Ooh blimey, that title was a surprise for me when my pen wrote it. Has my pen gone mad and developed a delusional mind of its own? Has it been in prison for too long?

Before we cast judgement on the poor, ball-pointed device, let’s think. Allow me to have a look around me. Is there anyone in here for whom prison does work?

The answer to that question, I believe, is yes. In fairness to the prison system, I think that there are some people who really are having their potential unlocked and their lives transformed positively.

Before I write about them, I wish to be absolutely crystal clear. For the majority of guys I see, prison is a disaster. It is cruel, inhumane, expensive and counter-productive. Most guys I see will leave here in a far worse position than they arrived. The powers that be should be utterly ashamed of themselves and I don’t know how they sleep at night.

However, for a small minority of people, I see positives with prison. In fact, I was speaking to someone the other day who actually said “This thing [prison] has been the best thing for me.” I won’t write too much about him for fear he could be identified but he has accessed education in a way he didn’t do as a child. That has given him the encouragement he never had as a child and prison is giving him boundaries that he never had as a child.

I’ve seen others in a similar position. Their lives have been a very difficult place up to this point – let down by education, forgotten by social services, abandoned by the state and written off by society. When they were at their most vulnerable, society turned its back on them so they had to go it alone. Against the odds, they fumbled together an existence that led, through no real fault of their own, to criminality and now have been scooped up by prison. So now they have some of the opportunities that were denied their child-selves.

I am leveling my criticism here at social structures like education and social work and I wish no limit to the weight of my criticism. The State is entirely responsible for its failings. Those individuals cannot be blamed for the harm that has been caused by their actions. So for this small group of prisoners, I think prison does work. Not for the idea of a “short, sharp shock” but from the perspective of a safety net to address the complete failure of the State.

For the majority, though, prisons are an example of the worst the State can be – amoral, vicious, nasty, destabilising and destructive. Negatives are further embedded and opportunities are squandered. time and time again, it is shown that they are failing and yet nobody seems to give a damn. When something consistently shows itself to simply not work, I think it’s time to answer the question, “Why do we have prisons?”

NaN.