Deep dives · Prison by prison
Prison by prison
Italy’s prisons hold more people than they have places, and those who count deaths in prison do not always arrive at the same number. Prison by prison, month by month since 2019.
People in prison and places
From 2019 to today
People in prison and places, at the end of each month
How full each prison is
Each circle is an adult prison, sized by the number of people held there. Each prison’s profile opens from the list, the map or the table further down.
The most crowded
All prisons
Awaiting trial, serving a sentence
Case circondariali, remand prisons close to the courts, take people when they are arrested and hold them while they await trial or serve a short sentence; many also hold people who have been convicted. Case di reclusione are for people serving longer final sentences.
People per 100 places, by type of prison
Region by region: remand prisons and people without a final conviction
How many people die in prison
Suicides and deaths from illness, per 10,000 people in prison
Suicides, according to who counts them
Who counts what
Where
What we don’t know
How many people share each cell, and how much space they have: the tables stop at the level of the prison, and a half-empty prison can have overcrowded wings. How many places are available each month, prison by prison. The legal status of people in each prison, which would be needed to understand the case of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. How many people die shortly after leaving prison, or in hospital weeks after a suicide attempt. How many of the deaths “still to be established” are suicides. And why a person takes their own life: the numbers do not say, and this page does not try to.
How the numbers were built, and sources
Why this page
The rest of the atlas counts reported crimes; this page looks inside prisons. The approach is that of The Marshall Project, the American newsroom that covers criminal justice: official data read to the end, the method next to the numbers, and words that do not reduce people to their detention. That is why this page says “people in prison”, not “prisoners” or “inmates”.
The Ministry’s tables
Every month the Ministry of Justice publishes, from data of the prison administration department (DAP), a table of every adult prison: type, official capacity, people present on the last day of the month, women and foreign nationals. All the tables since January 2019 are used here (December 2021 was published twice, identically), and the script checks that each month the rows add up to the total. At the end of 2025 the figures by region match those ISTAT publishes from the same source, used on the page on pre-trial detention.
Prisons over time and on the map
Prison names change from one table to the next: the script recognises prisons by region and name, with a short list of old and new names. Sanremo went from a prison for sentenced people to a remand prison in 2022. Camerino, empty, drops out of the tables in July 2019; Pozzuoli, for women, is empty; the centre at Gjadër, in Albania, is listed among the prisons of Rome from April to September 2025 and again from September 2026, always with nobody held there: it is not on the map, but its places count in the national capacity. Each prison is placed at the central point of its municipality, not at its exact address.
Available places
Deaths
How the data were built
The Ministry’s tables are web pages, read by a script. The Guarantor’s are published only as PDFs: they were copied one by one, with the page they come from, into scripts/istituti_tabelle.json, together with the counts by Ristretti Orizzonti and Antigone. The script re-checks the sums and stops if a row of the Guarantor’s tables does not find its prison or the capacity does not match. All the numbers on this page are in data/istituti.json.
Sources
The documents (in Italian): the Ministry of Justice statistics; the Guarantor’s report on available places at 31 July 2026 and the one on deaths in prison in 2025; Ristretti Orizzonti’s “Morire di carcere” dossier; Antigone’s dossier on suicides in 2025. For the method of the whole atlas: Methodology and sources.
More deep dives
Foreign nationals in Italian prisons
How many there are, from which countries, for which crimes, and why the comparison with residents should be read with caution.
Read the deep dive ReturnsHow many returns are ordered, and how many carried out
Country by country, the orders to leave Italy and the returns actually carried out, year by year since 2008.
Read the deep dive Perception and realityHow unsafe we feel, and how unsafe we are
Fear of crime alongside reported crimes: in Italy as a whole, in the big cities and province by province.
Read the deep dive Unknown offendersHow many crimes remain without a known offender
How many reported crimes have a known offender: crime by crime, in the big cities and province by province.
Read the deep dive MinorsMinors reported and arrested
How many there are among the people reported, for which crimes and region by region: the numbers since 2004, their share since 2014.
Read the deep dive Pre-trial detentionIn prison before the verdict
How many people are held without a final conviction, and how much the State pays when custody turns out to be unjust, district by district.
Read the deep dive TrialsFrom crime to verdict
How many cases prosecutors open, how long trials and appeals last, how many end because time runs out: district by district and court by court.
Read the deep dive Outside prisonSentences served outside prison
Probation, home detention, semi-liberty and probation before trial: how many people, how it has changed since 2014, region by region.
Read the deep dive