Penal reform loses out to crime postponement

national | crime and justice | opinion/analysis Friday January 06, 2006 01:14 by Martin Gregg - None ianmco at yahoo dot co dot uk

Irish prisons failing society

Irish prisons are failing society.Little or no real rehabilititive intervention takes place.Prisons have become places where we hold people until they are ready to commit their next crime!

Imprisonment is a subject of great fascination to most people. Though relatively few people are touched by it, and even fewer have a direct experience of it, almost everyone has an opinion of prison. Sadly, many of these opinions are ill informed, based as they are, on the misrepresentation of prison life by a scare mongering tabloid gutter press.

Prisons in Ireland are not holiday camps. They are intensely claustrophobic and depressing institutions where, by and large, lip service is paid by the agencies of the state to the idea of rehabilitation. In our modern, wealthy, and liberal western democracy, prison is where we hold people until we are ready for them to commit their next crime.

My opinion of the Irish penal system is subjective, since I was at the time of writing this piece a prisoner. However, that fact leaves me in a singularly ideal position to examine the value to society of the current regime, particularly in view of the fact that many of those with whom I am incarcerated with are guilty of extremely violent crimes including murder.

A prison sentence is generally imposed to punish the offender by the withdrawal of their liberty, to protect society from further harm, and to act as a deterrent. In two out the three purposes for which it was designed and imposed, prison fails.

Many of those who are most likely offend are not deterred by prison because the underlying causes of their criminal behaviour often leave them incapable of considering the consequences of their actions rationally. Many offenders suffer from alcoholism, drug addiction, childhood sexual abuse, or mental illness. Left untreated, indeed discarded, by society they turn to crime, either to feed their habit or to assuage a deep-seated anger and resentment at society for it’s perceived injustices. The fact that their actions may lead them to prison is seldom if ever a consideration for them, never mind a deterrent. That is not to say that somehow their offences are excusable, they are responsible for their actions, as I am for mine. I do not seek to excuse criminal behaviour because of the circumstances of the offender at the time of the offence, or because of their life history or lifestyle. To do that would be to somehow deny the suffering that they, and I, have caused. I simply make the point that they could not be deterred from offending by prison, because the cause of their offending was beyond such a reasoned deterrent. In fact, prison is only a deterrent to those who would never be likely to break the law in the first place, and therefore don’t need deterring.

At this juncture I feel obliged to make what I believe is a salient point. There is an all too common tendency among many opinion makers to dismiss societal factors altogether when discussing the problem of crime. Too often remarks such as “everyone from a difficult background doesn’t end up in jail, therefore crime is a choice freely made,” go unchallenged. It is true that all people from socially or economically deprived backgrounds do not end up in jail. Many end up as junkies, alcoholics, battered wives, violent partners, self-harmers, or psychiatric cases. All of my experience is that only a minority of them end up as well balanced, socially active, productive citizens. There is a strong argument therefore, for the belief that criminal behaviour is not the main problem, it is just another symptom of a much greater problem.

If prison fails as a deterrent to those most likely to end up in it, does it fare any better at protecting society? Well obviously while an offender is locked up society is protected from him. However, that is a very short-term solution. If society wishes to be protected from people who have already demonstrated a capability for criminal behaviour, then prison fails. Prison fails because little if anything is done in Irish prisons to address the causes of offending. No real attempt is undertaken to rehabilitate the offender. Probation and welfare services lack the manpower, resources, and authority to be effective. Rehabilitative programmes are rare, and where they do occur they lack either funding or innovative thinking, and in my experience, they are never the subject of detailed follow up or aftercare programmes. For instance, the Sex Offenders’ Treatment Programme, which I myself availed of, is available to eight, yes, eight prisoners in the whole country every year. Almost certainly those who take part in it will not have met a prison psychologist prior to being accepted for the programme, and upon completion of this gruelling nine-month programme, they will not, in all likelihood, meet one again. In fact, they will receive no real ongoing therapeutic help after the course, even though they may still have a considerable time left to serve. The same applies drug addicts, alcoholics, and others with mental or social problems. They receive no constructive assistance in changing their criminal behaviour while they are in prison. So what do you expect a high percentage of them to do upon release?

Prison doesn’t protect society from crime; it merely postpones the offender’s next crime for the duration of their imprisonment. And this costs you, the taxpayer, well over eighty thousand euro per prisoner per year. I wonder what would happen to the crime rate if even a fraction of that money were spent treating the problems of the offender in the first place? And how many fewer victims would we have? Because remember this, every untreated, unrehabilitated person we release into society is a potential crime, and every crime has a victim.

Make no mistake; I am not for one moment suggesting that we should abolish prisons. Nor am I suggesting that all prisoners are capable or willing to change. Further, I am not seeking to minimise the effects of crime either upon the individual victims or on society as a whole. What I am suggesting is that we need to overhaul our prison system so that it not only punishes the wrongdoer but also acts effectively to address the reasons why the individual has offended and seeks to minimise, through real rehabilitative programmes, the likelihood of the individual re-offending upon release.

A major concern for many victims is that the person who hurt them will hurt someone else. If we want to do victims justice, then we need not only to punish those who have made them victims, we also need to address their concerns for the future safety of others. To do that we must do all that we can to actively address the causes of crime and the rehabilitation of offenders. To continue as we are serves no purpose, other than to leave ourselves open to further crimes.