Discuss the effectiveness of the Prison system, and its purpose in relation to its history.

Prisons

There are currently one hundred and thirty-seven prisons institutions in England and Wales (June 2001), these can be divided into training, open, and closed prisons. Of these some are high security hospitals such as Broadmoor or Ashworth who hold prisoners such as Ian Brady, who although mentally insane are so dangerous and must be kept in a high security environment. Other prisons are to hold adult male offenders only such as Winson Green prison in Birmingham or Park Hurst prison on the Isle of Wight. There are also prisons that serve only adult female offenders such as Holloway prison or Cookham Wood prison. Young offenders (offenders aged between 15 years old and 21 years old) are also kept separate from the rest of adult prisoners, and are held in Young Offender Institutions which are often a wing of an adult prison. Young Offender Institutions include Feltham Young Offenders Institution or Aylesbury Young Offenders Institution.

There are four categories of prisoners who are categorised according to and the probability that they would attempt to escape and the risk they would pose to society if they were successful in doing so. The categories are labelled A, B, C, and D Prisons are often maintained for each category of prisoner they hold. Category A prisoners are classed as being highly dangerous and should be held in a high security environment and escape must be made highly impossible, there are eight high security prisons, Belmarsh is one example of a category A prison. Category B prisons hold prisoners who may not need to be held in high security environment but for whom escape must be made very difficult. An example of a category B prison is Blakenhurst prison in Redditch. Category C prisons hold the same category prisoners, these are prisoners who cannot be trusted in open conditions but are assessed as being unlikely to escape, an example of a category C prison is Ashwell in Leicester. Category D prisons are otherwise known as open prisons, where offenders are free to ‘wander’ around the grounds and can go out to work, this category holds prisoners who can be reasonably trusted in open conditions. Hewell Grange prison in the West Midlands is an example of a category D prison.

A prison day typically starts at 7a.m. with the inmates being unlocked for breakfast, which usually consists of porridge and toast. The rest of the day is spent working or learning. The educational activities are predominantly based around developing basic numeracy and literacy skills, the work usually focuses on production workshops, cleaning duties or routine maintenance within the prison, for which nominal wages are paid. (Prisoners in open prison can often go to jobs beyond the prison location).

Although all prisoners are legally required to work there are rarely enough jobs for all the people within the prisons system and those without a job are confined to their cells for most of the day.

Prisoners are entitled to 30 minutes of supervised exercise a day (when the weather is good), and often in the evenings allowed time for association, when they are allowed out of their cells to watch television, play pool or table tennis, or simply to socialise with others. The night typically with ‘lockup’ about 9p.m.when prisoners are sent back to the cells for the night.

The conditions within prison are still a continued cause for concern. Prisoners are now meant to have 24 hour access to toilet facilities, with the practice of ‘slopping out’ supposed to have ended but many prisons built in the last two centuries the cells are extremely small and it is highly unlikely that every prison cell will contain such amenities. Another problem as been the continually rise in overcrowding most prisons cells were made to hold one person but the continual rise in the prisons population has meant that there are often 2 or in extreme cases 3 prisoners to a cell. It could be argued that lack of such amenities and overcrowding could be derogatory and inhumane treatment under the Human Rights Act 1998.

An area of continued concern within the prison system is its internal complaints procedure; prisoners too often feel they cannot air their grievances. They get little exercise or fresh air and are often confined to their cells for most of the day. They are often placed in prisons far away from where their families live making visitations more difficult.

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There are almost 73,000 prisoners in the United Kingdom, with each place costing the almost £25,000 per year (2002), that is the equivalent to a cost of almost £500 per prisoner per week, with costs increasing for female prisoners and young offenders (Elliott and Quinn). Since 1992 there has been a significant rise in the number of people being sent to prison, it has been argued that one of the reasons for the rise was the legislative change brought about by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which limited the circumstances in which the judiciary could impose suspended sentences in. There was also an increase in criminal cases being referred to the Crown Court for sentencing, which has a wider jurisdiction over the sentences the Magistrate’s Court, can impose.

