What is the purpose of prison.

When i became a probation officer there were 47,000 prisoners and when I retired 24 years later the number had doubled. It's the walls and locked doors that are supposed to be the punishment and the sentence should incorporate rehabiliation, but as long as the Prison Officers Association rules the roost and mantains their old-fashioned culture, prison will not work.

Probation isn't allowed to work because 70% of an officer's time is currently spent in front of a keyboard, typing up risk assessments and records. Prisoners are 'ghosted' to far away locations so opportunites to work with them are sabotaged (this is at the whim of senior prison officers whose priority is good order and discipline), and too many public protection meetings are only attended by probation and police, who cannot manage offenders alone. They need prisons, mental health, education, social services, housing and others to help to keep offenders on track.

Having visited several other countries to view their prison and probation systems, I think we have taught them so much, but unfortunately we don't go beyond the urge to seek retribution and revenge in many parts of our Crimnal Justice System. I think we could learn much from the people and culture of Norway.

Anyone who goes for a look around our prisons will see how outdated and inappropriate they are, with a few exceptions like Thorn Cross near Warrington, which is an open prison for young offenders. They are ahead in terms of instilling respect and a sense of being a responsible citizen.

when - Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were more open prisons like Thorn Cross. I'd like to think it would go a long way in breaking the chain of disillusionment that so many young offenders experience, preventing a future life of crime.

when sounds like targets at the home office re numbers of prisoners, numbers re-offending etc etc have the same impact as the education targets do. The people working in the service are forced to focus on the targets and not on what they know will make the biggest difference!!

Yes, Butty it's a pleasure to walk around Thorn Cross. Everywhere you go, the young people are industrious and polite, interested in you and happy to talk about what they are doing to improve their lives. They aren't all minor offenders, you have to commit serious offences to get custody at a young age, it's just that some have rehabilitated so well that their risk of further serious offending has reduced over time, so they can be allowed to work both on the prison site and in nearby factories or farms.

Of course, serious offenders should be kept away to protect the public, but warehousing them and treating them like animals does nothing to enable them to regret their offences and make some recompense for the harm they've done.

I know what it's like to be close to a victim of serious crime - my daughter has been involved in two robberies, the most recent in the bank she works in - she ran from a masked man holding a machete and hid in a cupboard, then dialed the police on her mobile. They tried to find her, but were disturbed just before they reached the cupboard. One had a gun. They ran before police could catch them, so you can imagine how frightened she was about going to work with bank keys in the early morning for the next few months, before they were arrested. They got long sentences - a local well-known gang. An open prison for them would be no good - they would disappear immediately. They won't work on their offending, though - they'll come out in a few years and plan a robbery somewhere else. We need specialised offending programmes for such criminals, and there are a few available, but hardened criminals tend to get pally with the officers and avoid doing anything about changing themselves.

nanaej yes, you're right - it's all target driven, even reducing the numbers of prisoners who self harm or attempt suicide - they are spoken about in terms of numbers, put under close observation so they can't hurt themselves, but don't tend to get much help like treatment for drug withdrawal if they slip up and take drugs after arriving in prison. The sheer numbers make it impossible to manage. Suicides of drug users in prison are rising again.

In an average adult prison, 1,000 prisoners, at least half of whom are addicted to heroin, and two nurses, a manager and a drugs team of two or three will not keep up with 500 prisoners who need drugs treatment. In the community, 5 or 6 workers in a drugs team would not be expected to actively support that many people on a weekly basis. More like 60 to 100.

Sadly, there will always be many who need serious containment, and whose aptitude for rehabilitation is probably nil.

when What a terrible experience for your daughter. I don't know how long ago this happened, but really hope she is now 'over it' (whatever that means).

Butty the bank robbery was 7 years ago. She was 23! At the time, i was fortuately living right next door to her (house sale mess so I rented next door) and was able to be around whenever she wanted to talk. That, and getting very drunk with her boyfriend and a group of mates whilst they all shared fantasies about what bizarre things they would like to do to the bank robbers. She's moved on and has her twin babies now, so maternity leave, a degree including criminal psychology and several role changes at work have helped, but she will never forget it, nor will the rest of the family.

when Not forgetting, no, but lovely to hear how, 7 years later, your daughter's life is full of fun and interest. The best turnaround one could hope for.

Butty x

According to this article, prisons are deeply corrupt and do nothing but avenge and punish.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2170274/CHARLIE-GILMOUR-I-broke-law-paid-price-But-I-learned-prison-fills-dread-rioters-rampage-again.html

I agree prison is a bad solution in many cases, but in crimes of violence it seems necessary to me. As for crimes against money and property - I'd punish such crims where it hurts - in their wallets. They love money; preferably someone elses, so just make them pay financially by confiscating their goods and garnisheeing their income.

As for victimless crimes - they should not be crimes. Legalise drug addicts so they can get their fix cheaply and legally, but imprison suppliers because they are hurting people. Crimes against property such as grafitti: simple - make them clean the stuff up. Internet crime eg hacking - not sure here. How about giving them a 'no computer access' sentence? Not sure how to police that though.

