NCJ Number
142111
Date Published
1992
Length
61 pages
Annotation
This 1991 survey found that prison conditions in the United Kingdom varied widely, although almost all prisons were deficient in some way.
Abstract
In England, prisons were generally overcrowded, lacked in-cell plumbing, and kept prisoners locked in their cells for most of the day. In Northern Ireland, the Belfast Remand Prison was in poor physical condition and prisoners spent all but a few hours locked up each day. During the 1991 survey, problems associated with prison conditions in England were receiving a great deal of media attention. The Woolf Report had been submitted to the government, and both prisoners and prison officials were awaiting the government's response to the report's recommendations on improving prison conditions. Similarly, the escalation of violence in Northern Ireland added to tensions in the Belfast Remand Prison. Recommendations to improve prison conditions include allowing prisoners out of their cells more frequently, expanding educational and work opportunities for prisoners, improving sanitary conditions, ending punitive use of the segregation rule, ensuring that prison staff wear name badges at all times, protecting inmate privacy, easing prison overcrowding, and providing appropriate inmate services. The report pays specific attention to remand prisoners, disciplinary measures, the use of physical force, mentally disturbed inmates, suicide and self-injury, women's prisons, food, telephone and visitation privileges, racism, drug abuse, AIDS, religion, and work and wages. 97 footnotes and 3 charts