El futuro de la prisión en España

In comparative penology is prevalent to use the rates of imprisonment per 100,000 inhabitants as a criterion to measure the level of incarceration in one country. However, rates of imprisonment depend on two factors -flow of entries in prison and length of imprisonment- that not necessarily follow the same pattern. The present paper analyzes the evolution of imprisonment in Spain during the democratic period, focusing separately in its two dimensions. Four factors have been relevant to explain the evolution of the rate of entries and the length of imprisonment in Spain: the level of crime, the process of Europeanization,the criminalization of non-serious offences and the harshness of criminal law reforms. Considering the likely evolution of these four factors, I foresee a reduction of the imprisonment rates in Spain. In the future, the criminal justice system would need to devote more resources to the non-custodial sanctions, work with short prison sentences and pay more attention to the transition from prison to community.