![Show Menu](styles/mobile-menu.png)
![Page Background](./../common/page-substrates/page0130.jpg)
a r e
sent to prison. Therefore, it would appear that the
de
terrent effect of prison is not very substantial.
v
1 0
*rouiein of Rehabilitation in Prison
As for rehabilitation, the prison statistics contain
a
Mple evidence that prison does not rehabilitate. The
statistics do show us that two out of every three pris-
oners behind bars in 1971 had been in prison at least
°
n
ce before, one out of every three had been in there
a t
least five times and one out of every ten had been
to prison at least twenty times. These statistics have
ee
n more or less similar over the past
ten
y
ea
rs. Nevertheless, the high rate of recidivism
to this country is a monument to the failure
: prisons to do anything for prisoners. Most
these recidivists have become so institution-
•sed that they cannot survive outside and must con-
Mually return. Of all the people affected by the futility
our prison system the recidivist is the person who
f
ftors most. Prison is indeed a "collection of its own
lai
lures".
Most Prisoners not Reconvicted
A better way of measuring the efficacy of imprison-
®nt in reducing crime is to follow the activities of
l ^ o n e r s released from prison and discover whether
/
will commit another crime within a certain period
th
P
e r d o d
taken is usually three years). Research of
ls
type carried on in the U.S. for instance by Daniel
a s e r
has shown that approximately 70 per cent of
^
0 s
e released from prison have not been reconvicted.
°Wever, it is generally recognised that even figures
p . as these are no real indication of the success rate.
instance many of the prisoners may have committed
u'Mes which were not reported to the police or even,
re
ported, not traced to the offender. Secondly it is not
. ays possible to ensure that a subsequent conviction
J®
tr
aced. Thirdly, as Nigel Walker points out even if
e
can believe with certainty that he has infact "gone
a
ight" we have no way of proving that this is the
,cs
ult
of imprisonment unless we can claim to know
^ nether he would have gone straight even if he had not
imprisoned. In other words, the offender might
have decided not to commit any more crimes.
1
herefore, it would appear to be almost impossible to
scover how effective is any one penal sanction and
ether one penal sanction is more effective than
^ other one or indeed more effective than none at all.
^ovvever, in 1958 Leslie Wilkins carried out a survey
^ the efficacy of probation versus other sanctions and
^ came to the amazing conclusion, which has yet to
sa
r e
I
u t e i
I ) that reconviction rates appeared to be the
^
e
> no matter what form of disposal was used. Dr.
:°ger Ha r t, summarizing the conclusions of comparative
of p
1CS
t r e a t m e n t
results in a report to the Council
Lurope in 1964 came to the same conclusion. In other
r
ds if reconviction rates are taken as our criterion,
toe
n
it
\v
e
Prob'
would appear to be absolutely irrelevant whether
put the offender in jail, fine him, put him on
"nation or just discharge him. When one considers
e
tremendous economic and social cost of putting a
rson in prison it is unbelievable that we have not
£ rted down our prisons long ago. Th a t 's not all, how-
1
er
- T h e vast majority of the prisoners in 1971 spent
ij/
S
than six months in jail. I would suggest that it is
/"possible to rehabilitate anybody in six months no
t
,
a
tter how good the conditions. J udge Ke nny ma de
e
same point recently at the Law Conference in
Galway. Yet our judges continue to send hundreds of
prisoners to jail each year for such short periods. T he
Justice must know that such a sentence won't rehabili-
tate the prisoner. They are imprisoned merely to get
them out of the way for a few months.
Defects of imprisonment as a sanction
It is now time to discuss the defects of imprisonment
as a sanction. Firstly, it is the most expensive sanction
in use. According to the Prison Study Group Report it
costs over £ 70 a week to keep a man in prison. Proba-
tion costs approximately £ 3 a week and fines cost
nothing. Secondly, imprisonment of an offender not
only punishes him but will also punish, both economi-
cally and socially, his wife, and family, who, of course,
have not been found guilty of any crime. Thirdly, while
he is in prison society will lose any of the positive
services he was capable of contributing. Finally, while
he is in prison he will be associating with others who
can teach him new criminal techniques.
However, the worst defect of imprisonment is the
effect on the prisoner himself. As the Working Party of
the Labour Party on Prisons reported in 1946 : "A
prisoner is withdrawn from society and condemned to
a life of uselessness. He is left in silence and darkness
for long periods of unbroken monotony to nurse a
grievance against society and against the community.
When he returns to the world from which he has been
withdrawn for years he is a stranger to the normal way
of life." Elsewhere Goffman states: " The pris-
oner comes to prison with a conception of himself ma de
possible by certain stable social arrangements in his
home world. Upon entrance he is immediately stripped
of the support provided by these arrangements. He
begins a series of abasements, degradations, humili-
ations, and profanations of self. His self is systematically
if often unintentionally, mortified." He is, therefore,
rejected—and more importantly he sees himself as re-
jected. In the end he turns his back on reality and lives
in a contorted world of make-believe, he refuses to
accept rules of fellow mortals and makes ones that fit
in with his own little world. He is emotionally and
sexually deprived. Most of all perhaps the little free-
doms which we take for granted—freedom to decide
when to get up, when to eat, where to work, what time
to go to bed—are all taken from him. He is then
thrown back into a society full of stress and strain—
into a society that hates and despises him, that won't
give him a job because he has been labelled a criminal.
It is no wonder that so many wish to go back.
The Pattern of Criminal Behaviour
Let us now stress the following points. Firstly, it is
impossible to completely eradicate criminal behaviour.
Th e very fact of having rules at all will invariably mean
that these rules will be broken. Instead, the aim of penal
system should be to control types of behaviour consid-
ered particularly damaging to society. Secondly, we
must realize that criminal behaviour, like all behaviour
is not "the manifestation of pathological individuals"
—on the contrary, it occurs in the interaction with
others in the community—it is part and parcel of the
community and cannot be separated from it. Wilkins
has pointed out that it is easier to talk of a maladjusted
offender than a maladjusted society. It can be shown
that there is nothing in the criminal that sets him apa rt
from others except the fact that he has been labelled
a criminal in wh at Garfinkel calls a status degradation
129