More than 30 per cent of prisoners in Germany are “foreign”, a much higher proportion than other European countries, the Council of Europe has found.
In one state, foreigners made up an astonishing 96 per cent of incarcerated peoples.
Of the 65,710 prisoners in Germany this year, 19,592 were “foreigners”, the so-called ‘Space study’ presented this Tuesday in Brussels revealed. The European average is 8 per cent less, sitting at 22 per cent.
By foreigners, the authors of the study meant anyone in possession of non-German or duel citizenship. If “foreigner” was taken to include people with a migrant background, then the figure would likely be even higher.
In Poland, which is currently governed by an anti-mass migration right wing government, the percentage of foreigners populating jails is just 0.3.
In Monaco, meanwhile, which has a foreign population of about 78 per cent, 96.4 per cent of the prison population was foreign.
Drug offences were the most common reason for imprisonment, followed by theft, robbery and homicide.
The Council of Europe report comes just days before a leaked police report revealed that the German force is braced for a surge in drug and sex-related crimes by migrants, and a steep increase in Islamic radicalisation.
The explosive document predicts a rise in crime and warns that Islamists are “agitating” in asylum centres, increasing the risk of radicalisation among disaffected refugees.
It notes “hundreds” of incidents in recent months in which salafists — proponents of militant Sunni Islam — have “sought contact with refugees”.
German police are also attributing a sudden increase in drug related crime and drug-related deaths to the ongoing migrant crisis.
Police released new figures showing that 1,226 people died last year as a result of drug use and abuse.
The number had only increased gradually in preceding years, but jumped sharply between 2014 and 2015 by a staggering 18 per cent – a time frame correlating with the escalation of migrant crisis.