In 2001, over a third of prisoners were sent to prison for offences relating to theft, fraud, robbery, and burglary. With offences involving violence against the person making up 25% of offences for which persons were imprisoned and drugs related offences at 20%. Sexual offences made up 13% of offences for which prisoners were sentenced to a custodial sentence. Between 1992-1998 as stated above the prison population increased rapidly, but the number of juveniles and young offenders given custodial sentences more than doubled between this period. It has been suggested that the media was partly responsible for this as they reported children terrorising communities and delinquency which the law was unable to take action against, in response legislation was passed which in effect doubled the sentences available to the courts when dealing with juveniles and the courts responded by ‘imprisoning more children.’ Another suggestion has been that the Jamie Bulger killing is in part responsible for an upward increase in the prison population, especially in relation to juveniles. Between 1991 and 1999 the female population more than doubled, it has been argued that this was primarily caused by the Criminal Justice Act 1991, which limited the circumstances in which suspended sentences were given, who before this Act attracted such suspended sentences.

Another way in which the prison population can be analysed is in terms of its ethnic composition. Ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom are extremely over represented in the prisons system. In 1999, there were six times as many black prisoners as white prisoners for every 100,000 people of their ethnic groups. Ethnic minorities currently make up approximately 18% of the prison population (12% blacks, 3% Asians and 3% other ethnic groups- almost 13,000 prisoners are from ethnic minorities) yet in 2001, they only represent 9% of the population, half of the current prison population. A Home Office research in 1990 found that ethnic minorities were more likely to receive longer prison sentences in comparison to their white counterparts yet there was little evidence to suggest the ethnic minorities were committing more serious offences. Research has also indicated that they are less likely to receive police cautions unlike their white counterparts and more likely to face criminal proceedings. All of the features above suggest that discrimination is rife within the criminal justice system and that institutional racism is the cause for the over representation of ethnic minorities within the prison system.

There are many debates about the purpose of imprisonment, the purported purposes of imprisonment includes the notion of retribution that is that prisons are a way of punishing people for the crimes they have committed by exiling them form society and loved ones through incarceration. Another purpose is to deter the individual from committing further crimes through the fear of punishment as well as deterring other potential criminals. Another suggestion for the purposes of prison is that people sent to prison to be reformed or rehabilitated, that is to say they come to realise the ‘error of their ways’ and that crime is wrong and learn through education to change their ways. Another argument for the purpose of imprisonment is simply the protection of society through incapacitation, people may have been sent to prison because the crimes they have committed shows they present a threat to the public and imprisonment ensures they are unable to commit further crimes because they are not free to commit them.

The idea of imprisonment as a punishment is a fairly recent one; prison itself was not a form of punishment until a few hundred years ago. Imprisonment was initially used by the clergy in this country as a punishment against persons who had committed religious crimes. The building of local gaols began after Henry II issued the Assizes of Clarendon in 1166, which commanded that local gaols be built in the counties to hold persons awaiting trial. The use of the gaols gradually extended to holding persons convicted of crimes who were awaiting their punishment, which could be anything from exile (banishment from society or the kingdom) deportation, fines or the punishments of public flogging, torture, mutilation or execution. The prisons also became a system of coercion, debtors were held in prison until they paid their debt. This provides us with a comparative with the current practice of holding persons awaiting trial on remand.

Prisoners in the medieval prisons were held in poor conditions there was no segregation between men, women or children, nor were they separated according to whether they had been tried or not, or regardless of the crimes they were supposed to have committed, their age or health, and diseases such as typhus (gaol fever) spread rapidly and became uncontrollable. The more affluent prisoners however managed to buy relative comfort and could pay a fee in order to secure an early release. However the poorer prisoners often could not afford to buy their comfort or way out of prison and would often remained confined for long periods, or simply die there due to the unsanitary conditions.

The search for alternative punishments away from the display of public executions were sought after executions were increasingly becoming a form of entertainment rather than moral lessons to the public that attended them. An early effort to reform the use of prisons to provide labour came about in the mid 16th century, this was done through the introduction of Bridewells. The first Bridewell, or House of Confinement was introduced in 1556, and in reality was an attempt to deal with the increasing levels of vagrancy. Persons imprisoned were put to work in varying degrees of labour depending on the nature of their crime (that is, the more serious the crime the harder the labour), this led to the segregation of prisoners according to the type of crime they had committed. The idea behind this prison system was retribution and reforming people through hard labour. With an increase in crimes for which people could be imprisoned the Bridewells became increasingly overcrowded and the government turned to prison ships or ‘hulks’ as a temporary holding places, but as disease was common on the confined ships most prisoners would die on board.

