The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) has developed 13 indicators on intimate partner violence and domestic violence. Between 2023 and 2024, the indicators were used to collect national administrative data from the police and justice sectors in the EU-27 Member States, except for Slovakia.
This indicator presents data on the number of male perpetrators held in prison or with a sanction involving a form of deprivation of liberty for intimate partner violence, domestic violence, and violence in any relationship on December 31st of each year. Data is presented on perpetrators against female and/or total victims, during the period of 2014 to 2022.
Please note, the data collected across Member States should not be compared due to differences in counting rules, data collection procedures, characteristics of victims and perpetrators included, and the types of criminal offences included. Additionally, the data must be interpreted with caution as it does not represent the true prevalence of violence.
Further details on the data
The table below offers additional details to interpret the data collected from Member States. Further details regarding the completeness, accuracy, and comparability of the data are presented in the reference metadata section, and in the methodological report for the data collection exercise. In-depth analysis of the data collected in each country is presented in individual country profiles.
|
Country |
Details regarding the data collected by EIGE |
|
Czechia (CZ) |
Data on domestic violence relates to the number of criminal offences resulting in the imprisonment of perpetrators, not the number of perpetrators; data also excludes persons that do not share a common residence. Data on violence in any relationship relates to the number of criminal offences resulting in the imprisonment, not the number of perpetrators. For the justice sector indicators, there was a change in the method of data collection in 2022, so the data is not fully compatible with previous years. |
|
Estonia (EE) |
Data on violence in any relationship only refers to men convicted under the Article 121(2.2) of the Penal Code (physical abuse committed in a close or dependent relationship). |
|
Greece (EL) |
Data on domestic violence refers to the calendar year (January 1st – December 31st). |
|
Spain (ES) |
Data refers to perpetrators sent to prison in a reference year (not held in prison on December 31st). Data on intimate partner violence refers to gender violence instead of intimate partner violence. Data on domestic violence excludes intimate partner violence. Data on violence in any relationship only includes perpetrators of gender violence and domestic violence. Perpetrators of other violence are not included in the data. |
|
France (FR) |
Data on domestic violence does not include types of relationships that can exist in a domestic unit with no legal or family ties (e.g. housemates are not included). |
|
Croatia (HR) |
Data on domestic violence refers to the calendar year (January 1st – December 31st). For justice sector data, reporting practices changed due to legislative updates. There are also some inconsistencies and missing data due to the migration of data from one case management system to another (in 2015). In addition, in 2019, misdemeanour courts merged with municipal courts of general jurisdiction, so it is possible that there were errors in reporting. |
|
Luxembourg (LU) |
Data refers to perpetrators that should be in prison based on their conviction; data also refers to the calendar year (January 1st – December 31st). |
|
Hungary (HU) |
Data on violence in any relationship refers to male convicted prisoners in custody on December 31st, including those with pending proceedings for violence against women. Perpetrators were not necessarily convicted of these offences; these figures are based on the offences indicated in the proceedings conducted/pending against them. For Indicator 13 (perpetrators held in prison), changes in data collection systems make it difficult to produce the same data content for all the years included in the questionnaire. |
|
Romania (RO) |
Regarding Indicator 13 (perpetrators held in prison), in 2014 the Penal Code was changed, which resulted in changes in the application of Law 217/2003 on combating and preventing domestic violence. Until 1 February, domestic violence was predominantly legislated by Law 217/2003; since the Penal Code changed to include acts of domestic violence (Article 199), its application has taken priority over that of Law 217/2003. This means that harsher sentences are given to perpetrators found guilty of forms of family violence (Article 199 of the Penal Code). |
|
Finland (FI) |
Data on violence in any relationship refers to the calendar year (January 1st – December 31st). |
|
Sweden (SE) |
Data on violence in any relationship refers to October 1st. |
Available flags:
| b | break in time series | c | confidential |
| d | definition differs, see metadata | e | estimated |
| f | forecast | i | see metadata |
| m | imputed | n | not significant |
| p | provisional | r | revised |
| s | Eurostat estimate | u | low reliability |
| x | dropped due to insufficient sample size | y | unreliable due to small sample size |
| z | not applicable |