The prison population of Lanzarote has tripled between 2000 and 2019, according to a statistic just published by the Data Center of the Cabildo. Last year there were 427 inmates in the Tahíche prison, while 19 years earlier there were 141 inmates on the island.
Of the total number of prisoners last year in the Lanzarote prison, 397 were men and 30 were women. Of these, 76 were in pre-trial detention, representing 17.7% of the total number of inmates. For their part, 340 were serving sentences, while 11 appear as "other convicts", which, according to what is indicated, includes people who were in jail for weekend arrests, non-payment of fines, security measures or transits.
The statistics published by the Data Center of the Cabildo, which takes figures from the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC) based on data from the General Secretariat of Penitentiary Institutions, shows the evolution of the prison population of Lanzarote since the beginning of the 21st century.
Between 2000 and 2007, the number of prisoners on the island was gradually increasing, although without reaching 200, a figure that was exceeded in 2008, when there were 251 inmates in the Tahíche prison. Precisely, that year the first phase of the prison expansion was inaugurated, which consisted of the construction of two new buildings with 170 cells.
In 2009, the prison population of Lanzarote was 323 people, a figure that increased to 347 a year later and rose to 412 in 2011, the year in which the second and last phase of expansion of the Tahíche prison was inaugurated, which included two other residential modules, a third for women, a kitchen, a laundry and a warehouse.
A year later, in 2012, the prison population of Lanzarote was already 429 people, a number that continued to increase until reaching 458 in 2014, which is the highest figure recorded. After that, in 2015, the number of prisoners decreased to 403, registering a new decrease in 2016 to 357. However, in the following years the number of inmates in the Tahíche prison increased again, reaching 401 in 2017, 426 in 2018 and 427 in 2019.