The purpose of prison is to punish and rehabilitate but many are incapable of rehabilitation, so what then? I do begrudge my money going towards looking after such people and it makes me mad to hear them bang on about their human rights when they've no thought for other people's. Popping them on to a deserted island might be the only solution left.

goldengirl - have you considered anything I said about the type of people who are likely to find themselves in prison?

Remember this rhyme?

It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor wot gets the blame
It's the rich wot gets the pleasure
Aint it all a bleedin shame.

This seems to apply to crime and punishment, except line three should be 'it's the rich wot gets good lawyers'

Prison should be a great opportunity to rehabilitate inmates, but it seems that there is no chance of that. This would cost money and money matters more than people these days.

Here in Queensland Australia, our new ultra-right wing state government is removing funding for some prisoner programs, the most appalling loss being funds for 'Sisters Inside', which helps vulnerable female prisoners, often Aborigines and often victims of domestic violence.

Oh well, that's democracy for you. We are all entitled to vote for whom we think would be best, and the right wingers can afford the best electoral propaganda.

Such is life.

And the stupid thing is that it would cost less in the long term to offer treatment and education - but what politician ever thinks in the long term!

joan, your remark about the Queensland State Government interested me so I had a look at an article on Wiki that gives numbers of seats, etc. This has left me wondering. What do you think caused such a huge swing away from the previous Labor government? Why did they lose so many seats all at once?

Something I don't understand is if the crime figures have been showing a year on year decrease for more than a decade, why are there increasing numbers of prisoners? (The answer is not that crime has gone down because the criminals have been locked up – or at least not as a straightforward piece of "arithmetic".) I think the disproportionate increase in the number of female prisoners is very worrying.

The massive increase in prisoners is solely due to the expansion of imprisonable crimes via legislation, including being imprisonable for breaching parole/prison licences, committing further offences that would not necessarily have attracted prison on their own, breaching community service/unpaid work, breaching probation. The parole board have a running backlog of recall to prison cases that have to be looked at to see a) whether the recall was justified, or b) whether the prisoner can be released again. Automatic release after recall has been set in place, and probation officers have to put in a submission to say if they object to automatic release. The numbers keep escalating, and occasionally the home secretary will agree early release for some prisoners, which then falls into disrepute if a serious crime is committed whilst on early release. It's a bureaucratic quagmire!

Bags, they lost the seats because they privatised the port authority and rail freight, and something else, I forget what. They did this because finances were a mess after devastating floods and cyclones, but selling assets is deeply disgusting to Labour voters. Effectively, they acted against their own constituency, their own voter bloc.

So Labour voters had to hold their noses and still vote Labour in spite of being betrayed, or put in a blank ballot sheet (turning up to vote is compulsory here), or vote Tory for the first time in their lives. Many punished Labour by taking the one or other of the second two choices.

Simple as that.

And now the new LNP (our version of Tory) government is doing all those right wing things, including selling off assets, that Labour voters hate. We are the one State with no upper house, so they have open slather to indulge their idealism and blame it all on Labour finances.

They even employed the previous Tory federal treasurer, Peter Costello, to audit the books. There is apparently a 6 billion dollar black hole, but he projects this to 60 billion by 2025 (I think), and the right wing press talk about that 60 Billion as if it is here and now. Even the 6 billion figure is dodgy because Costello has to present the figures in the worst possible light, and we all know accounts can be presented in various different ways.

Sorry, I realise I'm niaive but how do prisoners in jail get drugs? What can't that be stopped?

It is possible that young black males commit more crimes than young white males and that would explain why there are more in prison. DS3's fiancee is mixed race and has lived in Trinidad where she says young black men are very often brought up by their mothers with no involvement from the father. This is apparently the norm and is often the case here in the UK too. Joining criminal gangs is just what they do. Until that culture is changed if is surely inevitable that there will be more black than white in court. I know it is not PC to say this but I do believe it is true.

Pick an orifice Alison! They get smuggled in on visits and get passed to the prisoners when officers aren't looking.

And I believe many prison officers are involved in supplying drugs.
Alison - how do you explain the fact that black men are treated more severely than white men for the same offences?

I was told by a solicitor friend that in general, women are treated more severely than men for the same offences.

Yes, that's true Anagram and whilst men will have a partner who will bring their children to visit them in prison, women tend to lose contact with their families and struggle to reintegrate with them when released. Baroness Jean Corston was commissioned to write a major report, and she recommended lots of actions to enable women to get fair treatment in the Criminal Justice System, very few of which were acted upon.

One recommendation was that women's prisons and probation hostels should be replaced with small units where women could maintain local contact with their children in a safe, supervised environment, as currently children cannot visit where sex offenders are present (this can be managed on prison visits). Nothing happened. The female offenders hostel I managed has recently closed down but it's replacement is 60 miles away. There are only two in the north west of England, none in Wales, none in Northern Ireland and four in the rest of England (Scotland has its own system).

If there were more women's probation hostels, fewer women would be imprisoned.

How does one know whether a woman or black man is treated the same or differently? I suspect it rather depends on the agenda of the person producing the statistics as no two crimes are the same and no 2 judges are the same.

Surely it is not beyond the prison service to watch what is going on or use CCTV? If 'many prison officers are involved in supplying drugs' is known then why havn't they been stopped? If they know that they must know who they are.