“A flexible range of sanctions and resources should be available so as to be able to respond to the individual needs of each offender in the hope of changing their future behaviour. Some offenders will need counselling with regard to drug dependencies; Others will need social skills training” (:245).
Offenders given a community sentence face a variety of experiences. They can include counselling or therapy for drug or alcohol abuse or anger management (Davis, Croall and Tyrer, 1998). Others may participate in projects such as the Essex Motor Project that provides offenders who have been involved in car crimes with an opportunity to drive and work with cars legitimately. Under the supervision of professionals they learn basic motor mechanic skills while preparing donated cars for banger races (Wilson and Ashton, 1998). Other schemes involve learning a trade such as decorating or joinery.
Schemes are also designed to put offenders in contact with disadvantaged people such as the disabled or elderly (Davis Croall, Tyrer, 1998).
An offender serving a prison sentence will also be given the opportunity to partake in various rehabilitative exercises. These include various work and educational courses, accredited programs for sex offenders, drug and alcohol abuse and management of violent behaviour (Home Office, 1998).
However, the increased prison population places an enormous strain on the prison service, and can effect the amount of rehabilitation work which can be done in them. For instance, 12,024 prisoners were held two to a cell designed for one in 1998/99 a 4% increase on the previous year (Home Office, 1998). In such conditions of over-crowding it becomes more and more difficult for the prison system to cater effectively for the special need of individuals. Unless they are able to receive individual attention and opportunity to change, their time in prison will make them worse rather than better (Dunbar and Langdon, 1990). All to often, the rehabilitation work that can be done in prisons is undermined by what offenders learn from each other. It is inevitable, that first-time prisoners will learn new skills from their more experienced inmates (Worrall, 1997).
PROTECTING THE PUBLIC
Whatever prisons cannot do, the one thing that they can achieve is to keep people locked up so that they cannot commit crimes outside in society.
In the case of ‘dangerous offenders’ imprisonment is the most effective form of punishment in order to protect the general public. The problem with ‘dangerous offenders' is that grave violent offences are rare occurrences and are very difficult to predict (Dunbar and Langdon, 1998). The fact is, the vast majority of prisoners are not convicted of violent offences.
Of the 60,000 people sentenced to immediate custody on 1995, 76% were convicted of non-violent offences. Of the 84,000 people who received prison sentences in 1996, 20,157 were convicted for non-payment of fines (Wilson and Ashton, 1998). The question is, what should be done with persistent non-violent property offenders who constantly re-offend?
The introduction of electronic tagging and probation orders with a requirement of residence in a hostel allows those offenders to be dealt with in the community while still offering significant protection to the public (Home Affairs Committee, 1998). These types of offenders are released from prison at some point and at present would not receive the same volume of rehabilitation provision that they would within a community sentence. Therefore in the long run community punishment could provide more effective protection from non-violent persistent offenders (Home Affairs Committee, 1998)
COST
The total annual cost of the prison service to the taxpayers is around £1.8 million, and each new prison costs an average £90 million to build (Wilson and Ashton, 1998). The annual cost per prisoner place is about £25,000. The cost of imprisonment varies depending on the level of security required, ranging from around £700 per week for keeping a prisoner in a dispersal prison to £300-350 in an open prison and a young offenders institution (Home Office, 1998. The average annual costs of community sentences are; probation orders - £2-369, community service orders - £1-170, combination orders - £3-500 (Home Affairs Committee, 1998). Although the difference between the cost of prison and community sentences appears substantial, these calculations so not consider any secondary costs of community penal measures when breach proceedings are necessary. In these instances the cost of supervising offenders in the community and then sending them to prison would need to be added together (Vass, 1990). Also financial resources are often needed to support families when partners/parents are in prison. Someone serving a community sentence on the other hand is still able to work and make financial contributions (Wilson and Ashton, 1998). Any assessment of the cost effectiveness of punishment needs to consider not only the direct financial expenditure, but also social costs that result from these measures such has the cost to the community through re-offending while serving a community sentence.
Imprisonment separates offenders from families, friends, associates- often leading to a breakdown in relationships.
For women in prison this is often exasperated by the fact that the dozen or so women’s prisons are particularly geographically widespread, leading to difficulties in sustaining contact (McLaughlin and Muncie, 1996). The conditions in prison can all too often lead to depression and even suicide. There were eighty-two self-inflicted deaths in prisons in 1998, compared with seventy in 1997 (Home Office, 1998).
