Anglo-Saxon attitudes to punishment
Notes from a presentation given by Wayne Brittenden at the Penal Reform Seminar 16-18
August 2013.
It’s very often over-looked in Anglo-Saxon countries that the relatives of the wrongdoer are
also victims of the crime. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon view of crime and punishment is very
different to that in most other western countries.
In the English-speaking world, the severity of the punishment is commonly viewed as more
important than the success of the outcome. Hence, in the US, where there are the most
brutalising of all western prisons, the recidivist rate is over 70 percent. In the UK, it’s a
similar figure. Norway, at the other end of the scale, has the most humane of all prison
systems and a recidivist rate as low as 16 percent.
In the US, there are 2.3 million people behind bars. Almost one in a hundred. The American
prison population has almost doubled in the last fifteen years. More than 60 percent are
blacks or Hispanics, though they represent only 30 percent of the population. One in nine
black children has a parent in prison. Yet crime itself is not increasing.
At the same time, more and more American prisoners are in solitary confinement. There
were only a handful in 1985. Now there are 30,000 in 44 states. If they aren’t mentally ill
when they arrive, they will be when they leave. They are behind a solid steel door for 23
hours per day, and some have been kept there for many years.
What is increasing in the US is the number of prisons run by private for-profit companies.
It’s a $1 billion dollar industry. Corrections Corp of America offers to buy and operate prisons
from strapped-for-cash state-governments. They’ve been known to demand a guarantee of
ninety percent occupancy, to ensure that they’re sufficiently profitable. So you have the
absurd situation of politicians promising to keep the crime rate down, while the prison
companies demand more criminals!
Two detention-happy Pennsylvania judges were found to be in the pay of a prison firm.
Some private companies even carry out executions in death penalty states. Market forces
have transcended social justice, with some prisons in California offering better-heeled nonviolent prisoners quieter, cleaner and more comfortable cells for a fee – away from the nonpaying riff raff. And, of course, because profitability is of the utmost importance, there’s little
unprofitable social support on release. They want the customers to return, anyway.
The prison industry is the only industry that quite literally functions on its failures.
No wonder the Wall Street Journal on April 10, 1996 enthusiastically described the prison
business as a win-win situation.
In Norway, by inspiring contrast, there are so few prisons that convicted people sometimes
have to wait at home until notified by mail that space has become available. Even Bastoy
Island, off Oslo Fiord, where the most serious offenders are in longer-term detention, there
are no cell blocks, and the prison walls are obscured by trees. Prisoners live in brightly
coloured bungalows, in a self-contained sustainable community. They prepare most of their
own meals. There are no cynical press complaints about a “soft life”. This prison has the
lowest recidivist rate in Europe.
Says its Governor: “We take their freedom, but not their dignity. Norwegian people don’t like
crime and criminals either. So, as we see it, we have a duty to society and to potential
victims to release people unlikely to reoffend”.
Another Norwegian prison governor comments: “We don’t think about revenge. We focus on
rehabilitation. If you stay in a box, when you come out, you’re not a good person”.