Prison isn't working

Prison isn't working

If we were serious that 'prison works' we would have a prison-building programme that resulted in a gulag society.
Richard Garside

May 31, 2007 10:00 AM | Printable version

In 1998, the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee argued that the "huge rise in the prison population during the last five years is unsustainable". Something must be done or it would "end badly". Having oscillated between 40,000 and 50,000 during the 1980s and early 1990s, prison numbers in England and Wales rose to more than 60,000 by the time Labour came to power in 1997.

At the time of this stark message the prison population stood at around 66,000. It now tops 80,000. The argument that "prison works" might once have been a rather disreputable stance. Today it is becoming positively de rigueur to celebrate high prison numbers and call for even more.

Superficially, the argument is persuasive. In the 10 years from 1995 to 2005 the official crime rate, according to the British Crime Survey, fell by roughly half. During the same period the number in prison increased by roughly half. Crime apparently fell because we successfully imprisoned the kinds of people who commit it. Keep locking up more of those people who commit most crime and crime will fall further. The equation appears rather simple.

However compelling this argument might appear, and however popular it currently is within certain circles, it is in fact one that is at best misleading and at worst spurious. To understand why, let us start by considering the kind of people that make up the current criminal justice caseloads as convicted offenders.

They are largely men from poor or working class backgrounds. They will tend to be in their late teens or early 20s. A notable proportion will have drug and alcohol problems. Many will be living with significant mental health problems. Poor literacy abilities and intermittent employment histories will be common. While the majority will be white, a disproportionate minority will be black or from other minority ethnic groups.

These are the people who are both vulnerable to repeat conviction and repeat incarceration. It should not surprise us then that such individuals might regularly find themselves in trouble with the police, prosecuted in the courts and filling up our prisons. Indeed, the criminal justice system is largely there to deal with, manage and regulate the problematic behaviours caused by poor, young males. Unsurprisingly, they therefore tend to figure strongly in the criminal justice caseloads. They are in the prison system in such numbers not because there has been a mass outbreak of wickedness since 1997 but because policy makers have designed processes that have driven prison numbers up for this group of people instead of focusing on other policy responses.

Yet whether it is domestic violence or child abuse, middle class fiddles or corporate corruption, sexual abuse or the abuse of power, most crime never features in the official crime rate. Crime is a far more common and cross-class phenomenon than is apparent from the caseloads of police, prisons and courts. If we were serious that "prison works" we would have a prison-building programme that resulted in a gulag society.

At best, the argument about prison and crime is about a small proportion of all offenders, responsible for a small proportion of all crime. If some of our politicians and policy wonks choose to limit their vision to debating such matters then that is their right. The rest of us should not feel so constrained.