offence in its own right, following a proposal by the then speaker of the Cypriot parliament, Annita Demetriou.

Speaking to MIIR, Ms Demetriou, who is the first woman to occupy her position in Cyprus, said the term “femicide” does not negate the term homicide, but rather has a complementary and reinforcing effect: “In order to have an effective response we must first of all call a spade a spade. This is precisely why we insist on the importance of the term femicide, because it encodes, signifies and names the most extreme form of gender violence – and any modern self-respecting society must admit that victims of domestic and sexual violence, victims of misogyny, victims of intimate partner violence, victims of ‘honour’ crimes or crimes over religious beliefs – these victims are women, not men. Therefore, the establishment of femicide as a specific offence – as opposed to the common-law crime of homicide – emphasises the intensity, origin and cause of the crime. There is therefore a need for legal separation. At the same time, another valuable aspect is added to the toolbox for eradicating the phenomenon: the possibility of an official record of femicide.”

As the MIIR data investigation has demonstrated, there is a significant pan-European data gap in terms of the actual number of femicides in the first place, but also of female victims of physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence. There is also significant uncertainty over the number of perpetrators of these crimes. In Greece and across Europe, experts and women’s groups who advocate the recognition of femicide as an offence, stress that this may be the only way to tackle underreporting of crimes that kill and harm thousands of women every year.

The data resulting from this project, as well as the findings on the institutional gaps in prevention and support for victims and on the administration of justice, show that the undeclared war against women in Europe will not stop until citizens and politicians face up to the problem. There is a need to invest financially and qualitatively in strengthening the system of protection for women and vulnerable groups. Laws need to be implemented, and young people need to be better educated on gender equality and gender relations. This would at least be a small tribute to the women who have lost their lives to crimes that could have been prevented. 

Photo: Shutterstock/sakhorn

Research-text: Ioanna Louloudi, Nikos Morfonios (MIIR)  

Research and graph development: Thanasis Trombukis (iMEdD Lab)*.

MIIR and iMEdD research on Greek prisons during the pandemic period in the context of an analysis of data from 32 countries carried out simultaneously by 12 European media led by Deutsche Welle in the framework of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet).

“For the last 3 weeks the prison has been in a state of turmoil, wards are being closed from one moment to the next, prisoners are being quarantined out of nowhere. The prison administration, unable to provide basic protection measures against Covid-19 and unable to manage the sudden increase in cases, has decided to impose a permanent confinement regime on us beyond what we are already experiencing.” 

This is the beginning of the open letter sent on 27 March 2022 by prisoners of the Women’s Prison of Korydallos, recounting the conditions in the prison while in Greece, as in most of the world, the fifth wave of the pandemic continues. The image conveyed from inside the prison is not a long way from the image conveyed by Greek prisoners at the beginning of the 4th wave. At that time, for example, there were more than 40 cases among inmates of the Diavata prison in Thessaloniki (November 2021). Similarly, at the end of the 4th wave, 20 prisoners and 7 prison officers tested positive and 50 were quarantined in the Nea Alikarnassos prison (February 2022).

The management of the pandemic in Europe’s prisons was the subject of a major survey which analysed data from 32 countries. It was conducted simultaneously by 12 European media led by Deutsche Welle as part of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet). MIIR (Mediterranean Institute for Investigative Reporting) and iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development) were commissioned to collect and process the specific data concerning Greece.

In the first part of the research, published on 12 March, we examined the spread of the virus in Greek and European prisons since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020, and came to some striking conclusions on prison conditions. For example, Greece appears in 7th place on the list of the most overcrowded prisons in Europe, while the minimum living space of 4 sqm per prisoner under international conventions is violated in 25 out of 34 Greek prisons. This makes prisoners even more exposed to the virus than they are already.

