Crime and Punishment. Crime Rates and Prison Population in Europe

Abstract

We present the attempt of finding association between crime level and prison population across European countries. We propose observation that Central and Eastern European countries distinctly differ from the rest of Europe. Building on this we offer justification that is methodologically based on correlations and regressions of country incarceration rates on crime rates, with the reference to governance indicators. We use data on crime and prisoner rates by offence from Eurostat and SPACE. Our cross-sectional analysis is confined to year 2018.

The empirical part of the paper is preceded by specifying the challenges of comparing crime between countries in Europe. Next, we present the review of research concentrated on relationships between incarceration and crime, with the emphasis on deterrence effect and the prison paradox. This stream of research is typically dedicated to single countries or smaller areas, with the use of microdata. International comparisons are rare and are usually based on time series and trend analyses.

Quantitative approach applied here is established on recognizing two clusters of countries: Central and Eastern European (CEE) cluster, and Western European (WE) cluster. We show that the observation of higher prisoner rates and lower crime rates for CEE countries is confirmed in a quantitative way. The analysis encompasses four types of offences: assault, rape, robbery and theft. Final part of the paper presents the attempt to include World Governance Indicators into the analysis of association between incarceration and crime rates.

All results confirm that crime rates in WE countries are distinctly higher than in CEE countries while incarceration rates in WE are significantly lower than in CEE countries. We think it is because of the broader extent of crimes registered and better accuracy of police statistics. Prison population is largely determined by the criminal and penal policy in each country. Those policies differ substantially between CEE and WE countries, e.g. in terms of frequency of sentencing to the prison and the length of imprisonment. These result in higher incarceration rates in CEE countries, despite lower crime rates – as compared to WE countries.

Keywords: incarceration rate, crime rate, criminal justice statistics, governance

JEL Classification: K14, C21