Why overcrowded prisons

Last year, a third of officers who left the prison service had spent less than two years in post. The criminal justice policy over the past three decades has led to cuts in prison budgets and staffing. This has resulted in the prison system becoming overstretched and, due to overcrowding, no longer able to provide safety and decency standards expected in international rules and standards Prison Reform Trust, According to the Chief Inspector of Prisons Annual Report , a reasonably good standard of health care is provided most of the time in the majority of prisons.

Serious detrimental effects were, however, cited by the Prisons Inspectorate due to prison officer shortages and resultant restrictive regimes. The shortage of prison officers has impacted negatively on health care with prisoners unable to attend health care appointments due to a lack of available escorts. It was also found that in some cases prisoners were given their night time medication as early as p.

NPS has links to medical emergencies, violence, debt and organised crime. Provision of help for prisoners with alcohol problems is insufficient: 58 per cent of people surveyed said that they had been offered support for their alcohol problems with only 22 per cent finding this support useful.

Additionally, only 40 per cent surveyed knew that there was support available for their alcohol problems Alcohol and Crime Commission, All prisons are tested to see if they satisfy basic standards for safety, respect for prisoners, access to purposeful activities and help when they leave the institution.

In each area, they are deemed as being good, reasonably good, insufficient or poor. An Observer investigation found that: […] in the most recent inspections of adult prisons in England and Wales, 80 out of the jails examined were providing insufficient or poor standards in at least one area.

Two in five prisons were providing inadequate assistance to prisoners as they left — a major problem in tackling reoffending. Savage and Townsend, b. The case of prisons in England and Wales demonstrates that overcrowding is a key factor that continues to have a wide-ranging impact on prisoner health and well-being and on their living environment.

Although the government has announced plans to increase the number of prison staff and improve safety, these plans are doomed to fail if they do not also deal with overcrowding by reducing the number of people sent to prison rather than relying on building more prisons.

What is needed, as argued by the Howard League is: […] to stem the flow of people into prison and support so that prison staff can focus on working positively with those who remain behind bars Howard League, and a justice system that tackles the underlying causes of crime and provides investment in prevention.

Howard League For Penal Reform, I hope the next time I re-visit the problem of overcrowding, I will be able to report that significant action has been taken to address the issue.

While the rates vary substantially across regions, in roughly half of all countries with available data, prison systems are operating at more than per cent of their intended capacity.

According to a global analysis of Government and open sources, as of last May, nearly , prisoners in countries have become infected with COVID In response to the pandemic, some prisons limited recreation time, work opportunities, and visitation rights — all essential components of rehabilitation programmes.

With prevention measures often difficult to implement in detention centres, especially overcrowded ones, some countries opted to temporarily release large numbers of people in custody, particularly those convicted of non-violent offences.

Since March, roughly six per cent of the estimated global prison population - which translates to at least , inmates - have been authorized or considered eligible for at least temporary release through COVID emergency mechanisms adopted by Member States. Since you asked: Just how overcrowded were prisons before the pandemic, and at this time of social distancing, how overcrowded are they now?

As states mandate reducing the capacity of public spaces to slow the spread of COVID, we collect the data to show just how overcrowded almost every state prison system still is. For this analysis, we collected the most recent population data available from state departments of corrections and the Bureau of Prisons and we calculated how full the 48 state prison systems and the federal Bureau of Prisons currently are, based on the rated, operational, and design capacities that state and federal officials reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics for the report, Prisoners in We calculated current levels based on each of these three capacity metrics, and reported the highest and lowest results.

Two states, Connecticut and Ohio, did not report capacity data to BJS and are therefore not included. For population counts and reported capacities, see the appendix table below. Footnotes There are three accepted ways to measure prison system capacity. According to the definitions used in Prisoners in , the three major capacity measurements can be defined as: Rated capacity: the number of people or beds a facility can hold, as set by a rating official; Operational capacity: The number of people a facility can hold based on staffing and services; Design capacity: The number of people a facility can hold, as set by the architect or planner.

Appendix: State and federal prison system populations, capacities, and data sources This table shows the different capacities reported by prison systems rated, operational, and design and the December 31, prison populations as reported in the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in report and the most recent population data available from individual departments of corrections. Reported capacity and population for Arizona, Georgia, and South Dakota include private prisons.

All other states do not include capacity and custody counts for private prisons. Because the November population data from the Tennessee Department of Corrections includes private prisons, we replaced the BJS reported population and operational capacity with data reported by the TDOC that includes private prisons. Related briefings: Since you asked: Is social distancing possible behind bars? Stay Informed Email:.

Prison Policy Initiative newsletter? Research Library? Prison gerrymandering? Recommended Reading:. Five ways the criminal justice system could slow the pandemic Quick action could slow the spread of the viral pandemic in prisons and jails and in society as a whole.

The "services" offered by jails don't make them safe places for vulnerable people Even in the best of times, jails are not good at providing health and social services.

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