Jail is The University of Crime
-Breeding places of criminality
-
Many Eminent Authorities Have
Chronicled The Damage From Prison Incarceration
Below are eight credible investigations which conclude that
Jail Is The University Of Crime;
therefore counter-productive and a considerable waste of the Public Pursethat rarely assists Rehabilitate humans less fortunate
in the -
* genes they received
at birth; and
* parental mentoring
and education that they
frequently did not receive.
“Are prisons
answering their purpose, which is that of diminishing the number of antisocial
acts?
To this question,
every unprejudiced person who has a knowledge of prisons from the inside will
certainly answer by an emphatic
No. On the contrary, a
serious study of the subject will bring everyone to the conclusion that the
prisons — the best as much as the worst — are breeding places of criminality;
that they contribute to render the antisocial acts worse and worse; that they
are, in a word, the High Schools, the Universities of what is known as Crime.
Of course, I do not
mean that everyone who has been once in a prison will return to it. There are
thousands people sent every year to prison by mere accident. But I maintain that
the effect of a couple of years of life in a prison — from the very fact of its
being a prison — is to increase in the individual those defects which brought
him before a law court.
These causes, being
the -
1. love of
risk;
2. dislike of
work (due to an immense majority of cases to the lack of a thorough knowledge of
a trade);
3. despise of
society with its injustice and hypocrisy;
4. want of
physical energy, and
5. lack of
will.
All these causes are
aggravated by detention in a jail.
Five-and-twenty years
ago, when I developed this idea in a book, now out of print (In
Russian and French Prisons), I supported it by an examination of the
facts revealed in France by an inquest made as to the numbers of
recidivistes (second offense prisoners). The result of this inquest
was that from two fifths to one half of all persons brought before the assizes
and two fifths of all brought before the police courts had already been kept
once or twice in a jail. The very dame figure of forty percent was found in this
country; while according to Michael Davitt, as much as ninety-five percent of
all those who are kept in penal servitude have previously received prison
education.
A little reflection
will show that things cannot be otherwise. A
prison has, and must have, a degrading effect on its inmates. Take a man
freshly brought to a jail. The moment he enters the house he is no more a human
being he is “Number So and So.” He must have no more a will of his own.
They put him in a fool’s dress to underline his
degradation. They deprive him of every intercourse with those towards who
he may have an attachment and thus exclude the action of the only element which
could have a good effect upon him.
Then he is put to
labour, but not to a labour that might help to
his moral improvement. Prison work is made to be an instrument of base
revenge. What must the prisoner think of the intelligence of these “pillars of
society” who pretend by such punishments to “reform” the prisoners?
In the French prisons
the inmates are given some sort of useful and paid work. But even this work is
paid at a ridiculously low scale, and, according to the prison authorities, it
cannot be paid otherwise. Prison work, they
say, is inferior slave work. The result is that the prisoner begins to
hate his work, and finishes by saying, “The real thieves are not we, but those
who keep us in.”
The prisoner’s brain
is thus working over and over again upon the idea of -
(a) the injustice of a society which pardons and often respects such
swindlers as so many company promoters are, and
(b) wickedly punishes him, simply because he was not cunning enough.
And the moment he is out he takes his revenge by some offense very often much
graver than his first one. Revenge breeds revenge.
The revenge that was
exercised upon him, he exercises upon society.
Every prison, because it is a
prison, destroys the physical energy of its inmates. It acts upon them far worse
than an Arctic wintering. The want of fresh air, the monotony of existence,
especially the want of impressions, takes all energy out of the prisoner and
produce that craving for stimulants (alcohol, coffee) which Miss Allen spoke so
truthfully the other day at the Congress of the British Medical Association. And
finally, while most antisocial acts can be traced to a weakness of will, the
prison education is directed precisely towards killing every manifestation of
will.
Worse than that. I
seriously recommend to prison reformers the Prison Memoirs
of Alexander Berkman, who was kept for fourteen years in an
American jail and has told with great sincerity his experience. One will see
from this book how every honest feeling must be suppressed by the prisoner, if
he does not decide never to go out of this hell.
What can remain of a
man’s will and good intentions after five or six years of such an education? And
where can he go after his release, unless he returns to the very same chums
whose company has brought him to the jail? They are the only ones who will
receive him as an equal. But when he joins them he is sure to return to the
prison in a very few months. And so he does. The jailers know it well.
