Translation. Trends and projections of the prison population and its characteristics in Germany

It would be useful to know the number of prison places to be provided in the longer or shorter term, or the characteristics of future inmates that might influence the design of the prison system. We could certainly boast of having the perfect punishment regime. But projections are notoriously difficult to make: looking ahead can only be based on analyses of the past. In this article, we address the problem of forecasting the number of prisoners and their characteristics by summarising the development of the prison population in Germany over the past decades, based on public statistics. We then briefly examine some explanatory models for this development in terms of the ability they provide to make projections, and conclude by presenting and discussing current predictive models.