Prisons.
We want them to have self-worth,
  so we destroy their self-worth.
We want them to be responsible,
  so we take away all responsibilities.
We want them to be positive and constructive,
  so we degrade them and make them useless.
We want them to be non-violent,
  so we put them where there is violence all around them.
We want them to be kind and loving people,
  so we subject them to hatred and cruelty.
We want them to quit being the tough guy,
  so we put them where the tough guy is respected.
We want them to quit hanging around losers,
  so we put all the ‘losers’ under one roof.
We want them to quit exploiting us,
  so we put them where they exploit each other.
We want them to take control of their lives, own their problems and quit being a ‘parasite’,
  so we make them totally dependent on us.

This is a poem from an article I read recently. I forgot to include the writer’s name but will put it up when i find the article again. Its not quite how i would have phrased it, personally, but it covers all the bases pretty well.

When you put someone in prison what are they actually learning? What lesson does pain really teach - cos there is a lot more to prison than just ‘losing freedom’? Ive got to say, its a pretty blunt instrument… Sure in some cases pain and suffering does indeed teach some people ‘not to do it again’, but in many other cases it teaches people to be more careful about getting caught. And to what extend does it teach people the person with the most power wins, therefore you always need to be the one with the most power?

And when your time is served, are we really all square then? Does one person’s pain and suffering cancel out another person’s pain and suffering? Does the victim stop hurting in relation to the pain visited on the offender? And if we really are all square, then why is it so hard for someone who has served their time to get a job, or a house? And what kind of a life do you have when its really hard to get a job or a house?

Teach them a lesson so they don’t do it again. Isn’t that the objective? So then why is the recidivism rate so high? Here in South Australia 50% of prisoners are back in prison within 2 years, 80% are back within 5 years. Surely, if you were serious about teaching, and that was your failure rate, wouldn’t you look at your methods a little more closely?

Lets unpack it just a little: ‘teach them a lesson’: what does that mean? Does it mean the behaviour was wrong and you want to find some way of stopping the person from doing that again? And you think the fear of prison will do that? Well, it seems like in about 20% of the prisoner population, it works! But for the rest of that population, it doesnt work. And lets face it, that 80%, they go back to prison for (perhaps one of) two reasons: reasons related to not being able to find housing or work; they get caught for one of a number of crimes they committed after prison. Prison either had no impact on their ability to stop the behaviour, or it exacerbated the factors underlying the behaviour.

Im all for getting tough on crime, but im not sure what the Government means when it says ‘tough’. I think it would be great for offenders to learn some lessons that stop them from killing, hurting, bashing, attacking, stealing from, raping, defrauding, lying, endangering, drugging, bullying other people, its just that prison doesnt seem to be very effective at doing that. Whats more, a lot of that stuff seems to happen to people who are already in prison, so its ability to teach people not to do those things seems very compromised. How do you bully people into not bullying anymore? How do you bash the bashing out of them? What do people really learn when they go to prison? What do we want people who break the law to learn?

Of course I dont want people who rape or kill or use violence wandering around freely! But how does prison teach a person the empathy, the problem-solving skills, the respect for other people’s autonomy, the ability to calm down to the point where one can think about consequences, the sense of responsibility and the self-restraint/self-discipline necessary to prevent that abuse of power? Cos in the end, 99.9% of prisoners are released…

I think the Government pushes the “tough on crime” line hard and loud just so that we won’t think about possible alternatives along the lines of “effective on crime” or “reducing crime”, and so that we will get the impression that something is being done. Just like the ‘crims’ have discovered, its easy to be tough when you cant find ways of being effective.

• arumanda said on 08/06/05 at 06:20 PM.....

  perfect timing. this very subject has been floating around in my mind for the past week, day in and day out. i think the triggers were a book i read written by a prisoner describing his life and the violence that surrounds him, and the brilliant but very scary documentary on tv last week by the bbc’s louis theroux.

  it just doesn’t sit right in my stomach, the concept of prison. there has to be another way. but i don’t know what better alternatives exist.  i just know there has to be alternatives out there. 

  thanks for the questions and for making me think.  i will continue to do so.

• MJD-S (between awake and asleep) said on 08/06/05 at 10:19 PM.....

  The problem is by the time you put someone in prison it may be too late.

  Very much a case of prevention is better than cure.

• Kristen (at the computer) said on 08/06/06 at 11:36 AM.....

  Here is an interesting commentary on California’s “pay to stay” system that allows prisoners to upgrade their rooms for a cost.