The Prisons Act 1877 brought about the nationalisation of the prison system, and transferred the control of the prisons to the government through the Home Secretary. The prison soon received much criticism for recidivism and over emphasis on the ‘punitive and oppressive’ nature of the prison regime. This led to the Gladstone Committee report, which moved away from the oppressive punitive regime and led to the function of prison placing more emphasis on deterrence and reform. The report also called for stopping the use of unnecessary labour and the introduction of better living conditions for prisoners. The report placed major emphasis on prisons as places for reform and proposed that prisons should be training institutions that reform criminals and allow them to be released back into society. The report also suggested a separate ‘penal and reformative’ institution to hold young offenders which led to the development of borstals (establishments used to house young offender institutions), which was named after Borstal, in Kent where the first such institute was set up in 1901.

As a result of the Gladstone committee the early 20th century saw a change in the way prisoners were kept, and led to the development of open prisons. These open prison establishments reduced the strict levels of security and allowed prisoners greater freedom in terms of movement and prison regime. Following the success of its first open prison at Newhall in 1936, the prison service has continued to develop and use open prisons.

The development of prisons and the conditions under which prisoners are kept have continually evolved in recent years. The riots of 1990, at Strangeways prison in Manchester, which spread to other prison establishments. The riots led to the Woolf report which reassessed the purpose of imprisonment and made recommendations about the conditions in which prisoners were kept including reducing overcrowding, access to sanitation, and where possible prisoners should be held near families or home. The purposes for prisons has changed over time from initially being remand centres, to being a punishment in itself, to a place of reform and one of deterrence to one of rehabilitation, with all of these varying purposes coming together in our prisons system today.

In order to assess the effectiveness of the prisons system the arguments and evidence for and against the prisons system must be taken into consideration. Arguments, which favour the prisons system, include the fact that prisons serve to protect the public by incarcerating serious and persistent criminals by taking them out of society, they are therefore unable to commit further crimes. Another argument, which supports and is for the prisons system, is the idea of deterrence, both to the individual from committing any further offences and to other potential criminals making them aware that criminal behaviour is not tolerated. It has also been argued that prison is an opportunity for people to reform and rehabilitate themselves, through education and behavioural courses available (although there are only a limited number of places available on such courses).

It can also be argued that prisons fulfil their purpose of punishment by depriving offenders of their freedom for the crimes they have committed thus providing retribution for victims of the crime and society.

However there are many more arguments against the prisons system. One major criticism is that there are high rates of recidivism amongst ex prisoners indicating that prisons are not in fact or do not work as a individual deterrent to criminals nor is it a place of reform or rehabilitation. Another argument, which is directly linked to that above, is that prisons do not tackle the causes of crime but simply lock people up exiling them from society, which itself could in fact lead to re-offending as prisoners may lose families, jobs, and even homes and as a result may gain the mentality that they have nothing to lose from re-offending. It has been argued that prisons act as ‘universities’ of crimes rather than reducing crime through reform and rehabilitation, prisoners who enter the prison system learn more criminal behaviour then they actually have when they begin their sentences.

A major argument against the prison system is the cost. It costs taxpayers billions of pounds to keep people imprisoned in this country, Money that could be spent on training and rehabilitative programmes to tackle the causes of crime or be used in crime detection, as a method of crime prevention. People who serve long sentences become institutionalised and dependent on the prison regime and as a result cannot function in society.

In conclusion, the history of prisons system in Britain has constantly changed the purpose of prisons in this country, which collectively given us the reasons for imprisoning people today as a form of punishment, deterrence, public protection and a place of reform and rehabilitation. Prisons offer protection of the public from dangerous criminals as they prevent them from committing further offences by keeping them out of society but prisons do not seem to work as deterrence to criminals, recidivist rates also indicate prisons as a failure as places of reform and rehabilitation. This may in part be due to the lack of training prisons or training courses available in prison which help to educate and reform.

There are despite improved conditions over the years and the introduction of conventions and rights in relation to prisoner’s still unsatisfactory conditions under which prisoners are kept. There is also need to address the composition of the prison population, which found an incredibly high proportion of prisoners from ethnic minorities.

The effectiveness of prisons is very questionable as the arguments against prison certainly outweigh the arguments for the system. With costs of such a system being a very high and the benefits in relation to the costs relatively low. Alternative forms of punishment need to be established with emphasis being placed on rehabilitation and reform instead of the wide spread use of imprisonment, which has continually risen causing overcrowding. Although prisons may be the only solution to persistent and highly dangerous offenders.