What is Prison For?

With the rise of recorded crime this year. This has caused further strain on an already fractured judicial system. What is a prison for? To protect the public by removing offenders from communities (incapacitation)? To punish the offender - delivering retribution in a serious but a proportionate way where a serious crime has been committed? To serve as a deterrent to the offender and/ or to others? To rehabilitate the offender?

Assault, theft, racism, criminal damage, bullying, intimidation, using threatening and abusive words and behaviour – you would be justified in associating these crimes with prison, they may even have led to some of the inmates being sent to prison. However, what would you think if I told you that prisoners are regularly met with such treatment by prison officers?
Behaviour antagonistic the rules which staff are ordered to adhere to is extremely high. It can cause adverse effects to the good order of prisons as well as creating problems for both staff and inmates.

I have spoken to a vast array of staff and inmates that falling victim to degrading treatment on a regular basis, and feeling that my rights are not held in the same regard as the rest of society's, tarnish any lesson which society might hope to teach.

A simple solution would be for all staff to wear body-worn cameras that record continuously. I feel this would benefit both prisoners and staff. Ultimately, what prison is for has been decided by our government's statues.

Prison records from 1978 to 2014 and there has been an upward trajectory of self- harm and suicide. Staffing levels may be an issue. Staffing levels are constantly up and down. What's more important is what do, and although there will be critical thresholds of staff needed, simply getting more staff in, as the union recommended, won't see suicide and self- harm reduce.

Probation Service

The public is being put at risk by the government's failing privatisation of probation services as criminals commit murder and sexual offences while being supposedly under supervision.

HM Inspectorate of Probation said private companies failing to properly assess the risk of harm in half of the cases, supervising thousands of convicts with phone calls every six weeks.
Since the reforms in 2014, the number of convicts committing a serious further offence while under probation supervision has risen by 20 per cent. from 429 to 517.

Some convicts may only undergo one face to face meeting with CRCs before being assigned a risk category and pushed into "remote offender monitoring" by telephone.