Prison doesn't work

Despite what former Tory Home Secretary, later Conservative Party Leader, Michael Howard, asserted in 1993, the evidence for the effectiveness of imprisoning more and more people convicted of crimes is ambiguous at best.

In 1993, the average prison population was 44,542. According to a paper published by the Cambridge-based Bennett Institute for Public Policy in May this year "A ratchet effect has followed as politicians competed with each other to appear tough on law and order. In May 2023, the total prison population stands at 84,940. Current government policy will see the prison population projected to hit 106,300 by March 2027."  

Recent figures for England and Wales of 88,852, with judges being asked not to impose prison sentences and plans to send foreign prisoners (around 10,000) home and to rent foreign prison places don't seem to suggest that Michael Howard was right in his assertion.

The fact that the UK has the third highest prison population in Europe, after the Russian Federation and Turkey, is hardly something to boast about, unless you happen to be of the rabid right, of course. Most liberal-minded people will understand that there is a need for prison places to contain the most dangerous and recidivist criminals. For the rest, shorter or community sentencing and a strong programme of education and rehabilitation are probably the most effective means of breaking the cycle of re-offending. But this is neither a cheap nor a 'soft' option and needs to be very labour and resource intensive to be effective. It is quite clear, though, that the status quo is emphatically not working, either for prisoners or for the wider society.

Banged Up, Channel 4's four-part documentary from Shine TV, screens this autumn. Six celebrities are incarcerated in Shrewsbury Prison, a decommissioned gaol now a museum, alongside current and former lags, to experience a realistic prison detention. It is bound to make for compelling viewing and should generate a long-overdue and much-needed public debate about a service which is too often out of sight and out of mind.

One thing seems clear, prison only works where prisons work.

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