Robert Geddes, Republican president of Idaho's State Senate, suggests that one way to deal with limited space in prisons would be to make inmates share beds by sleeping in shifts. From Reuters:
"Why does every inmate need his or her own bed?" asked State Sen. Robert Geddes. "The military does it all the time…."
A prison overcrowding expert said the concept has been discussed for years but remains completely untested.
"I can't think of any correctional facility where people share a bunk," said Robert Sigler, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama.
He warned that courts have tended to frown on prisons that are crowding their inmates, whether they have a bed or not. "It's not how many times you rotate that bed, it's how much living space you provide," Sigler said.