Our comparative analysis of data revealed that during the pandemic, the occupancy rate of Greek prisons not only did not decrease, but actually increased, with the result that Greece was among the countries that had high spread of the virus in prisons compared to the general population. Specifically, by 2 July 2021, 16 months after the start of the pandemic, it is estimated that 7.9% of prisoners overall had contracted Covid-19, while 4.1% of the general population in Greece was infected with the virus. Our conclusions are confirmed by the Council of Europe’s annual report published on 5 April, which states that on 31 January 2021 Greece hosted 106.1 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants – up 3.6% compared to 2020. The equivalent figure in Council of Europe member states was 101.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, down 2.3% compared to 2020 (104.3). According to the report, in Europe as a whole, prison occupancy fell by 5.3% compared to a year earlier (from 90.2 to 85.4 prisoners per 100 available places). Greece was among the countries reporting overcrowding (111.4 prisoners per 100 places), behind Romania (119.3 prisoners per 100 places) but ahead of Cyprus (110.5), Belgium (108.4), Turkey (108.3) and Italy (105.5). Greece also has a very high prisoner-to-staff ratio (2.8 prisoners for every staff member), while the European average is 1.4. 

The publication of the first part of the survey was followed on 21 March by a question to the European Commission from Left Group MEP Konstantinos Arvanitis, asking whether “it is acceptable to transform Greek prisons into overcrowding centres, given that Greece is one of the few European countries that refused to proceed with the measure of decongestion, which is a demonstrably effective strategy for dealing with the pandemic, and despite the dramatic appeals of the United Nations”, and whether the Commission “considers that the worsening of the overcrowding conditions, resulting inter alia from the drastic reduction in the transfer of prisoners, is compatible with due respect for the principles of necessity and proportionality and with the fundamental human rights of prisoners”. The reply is currently pending.

A few days earlier, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, at its recent meeting on the enforcement of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights by member states, had expressed its concern about overcrowding in Greek prisons, stressing that this is a problem that has not been effectively addressed and has been outstanding “for more than ten years”. The committee made particular reference to the need to decongest the prisons of Ioannina, Korydallos and Thessaloniki, and called on the Greek government to provide a specific timetable for addressing the issue.

With the 5th wave of the pandemic just around the corner, we examined in the second part of the survey what happened in Greek prisons before and during the 4th wave, i.e. the period from 1 July 2021 to 18 February 2022, two dates for which we have detailed data for each prison.

The data shows that 2671 prisoners were diagnosed with coronavirus during this period, with the prevalence in prisons being 1.4 times higher compared to the general population. Specifically, 870 cases had been recorded by 1 July, while by 18 February 2022, 3541 cases had been recorded. Given that the average total number of prisoners in this eight-month period was 11037, it is estimated that 24% of prison inmates in that period were diagnosed with Covid-19, compared to 17% in the general population.

The highest prevalences, with more than 500 cases per thousand prisoners, were recorded in the Nafplio, Corinth, Kos and Amfissa detention centres. During this period the Nafplio prison held more than 400 prisoners, while its capacity was 273. 

Comparison with the general population

During this period, a higher rate of cases in prisons compared to the general population was recorded in 15 of the 22 Greek regions we examined.

Notable are Fokida and Argolida, where the incidence within prisons was 4.7 and 4.1 times higher compared to the general population, while in Korinthos it was 3.9 times higher. Overall in the 22 regions during the eight months under review there were 205.5 cases per 1000 inhabitants, while in prisons there were 242 cases per 1000 prisoners.

Furthermore, the prevalence within prisons during the 4th wave was even higher compared to the previous period. In the period from 1 March 2020 to 1 July 2021, in 13 regions of Greece the incidence within prisons was higher compared to the general population and in 9 regions it was lower. According to available data, by November 2020, 0.9% of prisoners had tested positive for the coronavirus, compared to 0.4% of the general population. By February 2021, 3.8% of prisoners had tested positive, compared to 1.6% of the general population. In July 2021 the rates were 7.9% and 4% respectively. In November 2021, the prevalence in prisons was still more than double (16.8% vs. 7.2%). By February 2022, a period covering the fourth wave of the pandemic, 32.6% of prisoners had been diagnosed with coronavirus compared to 21.2% of the general population. 

It is interesting to compare the rate of increase in cases inside and outside prisons during the period from November 2021 to February 2022: cases outside prisons increased by 193.7%, while cases inside prisons increased by only 88.8%. For prisons, however, this did not mean a reduction in the problem. By February 2022 a higher proportion of prisoners had already contracted coronavirus compared to the general population, which may be attributed to inadequate containment measures. 

Based on our research and the response we received to a query to the General Secretariat for Anticrime Policy, among the measures taken since the beginning of the pandemic were the suspension of prison visits during outbreak periods and a halving of them during the rest of the time; the curtailment of leave (educational, regular, etc.) for prisoners; a reduction of employment and “day jobs”; restrictions within prison shops; and the creation of an electronic visit register.

