Prison Rehabilitation

What is prison rehabilitation?

Despite its barbaric origins in the medieval dungeon and torture chamber, since the late 18th century prisons have combined elements of punishment with elements of rehabilitation. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it, punishment shifted over time from the disciplining of the body to the disciplining of the "soul".

The rehabilitation of offenders is a key feature of the modern UK criminal justice system, and work to rehabilitate prisoners goes on, in varying degrees, in every prison.

While in the past, rehabilitation may have been directed at 'reforming the character' of prisoners, its focus is now on preventing reoffending.

Background

In 1779 the British Government passed the Penitentiary Act, which made the rehabilitation of criminals a function of all prisons. Since then, while imprisonment has remained the central form of punishment in the criminal justice system, the emphasis on correction rather than punishment has steadily increased.

Rehabilitation techniques vary according to the nature of the offender, the type of offence committed, and the institution in question.

Techniques vary from educational and vocational training to help the offender learn a skill for use outside the prison, to psychological rehabilitation, dealing with various problems the individual offender may experience. Drug-addicted prisoners can also receive treatment for their condition in some prisons.

Rehabilitation takes place both inside prison, and in some cases, once an offender has been released, on Resettlement Programmes. Help continues to be provided in these circumstances by the Probation Service and other agencies, either as a condition of their early release, or to ease the transition into the community.

Controversies

Despite the entrenchment of rehabilitation in social and criminal justice policy, the idea that prisons are not intended to rehabilitate but rather solely to punish and protect the public retains considerable public support in some areas. Improved conditions and opportunities for rehabilitative activity in prisons generate the complaints that modern life behind bars is soft and too much like a 'holiday camp'.

Public resentment is also fired by weaknesses in the provision of similar services in the community. Drug rehabilitation, for example, is widely believed to be more easily accessible in prison than outside.

Nonetheless, there has been much criticism about the level of rehabilitation that actually occurs in the UK's prisons, mainly due to a lack of funding for these programmes and prison overcrowding, which hampers effective delivery of many schemes.

The success that prisons achieve is hampered further by many prisoners lacking basic skills or suffering from social and psychological problems. Thousands of prisoners are released every year without anywhere to live, worsening problems of homelessness. Almost three-quarters of those in prison have mental health problems and almost two-thirds have drug problems.

Whatever rehabilitation takes place inside prison, many former inmates experience considerable difficulty reintegrating into society because of the attitudes of others. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 deals with the disclosure of criminal convictions and allows, in certain circumstances and after a period of time, many past convictions to be regarded as 'spent' and they therefore do not need to be declared. However, the stigma of imprisonment, and long absences from work on CVs, has a tendency to put employers off hiring former prisoners - exacerbating social exclusion, and increasing the risk of a return to crime.

In December 2010, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke published a green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation which set out plans to "break the destructive cycle of crime and prison" by ensuring that prisons become "places of hard work", the priority being to reduce re-offending.

The proposed radical reforms include introducing regular working hours in prison, new measures to force criminals to make amends to victims and communities for the harm they have caused, and most controversially, introducing a 'payment-by-results' scheme with private providers being rewarded for reducing re-offending.
Consultations on the green paper - 'Breaking the cycle: effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders' - continue until March, with the Government expected to publish its response by May 2011.

Statistics

Comparing reoffending results for the 2000, 2007 and 2008 adult cohorts:

Since 2000 the frequency rate has fallen 15.9 per cent1 from 185.0 to 155.5 offences per 100 offenders but rose 5.5 per cent from 147.3 to 155.5 from 2007.

The number of offences classified as most serious (severe) per 100 offenders increased 14.7 per cent from 0.76 to 0.87 offences since 2000 and has seen a 13.8 per cent increase since 2007 from 0.77 to 0.87 offences.

Since 2000 the proportion of offenders in the cohort who reoffended decreased by 6.8 per cent (2.9 percentage points) from 43.0 per cent to 40.1 per cent; however since 2007 this has increased by 2.9 per cent (1.1 percentage points) from 39.0 per cent to 40.1 per cent.

When controlling for changes in offender characteristics, the proportion of offenders who reoffended fell by 8.4 per cent since 2000.

(Data covers adults released from custody or commencing a court order under probation supervision in the first quarter of the cohort year. A reoffence is defined as any offence committed in the one-year follow up period proven by a court conviction.)

Source: Ministry of Justice - March 2010

Despite a 50% increase in the budget for prisons and managing offenders in the last ten years, around half of adult offenders re-offend within a year of being released from prison.

Source: Ministry of Justice - December 2010

Quotes

"The green paper is an important change of direction in penal policy which will put more emphasis on reducing reoffending without reducing the punishment of offenders. By reforming criminals and turning them away from a life of crime we will break the cycle. This will mean fewer crimes, fewer victims and safer communities."

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke - December 2010

"While welcoming the government's idea that there should be fewer people in prison, APF hopes that prisoners' families will be recognised as an important resource, not only in supporting prisoners with mental health, housing and substance abuse needs, but as an incentive for meaningful prison-based work which will both contribute to the domestic budget and the prisoner's sense of familial responsibility."

APF Action for Prisoners' Families Director Deborah Cowley, responding to the Green Paper 'Breaking the Cycle' - 2010

"St Giles Trust has long known that prisoners can play an active role in their own rehabilitation and that of others by being put to work during their sentence. Our own Peer Advice Project - which trains serving prisoners to become trained advice workers able to help their fellow inmates - is highly valued by prisoners as it gets them out of their cells, occupies their minds and improves their skills."

Rob Owen, chief executive St. Giles Trust - October 2010