Sweden’s prison population could increase to more than 30,000 in the coming decades.
Articles on Prison overcrowding
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Attempts to understand why people offend can clash with deeply-held ideas about responsibility and what punishment someone deserves.
What shapes leaders’ responses to issues of crime and justice is not that toughness wins, but that leniency-gone-wrong loses.
With no clear plan to manage sentencing inflation, one option becomes to release prisoners early.
People sentenced for similar offences are more likely to offend after a short prison sentence than if they had been given a community sanction.
Mental ill health was the leading cause of prison officer absence in the year to June 2025.
Medical law is based on the idea that a patient consents to an intervention that will benefit them. Is that the case here?
Nordic prisons are praised for their humane approach to incarceration – but they face overcrowding and understaffing issues.
A parliamentary committee surveyed 5,113 prison officers and found that 50% do not feel safe in the prison they work in.
While crime has fallen since the 1990s, this is not reflected in the prison population, which has doubled in the same period.
An expert on rehabilitative prison design explains how the UK’s prisons could be much better.
Lengthy confinement within locked, poorly maintained and overcrowded cells triggers boredom and restlessness, and contributes to violent incidents.
Higher jail mortality is related to jail turnover rates and demographics.
The UK imprisons more people than most of its western European neighbours and the conditions in its prisons are getting worse.
Infection rates of COVID-19 have soared among prisoners in the US. An expert on penal policy considers what is ‘unjust and disproportionate’ punishment at this time.
El Salvador is arresting thousands of people for violating its COVID-19 quarantine, further packing a ‘hellish’ penal system once described as a ‘petri dish’ for infectious disease.
In the 1790s, penal reformers rebuilt America’s squalid jails as airy, hygienic places meant to keep residents – and by extension society – healthy. Now they’re hotbeds of COVID-19. What went wrong?
There are now more legally innocent people in jail in Victoria than there were convicted prisoners in 2005.
Evidence from Scotland reveals the presumption against shorter sentences has shown little reduction in prison numbers.
After a fire killed 66 inmates at a Venezuelan jail in March, news stories portrayed the country’s prisons as lawless. The real backstory of this deadly riot is more complex — and maybe a bit scarier.
Top contributors
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PhD Candidate in Criminology, University of Westminster
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Senior Lecturer, Criminal Justice, Birmingham City University
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Associate Professor, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
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Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Bristol
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William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst College
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Professor of Criminology, University of Bath
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Chair of Postgraduate Studies, Universidad Nacional Experimental de Seguridad (UNES), Venezuela
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Lecturer in Criminology, Edinburgh Napier University
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Dean, School of Law, Deakin University
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Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Hawaii
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Associate Professor of Anthropology and Human Rights Center Research Fellow, University of Dayton
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Professor of Criminal Justice Policy, De Montfort University
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Senior Research Fellow, Uehiro Oxford Institute, University of Oxford
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Associate Professor of Forensic Psychology, University of Birmingham
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Doctoral student in criminal law, Lund University