Behind bars | Give prisoners more, not less

This is a government whose commitment to rehabilitation only extends as far as the ex-jailbirds among their supporters, who, cleansed of all sin by a short stretch working in the prison library, strut among the leaders of our nation as guests at events like Thatcher's funeral. Men who had every chance in life, every advantage, every educational and social privilege, and who still screwed up. People whose lives are as far removed as it is possible to be from the reality of the existence of the 80,000-plus inmates of our prisons, and who do not serve as any lesson at all, other than the bog-standard one that he who has much gets more.

The lesson that this government will not learn - refuses to learn in fact - is one which the rawest and greenest of pupils learns round about week nine in the criminal justice business. It is this: prison does not deter the people who go back to it. Prison works as an effective deterrent for those who have never been - the threat of loss of liberty, loss of privacy, separation from your family, the prison stigma that lasts for ever, the loss of employability, plus the hideous, ugly, shouting, violent environment; the filthy food; the soul-destroying boredom; the loss of hope. Those factors deter and frighten the best and worst of us.
But I do not imagine that Chris Grayling has ever sat with a weeping 18-year-old whose rotten choices, made in a violent drunken evening, have resulted in a stretch of government hospitality - nor has he seen that same sad, stupid boy two years later, hardened with loss, armoured by not caring any more. He has not seen recidivism in action, or in the flesh - he has not seen the harm that prison does. He sees the statistics only, and comes to possibly the most stupid conclusion that is available to a sentient being: that if people go back to prison it must be because prison is not nasty enough.

Impetus and motivation

Why do people go back? Why do they voluntarily enter into that world again? According to people like Grayling it is either sheer evil bloody-mindedness or an addiction to daytime television on tap and Sky Sports. (One nicely ironic point about the recent reforms is that it is the privatised prisons, the G4S run ones, which have introduced subscriptions to Sky for their inmates - better management all round eh?)

The truth is that once someone has been inside, nothing is ever as bad again. Human beings have evolved to be adaptable - the humdrum result of that is that we can get used to anything. A person who, when released after a short sentence in which he has learnt nothing, obtained no new skills, and is coming out to an even more fractured family than they left behind, has only the choices before them, which very strong and very sorted people have the real ability to make. As well, more than half of prisoners have serious addiction and substance abuse problems, or mental health issues, as well as social problems, they are not best placed to make strong choices. Without a positive life to return to, what impetus or motivation is there to stay on the straight and narrow? Without a positive life one cannot bear to leave, what is there to stop the average person carrying on in the old ways, with the old risks and temptations?

Rehabilitation

Prisons should provide impetus and motivation. To do that, prisons need to be truly rehabilitative institutions. They should provide top class physical and mental health care, drug rehabilitation, practical skill training, education, meaningful and productive work, psychological help and resettlement help of a high order. They should be staffed by professionals trained in those areas, whose job is more geared towards educating inmates for a better, richer life than containment and security.

Prison should be the last resort for the few who refuse to, cannot, or wickedly set their faces against behaving properly to their fellow creatures. To have in excess of 80,000 people in our prisons is a recipe for failure of all attempts to make prison anything other than a containment camp for the unloved and unwanted. And just as one cannot slap a plaster on a syphilitic sore and say it makes it better - nor can one strip prisoners of some minor recreational 'privileges' and say it makes prison work.