Prisons in Slovakia

Prisons in Slovakia are fully owned and operated by the state. In 2004, Slovakia had 8 891 prisoners, representing 165 per 100 000 of the national population. As of January 2019 the prison population has risen to 10 372 prisoners (190 per 100 000 citizens).^[1] As of 2019, Slovakia had 18 correctional institutions capable of holding 11 499 inmates. Of these, five are devoted to pre-trial detainees, nine for sentenced prisoners, and four for a combination of sentenced prisoners and pre-trial detainees.

The prison system is administered by the Slovak General Directorate of the Prison and Court Guard Corps (current Director General is Col. Milan Ivan, operating under authority of the Ministry of Justice of the Slovak Republic.) Current occupancy level of the Slovak prison system is 90.2%. As recently as 2010, in stated concerns from Slovak newspaper SME, there had been no place for convicted criminals evading their sentences, if they were to be arrested by the Slovak police, there would have been simply be no place where to detain them.^[2] According to the Slovak Ministry of Justice, the number of convicted prisoners was critical, despite the fact that 9 prisons lowered the minimal space per prisoner to lower values than mandated by law.^[3]