I have been pretty critical of prisons in these articles but today I thought I’d try to do something different. I’m going to try to argue that actually prisons are doing a good job and that they are necessary.

One of the key roles of the prison system is to remove people from a society if they have been judged to be unable to properly act within that society. The Scottish Prison Service does this key role very well indeed. The SPS has a very good record for escapes although, to be fully honest, I don’t have the data to back that up. I do believe, though, that it is a very rare thing for people to escape.

Our cells are locked appropriately and we are, indeed, segregated from society. Then, on our liberation dates, we are released back into the society from whence we came. Again, I think it’s a very rare occurrence for someone to be kept in prison beyond their lawful custody date. To be unlawfully imprisoned in Scotland is so rare that we might as well say it doesn’t happen.

Okay, all good so far in my argument that prisons are doing a good job and that they are necessary.

My next point then is…um… well these people who have been judged to be unable to properly act within a society are helped to alter their actions by… surrounding them with other people who have themselves been judged to be unable to properly act within that society. Actually, that doesn’t help my argument so forget it.

Oh – education, that will help my argument. Prisoners are assessed properly ad their educational needs are met with targeted interventions to combat barriers to societal functioning. Actually, they aren’t.

What about programmes, specialist courses aimed at addressing the root of offending behaviour? They sound like a good thing apart from the fact that they don’t happen in any meaningful volume. I know only of one prisoner that has done a course during the time I have been in here. The national waiting list is huge and the system has fallen down.

Okay, work – prison obs help people to develop a positive attitude… apart from the fact that they don’t, they just embed already existing, poisonous attitudes. Health and physical fitness? ope, NHS healthcare is dreadful and gym access is very poor. Family contact? Nope – contact with family and friends is severely restricted. Faith in authority? Nope – the actions of may of the guards merely prove the bullying and intimidation of the state.

So my conclusion appears to be that the prison service takes in people who have been judged to be unable to properly act in society, does nothing other than surround them by others who, apparently, can’t act properly and then kicks them out at the end of their sentence with even less stability than they had before. Hmmmm…

I’ll let you be the judge if I’ve managed to argue the case for prisons.

NaN.