Our prison system is screwed

[s1962a]

I saw a CH4 documentary about life inside our prisons, and how we are sentencing these (mainly youths) to a few years in jail for crimes and totally fking them up before they are being released back into the public. My thoughts are that prison should be a place for punishment and rehabilitation, with the goal being that prison should be a deterrent but also a place of reform so that they might do something useful and not re-offend when they get out. Right now it seems like a mad zoo with neither of those things happening.

This is the documentary if you want to watch it, but if you don't the main themes are that weapons, violence, drugs, and mobile phones are rampant in our prisons, and it's hardly a deterrent or a place of rehabilitation. People are coming out more fked than when they went in.

https://youtu.be/tDXRNOSPrC0

[Ian Geary]

It is indeed a problem that will compounding future problems.

The prison reform trust and others have been on about this for decades.

I think by the end of the Victorian era it was acknowledged prisons had to be about more than just punishment.

As with all things though, it takes time and money. Prison funding has been massively reduced in recent years, as has wider budgets for the justice department and many area sof public spending. Prison funding wasn't exactly great to start with.

Voter's just can't get over the short term gains of tax cuts, and lose sight of the long term costs. Prisoners' wellbeing is a long way down a long list. Politicians merely act as a weather vane for political opinion.

The Victorians didn't have to deal with hidden mobile phones and Spice though (other super strong synthetic drugs are available).

I wonder how they would have dealt with them? It would probably have involved truncheons.

[NuckyThompson]

As with any public service under this government it’s massively underfunded.

Starting wage for a prison officer isn’t much more than you’d get in Aldi’s and for that you have to deal with idiots on spice, aggressive inmate, assaults and unsociable hours. Oh and you’ve got to be super nice to the inmates (probably have to call them residents these days) in case they get offended.

[Voldemort]

NuckyThompson said:

Starting wage for a prison officer isn’t much more than you’d get in Aldi’s and for that you have to deal with idiots on spice, aggressive inmate, assaults and unsociable hours.

So, basically the same.

[55palfers]

Perhaps privately run prisons may not be such a good idea after all.

Serco alone made £192M profit last year though.

[Panamax]

NuckyThompson said:

As with any public service under this government it’s massively underfunded.

UK imprisons a bigger proportion of its population than other European countries.

The public are always screaming "send more people to prison" and "give them longer sentences".

Yes, the criminal justice system including prisons and probation service is insufficiently funded.

It nonetheless costs around £45,000 a year to keep a prisoner in jail. Staggering.

[CoolHands]

They were hardly saints to get locked up in the first place. So have they really been made worse. They would have also got worse if they had been out and continuing their crime lifestyle, so it may be hard to get objective comparable data!

[ClaphamGT3]

The penal system has to discharge two functions;

1) To meet society's legitimate requirement for retribution and deterrence for criminal offenders
2) To rehabilitate offenders and enable them to re-join society as law-abiding citizens

The problem is that governments have been too willing to bow to base societal pressure and focus on the first function at the expense of the second when, actually, it is the second that is vastly more important.

[biggbn]

ClaphamGT3 said:

The penal system has to discharge two functions;

1) To meet society's legitimate requirement for retribution and deterrence for criminal offenders
2) To rehabilitate offenders and enable them to re-join society as law-abiding citizens

The problem is that governments have been too willing to bow to base societal pressure and focus on the first function at the expense of the second when, actually, it is the second that is vastly more important.

Well said.

[Digga]

CoolHands said:

They were hardly saints to get locked up in the first place. So have they really been made worse. They would have also got worse if they had been out and continuing their crime lifestyle, so it may be hard to get objective comparable data!

Completely true, in general, but like everything, there are shades of grey. My nephew was not ‘bad’ but hung around with some real *****s. He got sent down to youth offenders centre for being in the wrong place. 100% his fault an judgement.

What happened subsequently is what saved him. It was, in the truest sense of the phrase, a short sharp shock.

