Austerity doesn’t work in prisons either….

I thought people might find the following letter (to the Editor of the Herald) interesting. It’s a response to a lot of media coverage today of comments made by the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service to the Justice Committee yesterday. I’m guessing the central points may be as important in other jurisdictions where a combination of cost cutting and populism might adversely affect prison regimes….

Dear Editor,

Like many other news outlets, today’s Herald carries a story about comments of the Chief Executive of the Scottish Prison Service, Colin McConnell in evidence to to the Justice Committee. His ideas regarding prisoners’ access to phones and TVs in their cells appear to have generated a lot of heat but not much light but both his comments and the adverse reaction to them perhaps need to be analysed in the context of evidence both about the experience of imprisonment and about the process of desistance from crime.

There are many research studies suggest that maintaining positive family ties is often crucial in supporting people to stop offending. It is obvious why that is the case. For most of us, the wellbeing of those that we love is a primary motivation to lead a decent life. However, one of the many paradoxical and counterproductive effects of imprisonment is that, in order to survive it, many prisoners (especially those serving longer sentences) actively distance themselves from their families so as to make the pains of imprisonment less intense. Rather than, as we sometimes imagine, compelling people to confront their crimes, imprisonment tends to force them to adapt and survive. Recent research – for example, by Marguerite Schinkel at the University of Edinburgh – suggests that while distancing themselves from the outside world may help people cope with life inside prison, it makes reintegration after imprisonment even more difficult.

Some readers, and judging by some of their reactions, some politicians might wonder why they should care about this. Leaving aside basic humanitarian principles, we ought to care because failures to rehabilitate and reintegrate affect the whole of society, not least by driving up reoffending rates. But if that isn’t a good enough reason for the more punitive amongst us, consider this: having phones in cells might make imprisonment more painful, by reminding prisoners of what they have lost.

So before bemoaning Mr McConnell’s comments as further evidence of ‘soft-touch Scotland’, we might want to resist our baser impulses, stop and think and try to develop a more mature reaction (much as we hope that prisoners will learn to do). In the penal system as in the economy, there is scant evidence that austerity works; if we want to see positive growth and development, we need to invest in it.

Yours,

Fergus McNeill

Professor of Criminology & Social Work

Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research

University of Glasgow