ADEQUATE PUNISHMENT
In general terms prisons have credibility with the public as an instrument for punishment – the punishment being loss of liberty. By removing offenders from society and imposing strict limitations on their freedom, imprisonment is intended to send a powerful symbolic message to offenders and potential offenders that criminal behaviour will not be tolerated (Davis, Croall and Tyrer, 1998, Mclaughlin and Muncie, 1996). In this respect, imprisonment provides a means for the state and the public to express its collective disapproval of criminal behaviour. Community sanctions may also restrict liberty but not in such a readily understood way. For many non-custodial punishments are not regarded as ‘proper’ punishments at all (Mclaughlin and Muncie, 1996). Many would suggest that for an offender to remain in the community it is like letting them off. Community sentences are often described as ‘alternatives to imprisonment’ which some would argue implies that imprisonment remains the central and only sort of punishment (Vass, 1990)
FAIR ADMINISTRATION
Neither prisons nor community sanctions can be deemed truly effective unless they are administered fairly without discrimination. Evidence suggests that certain groups of offenders are over-represented in prisons for reasons that have little to do with the nature of their offence. It is also argued that community sentences are reserved for those who are socially advantaged (Hood, 1992, Hudson, 1993, Vass, 1990). Hoods (1992) study of the impact of race on sentences in five Crown Courts in the West Midlands, found that black offenders were more likely than white offenders to receive a suspended sentence. They were less likely to be given a community sentence or a probation order and less likely to be recommended for probation. Hudson (1999) and Vass (1990) draw attention to evidence of racial, sexual and age discrimination in the use of community sentencing. Hudson (1993) suggests that: -
“Community based sentencing is bringing about not so much a reduction but a restructuring of the penal population with the creation of a young, white hopeful penal population in the community, and a black, mentally disordered, homeless and hopeless population in the prisons” (cited in Brownlee, 1998, :107)
CONCLUSION
Prisons are made such problematic places by there extreme overcrowded conditions and the wide range of offenders they have to control, care for, and contain against their will. Because of these extreme conditions prisons are less effective than community sanctions in terms of rehabilitation and cost effectiveness. Unless offenders are violent offenders or worse, they should not be sent to prison to be rehabilitated but given a community sentence. Worrall (1997) asserts that: -
“There needs to be a consensus that prison can never be a genuine site of rehabilitation and that some attempts must be made to keep those criminals deemed capable of being rehabilitated out of prison” (:27).
Imprisonment can offer immediate protection to the general public, however, nearly all prisoners are released at some point, and at present, will rarely have to confront their offending behaviour in order to be rehabilitated to the same extent as those who are subjected to community sanctions (Home Affairs Committee, 1998). With the provision of electronic tagging and probation orders with a required residence in a hostel, community sanctions can be just has effective in protecting the public against non-violent offenders has a prison sentence. And In the long run, maybe more so.
Prison should be reserved as a punishment for the most serious offences.
Prison is still accepted by many has a necessary, if not an altogether desirable ‘social institution’. And for sometime yet, large numbers of offenders will be kept in them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brownlee, I. (1998) Community Punishment, Harlow: London.
Davis, M. Croall, H and Tyrer, J. (1998) Criminal Justice: An introduction to
the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales London: Longman.
Dunbar, I. and Langdon, A. (1998) Tough Justice; Sentencing and penal policies in the 90s, London: Blackstone Press.
Home Affairs Committee (1998) Alternatives to Prison Sentences, London: HMSO.
Home Office (1998) Prison Statistics England and Wales 1998, London: HMSO.
Hood, R. G and Sparks, R.F. (1970) Keys issues in criminology, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Hood, R (1992) Race and Sentencing: A study in the Crown Court, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
May, T. (1994) ‘Probation and Community Sanctions’, in Maguire. et al (eds) The Oxford Handbook Of Criminology, 1st ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
McLaughlin, E and Muncie, J. (1996) Controlling Crime, London: Sage.
Vass, A. (1990) Alternatives to Prison, Custody and the Community, London: Sage.
Wilson, D and Ashton, J. (1998) What every one in Britain should know about Crime and Punishment, London: Blackstone Press.
Worall, A (1997) Punishment in the Community: The future of Criminal Justice, Harlow: Addison Wesley Longman.