UK looks at Texas supermax prison for ideas to cut overcrowding

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Published:
February 28, 2025
BBC

"The incentivisation scheme has little to do with the reforms that helped bring Texas's prison population down in 2007," says Michele Deitch, a criminal justice policy lecturer at the University of Texas. "And by itself it will do little to address the UK's very serious overcrowding problem."

What would make a real difference, she says, would be diverting more people from incarceration in the first place: "To shorten sentences, to reduce the use of recalls to prison, and to invest more heavily in rehabilitative programs in prison and in programs and services in the community."

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