Muristek
Right from Wrong; Criminal; The Life Inside review – the problem with our prisons
Three different viewpoints on the UK’s system of incarceration – by Jacob Dunne, Angela Kirwin and Andy West – examine the human cost of our investment in punishment rather than rehabilitation
In the past 30 years, prison numbers in England and Wales have doubled to almost 90,000, the biggest per head of the population in western Europe, largely as a result of successive governments claiming that longer sentences will reduce crime. That the current regime is now planning to invest a further £4bn in yet more prison places suggests that the anticipated reduction hasn’t materialised. Yet we will continue to spend roughly £40,000 a year per head on keeping people locked up when, within a year of release, about 50% of them will reoffend.
In any good prison system there has to be a balance between punishment and rehabilitation. That ours is so out-of-kilter should be another national scandal. Instead, the new expansion plans – with details to date few and far between – were clearly intended by the Conservatives as a vote-winner. Locking more and more people up, even if it doesn’t prevent crime, is another addiction Britain has caught from the US.
Continue reading...