Foreign nationals accounted for around 45 per cent of people held in German prisons in 2025, according to the latest federal prison statistics, despite making up roughly 15 per cent of Germany’s resident population.
The figures, published by the Federal Statistical Office, cover people serving prison or youth sentences, as well as those held under other forms of judicial detention, and are based on the situation in Germany’s prisons on March, 2026.
The statistics record nationality, not ethnic background or migration history, meaning that German citizens with an immigrant background are counted as German.
The proportion is highest in Germany’s city-states.
Foreign nationals account for 58.9 per cent of prisoners in Berlin and 57.95 per cent in Hamburg.
In Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse, the figure also exceeds 50 per cent.
By contrast, the share is significantly lower in eastern Germany, standing at roughly one in four prisoners in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.
René Müller, federal chairman of the prison staff union, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung that language barriers between staff and inmates were creating significant difficulties, making it harder to engage with prisoners and support their rehabilitation.
Müller also warned of a growing potential for violence and the formation of isolated groups within prisons. The prison system urgently needs more staff to monitor situations more closely and separate groups when necessary.
“It must not be the case that some detainees are more criminal when they are released than when they entered prison,” he said.
The figure has become a focal point in Germany’s continuing debate over immigration and crime. The country’s prison system is administered by the individual federal states, while the Federal Statistical Office compiles nationwide data.
The federal government has said it does not maintain its own separate total for non-German prisoners and relies on the official prison statistics for the figures.
The comparison with the general population is striking. Germany had around 14.1 million foreign nationals registered at the end of 2025, equivalent to roughly 17 per cent of the total population. The share of foreign nationals among prisoners is therefore substantially higher than their share of the population.
Prison statistics also measure people who have been sentenced or placed in custody, rather than all people suspected of crimes.
The disparity is particularly politically sensitive after years of high immigration and asylum migration, with successive governments struggling to reconcile the demand for stricter deportation policies with the legal and practical difficulties involved in removing foreign nationals from the country.
Germany’s foreign population has grown substantially over the past two decades. By the end of 2025, around 14.1 million foreign nationals were registered as living in the country, while a further 21.8 million people had an immigration history under the broader statistical definition, which includes people who themselves migrated to Germany or whose two parents did so.
German authorities have transferred a transgender neo-Nazi to a men’s prison despite the inmate being legally recognised as female, apparently overruling Germany’s controversial Self-Determination Act. https://t.co/CKsPH6hDcN
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) July 17, 2026
