26/8/23.
Hello again and than you for coming back. Last week, I tried to paint a bit of a picture about what day to day life was like. A lot of it is boring, quite frankly. Many of the guys just lie in their beds all day and watch TV. “Canteen day” is once a week when we get our canteen orders delivered. Canteen is like a tuck shop and we can buy a variety of things including snaks, toiletries and vaping products. Most of the stuff is unhealthy and there is a LOT of chocolagte and sweets. So on canteen day, many guys eat through a load of sweets and biscuits and vape all day.
There are two types of prisoner. Those who can’t properly and responsibly manage themselves and those who can. In many wayts, those who can’t have an easier time in here because they don’t feel the restrictions as much as those who are used to taking responsibility and making decisions. If all you want to do in here is sleep all day and be a lazy slob, munching on kid’s sweets like lollipops and fruit sald chewy things then there’s nothing to stop you. However, if you want to look after your physical heath with diet and exercise and maybe learn a new language or address numeracy issues, you’ll be struggling.
That brings me nicely onto the question I posed at the end of last week’s blog – what is the point of prison? In anyone’s answers to that question, two words in particular tend to feature: “punishment” and “rehabilitation”. According to the Oxford dictionary, “punishment” means “an unpleasant experience imposed on someone because they have done something criminal or wrong”. “Rehabilitate” means “help someone who has been ill or in prison to return to normal life”. And, actually, while I have the dictionary, “prison” means “a building where criminals are ket as a punishment.”
Your political views may well inform your own definition but even the most extreme punitive view would probably have a small nod towards some process to fix the underlyig cause of the criminal act. Equally, even the most forgiving forward thinker would recognise the need for some punitive layer.
My view which, of course, may develop over time, is that this place is a stagnant pond. It isn’t punitive enough and it certainly isb’t rehabilitative enough. It doesn’t address the causes of offending, it destabilises rather than restabilises and it doesn’t challeng people enough. It doesn’t provide the opportunities or support that it shoud. I think we should be up at 6:30am with our beds made and clean our cells every day for a cell inspection. I think we should be made to shower every day after a period of compulsory exercise. I think we should have a “no sleeping during the day” rule with fewquent cell inspections. However, I also think there should be genuine work done to address educational and health issues. Genuine efforts are made to equip prisoners with the tools they need to lead a positive and crime-free life. Prisoners need to learn how to love and care for themselves and others. This place certainly does not do that, hence it is neither sufficiently punitive or rehabilitative. At best it is a tank of water slowly becoming stagnant and, at worst, a petri dish growing a sub-culture of causes of criminality to be released at some future date into the community like a bacteria. Maybe that is a little overdramatic but I’m sure you get my point.
Take care,
TSP.