Zoe Williams is not alone in believing that prison can work (Britain’s jails are in terrible crisis, but prison can work. I know, I’ve seen it, 8 August). Plenty of other people have believed just that, reaching back to George Onesiphorus Paul in Gloucester in the late 1700s, and Jeremy Bentham in the early 1800s.
Sadly, belief is not enough. The model prisons of the 19th century (such as Pentonville) that adopted the “separate” system designed to rehabilitate prisoners through private contemplation while preventing their association with corrupting influences largely gave way to the less severe “silent” regime where association was possible, albeit without verbal communication. As the century unfolded and the management of the prison estate was brought under central control, prisons became less rehabilitative and more punitive, the emphasis being on “grinding men good” via the treadwheel, the crank and starvation diets.
At least prison was relatively safe, and convicts could clean their bodies of cheap liquor and maybe even learn a basic trade. Throughout the modern estate, drugs, blades, gangs, abuse and suicide are seemingly commonplace. Rehabilitation requires sentences that allow the time for education, skills training, counselling and effective support to withdraw from drugs and/or alcohol. It needs a supportive environment with space (and not simply physical space) to change. You won’t have this while prisons are so overcrowded, so underfunded, and where staff are demoralised and overworked.
Fundamentally, though, prison won’t work unless we, as a society, are prepared to have a serious conversation about punishment and what it is meant to achieve. We send too many people to prison, either for too long or for not long enough to rehabilitate. Prison might work for a small number of convicted criminals if we can give them the facilities and support they need. But better perhaps to only incarcerate those who present a real threat to the public. But that will be unpopular with a popular press and public that so often seek retribution over rehabilitation.
Do we actually want to reform criminals, or just lock them away so we don’t have to confront the causes of their offending? Prison doesn’t work, it never has, and unless we think differently, it never will.
Dr Drew Gray
Historian of crime, University of Northampton
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