Q. To what extent do prisons meet their aims?
A. In order to establish the extent to which prisons meet their aims it is vital to understand exactly what the main aims of prisons are. There are four main functions which prisons have and as such it can be said that these functions are in fact their aims.
Prisons aim to: protect society; punish offenders, act as a deterrent; to rehabilitate. This essay will consider each of these aims and the extent to which they are being met.
Firstly, one of the main aims of prisons is to protect society from individuals who have committed serious crimes and are as such considered to be a danger to society. As of
1 st February 2008 there were 7484 prisoners in Scottish prisons 1 . The simple fact that these people have been incarcerated and removed from society and are therefore not a threat to that society proves that prisons do protect the public. However from a parliamentary question asked in January 2007 it was discovered that 525 UK citizens who had committed serious or violent offences abroad were not in jail 2 . It can also be argued that the system of automatic early release from prison can put serious and violent offenders back into society. Opponents of the early release system suggest that they are freed when they should still in fact be in prison. There are even those that argue that the constraints placed on judges in terms of maximum terms for offences or constraints of the remand system mean that serious offenders can be free in communities long before they perhaps should be. A recent example of this was the case of Adam Swellings who was convicted of the murder of Gary Newlove only hours after his release on bail 3 . Therefore although prisons do protect society to a significant extent there are obvious cases where violent or serious offenders are still at large in our communities.
A second aim of prisons is to punish offenders for the crimes they have committed. This means that an offender should be in a position to accept and deal with the consequences of their actions while at the same time acting as a deterrent to others intent on committing the same crime. Whilst incarcerated there is an obligation to adhere to the prison regime of meal times, work, exercise, lock-up and lights out etc.
However there are those who would suggest that prisons do not punish severely enough. On a recent visit to Perth Prison it was discovered that long term prisoners are soon to get Sky TV and have access to medical and dental care without any wait whatsoever 4 . Prisoners are also encouraged to improve their later life chances through educational programmes whilst in prison. However it must be accepted that the punishment being meted out in this situation is the removal of ones liberty and not what happens once inside. In this respect prisons do in fact meet the aim of punishment through the removal of a person’s freedom.
One of the key functions of a prison is to rehabilitate offenders. It is hoped that through confronting, addressing and changing a person’s criminal behaviour they might return to
3
4
1
http://www.sps.gov.uk/default.aspx?documentid=7811a7f1-6c61-4667-a12c-f102bbf5b808
2

society and not commit further crimes. There are support programmes both in and out of prison designed to help rehabilitate offenders and meet this important aim. Inside prison there are education and work programmes designed to equip prisoners with skills that may help develop a work ethic and thus make it easier to get a job once released.
Latest government figures state that 41,313 prisoners received Basic Skill awards and according to RSA Prison Learning Network UK prisons are one of the largest providers of adult education in Britain 5 . However there are problems with these types of programmes. They are not compulsory and as such prisoners that do not want to engage with such programmes will not accrue any benefits from them and in turn not be rehabilitated. Also it was recorded in a parliamentary question on 28 th March 2007 that the average prisoner pay was around £8 per week 6 . This is a sum which is not likely to encourage a strong work ethic and as such undermines the likelihood of rehabilitation.
There are not only education programmes in prison however there are also drug rehabilitation programmes. In Scotland a needle exchange programme has been set up to cut the risk of infection among inmates and also to identify problem drug users and hence address their drug use. However there is a widespread belief that drugs in prisons are rife and that not enough is being done to tackle it. There is a perception among some prison staff that a drugged prisoner is a quiet prisoner and as such there is seen to be a general tolerance of drugs in prison, completely undermining any serious attempts at rehabilitation, thus limiting one of their key aims 7 .
Overcrowding is also a major issue in British prisons and this also has a limiting effect on rehabilitation. In April of 2007 the former lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, stated that
" overcrowding was a cancer eating away at the heart of the prison service" 8 .
Overcrowding makes it very difficult to offer rehabilitation programmes. There is as a consequence fewer staff to monitor drug use and meet the general needs of prisoners and in fact Frances Crook the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform suggests that the 37% increase in suicides in prison, is directly attributable to overcrowding 9 . If inmates are committing suicide they are certainly not being rehabilitated and even if there are programmes in place there are limits to how effective such rehabilitation programmes are.
In order to stop prisoners re-offending once released from jail there have been programmes set up to establish links between the community and the prison. Saughton prison in Edinburgh has a compulsory programme on Individual Living Skills which all inmates must complete before release 10 . However there is evidence to suggest that the length of time a prisoner is incarcerated has a significant bearing on re-offending.
According to Philip Davies the Conservative MP for Shipley in a parliamentary debate on adult re-offending on 11 th December 2007 a government report suggests that “of
8
9
10
6
7
5

those who spend up to a year in prison 70% re-offend, of those who spend up to two years in prison 49% re-offend, and of those who spend more than four years in prison only 35% re-offend
” 11 . This suggests therefore that although there are programmes to address re-offending both inside and outside of prison, not all prisoners are being rehabilitated.
In conclusion it can be said that prisons meet their aims to a certain extent but there are undoubtedly certain issues that are more difficult to deal with. It is certainly true that simply by the removal of liberty prisons do punish criminals and as such keep society safe from the serious and violent offenders. There are however dangerous criminals still at large. Prisons do indeed deter the majority of citizens from committing offences that are punishable with jail terms. If this were not the case prison overcrowding would be significantly worse than it already is. This is described as general deterrence but as a specific deterrence for those who have previously committed crimes it is much less of a deterrent and it is the case that prisoners do re-offend. Finally regarding the issue of rehabilitation it is safe to say that rehabilitation works when prisoners want to be rehabilitated and effective programmes for rehabilitation are in use but they are both very expensive and impractical in the short term. On balance therefore it would be fair to say that prisons do in fact meet all of their aims although some are met more effectively than others.
11