Croatia is near the top among 40 European countries in terms of penal policy lenience, according to a Council of Europe report on penal systems, Croatia's Vecernji List daily reported on Monday.

However, Croatia ranks eighth in terms of prison population density at 102.6. At the end of last year, it had 3,905 prisoners while capacity was 3,805. Prisons were more crowded in Belgium (114.6), Cyprus (118.5), France (115.3), Greece (107.6), Italy (106.9), Romania (123.6) and Turkey (112.6).

Penal experts don’t think short prison sentences are useful, the daily said, adding that in Belgium, only 7% of prisoners are serving sentences up to three years, as against 53.3% in Croatia. Only six countries have higher percentages.

In Croatia, 20.6% of the 2,512 prisoners are serving sentences up to one year, 32.7% between one and three years, 17.9% between three and five, 12.9% between five and ten, 9% between ten and 20, and 5.4% over 20 years.

Since 2018, the share of prison sentences under one year has been about 15%. The share of those over five years has been declining since 2019, when it was 36%, to last year’s 27.3%.

Overall, 71.2% of prisoners are serving sentences up to five years. Only the Czech Republic and Iceland have higher shares, 76% and 81.9%, respectively. The Netherlands has a more lenient penal policy (70.8%). Together with Iceland, it has the highest share of prisoners serving sentences up to one year (33.3%) as well as a smaller share of longer sentences.

Switzerland has 57.5% of prisoners serving up to five years, but it has the lowest share of those serving terms over five years (14.1%), as against Croatia’s 27.3%, and only 5% of those serving over ten years, as against Croatia’s 14.4%.