Criminal Justice - Imprisonment

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So to what extent do prisons ‘work’ to reduce crime, deter offenders and punish and rehabilitate offenders? Research carried out by the Prison Reform Trust (2013) shows that ‘Prison has a poor record for reducing reoffending – 47% of adults are reconvicted within one year of release.’. This suggests that using prisons to reduce crime and to deter offenders doesn’t necessarily work as well as they had hoped. It could be that prisoners are not receiving the support of rehabilitation that they need whilst serving their time in prison. It has been brought to light that prisoners who are serving short sentences often don’t finish their course of rehabilitation which defeats the purpose of starting it. These statistics show that prison isn’t working as a deterrent or 47% of offenders wouldn’t reoffend and put themselves back in prison. The Prison Reform Trust (2013) also state that ‘The prison system as a whole has been overcrowded in every year since 1994.’ This also disproves that prison acts as a ‘deterrent’ as prisons are so overcrowded when they shouldn’t be if they’re seen as such a terrible punishment. It is also thought that being put into prison for what is described as a ‘petty offence’ (which may be punished by a short prison sentence) may turn an offender into a ‘hardened criminal’. This is because these offenders which may have committed a crime such as trespassing or theft are being placed in prison with criminals who have been jailed for committing violent offences like murder or rape. To avoid this, charities such as the Prison Reform Trust aim to reduce sentencing for petty crimes and completely avoid them all together by using community service as a punishment.

In conclusion after reading a lot of research about the functions and effectiveness of prisons, to say that they ‘work’ as a punishment wouldn’t be a truthful statement in my opinion. This is because the reoffending rates (49%) prove that prisons clearly aren’t acting as a deterrent therefore why do we keep sending offenders there. With prison being overcrowded and understaffed there is no balance and therefore it is almost impossible to run a fully functional and effective prison. I believe that community sentences should be used as an alternative for a number of crimes as this will stop criminals from merging together and also may resolve the issue of prison overcrowding.

Word Count: 1467

References:

- Sykes, Gresham M., (2007) The society of captives : a study of a maximum security prison, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

- Christianson, Scott. (2002). Prisons: History. Encyclopaedia of Crime And Justice, Vol.3 (2), pp. 1168-1175. Retrieved from Gale Cengage Learning; New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002

- Hudson, Barbara, (2003) Understanding justice: an introduction to ideas, perspectives and controversies in modern penal theory, Buckingham: Open University Press

- Scott, D. (2008). Penology. 1st ed. Los Angeles: SAGE.

- Prison Reform Trust. (2013). Prison: the facts. [online] Available at: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/portals/0/documents/prisonthefacts.pdf [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].

- Mail Online. (2016). Prisoners' life 'living like students' is revealed by a builder. [online] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3942056/Ordering-takeaways-taking-drugs-brewing-hooch-Prisoners-relaxed-life-living-like-students-revealed-builder-accidentally-added-Facebook-friend-inmate.html [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017].

- Scott, D. and Flynn, N. (2014). Prisons & punishment. 2nd ed. SAGE, pp.8-9.