However, as pointed out in the first part of the survey, no overall plan was implemented to decongest the prisons (reduction of the number of inmates, reduction of sentences, targeted transfers). Moreover, there continued to be serious shortages of health staff and protective equipment, as well as a manifest sloppiness in the management of cases and care of the sick. Indicative is the testimony of an inmate of Larissa prison, Vangelis Stathopoulos, who himself contracted coronavirus in December 2020: “So anyone who gets sick is put in a ward for 14 days with all the other Covid patients, which means that if someone has a heavy viral load they will automatically spread it to everyone else and they can all get very sick. So the procedure is that we put all the sick people together and whatever happens will happen.” 

This picture is not far from the one conveyed by the inmates of the Women’s Prison of Korydallos, while similar complaints have been made by prisoners of the Domokos Detention Centre. There, only 4 cases had been detected by 2 July 2021, while in the eight months that followed, until 18 February, the cases reached 152. That number is estimated to have since increased: in March alone at least 18 more prisoners reportedly tested positive for coronavirus. 

Korydallos prison – Credit: Prisoners’ Solidarity Network

Delay in vaccinations

A crucial factor in the increased spread of Covid-19 during the 4th wave of the pandemic appears to have been the delay in the start of the vaccination programme in Greek prisons. This only began on 1 July 2021, several months after the start for the general population, despite the fact that prisoners are a vulnerable population living in closed, and therefore dangerous, conditions.

According to the minutes of the Special Standing Committee on the Penitentiary System and other Inmate Confinement Facilities of 10 June 2021, only 388 inmates (out of a total of 11,031, 3.5%) and 504 employees had completed vaccination. During the same period, only 22 prisoners had received the first dose. That is a total of 410 inmates vaccinated, the vast majority of them with the J&J single-shot vaccine. By 18 November 2021 – i.e. at the beginning of the 4th wave – only 59% of prisoners had been vaccinated (6,600 prisoners).

“Vaccinating prisoners should be a top priority for every state because their living conditions enhance disease transmission. Prisoners are under the responsibility of the state, they are not able to protect themselves and their health, or to take the measures they themselves consider necessary to prevent the risks posed by the pandemic”, stresses Iphigenia Kamtsidou, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and member of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the Council of Europe (CPT). “It is for this reason that a democratic state should first and foremost take care of the health and lives of the people under its responsibility.” 

Can Greece change direction?

On 9 March 2022, the Greek judge of the European Court of Human Rights, Ioannis Ktistakis, presented to the parliamentary committee responsible for monitoring ECHR judgments the data on Greek convictions in Strasbourg, as well as the pending individual appeals from Greece. All paint a dark picture of the living conditions in Greek prisons. According to Ktistakis, of the total of 2,214 individual appeals pending against Greece (representing more than 3% of the total of 70,150 pending appeals from 47 states), 1,782, or 81%, concern exclusively the conditions of detention in the country’s prisons. “What is particularly worrying in the case of Greece is its inability to put things right, to comply in a timely and substantial manner with the Strasbourg judgments,” the ECHR judge told parliament.

March marked two years since the emergence of the coronavirus in our country and no one knows how long the pandemic will remain in our lives. “Covid-19 should be a wake-up call to invest in better prison conditions and reduce the use of incarceration,” says Catherine Heard, director of the World Prison Research Programme. In the case of the management of the pandemic in Greek prisons and during the 4th wave of the pandemic, however, the lesson does not seem to have been learned yet.

*Supplementary report by Kelly Kiki (iMEdD Lab)

The project is a collaboration within the European Data Journalism Network

Project leader: Deutsche Welle

Partners: Alternatives Economiques, Civio, El Confidencial, EURologus, Il Sole24Ore, iMEdD, MIIR, OBC Transeuropa, Openpolis, Pod črto, VoxEurop

Vangelis Stathopoulos, who is in Greece’s Larissa prison, is one of more than half a million people incarcerated in Europe amid the COVID-19 pandemic. And, like so many others, the prison where he is being held is an ideal breeding ground for viruses: it’s overcrowded, with cramped living arrangements, and often poor hygiene conditions.

