Prisons: I think a big problem with prison systems is that they're looked at as a blanket fix for crime. Supposedly prison will serve as a deterrent for potential criminals, but from the poorest criminal to the wealthiest white collar criminal, they were aware of the risk and the reward and choose to commit the crime anyway.
Prison is also supposed to rehabilitate criminals. Sometimes it does, but the expectation is much higher than the reality. In my opinion it's not that prison is necessarily ineffective at dealing with crime, it's that expectations and the general perception of what purpose prison actually serves is very distorted. It's the laws and the judicial systems that decides who the authorities are placing in prisons. If prisons aren't proving effective then we need to look at the laws responsible for putting people in prison as well as the social patterns (poverty, mental health) associated with their arrests before saying just shut the prisons.
I'll also say that the privatization of prisons is a very very dangerous thing in my opinion. The so-called prison industrial complex seen here in the US is a system designed to make profit. I feel that's a huge conflict of interest to any type of possible rehabilitation for convicts. It also reeks of corruption and there's a very disturbing paper trail between tough new laws being enacted that lead to more and more arrests and the soaring profits these for-profit prison systems are making.
The incarceration of impoverished communities should not be the backbone of any local economy. Sadly that isn't the case in many places in America where local businesses depend on a thriving and ever-increasing population of convicts.
Or maybe I just watch too many documentaries and read too much.
Prisons are an interesting topic due to the way that they reflect the society they are within. Before looking into that though we need to establish what the purpose of a prison is. It seems strange but actually we are not all that clear on their purpose, or at least their purpose differs depending on whom you ask. The main areas usually fall into one or more of: Punishment, Protection, and Rehabilitation.
Punishment:
We often think that when someone does something bad, they should suffer the consequences. If you hurt me, you should be hurt. When we have personally suffered it becomes harder to be rational in the kind of response we would like. Take a situation where someone has harmed your child, many would call for torture of some sort. But that in itself raises too many problems ethically. Therefore the judicial system takes that extreme viewpoint and transfers it into a recognised removal of one’s civil liberties for a set amount of time. In some countries this can become a loss of life. I would argue that these actions do little to change anything for either the victim or the perpetrator. It is too simplistic and masochistic to have any positive outcome. Will the criminal then become less likely to commit the crime again because they have been harmed? Obviously if they are dead, they cannot, but is the taking of a human life justifiable?
Protection:
Another reason cited for prisons is to protect the public. If the criminal is in jail, they cannot harm the public. Again, this is too simplistic. This depends largely on the crime being committed. If we are talking about drugs, then someone else will just take their place. With violence we should be looking into the reasons behind the violence, which is usually to do with upbringing, culture, and mental health. In the case of robbery it is usually an economic issue, linked to education, career opportunities and upbringing or drug abuse. It costs around £35,000 per year to keep someone in prison. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on re-educating them and providing them with an income which they could work their way out of their current situation? I know that this is controversial because it will be suggested that people would start committing crimes in order to receive this opportunity. But that only tells you more about the lack of opportunities that people have rather than highlighting the unfairness of this idea. Protection only protects for the duration of the sentence so then what?
Rehabilitation:
The final goal of prison is to rehabilitate the offenders. Or at least that is what we would like them to do. The problem here is that it just does not work. Over 50% of people in prison have been to prison before. Until we are able to find alternative ways to help these individuals, we will keep going round in circles with this problem. There are an incredibly high number of illiterate people in prisons, which means that education is vital. That does not mean we need to blame the schools, the problems are far greater than that. The main issue here is that the view of a prison is a blanket vision. It does not look at the individual sufficiently, in order to make the correct decisions about what is actually best not only for the victim/society but also for the offender, as that will always be what is also best for society as a whole. Until we start treating the offenders as human beings that are misguided in their views of the world, due to circumstances quite often out of their control, we will not reduce the amount of crime or the numbers of incarceration.
Other issues:
The United States has the worst outlook on prisons of any nation. The numbers per capita are the highest by far in the world. Their record on rehabilitation is shocking and they impose sentences that are severe. The privitisation of them is also a worry, but not surprising given the way that corporations are continually looking for ways to make a buck.
Prisons also serve as a way to maintain the status quo, those in power are able to remain in these positions because anyone who would wish to depose them, in the way that would have been done in the past (ironically in the way that many of these gained their power in the first place), are not able to do so, without the threat of prison. It is usually the poor and lower classes in prison, which although is due mainly to the social hegemony that exists, there is also many cases where those with power, or financial means, avoid being put through the legal system.
I will conclude with a personal view. I feel that we do need to have a serious look at a number of things within our justice system. One of which is the actual use and purpose of prisons. Yes there are individuals whom are simply too unstable to have amongst society in their present state. But they should be kept securely within a hospital environment, looking at ways to heal those issues if possible, but if not kept indefinitely in a humane way. For others we need to look more deeply at the causes of crime and realise that those that are in power, are quite happy with the way things are now. But can we carry on heading in the direction we are in? Or is it time to make some changes, for the betterment of the whole of society?
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