I am often asked —
What reforms of prison I should propose; but now, as twenty-five years ago, I
really do not see how prisons could be reformed. They must be pulled down. I
might say, or course: “Be less cruel, be more thoughtful of what you do.” But
that would come to this: “Nominate a Pestalozzi as Governor in each prison, and
sixty more Pestalozzis as warders,” which would be absurd. But nothing short of
that would help.
So the only thing I
could say to some quite well-intentioned Massachusetts prison officials who came
once to ask my advice was this: If you cannot obtain the abolition of the prison
system, then — never accept a child or a youth in your prison. If you do so, it
is manslaughter. And then, after having learned by experience what prisons are,
refuse to be jailers and never be tired to say that prevention of crime is the
only proper way to combat it. Healthy municipal dwellings at cost price,
education in the family and at school — of the parents as well as the children;
the learning by every boy and girl of a trade; communal and professional
co-operation; societies for all sorts of pursuits; and, above all, idealism
developed in the youths the longing after what is lifting human nature to higher
interests. This will achieve what punishment is absolutely incapable to do.
"First published in 1912, it has become a classic in autobiographical literature.
Berkman's acclaimed story tracks the difficult loss of his youthful sentimental
idealism as he struggled with the physical and psychological conditions of
prison life, at times bringing him to the verge of suicide. As he got to
know the other prisoners, he had nothing but disdain and disgust for them as
people, though he saw them as victims of an unjust system. "They are not of my
world", he writes. "I would aid them", he says, being "duty bound to the victims
of social injustice. But I cannot be friends with them ... they touch no chord
in my heart." Gradually, though, Berkman's self-imposed distance and moral high
ground begins to crumble as he comes to see the flawed humanity in everyone,
including himself."
"The
most successful skills training the British government provides occur in
the prisons of England and Wales. Unfortunately, the upskilling
that occurs doesn’t provide inmates with qualifications so they can turn
away from crime once they leave, but turns shoplifters and petty
criminals into drug dealers and bagmen."
"At an age when they should be exploring options in life, building
towards longer term
plans and developing an idea of who they are and what they can achieve,
young
adult offenders are held within a system that is at best fragmented and
highly
problematic to navigate, and at worst risks fast-tracking them into an
extended
criminal career, stripping away other options that might be open to
them."
"They (inmates) have differing
needs, hopes, personalities, ages, talents, nationalities, educations,
family, social and professional backgrounds. All distinctions are lost
upon entering prison when all reach an equal, base level. Over time
prison grinds inmates down diminishing previously positive aspects of
their lives. ....Conversely, prolonged prison makes future
criminality more viable - detachment from social groups,
institutionalisation, eroding of self-esteem all impact the already
reduced alternatives of an ex-con. .....Prison is a place where both
people needing (drugs) rehab and those supplying drugs to the vulnerable
are sent. The combination seems doomed to fail, and it does. Drugs are
widely available in prisons and heroin addiction is exploding (creating
more long term addicts), partly as it's less detectable than cannabis in
prison urine tests. ... Prison is a 'university of crime'... I believe
there is no better place to learn about crime and become more
aggressive."
"Prison acts as a university of crime
for the young," the Trust concluded,
with those under 20 serving short
sentences for petty crimes most likely
to be reconvicted.
Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison
Reform Trust said:
"Pressure on public
spending means that ministers can no
longer afford to be complacent about
prison overcrowding or the high
reconviction rates it leads to simply building more prisons is an
expensive dead end. Investment in
prevention, treatment for addicts and
mental healthcare would all pay
dividends. After more than 10 years of
lurching from crisis to crisis it must
be time for coordinated effort across
departments and authoritative
leadership."
Meanwhile Liberal Democrat justice
spokesman Paul Holmes said: "These
deeply troubling figures highlight the
chronic failure of this government's
prison policy.
"Labour's obsession with sounding
tough on crime has left our prisons
dangerously overcrowded with sky-high
re-offending rates. Ministers must realise the bankruptcy
of their approach and focus instead on
what works."
However a Ministry of Justice
spokesperson said:
"We will
always provide enough prison places
for serious and persistent
offenders.
