“Prison Overcrowding

The effect of longer sentences, combined with higher crime rates and more prisoners, has been to create mammoth prison overcrowding. Overcrowding contributes directly to unsanitary and dangerous prison living conditions; it is associated with assaults, rapes, homicides, suicides, and riots. Prison staff are also placed at risk by overcrowding and the violence it produces. Lawsuits against the prison system are brought by inmates and prison personnel alike.

Federal courts have determined that prison overcrowding is a violation of the U.S. Constitutions Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. (Simple crowding per se is not unconstitutional; federal courts must also find evidence of adverse effects of overcrowding.) Virtually all of the states confront federal court orders to reduce prison overcrowding at one or more of their prisons or their entire prison system. Most state prison systems are near, at, or over their capacity to house prisoners. In the landmark 2011 Brown v. California decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 54 that California had to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. The severe overcrowding kept the states prison system from providing help to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced needless suffering and deatha clear violation of the Eighth Amendments prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Dye, T. R., & MacManus, S. A. (2014). Politics in States and Communities (15th Edition). Pearson Education (US). https://reader.yuzu.com/books/9780205994861″