Overcrowding: Causes, Consequences and Reduction Strategies

All correctional services face the challenge of ‘doing more with less’. Doing more means that they are expected not only to ‘house’ prisoners in a safe and secure environment but also to deliver rehabilitative programmes and to prepare prisoners for release. Importantly, they must also meet the growing expectations of external accountability agencies including human rights organizations. Doing more with less reflects the fact that that the number of prisoners is generally increasing at a faster pace than the resources that are allocated to corrections. The current global financial crisis is likely to exacerbate the problem. There may well be an increase in some types of crime and a consequential increase in the number of prisoners but it is unlikely that there will be a commensurate increase in available resources.