The Government is pursuing an extensive
building programme to expand the prison
estate and expect to deliver an
additional 1,750 places in 2009.
This is intended to provide us with
sufficient space to modernise the estate
and ensure prisons remain places of both
punishment and reform."
The most overcrowded prison in England
and Wales, according to official
figures, is Shrewsbury, which currently
holds 316 men, despite being designed to
hold just 177.
Earlier in the year the government was
forced to scrap plans to build so-called
Titan prisons in the face of widespread
condemnation from opposition and reform
groups.
7.
Renowned Professor of Criminology at Liverpool John
Moores University, Joe Sim, contends that the prison system
does not meet its stated aims to rehabilitate, deter and
incapacitate offenders. In a
video and the below two publications Joe Sim makes the case for a more
humane and effective system:
8. Many aspects of the prison environment are
impediments to rehabilitation extracts the section titled "REHABILITATION " inSOCIETY’S RESPONSE TO THE VIOLENT OFFENDER
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Australian Institute of Criminologywhich re-enforces that treatment of criminals is an exceedingly complex issue
that ideally has to be tailored according to the plethora of factors that
influenced the particular crime, particularly as
"for well over a
century, prisons have been referred to as 'schools of crime'."
9.
The existing practice of congregating Muslim
radical extremists, ensnared by
the ISIS ideology of do-it-yourself violence, at
Goulburn's Supermax
is a bombcounting down to
explode when they are eventually released
The solution is to place
many of these
impressionable young men amongst humans that hold different beliefs than they
hold,
coupled with education and rehabilitation into paid work opportunities.
"There are no votes in prison reform so the political axiom goes,
but there should be.
Prisons are breeding grounds for criminality and any young person
who is detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure for a period of time runs the risk of
returning to the community as a more dangerous individual than they were when
they first were locked up. The longer the period the greater the risk.
The tough on crime push speaks of locking people away where they
can do no harm, but when that detention runs the risk of turning street criminals
into something far more lethal, we need to examine the nature and conditions of
our prisons.
It should come as no surprise to learn the most appalling men in
our recent criminal history, mass murderers, contract killers, gangsters,
gunmen, traders in heroin on a vast commercial scale, were products of a youth
detention system where violence, physical and sexual abuse were commonplace.
We can have a tough on crime mentality and lock up offenders in
brutal institutions or we can have a cohesive, functioning society. The
punishers among us need to understand we can’t have both.
The redeemers need to appreciate their efforts do not always bear
fruit. People commit crimes for all sorts of reasons. Poverty is a clearly a key
factor. But those, including the criminal luminaries mentioned above, brutalised
and monstered as youth in state run or sponsored youth facilities, chose to
continue to commit violence on society. What makes a criminal is a complex and
demanding question but the best answer is a combination of nature, nurture and
choice.
For all that, what the redeemers offer is a better and cheaper
solution that seeks to mitigate the vast social costs of the cycle of
crime.
Locking people away, especially children, out of sight in grim, violent
oppressive
facilities is a recipe for disaster."
Increasingly,
research points to the negative
effects of incarcerating youth offenders, particularly in adult
facilities. Literature published since 2000 suggests that
incarceration fails to meet the developmental and criminogenic needs of
youth offenders and is limited
in its ability to provide appropriate rehabilitation.
Incarceration often results in negative behavioral and mental health
consequences, including ongoing
engagement in offending behaviors and contact with the justice system.
Although incarceration of youth offenders is often viewed as a necessary
means of public protection,
research indicates that it is not an effective option in terms of either
cost or outcome. The severe behavioral problems of juvenile
offenders are a result of complex and interactive individual and
environmental factors, which elicit and maintain offending behavior.
Therefore, the focus of
effective treatment must be on addressing such criminogenic needs and
the multiple “systems” in which the young person comes from.
Recent research demonstrates that in order to achieve the best outcomes
for youth offenders and the general public,
community-based, empirically
supported intervention practices must be adopted as an alternative to
incarceration wherever possible.
Highlights
► Incarcerating youth in
prison has little positive impact in reducing crime.
► The literature highlights this problem, particularly in adult
facilities.
► There are many negative effects from incarcerating young people in
prisons.
► Incarceration fails to address
both the young person's developmental and criminogenic needs."