Worse still was what happened on his release. He was living with my sister in law and, in part of one of those County Lines criminal gangs, the dealers found out where he lived and tried to threaten him to work for them. It culminated in them kicking the front door of the house in. At which pint, thankfully, not only were the police called (a difficult decision for someone just on the wrong side of the law) but also they fully grasped the gravity of the situation.

Glad to say he is now a different character. Although the scars of the experience run deep.

[Terminator X]

s1962a said:

I saw a CH4 documentary about life inside our prisons, and how we are sentencing these (mainly youths) to a few years in jail for crimes and totally fking them up before they are being released back into the public. My thoughts are that prison should be a place for punishment and rehabilitation, with the goal being that prison should be a deterrent but also a place of reform so that they might do something useful and not re-offend when they get out. Right now it seems like a mad zoo with neither of those things happening.

This is the documentary if you want to watch it, but if you don't the main themes are that weapons, violence, drugs, and mobile phones are rampant in our prisons, and it's hardly a deterrent or a place of rehabilitation. People are coming out more fked than when they went in.

https://youtu.be/tDXRNOSPrC0

Perhaps a way to separate lifers from regular low level crime types; the lifers have nowt to lose so my guess is they and their mates will be running riot even in prison. If you are in for speeding though say then bad news to be mixing with absolute nutters.

TX.

[smn159]

biggbn said:

ClaphamGT3 said:

The penal system has to discharge two functions;

1) To meet society's legitimate requirement for retribution and deterrence for criminal offenders
2) To rehabilitate offenders and enable them to re-join society as law-abiding citizens

The problem is that governments have been too willing to bow to base societal pressure and focus on the first function at the expense of the second when, actually, it is the second that is vastly more important.

Well said.

Indeed. Apparently our local crime rate goes up or down depending on who happens to be behind bars at the time. I don't know if all of the perpetrators could be rehabilitated, but it's a fair bet that a good proportion could be, which would in itself have a significant impact on low level crime locally.

Rehabilitation doesn't play well with a certain section of the public though, so it's easy to not bother.

[rasto]

I can recommend this book (A Bit of a Stretch) for anyone that wants an eye opening account of life in prison - in some ways it reminded me a bit of 10 pence shorts prison diary from way back on here:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/48569093

[turbobloke]

Terminator X said:

Perhaps a way to separate lifers from regular low level crime types; the lifers have nowt to lose so my guess is they and their mates will be running riot even in prison. If you are in for speeding though say then bad news to be mixing with absolute nutters.

TX.

That makes sense to me.

An angle on this that not too many will see is the attitude of those with overnight stays in HMYOI and HMP. I had discussions (interviews) with many of their customers through work as part of a review of Prison Ed. A decent sample size for sure though I wasn't asked to meet with lifers.

Just as the prison Governor is in favour of Prison Ed provision and uptake because it ticks some of his/her boxes, their customers go in for prison Ed because it gets them out of their cells over to Ed Wing and earns brownie points if they behave.

Not one customer said they wanted to attend motor mechanics etc to help them get a job, it was brownie points with a change of scenery and for males, often, a female teacher. Did they want to get a job on release, no, they were already planning their next move (not that I was told what). What would change that? Nothing, working is a mug's game.

Too often the education provision available wasn't ideal, often a customer would arrive on remand and then leave before their needs had been assessed, never mind providing any targeted provision. Yes I did notice and make several recommendations, but edu provision as a whole is (was) looked down on by prison officers as their customers need to be moved to get to Ed Wing and movement is a security risk. This gave rise to another problem. Their time receiving education/training tended to be in 1 x 3 hour block on any day, to limit movement, when they could barely maintain concentration for 5 minutes.There was a lot more but it would involve eduspeak and we're at 'enough already'.

Sincere best wishes to anyone thinking rehabilitation is at all easy when the recipients are determinedly unreceptive.

ETA the time on offer has increased since then.

Edited by turbobloke on Sunday 25th June 12:47

[Gareth79]

Terminator X said:

Perhaps a way to separate lifers from regular low level crime types; the lifers have nowt to lose so my guess is they and their mates will be running riot even in prison. If you are in for speeding though say then bad news to be mixing with absolute nutters.

