Prison Crowding

Report Outline
Special Focus

Overview

▪ In New York City, prison inmates are jammed into tiny cells, while weary guards work heavy overtime schedules. During a period of several weeks earlier this year, a corrections officer and an inmate were indicted for stomping a prisoner to death, another inmate shot and wounded two inmates with a smuggled gun, and a state agency released a report charging guard brutality at jails on Rikers Island. The city has responded to overcrowding with a plan to build more corrections facilities, including a proposal to convert a barge into a floating prison.

▪ In the District of Columbia, inmates in a work-release program wait in line for us long as seven hours at the end of the day until there is room for them to re-enter a crowded jail for the night.

▪ In Texas, which is under court order to alleviate overcrowding, thousands of prisoners are released onto the streets each month before their sentences are over to make room for new prisoners. So far this year, the state has closed its prisons to new inmates more than a dozen times because the prison population exceeded legally mandated limits.