“When I got COVID last December, around half of the prisoners in here were sick at the same time,” Stathopoulos says. “We were put into a ward with 60 people, in a space of around 110 square meters (1,200 square feet). It was a roll of the dice whether you were going to be severely or just mildly ill.”

Korydallos prison in Greece

During the pandemic, we have become accustomed to meticulously updated COVID-19 dashboards and kept a close public eye on settings vulnerable to outbreaks, such as care homes. Yet little data has been made public about the spread of the coronavirus in carceral facilities.

Together with 11 newsrooms in the European Data Journalism Network, DW has collected data from 32 countries that show how many cases and deaths were reported in prisons, how vaccinations progressed, and what measures were taken to curb the spread of the virus.

“Many prisons are overcrowded, with no possibility for physical distancing,” says Filipa Alves da Costa, a public health consultant for the World Health Organization’s Health in Prisons Program. “So, when the virus gets carried in, it gets transmitted much more easily.”

Incarcerated people vulnerable

Da Costa says the risk in prisons is similar to that faced by people living in congregate residential facilities such as care homes and shelters.

Many incarcerated people have multiple factors that put them at increased risk of severe COVID-19, including conditions such as HIV and histories of smoking or other drug use. Marginalization, poverty and poor access to health care often take their tolls on such populations even before incarceration, and prison conditions frequently have an exacerbating effect, the WHO has found. “We actually consider people in their 50s as elderly already in prisons, even though in the community they wouldn’t be,” da Costa says.

COVID outbreaks in prisons affect everyone

Outbreaks in prisons affect not only the people who are confined or working there, but also the surrounding communities. “It’s not a totally closed environment,” da Costa says. “People come in and out every day. Not only staff, but also service providers, lawyers, and prisoners themselves. So, if you’re not protecting prisons, you’re not protecting the community.”

In the US, where the coronavirus quickly swept through prisons in 2020, multiple case studies show how outbreaks in prisons spread to surrounding communities. A nationwide comparison found that COVID-19 cases grew more quickly in counties with more incarcerated people, and linked mass incarceration to more than half a million additional COVID-19 cases inside and outside prisons.

The most recent Europe-wide data collection, by the University of Lausanne, reported case numbers in prisons through September 2020. More than a year has passed since, with multiple waves, new variants and a global vaccination campaign.

First responses shut down all activity

A study by researchers in Barcelona shows that most countries locked down prisons hard and fast at the start of the pandemic.

Visits were immediately stopped or severely limited in virtually all countries. In many prisons, sports, recreational activities and work were also suspended and prison leave schemes were put on hold.

“Even our letters were quarantined,” recalls Csaba Vass, who is in prison in Hungary. Countries such as Germany, Belgium and Hungary quarantined new arrivals and prisoners who showed symptoms.

Prison infection rates follow the general population

Data collected for this investigation now show that, at first glance, these measures seem to have helped avoid the worst: Prisons have, overall, not become runaway COVID hot spots. According to the data available, infection rates in prisons in many countries seem to roughly parallel those of the population in general. 

Where infection rates were high in the general population, they also tended to be high in prisons. This is true, for example, in countries such as Slovenia, Estonia and Belgium, where more than one in 10 people have tested positive already.

In countries such as Croatia and Greece, prisoners are infected at a much higher rate than in the general population. But, in many countries, reported cases in prisons remained below the level of the general population, according to the latest available data — even in Hungary and France, countries with notoriously overcrowded prisons.

Even in countries with lower infection rates, individual prisons can still be the sites of serious outbreaks. Just recently, more than 50 people tested positive at Béziers prison in France, which currently confines 638 people to a space built for 389. 

Cases and deaths may be underreported

Official numbers may not always tell the whole story. Most prison administrations don’t collect data systematically, says Adriano Martufi, who researches prison conditions in Europe at Leiden University. “My feeling is that there is certainly a problem of underreporting,” Martufi says.

The Larissa prison in Greece, for example, had reported only 200 cases officially through July 2021. Stathopoulos says he has counted far more. “Just between December 2020 and now, I believe we’ve had more than 500 cases,” he says.

Underreporting might not necessarily be deliberate — it could also be the result of organizational challenges. “Health services in prisons are understaffed, underequipped,” Martufi says. “I’m not even sure whether they have the technical capability to collect and handle such data.”

