Prison severe overcrowding: An ignored crisis

In its Annual Penal Statistics on Prison Populations for 2025, the Council of Europe reported that Malta’s prison system was the fifth of nine across Europe with “severe overcrowding”, having 118 inmates per 100 places available.

This overcrowding crisis of unprecedented proportions is probably the root cause of why, despite the many laudable efforts to improve the system, our correctional facilities are neither punishing nor rehabilitating, let alone protecting.

How can we forget the Ombudsman’s damning conclusions following an own initiative investigation regarding possible systematic maladministration at Corradino, finding that there was endemic dysfunctionality in prison management, degrading treatment of prisoners, and use of intimidation as an operational tool?

This brings to mind one famous quote attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky: ‘The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’

Prison population statistics are based on the number of people held in prison, the baseline certified normal accommodation, and the operational capacity.

In light of the above, the pertinent questions remain: When will we run out of prison space, and why does it matter if our prison is ‘severely’ overcrowded?

When a prison is asked to accommodate more people than it is designed to hold, it piles more pressure on people working there and makes it harder to meet the needs of people living there.

If someone is incarcerated, we should do everything possible to assist them in transforming their life and moving away from criminal behaviour. But overcrowding, coupled with chronic staff shortages, makes it more difficult for prisons to engage everyone in activities that help rehabilitation, such as exercise, education, employment and training. For many people, this means being locked in an overcrowded cell at a time when the physical state of prisons is getting worse.

Rules state that all cells must be certified as being “adequate for health” in terms of their size, lighting, heating, ventilation and fittings. If cells are not adequate for health, then they must be either fixed immediately or withdrawn from use.

But recent inspections by outside sources continue to reveal that people are being placed in cells that are not fit for purpose. As overcrowding pressures continue, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that cells are being certified as adequate when they are not.

The growing tension behind bars is reflected in statistics revealing worrying rises in self-harm and violence. Where incidents require police investigations or referrals to hospitals for treatment, they put further strain on local public services, while overcrowding makes it harder to respond effectively to major incidents.

So how did we get into this mess?

These problems did not come out of the blue. The prison population has almost doubled in the last few years. After a rapid increase in the 1990s and 2000s, it began to stabilise in the 2010s and decreased slightly during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has since risen again to reach record heights.

Urgent action is needed to ease the strain on the prison system, and the government must take action to reduce the prison population and increase prison officer numbers.

This is not a response to rising crime. In fact, recorded crime has fallen, so it is clearly a sign of how changes in sentencing policy, led by politicians, have had a dramatic impact. Strange as it may sound, prison sentences have been handed down more and more, and they have got longer and longer over time.

Campaigns calling for the creation of new offences or the introduction of longer sentences to address specific issues or problems have contributed to this shift. The impact of these campaigns can be far-reaching. When politicians make sentences longer for one crime, it often leads to calls for longer sentences for other crimes. And so it goes on.

A backlog of cases in the courts, which grew longer during the pandemic, has not helped, either. The number of people in prison on remand awaiting trial or sentence keeps rising.

Overwhelmed by overcrowding, the Corradino Correctional Facility is not preparing people for life outside, and there is insufficient support for people when they are released. Too often, we see people leaving prison without somewhere to live.

Yet solutions can be put in place to cope with prison congestion. Broadly speaking, these measures can be clustered into two groups.

On the one hand, some solutions impact prison admission and release. Examples include strengthening community sentences and adopting other such alternative measures; the early release of individual prisoners well before the conclusion of their legally imposed sentences via parole; and the mass release of prisoners via general pardon-like measures.

On the other hand, the most common, but also controversial, tool is the expansion of the physical capacity of the prison system through the construction, growth, or renovation of national detention facilities. Some countries have also hired prison spaces in other jurisdictions.

Yet these measures seem unable to address prison congestion in the long term. It has never been clearer that a change of direction is needed, and the longer we leave it, the harder it will become to address the situation.