The other day I was reading Cyprus Mail’s coverage of Cyprus prison overpopulation problem. As any other problem it does involve attention. But for me personally the article was more useful with absolute numbers rather than relative. This paragraph in particular:
Cyprus’ total prison population in June this year, including pre-trial detainees and remand prisoners, was 831. Its prison population rate reached 105 per 100,000 members of the population, lower than the EU average of 137 per 100,000.
Can you imagine that there are only, more or less, 830 people in prison? And some of them aren’t even proven criminals yet – pre-trial detainees!
Coming from Russia, with it’s multi-million population and millions of people in correctional facilities, and criminal culture tightly integrated into the population with TV, movies, music and language; so tight indeed that even presidents, premiers and ministers are using bits and pieces of it during their public speeches and appearances; I find it almost impossible to believe that there are less than a 1,000 people in Cyprus jails.