Straight Outta Bodmin

I recently went on an excursion with my lovely ladyfriend to Bodmin Jail. I know, I'm a hopeless romantic. Next trip I'm planning to take her to a slaughterhouse, or maybe to see High School Musical 4 (okay, that was too far).

This got me thinking about prison. This is, of course, like saying that a trip to a dairy farm got me thinking about milk. Of course it did. But for a subject that is really at the core of society, it's remarkably contentious. Prison, not milk.

Prison is a bloody horrible place. Even worse than a conversation with Uri Geller. There is the constant awareness of violence, a high degree of rape and sexually-inappropriate behaviour (both from fellow prisoners and staff) and of course, the sense of being sectioned away from society with a collection of people who have done things to make themselves worthy of being sectioned away from society.

Now, almost like a waiter to a trio of dolphins, prison is intended to serve three purposes:

1. It removes people who break society's rules from society;
2. It acts as a punishment for those caught breaking the law and a deterrant to those considering it;
3. It acts to rehabilitate people into society when they are not playing ball.

That is not to say it exists for all of those reasons for everybody. Some people want it very much more for reason 2 than reason 3, for instance.

But nobody wants not to fit into society. We have spent millions of years developing social ability and survival skills. When cut off from society, we go nutso. We go crazier than the craziest of paving. So can it really be an honest choice?

I submit this suggestion: people are born into environments they have no choice over, and with physiologies they cannot help. While infinitely complex, everything that happens to them shapes them. They always make choices, but their choices are shaped by who they are, and that is shaped by who and where and when they've been.

Society, of course, does benefit from not having people who act against it within its ranks. But is the best way to treat the problem to lock up all offenders, slowly stretching the resources of society? For me, this feels like trying to house-train a dog by picking up all of its turds and putting them into a pillowcase. Soon you'll end up with a pillowcase straining at the seams, and you'll still have crap all on the carpets. The crapets.

I am not saying that prison doesn't act as a deterrent. There is some reasonably compelling evidence that it does (though the deterrence doesn't increase with the severity of punishment). So in that sense, it does help society. But is it as much as actually addressing the causes of crime?

I don't believe we will ever eradicate crime... but by focussing more on point 3, and treating criminals as people reacting in unsocial ways (without inherent evil), you are more likely both to discover common causes of criminality and treat the individuals who have acted against society - helping to reduce massive recidivism.

Priming people to work within society is probably not best achieved by having them mix solely with people who are, for one reason or another, anti-social. That is like teaching somebody how savour fine wine by making them drink gallons of rat vomit.

Now, I understand that this is blue sky thinking. My brain is a like a summer's day seen through a sapphire or something similarly bloody lovely. What's more, it's impractical to help society by chucking the anti-social back into it. That's bandaging a papercut with a plaster made of razors. But surely there is a halfway point, between putting offenders into wider society and putting them into a small, enclosed space with what could sensibly be termed bad influences? For instance, placing them into the company of people who try to understand them and help them come to terms with why they act in ways that don't help themselves or anybody around them at all.

I know this sounds like a bleeding-heart rant - but actually, putting everybody in prison is expensive for society, doesn't prevent regression to crime and might just see more criminals back on the streets.

Anyway, that's my two pence. Don't steal it, or I'll slam you in the banger like a nail into a firework sausage.


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