Data extracted in April 2025.
Planned article update: April 2026.
Highlights
Number of police officers, professional judges and adult prison personnel, 2012-2023
This article presents personnel statistics for police, courts, and prisons in Europe, including the number of employees and the proportion of women. Data cover the period 2012 to 2023. Official figures are provided by national administrations of police, courts and prisons.
The personnel numbers increased in 2023 compared to 2022
In 2023, there were 1 537 588 police officers, 75 333 professional judges and 264 662 employees in adult prisons in the EU (Figure 1). The number of police officers in the EU has been increasing since 2015 and it reached the highest value in 2023. There was a slight increase (0.2%) from 2022 to 2023.
With the highest value in 2012 (79 816), the number of judges in the EU was largely stable between 2017 and 2023. Compared to 2012, the number of judges in 2023 was 6% lower, however, the change compared to 2022 was negligible – less than 0.1%.
The number of employees in adult prisons decreased between 2013 and 2017, largely due to a decline in the prison population. However, this trend reversed from 2017 onwards, with the personnel numbers increasing again. Between 2022 and 2023, the number of prison staff grew by 1.4%. In 2023, compared to 2017 the increase was 9.6%.
Source: Eurostat (crim_just_job)
In 2023, the proportion of women as police officers, judges and prison personnel in the EU has generally increased since 2012 (Figure 2). It reached the highest values for police officers (20.4%), professional judges (59.7%) and personnel in adult prisons (31.3%) in 2023.
Source: Eurostat (crim_just_job)
Source data for tables and graphs
Data sources
Data are official figures from national administrations of police, courts, and prisons. Each country provides official national figures to Eurostat as part of a yearly data collection on crime and criminal justice statistics. When EU totals are calculated to indicate an overall trend, missing figures for countries are estimated with the last available year (of the same country). However, the EU totals presented in this article are not disseminated in the Eurostat database.
Available data
- 1993-2007: number of police officers
- 2008-2022: number of police officers, professional judges, prison personnel; total, men and women
Context
Police, court, and prison personnel statistics relate to the work of law enforcement services and criminal justice administration. The basic data are made for administrative purposes and mainly used by governments and authorities such as police, prosecution, courts, and prisons.
Related statistics include police-reported crime, prison statistics, government expenditure and employment statistics. Related issues include occurrence of crime, society's reaction to crime, safety and security policy, rule of law, effectiveness of the justice system.