The overuse of criminal justice detention and poor detention conditions create serious moral, social, economic and public health threats for societies. Crime rates are not rising, but criminal justice detention is expanding. 11.5 million people are now imprisoned globally, 30% of whom are unconvicted. Detention institutions concentrate criminogenic and health risks that detainees are unable to leave. Regulation holds potential to check these risks, for societal benefit. Although detention regulation mechanisms have recently proliferated internationally, their effects on practice are unknown. There is a compelling need to address this major evidence gap.
UN SDG 16 promotes justice, strong institutions and human rights. Reducing health inequalities features in SDG 10. Reoffending in England and Wales costs over €20 billion annually. Ill health correlates with recidivism, yet continues to thrive in detention, which concentrates poverty, conflict and discrimination. Prisoners worldwide disproportionately have communicable diseases, largely due to conditions. Suicide is a health concern in detention, with significant implications for staff, prisoners and bereaved families. We know that higher quality of prison life correlates with lower recidivism. We know that prison health is public health, and that most prisoners’ health needs will ultimately come into the community. It is thus vital to explore how detention could be better regulated, but there is a dearth of related scholarship.
REgulating Criminal justicE DEtention: glocal prospects for improving health and safety (RECEDE) aims to develop the first comprehensive, empirically generated model of criminal justice detention regulation, to facilitate new understandings of how detention regulation could improve health and safety – in detention and society. RECEDE’s objectives are to:
i. Theorise (quasi-)statutory and (participatory) voluntary sector regulation of detention as a system of interdependent institutions, across glocal geographical scales
ii. Conceptualise relationships between detention regulation, law and policy ‘on the books’ and ‘bottom up’ norm making in the cells
iii. Theorise how and by whom innovations in detention regulation, policy and practice are and could be brokered
iv. Produce a new comprehensive, empirically generated model of detention regulation, illustrating how criminal justice could be regulated to improve public health and societal safety.