Low case numbers come at an exorbitant price

Even if infection numbers are taken at face value, the restrictions imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus often have side effects of their own. “The tragedy that we feared did not happen, but only with enormous sacrifices for the prison population: no more activities; an end to teaching; an end to what little work exists in prison, and so on,” Dominique Simonnot, who heads France’s independent public body for overseeing conditions at places where people are deprived of liberty. “In social terms the price is exorbitant.”

For the past 18 months, many prisons have established lockdown measures that put inmates in especially harsh conditions.

One prison in Malta kept new arrivals in a cell with just a floor mattress and an open floor toilet 23 hours a day for two weeks, in conditions that the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture had already condemned in 2013. 

Quarantine confinements pose serious health risks

The UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, or Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, state that solitary confinement should only be used as a last resort, for as short a time as possible, and never for more than 15 days. But, during the pandemic, isolating prisoners has become a standard measure in many countries.

In Ireland, where incarcerated people 70 and older or with chronic illnesses were automatically placed in solitary confinement between April and June 2020, detainees in such isolation reported feeling depressed and even suicidal.

In some facilities in Germany, pretrial detainees were isolated for 14 days after each court hearing. 

In France, two-week isolation was mandatory after any leave of absence, family visit or outpatient medical treatment, says Dominique Simonnot, the country’s chief prisons inspector. “As a result, some are refusing these trips, with all the risks that this implies for their health.” 

And even people who weren’t under quarantine were often restricted to their cells for large parts of the day and left with very little to do to pass the time.

‘Lifeline’ for prisoners cut as visits stopped

Prohibitions on visitors were also especially difficult for many incarcerated people.

“Visits are an immensely important lifeline for prisoners,” says Catherine Heard, director of the World Prison Research Programme. “It’s hard to overstate just how much of a difference it makes to them, being able to stay in touch with families and loved ones.”

Prisoners have a right to family life, according to the European Court of Human Rights.

In October 2020, people incarcerated at the Rec prison in Albania launched a hunger strike to protest the suspension of visits when the pandemic was declared. They had only been able to contact families by phone since that March.

In Hungary, Vass says, “We had two and a half hours of physical contact twice a month before the pandemic — the lack of that caused very serious mental problems.” The prison eventually set up video-calling options to at least permit virtual visits. “That made it easier,” he says. 

Most countries introduced measures for virtual visits, although low connection speeds and usage restrictions still pose problems. “There’s been a huge leap forward in many prisons across Europe to develop videoconferencing systems,” Martufi says. “That was absolutely unthinkable in many member states before the pandemic. So that was a positive development.” 

Martufi says one possible risk of this is that prisons could attempt to use video calls as a replacement for in-person visits in the long term. “We have indication that some prison administrations said: ‘Well, now you have Skype, you can live with that — there’s no real need for you to be allowed to meet your family or your lawyers anymore,’” Martufi says.

“We don’t know yet how systemic this change is, but the risk is that this might stay with us even after the pandemic is gone.”

Apart from video calls, Catherine Heard does not see much effort being made to mitigate the effects of restrictions. “I cannot off the top of my head think of anything really meaningful that was done,” she says.

“There was a huge missed opportunity, for example, to provide reading material, recorded information or access to online courses. There were a lot of things that could have been done, should have been done, but weren’t done.”

The Netherlands was one of the countries that managed to restart prison activities relatively quickly through measures such as rotational schemes or smaller, fixed groups, Heard says. But most countries didn’t implement such measures.

Structural problems exacerbate situation

As in so many other areas of society, the situation has been exacerbated by structural problems that existed long before the pandemic.

“Some of the most severe and prolonged restrictions were seen in the countries with the worst prison overcrowding,” Heard says. A lack of space makes distancing measures impossible to implement, and alternative measures are hindered by staff shortages. “If there aren’t staff to move people around the prison,” she says, “there is no option but to keep them locked up in their cells for most of the day and night.”

Researchers, NGOs and incarcerated people alike repeatedly mention overcrowding as key to the problem. One in three European countries operate their prisons above official capacity. 

In many individual prisons, the situation is much worse than the country average suggests. “I am in a cell that is intended for five people — now there are eight of us. It is impossible to maintain distance,” a person on hunger strike told a Croatian news outlet at the start of the pandemic in March 2020. “We are unable to see our wives and children, and, God forbid, maybe some of us never see them again. We practically feel like death row inmates, waiting for the coronavirus to break into prison.”

