Projections show that the prison population should fall by 0.8% during the year 2023, to increase thereafter in 2024 by 2.6%, to settle at 99,000 prisoners, indicated the General Delegation to the administration and reintegration (DGAPR) in its report for 2022.
In its forecasts for the period 2023-2026, the DGAPR expects a continuous increase in the number of detainees, which should reach 104,000 detainees by 2026, which corresponds to an expected increase of 7% between 2022 and 2026. .
The report also pointed out that these figures correspond to the expected rates of increase in the number of prisoners. On the other hand, a slight decrease in the prison population is expected for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025, before approaching in 2026 the number recorded in 2022.
The number of sentenced prisoners is also expected to increase by 10% in 2026, compared to 2.5% for the number of people in pretrial detention, which is expected to decrease in 2023 and then increase again.
If these projections are confirmed, the same source noted, people in preventive detention should represent 39% of the prison population by 2026, adding that the number of prisoners who benefited from provisional release should increase by 3.3% in 2023. and 2% in 2024 to approach in 2026, 128,000 individuals.
Regarding the evolution of the prison population during the period 2018-2022, the report revealed that the number of inmates increased from 83,757 to 97,204 between 2018 and 2022, which represents an increase of 16%, indicating that this development was accompanied by a significant decrease (-1.6%) in the number of detainees between 2019 and 2020 in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic which led to a suspension of judicial activities and exceptional amnesties.
This decrease affected the average of the annual evolution, which amounted to 4% during the same period, while the number of the prison population increased by 9.3% between 2021 and 2022, compared to 4, 6% between 2020 and 2021. The number of female prisoners has increased at a higher rate (about 13%) compared to the increase in the number of female prisoners (9.3%) between 2021 and 2022.
The number of sentenced prisoners increased at a higher rate (about 12%) compared to the increase in the number of individuals in preventive detention (5.8%) between 2021 and 2022, noted the same source, which explains the drop in the percentage of this category of the total prison population from 42.19% to 40.85% during the same period.