relieve/ease/reduce overcrowding• Radically reforming conditions inside prisons, reducing overcrowding, improving prison officers' morale and punishingoffenders where possible within the community.• The provision of council housing has had an equalising effect both as regardsreducing overcrowding and improving housing amenities among working-class people.• Meanwhile the government has begun freeing thousands of inmates to reduce overcrowding and make it easier to control the prisons.