With visits from the outside world suspended and rehabilitation and other activities stopped, prison inmates endured a ‘double lockdown’ during the pandemic.
This took a heavy toll on their mental and physical health, detailed in a study of prisoners in five continents by the Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research (ICPR) at Birkbeck, University of London.
Lead author Catherine Heard, senior research fellow at ICPR, said: ‘The focus must be on reducing prisoner numbers, so that the “cure”―in the shape of isolation, inactivity, lack of basic services, lost rehabilitation outcomes―is not worse than the disease.’
