Last week this column argued that the discourse about prisons should go beyond the usual concern with overcrowding, trial delays, etc. and focus somewhat more on the fact that generally, prisons do more than take away the liberty of the prisoner. They dehumanize the individual in a manner that makes rehabilitation all but impossible and thus should be utilised rarely and where necessary be made as humane as possible. Here, I will give my view of the nature of the discourse we should be having and the kind of prison environment we should seek to establish.
Although it might appear trite, it could be useful for our attempt at reform and to find other methods of ‘punishment’ to base our analysis upon a consensus of why we send people to prison. A recent public lecture at the London School of Economics, What are prisons for? suggests that when we incarcerate persons, we tend to have about four broad expectations, which themselves raise all manner of interesting and complicated questions.
For example, imprisonment is viewed by some as a deterrent, but with a recidivism rate of 70% in Guyana, it would appear that far from deterring crime, our prison system is a training ground for criminals. Prisons also incapacitate: make it impossible for the criminal to continue his/her activity at least for the time of his/her sentence. Prisons appear to do this quite effectively, although one
