So in discussing the effect of imprisonment, studies on the effect of prison crowding, long term imprisonment, short term detention, solitary confinement, death row and the health risk associated with imprisonment provide inconclusive evidence regarding the pains of imprisonment.
It is public knowledge that the nation’s prisons are not just overcrowded, but dangerously overcrowded Prison crowding is always apparent negatively. It is seen by many correctional managers as the major barrier to humane housing of offenders despite an estimated 170000 additional new beds since 1980 (correctional Digest 1986) this population explosion has prompted court interventions, sentencing reforms and innovative classification systems intended to reduce prison populations.
Researchers view crowding as a complex phenomenon. In Stokols it distinguished density, a physical condition from crowding, a psychology condition involving the individual’s perception of constraints imposed by limited …show more content…
In an attempt to cope with the limited space available and the resulting overcrowding, there has been strong tendency to misclassify offenders. To a certain degree, overcrowding has resulted in offenders being classified on the basis of the space available rather than the security level and programs most suitable for the offenders.
It has not uncommon to find inmates, classified as medium security, incarcerated in maximum security institutions, while other inmates were in medium security facilities who would previously have been considered candidates for maximum security.
Although many negative effects of crowding have been identified overcrowding does not affect all prisons uniformly. For instance, it has been reported that larger institutions with younger inmates tend to be more effected by crowding. Moreover substantial individual differences in responses to crowding have been found among various racial, ethnic and socio economic groups.
Aswe have seen with the prison crowding literature, it is not uncommon to observe physiological and psychological distressassociated with high population densities. Such outcome are also commonly associated with stress and physical disorders. Most of the researches has dealt with the identification and description of illness reported by