Former Staffordshire police officer William Tittensor has an interesting CAPX piece on the state of UK prisons. Well worth reading.
I have no personal experience of prisons, thought I'd add that, but perhaps it is also worth adding that many major public institutions seen to exist in a permanent state of crisis.
Why more cells won’t fix the prisons crisis
Why more cells won’t fix the prisons crisis
- Since 1986 the prison population has more than doubled, and the average sentence has increased from 11 to 20 months
- Prisoners participating in educational programmes are 7.5 percentage points less likely to reoffend
- Many prison workshops fail to provide any formal qualifications at all, limiting employment opportunities on release
Britain’s prisons are at breaking point. This month, 85,840 people are currently detained across prisons in England and Wales, with the estate operating at over 96% capacity. In 2023, 66% of prisons were operating above their original design capacity...
Prison’s purpose should be to ensure that those leaving custody are equipped to lead a law-abiding life, facilitating their re-integration into the social and economic fabric of society. The evidence, however, presents a grim picture. In the UK, almost 40% of offenders will reoffend within two years of being released from custody. We perform poorly compared to our European counterparts; the Netherlands and Austria enjoy a reoffending rate of less than 25%, while Norway’s is just 17.6%.
Prison’s purpose should be to ensure that those leaving custody are equipped to lead a law-abiding life, facilitating their re-integration into the social and economic fabric of society. The evidence, however, presents a grim picture. In the UK, almost 40% of offenders will reoffend within two years of being released from custody. We perform poorly compared to our European counterparts; the Netherlands and Austria enjoy a reoffending rate of less than 25%, while Norway’s is just 17.6%.
6 comments:
Distant cousins of ours retired early from being prison wardens because the prisoners had been allowed to become far too violent.
"Prison’s purpose should be to ensure that those leaving custody are equipped to lead a law-abiding life, facilitating their re-integration into the social and economic fabric of society." That would be nice but it's secondary. The prime purpose is to lock the buggers up so that they can't impose their criminality on the rest of us.
Being a strong and high growth economy would help a bit too.
dearieme - I agree, re-integration is merely a nice to have, not the main purpose which is to lock them up out of the way.
Tammly - yes it would be a great help, in many other areas too.
I have always considered the primary purpose of prison is to act as a deterrent. Trying to rehabilitate criminals is largely a waste of time and resources (7.5 percentage points? wow!); and for any but the worst crimes (and apparently not even those, nowadays) the crooks will be back among us in a few months to a few years.
But if they can be convinced, before they start, that crime has a good chance of landing them with a thoroughly unpleasant experience they just might decide to give it a miss and get a job instead.
Barbarus - I agree, deterrence comes first and throw away the key for recidivists.
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