I go into a prison regularly as a volunteer monitor. So I see what prison really means & meet & talk to offenders & staff often. Because of that I find myself wondering what we actually achieve by putting people in prison, as opposed to what we think we achieve.
People who break the law make a choice & know what they are doing. So the logic is they should be punished. I'm not denying that the public need to be protected from a proportion of dangerous & recidivist offenders. I'm also not denying the often serious & long lasting impact crime has on the victims.
But, so many offenders have addictive personalities & therefore have drug and alcohol problems which aren't best treated in a prison. Also a big proportion have psychological problems and need specialist help which is difficult to provide in a prison environment. Added to all of that there are the problems of a lack of literacy & numeracy skills due to a poor level of education or low intelligence. Then there is the general seriously disfunctional family background many offenders were brought up in.
I'm not a "bleeding heart liberal". But I am concerned that we seem to be a very punitive country, with statistics for incarcerating offenders which are disappointingly high compared to other European countries. I wonder why that is? Could it be that politicians make policy on the basis of newspaper headlines & focus groups. They know all of the above. They also know the true cost of our prison population in financial & human terms. They know that there are other ways of ensuring justice. Community Sentencing & Restorative Justice are both successful, but not particularly publicly popular.
I was also a magistrate for 12 years, so have been on both sides of the fence. That & my current "job" convince me that there is an awful lot of Law, but not a lot of Justice. I am sincerely impressed with the way the majority of staff work with offenders in the prison. They do the best they can & manage to maintain a sense of humour. I don't usually know what crime an offender is "in" for, so take them at face value & try to help deal with their problems. They are mostly surprisingly polite & reasonably easy to talk to.
Our society reflects us as individuals. We either actively support, tolerate, or demonstrate against any policy. Do we really want to be a "lock them up and throw away the key" society? Are we capable of being less judgemental and right wing & are we prepared to look a bit deeper & try to make the punishment really fit not only the crime but the criminal?
When you are eating your Christmas dinner surounded by friends and family, think about those thousands, not just offenders but also immigrants, who we have deprived of their family & friends as well as their freedom. Try, just try, to imagine what that might be like.
People who break the law make a choice & know what they are doing. So the logic is they should be punished. I'm not denying that the public need to be protected from a proportion of dangerous & recidivist offenders. I'm also not denying the often serious & long lasting impact crime has on the victims.
But, so many offenders have addictive personalities & therefore have drug and alcohol problems which aren't best treated in a prison. Also a big proportion have psychological problems and need specialist help which is difficult to provide in a prison environment. Added to all of that there are the problems of a lack of literacy & numeracy skills due to a poor level of education or low intelligence. Then there is the general seriously disfunctional family background many offenders were brought up in.
I'm not a "bleeding heart liberal". But I am concerned that we seem to be a very punitive country, with statistics for incarcerating offenders which are disappointingly high compared to other European countries. I wonder why that is? Could it be that politicians make policy on the basis of newspaper headlines & focus groups. They know all of the above. They also know the true cost of our prison population in financial & human terms. They know that there are other ways of ensuring justice. Community Sentencing & Restorative Justice are both successful, but not particularly publicly popular.
I was also a magistrate for 12 years, so have been on both sides of the fence. That & my current "job" convince me that there is an awful lot of Law, but not a lot of Justice. I am sincerely impressed with the way the majority of staff work with offenders in the prison. They do the best they can & manage to maintain a sense of humour. I don't usually know what crime an offender is "in" for, so take them at face value & try to help deal with their problems. They are mostly surprisingly polite & reasonably easy to talk to.
Our society reflects us as individuals. We either actively support, tolerate, or demonstrate against any policy. Do we really want to be a "lock them up and throw away the key" society? Are we capable of being less judgemental and right wing & are we prepared to look a bit deeper & try to make the punishment really fit not only the crime but the criminal?
When you are eating your Christmas dinner surounded by friends and family, think about those thousands, not just offenders but also immigrants, who we have deprived of their family & friends as well as their freedom. Try, just try, to imagine what that might be like.
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