Prisons: I predict a riot?

England and Wales have one of the largest prison populations in Western Europe, at nearly 80,000. The number of prisoners has quadrupled since 1990. That might seem surprising when recent data reveals that the police now effectively do not investigate many crimes, such as burglary, and there’s a seeming impasse in dealing with serious issues such as knife crime and drug-related disorder. The trend for politicians to create an endless array of new offences, from online offence to protests, means it is perhaps easier than ever to be branded a criminal and locked up.

Is prison the answer to such problems? Arguably the prison service is in crisis: massively overcrowded, and experiencing increasing problems of self-harm, poor mental health and degraded living standards. But if law-and-order debates are politically divisive, debates on prison conditions can be even more polarising.

One caricatured side suggests that ‘bleeding heart’ liberals are too soft, prison life is a doddle, drugs and gangs run rampant inside prisons, that do-gooders are too keen to stop criminals being sent to jail, and that we need to ‘lock ‘em up and throw away the key’ to protect society. Reformers argue that a lack of education and training in prisons, combined with a policy of turfing prisoners out to post-sentence homelessness and ex-con stigma, will lead to unnecessary hardship and repeat offending.

What’s the balance between rehabilitation and retribution, and how do they both affect recidivism? Is there any place for compassion in punishment? Is it possible to have a nuanced discussion on the role of prison?

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