I HAD a sense of déjà vu after the recent riots in England and Northern Ireland (News, 9 August). The subsequent imprisonment of many of those involved in the disorder had strong echoes for me of January 2012, when I joined the Prison Service. As a novice chaplain, I discovered many of those who were incarcerated at that time had been sentenced after the riots during a similar summer period in 2011.
The influx then, as now, meant that cell occupancy was at its maximum: residents had to double up in single cells or reside in ones that, under normal circumstances, would have been deemed unfit for use.
Conditions in 2024 are even worse. The present Government has inherited from its predecessor a prison system in a particularly parlous condition. Prisons are beyond full, and post-riot sentencing has necessitated the implementation of Operation Early Dawn, allowing convicted people to be held in police custody until a prison place is available. This is not ideal, and nor will be the cramped and sometimes insanitary conditions that they will encounter in prison itself.
Given the violence perpetrated, fear fostered, racial hatred expressed, and property damaged, some may ask, “Why should we care about how rioters are treated?” Although I strongly believe in penal reform, I also hold that crime should be punished, and imprisonment is often appropriate (although over-used). But the question then arises of the purpose of incarceration.
THERE is a fourfold purpose to imprisonment: punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Loss of liberty is a punishment for certain crimes. The threat of loss of liberty can serve as a deterrent for some people. Custody is meant to prevent offenders’ being an ongoing threat to society. Finally, imprisonment should offer the opportunity for rehabilitation.
This latter element was especially prominent at the inception of systems of modern mass incarceration, in the 18th century. The word “cell”, borrowed from monasticism, is a reminder of a religious quest behind early forms of incarceration, one that sought the transformation of lives.
When I joined the Prison Service, the post-2008 austerity cuts in the public sector had reduced staff numbers to dangerously low levels. Unsurprisingly, rates of violence, drug use, self-harm, and suicide were alarmingly high. In such a chaotic context, rehabilitative opportunities were diminished.
The situation is similar today. Only a year ago, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, said that rehabilitative opportunities were few in many prisons, and that he had observed “empty workshops, overgrown farms and gardens, broken greenhouses, and demotivated and disillusioned prisoners either locked in their cells or aimlessly stuck on the wing with nothing meaningful to do”.
How many people go on to reoffend after release highlights the rehabilitative ineffectiveness of prisons. While uncontested recidivism rates are difficult to obtain, the Ministry of Justice’s figures state that approximately 25 per cent of those released reoffend within one year. The Prison Reform Trust suggests that this figure is closer to 50 per cent. All agree that short sentences (such as those imposed on many of the rioters) are the least effective rehabilitatively.
THIS failure of prisons to fulfil their rehabilitative purpose is costly in numerous ways. One report suggests that reoffending costs the public £18.1 billion per year. Think how much more transformative incarceration might be if that was spent, instead, on prison-based education, mental-health support, and training for meaningful employment.
Criminal justice, like health care, is a “Pay now or pay later” system. But the greatest costs arising from a failing penal system are not financial. Families and communities suffer when their imprisoned members become more traumatised, angry, drug-dependent, or violent as a result of the unnecessary privations and dangers of incarceration.
As a chaplain, I discovered that many incarcerated souls had suffered a troubled upbringing or struggled long-term with addiction or mental-health issues. This is not to excuse or condone their criminal behaviour. Imprisonment should not exacerbate their difficulties and leave them in a worse state on release. Ideally, incarceration should be transformative, and the rehabilitative task begins with a practice at the heart of Christian pastoral care: “Seek first to understand. . .”
Such a custodially compassionate approach requires an investment of resources. It also requires an investment in the humanity of those incarcerated souls. I was heartened by the progressive signal given with the recent Cabinet appointment of James Timpson as Prisons Minister (Comment, 12 July). Over many years, his company has employed people leaving custody and has been instrumental in the transformation of many lives.
Like our penal-reformer forebears, we need to rekindle such faith in the ability of people to change. I pray that the recent civil unrest will not derail any good intentions to shift the political narrative away from “Lock ’em up!” to “transforming wounded lives”.
The Revd Dr David Kirk Beedon, a former prison chaplain, is an author and researcher in penal pastoral practice. His books include Pastoral Care for the Incarcerated: Hope deferred, humanity diminished? (Palgrave-Macmillan 2022).
Read more on this story in Letters.