Overcrowding in prison is a significant issue that affects a lot of countries. It is challenging to detect this controversial term as there is no single and uniform internationally accepted standard. Undoubtedly, this notion must be neutralized and counteracted, as inmates’ mental and physical conditions might be negatively affected to a great extent, and it can entail convicts’ self-harm or violent and hostile behaviors towards others.

Prison overcrowding also impacts prisoners’ health conditions and well-being and adversely affects the prison system and public health. Overcrowding in prison entails a staggering increase in disease prevalence, especially psychiatric and infectious disorders. It can prevent social rehabilitation work and lead to degrading and inhuman treatment of prison staff workers. Increasing awareness about this issue is a significant element in eliminating this deficit in health care and social welfare.

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Overcrowded prisons are contributing factors for health issues spread in jails. These prisons create complex and pervasive challenges to adjust inmates’ health and provide them with a safe environment. Overcrowded prisons can “lead to unsanitary, violent conditions that are harmful to the physical and mental well-being of prisoners” (MacDonald, 2018, p.1). Prison staff are also at several risks in a range of ways. They face potential violence from inmates and increased stress and mental health issues, and the threat of infections. Nowadays, the scale of overcrowding remains enormous, as the number of prisoners regularly increases globally.

There are a lot of discussions concerning the negative and even irreversible consequences of overcrowding in prisons. While authorities and social activists raise this issue, there are two responses. The first one is to build more prisons to distribute inmates or reduce convicts by utilizing particular reforms such as death penalty implementation, which is not humane, or early release programs. Unfortunately, these stated solutions cannot resolve this controversial issue in the long-standing reduction of the prison population. More recently, the Council of Europe addressed the issue of overcrowded prisons in the White Paper published in 2016 (European Committee on Crime Problems).

The White Paper suggests moving away from increasing prison capacity and offers other short-term measures that might eliminate the primary causes of overcrowding. This paper also presents implementing “more use of alternatives to custody and make lesser use of detention in order, among others, to reduce prison population growth” (Council of Europe, 2016, p. 85). The White Paper claims to reassess the national penal law; and decriminalize several offenses that might be interchanged by alternative sanctions, such as victim restitution, community sentences, and more elaborate monitoring and evaluation of prisons by external evaluators.

Eliminating prison overcrowding is the profound initiative to combat this problem and concern for staff and prisoners’ health condition resulting from the negative impact of working and living in overcrowded prison houses. These preventive measures embrace programs dealing with drug addiction, as well as education improvement and working skills. Both the UNODC (2013) and the White Paper (2016) recommend eradicating overcrowding in prison, claiming to organize fair sentencing structures and facilitate well-structured healthcare programs to drive societal reintegration and eliminate the effect of the “revolving door” in the prison adjustment.

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Obviously, prison staff working in overcrowded prisons might develop control methods in the prison environment to reduce increasing violence and conflicts among inmates and prison workers. Prison managers or administrators encountering the convicts’ population believe that it is challenging to satisfy international guidelines and standards to guarantee human and ethical conditions for convicts. Nowadays, it is getting more difficult to monitor prisoners’ behavior patterns in an overcrowding environment. This situation imposes high pressure on financial resources that might help provide criminals with more extra space.

Effects of Overcrowding

Submitting a Safe Environment for Inmates

The lack of financial resources and the absence of control forces is