Twelfth Congress Workshop:“Strategies and Best Practices against
Overcrowding in Correctional Facilities”
The Congress and the Workshop
The UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice [hereinafter Congress] is
the world’s largest international conference in the field of criminal justice, organized by
the United Nations every five years since 1955. The Twelfth Congress, held in Salvador,Brazil, from April 12-19, 2010, brought together more than 3,000 participants ranging
from Member State delegations, many of which including high-level officials such as
Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General, to representatives of internationalorganizations and NGOs, as well as individual experts.
The main theme of the Twelfth Congress was “Comprehensive strategies for global
challenges: crime prevention and criminal justice systems and their development in achanging world”, and the participants discussed agenda items such as: children, youth
and crime; technical assistance to combat terrorism; revitalization of UN standards
regarding crime prevention; and international co-operation against money laundering.
The outcome of these discussions was adopted as the Salvador Declaration.
During the Twelfth Congress, five official workshops were held apart from theplenary meetings. One of these workshops, entitled “Strategies and Best Practices
against Overcrowding in Correctional Facilities,” was organized by UNAFEI. The
background paper prepared for the workshop is available on the UNODC website.

Workshop Summary
1. The Presentation Session
As an introduction, the following presentations were made by five learned experts;“Current Situation of Prison Overcrowding”, “Causes of Prison Overcrowding”,“Countermeasures against Prison Overcrowding”, and “Specific Situations in Middleand Low Income Countries”. Click here for the presentation summaries.
2. Panel Discussions
The workshop then held the following three panel discussions. Click here for thesummary of contributions by each panellist.
Panel Discussion IStrategies for the reduction of prison populations through diversion, informal
and restorative justice and alternatives to pre-trial detention
The first panel discussed measures against overcrowding that can be taken at the
pre-sentencing stages, particularly measures to reduce the number of pre-trialdetainees.
In some developing countries, more than half of all inmates are pre-trial detainees.
This is a result of prolonged pre-trial detention due to inefficiency in the trialproceedings. One of the panellists presented a case study in which active utilizationof paralegals as substitutes for lawyers helped to improve the situation.
Panel Discussion II
Strategies for reduction of prison populations at the sentencing andpost-sentencing stages
The second panel discussed measures that can be taken at the sentencing andpost-sentencing stages.
One panellist pointed out that, while alternatives to imprisonment (e.g. community
service orders, home confinement) can serve to reduce prison populations, suchalternatives could have an adverse effect if not administered adequately. Anotherpanellist presented a country’s experience in significantly reducing prison population
by improving the correctional treatment of offenders and preventing recidivism.
How parole could be used to reduce prison overcrowding was also discussed.
Panel Discussion III
Strategies for securing support for reduction of prison populations
The third panel discussed strategies to secure support for the various measures
examined by the first two panels. Singapore’s Yellow Ribbon Project drew particularattention as a very successful example of achieving broad community support forsocial reintegration of offenders.

Conclusion
The workshop ran for a total of six hours, having an audience of 150 people andlively discussions throughout. The outcome of these presentations and panel discussions
was adopted as “Recommendations from the Workshop”, which were then reported tothe plenary session of the Congress. It is hoped that this workshop will be the first step
toward resolving the problem of prison overcrowding around the world.