Prison reform?

So . . .

Prison reform has been on my mind for a while now. It seems to me that our current system of custodial sentencing is very good at achieving some objectives, and pretty poor indeed at achieving some others.

Prisons are excellent at preventing prisoners from committing crimes outside the prison for the duration of their custodial sentence; escapes are rare, and mostly from "open" prisons when they do occur. Prisons are usually a punishment, unless the prisoner's life conditions before incarceration were so terrible that prison represents a definite improvement. Prisons can be a deterrent, but again, the level of deterrence depends on the quality of life "on the outside" of which the potential criminal would be deprived by a prison sentence. Rehabilitation is pretty hit-and-miss, as the reoffending rates are worryingly high; this is another indication of a failure in deterrence. All of this is done at a pretty staggering cost per prisoner per year.

I believe that one big factor which leads to many of these failings is the acclimatization effect. The longer someone spends incarcerated, the more that life inside prison will feel "normal", while departing that environment will feel abnormal, perhaps intolerably so. The one released will, consciously or subconsciously, engage in behaviour that will lead to a return to "normality", i.e. commit crime so that they may return to prison. This effect will be more pronounced for younger inmates, with less experience of outside society, and more pronounced the longer the sentence.

I would therefore propose a different model of incarceration, in which the focus of the sentence is not on duration, but on intensity. If certain categories of prison sentences were much shorter (weeks rather than months, months rather than years), then acclimatization would be much reduced, as it always takes time to acclimatize. If the sentences were also much tougher to experience (e.g. limited entertainment facilities, nutritious but bland food), then punishment would be still be served, with deterrence maintained. The prisoner should be left with a memory of an experience that they actively wish never to repeat, but which didn't become familiar enough to feel like the new "normal". If these "short, sharp sentences" were combined with thorough psychological evaluation, then the causes of each prisoner's offending might be determined, with the possibility of targeted support (court-appointed therapy, educational opportunities, drug rehabilitation, etc.) reducing the reoffending rate.

Obviously, this approach would not be a panacea; if there is not to be capital punishment, there will remain a need for long custodial sentences; in some cases, lifelong sentences. The evaluation procedures would be real costs, as would the post-sentence support, although not, I believe, as much as the costs of repeated long-term incarceration, not to mention the social costs of crime between custodial periods. One benefit of this new approach is that it could be tested on a trial basis first, in just one or two prisons, with assessment of results such as reoffending rates in just a few years (due to the shorter sentences).

The other fairly obvious point is that any adjustment to the prison system would need to be carried out in conjunction with both social services, and the care system, as there is a statistically significant correlation between children growing up in care of the state, and then going on to be imprisoned. Social services, although politically unexciting, need more funding, and alternatives to institutional care of children need to be sought wherever possible; I may well blog more on this point in the future.

Finally, I feel compelled to say that, in one sense, all of this would only be applying a more effective sticking-plaster to the ailments of modern society. The true cause of almost all crime is the selfishness and lack of self-control of individual humans, living in an unjust society, and as a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is the only true solution to the problem of the human heart, and the oppressive structures that humans have created.