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 should bear in mind that locking up one criminal may only be opening a vacancy for another, leading to a resultant increase in the criminal population.
Retribution is also sometimes given as one of the reasons for imprisonment. A person breaks the law and must be punished for doing so: society cannot be kept on a sensible footing if persons are not held accountable for breaking its rules. But is imprisonment the most adequate response to all forms of lawbreaking or should we allow space for other kinds of intervention, contrition, apology, etc?
Indeed, what is the appropriate punishment for any given crime and should we treat a person brought up in an abusive, crime-infected home similarly to one who was not? If not, when, where and how should this differential treatment take place? After all, as one participant in the above mentioned lecture commented, ‘there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals’.
And finally, there is rehabilitation, after which all prison systems and societies hanker but only a few, such as the Norwegian system, which seeks to make the actual loss of liberty the only punishment the convict suffers, has been able to achieve. Norway is said to have the best prison system in the world. Its reoffending rate is less than 30%; half that of the UK and the lowest in Europe. Some of its best prisons have reoffending rates of as little as 16%.
Norwegian prison guards undergo two years of training at a special academy (compared to Britain’s about six weeks) and compared to other European countries they enjoy an elevated status. Their job description commits them to motivate the inmate ‘so that his sentence is as meaningful, enlightening and rehabilitating as possible’ and they frequently eat meals and play sports with prisoners.
Norwegian prison cells have televisions, computers, integral showers and sanitation. In some prisons, prisoners lived in small communities within the prison, thus limiting the spread of the criminal subculture of the traditional prison. They are also offered education, training and skill-building programmes.
Arne Nilsen, clinical psychologist and governor of Norway’s Bastoy prison island, made this important point about the traditional prison: ‘In closed prisons we keep them locked up for some years and then let them back out, not having had any real responsibility for working or cooking.
In the law, being sent to prison is nothing to do with putting you in a terrible prison to make you suffer. The punishment is that you lose your freedom. If we treat people like animals when they are in prison they are likely to behave like animals. Here we pay attention to you as human beings.’
Responding to comments that Norwegian prisons are more like holiday camps, Nilsen responded, ‘You don’t change people by power … For the victim, the offender is in prison. That is justice. I’m not stupid. I’m a realist. Here I give prisoners respect; this way we teach them to respect others.
But we are watching them all the time. It is important that when they are released they are less likely to commit more crimes. That is justice for society’ (The Norwegian prison where inmates are treated like people).
Finally, the highly chaotic, dangerous and permissive conditions that the present commission of inquiry into the recent tragedy at the Camp Street prison has highlighted are largely known to most fairly informed people and thus the widespread view is that establishments such as the Georgetown prison would be best located as far as possible from the rest of the population.
The officially encouraged secrecy (I understand that only news media supportive of the past regime were allowed into the prison) that normally surrounds the criminal justice system gives rise to what Professor Albert Dzur terms a ‘repellant institution’ – criminal justice arrangements that tend to repel public responsibility for punishment (Repellent Institutions and the Absentee Public: Grounding Opinion in Responsibility for Punishment).
In the absence of persistent public oversight, concern and activism, the abuses taking place in Guyana prison system are likely to continue. Yet the public does not really want to know and the system itself tends towards a nontransparency that is encouraged by the authorities. If the proposed reforms are to be successful, the present COI should recommend the establishment of institutions that will encourage public engagement beneath, outside, and all around the channels of the prison system.
