UK-Prisons
The human and financial cost of the growth and overcrowding in British jails is "now too great to bear," the Prison Reform Trust warned Thursday.

Issuing a report on the government's figures showing that two- thirds of the country's prisons were overcrowded, the NGO campaign group listed the top ten worst with jail populations between 45 per cent and 63 per cent over capacity.

"There are now over 10,000 more people in the prison system than it is designed to hold," the report said." Worse still, 15 prisons were full beyond even their safe overcrowding limit in July." The prison population in England and Wales reached a record of over 83,000 last month, the highest proportion in western Europe.

This was despite over 31,500 criminals being granted early release in the first year of emergency measure to combat overcrowding.

"The prison population is mushrooming out of control, and the government is still trying hopelessly to build its way out of a crisis. Ministers have grown complacent about jail overcrowding," said the director of the Prison Reform Trust Juliet Lyon.

The report warned that the massive prison growth will not end on its own accord but through a "concerted effort across government to reserve prison for those who have committed serious and violent crimes."
It also called for investment in drug treatment for addicts, mental health and social care and enforced community work for petty offenders.

The Trust's central warning was that the overcrowding is "forcing the Prison Service to risk good order, security and proper running of prisons around the country."
"Prison conditions are deteriorating. Prisons are short-staffed.

Opportunities for constructive activity have just been reduced following budget cutbacks," it said.

Overcrowded jails was also "not working to prevent re-offending," with reconviction rates running at an average of two in three prisoners reconvicted within two years of release, the report added.

Britain's imprisonment rate was calculated to be at 147 per 100,000 of the population, compared with France's 91 per 100,000 and Germany with 95 per 100,000.

A new building programme announced by the government will take the rate of imprisonment in England and Wales to 178 per 100,000 of population, this compares with east European rates of 148 in Bulgaria, 155 in Slovakia and Romania (155) and 156 in Hungary.