TX.

From what I've read in a few prison books, "lifers" rarely cause trouble. They get settled in for however many years they expect, with the aim to move to an open prison as soon as possible, and can then more easily prove they are suitable for release.

[Gareth79]

rasto said:

I can recommend this book (A Bit of a Stretch) for anyone that wants an eye opening account of life in prison - in some ways it reminded me a bit of 10 pence shorts prison diary from way back on here:
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/48569093

I'll definitely add that to my list. "In It" is good, it gives a view of a respectable/educated/well-off person being sent down for several years. The author was a helicopter flying instructor, convicted of theft from his employer. It details how when he got to an open prison he wanted to teach reading/writing to the illiterate inmates (who were eager to learn), but while he was able to, he was forced into using an inappropriate teaching system rather than one better suited to adults.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jonathan-Robinson-ebook/d...

The Jeffrey Archer series is good too, although obviously he was a very famous inmate, so it's not going to be as realistic.

[gamefreaks]

ClaphamGT3 said:

The penal system has to discharge two functions;

1) To meet society's legitimate requirement for retribution and deterrence for criminal offenders
2) To rehabilitate offenders and enable them to re-join society as law-abiding citizens

The problem is that governments have been too willing to bow to base societal pressure and focus on the first function at the expense of the second when, actually, it is the second that is vastly more important.

I'd say both of those are secondary objectives. The primary reason for imprisoning people is to segregate them from the rest of us so we don't have to deal with their st.

Some people can be rehabilitated, some people can't. Some people think twice because of the consequences of going to prison, some people don’t care.

Nobody can be a threat to my person or belongings from prison. So for me, prison works.

[CT05 Nose Cone]

Gareth79 said:

Terminator X said:

Perhaps a way to separate lifers from regular low level crime types; the lifers have nowt to lose so my guess is they and their mates will be running riot even in prison. If you are in for speeding though say then bad news to be mixing with absolute nutters.

TX.

From what I've read in a few prison books, "lifers" rarely cause trouble. They get settled in for however many years they expect, with the aim to move to an open prison as soon as possible, and can then more easily prove they are suitable for release.

I worked in a cat B prison for a while, albeit in an admin role, and that was what a lot of the staff said. For lifers it's their home, so generally speaking they aren't going to cause trouble and get themselves moved away. On the other hand, the young men in for short sentences were far more dangerous and thus kept separately.

As an aside, despite my trepidation working at such a place I never encountered any trouble and most of them were disconcertingly polite to you. I felt safer than some of the retail jobs I'd worked in the past, despite being surrounded by literal psychopaths. The part where I worked was behind multiple gates, and unlike out in the real world if anyone tried anything you'd have every Officer in the vicinity charging in to help.

[Skeptisk]

gamefreaks said:

I'd say both of those are secondary objectives. The primary reason for imprisoning people is to segregate them from the rest of us so we don't have to deal with their st.

Some people can be rehabilitated, some people can't. Some people think twice because of the consequences of going to prison, some people don’t care.

Nobody can be a threat to my person or belongings from prison. So for me, prison works.

The US locks up far more as a percentage than we do. How is that working for them?

Unless you lock them up for life it I think it makes a huge difference whether you rehabilitate them and make them productive members of society.

[turbobloke]

gamefreaks said:

ClaphamGT3 said:

The penal system has to discharge two functions;

1) To meet society's legitimate requirement for retribution and deterrence for criminal offenders
2) To rehabilitate offenders and enable them to re-join society as law-abiding citizens

The problem is that governments have been too willing to bow to base societal pressure and focus on the first function at the expense of the second when, actually, it is the second that is vastly more important.

I'd say both of those are secondary objectives. The primary reason for imprisoning people is to segregate them from the rest of us so we don't have to deal with their st.
...
Nobody can be a threat to my person or belongings from prison. So for me, prison works.

That's forgotten far too often.