French chief prisons inspector Dominique Simonnot: “Imagine three people crammed 10 hours a day into a 9-square-meter cell, which is only 4.5 square meters with the bunk bed, the table and the toilet area.”

During the first wave, many countries throughout Europe released people in unprecedented numbers in order to ease the pressure on prisons. “It’s what the experts have been telling them to do for years, but it was too politically scary,” Heard says. “I think COVID gave many countries an excuse to quietly reduce their prisoner numbers.”

Heard calculated that the incarcerated population may have been reduced by as much as half a million people globally between March 2020 and June 2021. Countries such as Slovenia, Belgium, France and Italy, all of which had been operating over capacity to begin with, reduced their incarcerated populations by up to 25%, bringing them down to at or below official capacity.

“One lesson countries will have learned is that they’ve reduced their incarceration numbers without the sky falling in,” Heard says. With the pandemic offering a public health reason for reducing prison populations, she says it is vital that countries now sustain the trend.

Prison populations are rising again

But many countries seem to be reversing the progress made since spring 2020. After the initial drop, incarcerated populations are now rising again in about half of the European countries studied — in some cases even surpassing their original levels. 

French and Slovenian prisons, for example, are now back to being overcrowded at the national level, with individual prisons worse off still.

Vaccinations delayed

With these structural problems exacerbating an already complicated situation, a “return to normal” in prisons hinges on the same thing it does for the rest of society: vaccination.

“When it was announced that there would be a vaccine, people became much calmer,” Vass says. “To the best of my knowledge, almost all inmates here took it. I received my first dose in May, the second in June, and, like many, I took the third in September.”

But not everyone has gotten their jab yet. One big reason for the delay is the fact that, even with the high risk to inmates, staff and the general population, most European countries did not include incarcerated people as a priority group in their vaccination plans. Many didn’t mention them at all. 

In Germany, for example, people in communal living arrangements such as elderly care homes were prioritized explicitly, but prisoners were still vaccinated in parallel with the rest of the population.

“There has been consistent indication from independent supranational organizations that prisoners should be prioritized,” Martufi says. “It’s a good example of the absolute discrepancy between the policy indications on the one hand and the reality on the ground.”

Many attribute this to a lack of political will. In some cases, Martufi says, politics even actively hindered early access to vaccination. “In Belgium, prisoners’ being prioritized became a political discussion,” he says, “and, as a result, prisoners just stayed out of the vaccination campaign until the very end.” In Italy on the other end, he says, the decision to give incarcerated people priority access to vaccinations was an administrative decision, made without much public discussion.

This has meant that the start of vaccinations in prisons was significantly delayed, with some countries not distributing a single shot in prisons before June, while others reported starting as early as the end of March.

Facing the second pandemic winter

With vaccination rates in European prisons finally reaching the level of the general population in many countries and with infections low during the summer, incarcerated people caught a breath of fresh air as visits and activities resumed under hygiene requirements.

But, with winter and the next wave arriving in most European countries, the pandemic isn’t over for anyone — and certainly not for people in prisons. “We will not get our old life, our benefits, back soon,” Csaba Vass in Hungary says. In Italy, weekly data show active cases among staff and inmates rising. And Croatia’s Justice Ministry recently confirmed that more than 20% of incarcerated people have by now been infected with the coronavirus — that is roughly 1.5 times the rate of the population in general.

Lessons for the future

Experts say countries need to reduce their prison populations drastically in order to better prepare for such situations in the future. “We cannot face another health crisis with these numbers of people incarcerated throughout Europe,” Martufi says. “That needs to go down.” 

But observers also see reason for optimism. “COVID should have been a wake-up call to invest in better prison conditions and to reduce the use of incarceration,” Catherine Heard says. 

For that wake-up call to be heard, public interest and political will are crucial. “It’s time to rethink our perception of prisoners as second-class citizens,” Martufi says. “We cannot allow anyone to be left behind. It will be worse for everyone.”

The project is a collaboration within the European Data Journalism Network

Project lead: Deutsche Welle

Collaborators: Alternatives Economiques, Civio, El Confidencial, EUrologus, Il Sole24Ore, iMEdD, MIIR, OBC Transeuropa, Openpolis, Pod črto, VoxEurop

This piece was edited by DW’s Milan Gagnon, Gianna-Carina Grün and Peter Hille.