Overview
- An analysis published July 24, 2026 shows that non-German inmates made up 44.8 percent of people in custody in Germany as of March 2026, with more than 27,000 foreign prisoners among 60,408 detainees.
- City-states and several western states have the highest shares, with Berlin at about 58.9 percent and Hamburg about 57.95 percent, while some eastern states have roughly one in four inmates without German citizenship.
- The prison staff union Bund der Strafvollzugsbediensteten (BSBD) says language barriers are already blocking officers from delivering resocialization work and that communication failures are increasing violence and group isolation.
- The published figures count people with dual German and foreign citizenship as German and include pre-trial detainees, a methodological point that can understate foreign-origin involvement in long-term prison populations.
- Unions are calling for more personnel and targeted language and rehabilitative services, a move that could change how prisons are run locally and affect post-release outcomes for inmates and community safety.