Overcrowding
Definition
A prison population that exceeds its officially sanctioned or design capacity, usually expressed as an occupancy percentage or ratio of inmates to rated capacity.
Related terms
- Custodial Death
- A death occurring while a person is in police or judicial custody, tracked separately in official statistics because it signals possible failures...
- Nelson Mandela Rules
- The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, revised and renamed by the UN General Assembly in December 2015,...
- Dietary Scale
- An official schedule specifying the quantity, calorie content, and nutritional composition of food a prison must serve, often varying by labour classification,...
- Undertrial Prisoner
- A person held in custody while awaiting or undergoing trial, not yet convicted, a category that forms the majority of the prison...
- Correctional Staffing
- The distinct cadres, custodial, medical and welfare or vocational, that a correctional institution needs at adequate sanctioned strength to function.
- Correctional Understaffing
- A shortfall in the sanctioned strength of prison staff, particularly custodial, medical, and correctional (welfare and vocational) cadres, relative to the population...
- Custodial Deaths
- Deaths occurring while a person is in police or prison custody, whether from violence, medical neglect, or suicide connected to institutional conditions.
- Deliberate Indifference
- Also called 'willful blindness' or 'conscious avoidance' in some jurisdictions: the doctrine that a defendant cannot escape knowledge of a fact by...
- Prison Privatisation
- The transfer of prison construction, management, or specific services such as food and healthcare to private for-profit contractors, ranging from full-facility operation...
- Prison Reform
- Committee-driven recommendations, such as the Mulla Committee and the Model Prisons Act, aimed at correcting the recurring failures in correctional administration.
- Prisoner Healthcare
- Medical, dental and mental health services a prison system must provide to a confined population that cannot seek outside care on its...
- Privatisation
- The transfer of prison construction, management, or specific services to private for-profit contractors, ranging from full-facility operation to partial outsourcing.
Explained in these topics
- Challenges in Correctional AdministrationA prison population that exceeds the institution's sanctioned or design capacity, measured as an occupancy rate above 100 percent of rated strength.
- Prison Accommodation, Food and Medical Care (UGC-NET Unit VIII)A prison population that exceeds its officially sanctioned or design capacity, usually expressed as an occupancy percentage.
- Prison Conditions: Accommodation, Food, and Healthcare Standards
- Problems in Correctional Administration (UGC-NET Unit VIII)A prison population that exceeds the institution's sanctioned or design capacity, measured as an occupancy rate above 100 percent of rated strength.