We don’t need new prisons, we need a new prison culture

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/09/prisons-prison-culture-detainees-crime-jails

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The government is right to have decided finally to close outdated prisons, some of which George Osborne described as “relics from Victorian times”. The plan is that over the next five years the old prisons will be sold for development and nine new prisons will be built at a cost of around £1bn. The new facilities will house up to 10,000 prisoners, and in the long run are projected to save around £80m a year. The Treasury says that the plans will make the prison system in England and Wales “fit for purpose in the 21st century”.

Much as the closure of the older corroding and socially corrosive prisons like Brixton, Wandsworth, Pentonville and Leeds should be welcomed, getting our prison system fit for purpose in this or any other century is going to take much more than the scrapping of old and the building of a few more new prisons.

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The good news is that for the first time in living memory we have, in Michael Gove, a justice secretary who believes that prisons should be places of redemption. He understands that while there is no excuse for crime, “prisoners come – disproportionately – from backgrounds where they were deprived of proper parenting, where the home they first grew up in was violent, where they spent time in care, where they experienced disrupted and difficult schooling, where they failed to get the qualifications necessary to succeed in life and where they got drawn into drug-taking”. Gove understands the issues, that much is for sure – but does he understand the crux of the prison problem? Anyone going to jail in this country has to adapt to a cynical, corrupt, antisocial lifestyle which does little to encourage change in post-prison behaviour.

If the government truly wants to have a prison system fit for modern times, it should close every prison in the country, one by one. And rebuild with a new regime, in which there is no place for “prison language”, prisoner hierarchies, or antisocial behaviour. A prison is a valuable community resource, as much as a hospital or a school. The government needs to recognise this, not just by building a few new shiny jails, but by eradicating the pro-criminal culture that has dominated our prison system for far too long.

Hand on heart, I know that most of the people I served alongside in prison had the desire to change

Gove said: “Our streets will not be safer, our children will not be properly protected and our future will not be more secure unless we change the way we treat offenders, and offenders then change their lives for the better. There is a treasure, if only you can find it, in the heart of every man, said Churchill. It is in that spirit we will work.”

I met every type of offender during my 20 years in prison – I was one of the “worst of the worst”. I owe the fellow prisoners I left behind nothing, but, hand on heart, I know that most of the people I served alongside had the desire to change and live crime-free lives.

For some, the problems and issues they faced were so deep-rooted that progress was unlikely. But in the right environment and with the right attitude from government and society in general, rehabilitation was achievable for the majority. For so long we have just made it too hard for too many. If ever there was a time that our prison system was ripe for change, it is now.