The Council of Europe’s newly released 2025 annual penal statistics on prison populations (SPACE I), show that many European countries are failing to address the serious prison overcrowding they face. In many others prisons are close to full capacity following an increase in their prison populations in recent years. At the same time, the survey indicates that the proportion of older detainees is increasing, which may create operational and policy challenges to prison systems in the future, and there is a slight increase in the proportion of women in prison.