Adding issues related to Brexit, the question that needs to be asked is whether it is still justified for an already-stretched national purse to be paying for more people to be kept in UK prisons or whether the same money can be spent on other important areas such as in education and healthcare.
Each criminal case must be reviewed on a per-case basis of course, but campaigners for prison reform have been questioning how effective it is to lock perpetrators of crime up for long periods of time and expect them to learn the error of their behaviors with what they deem to be an outdated method of punishment.
"The number of men, women and children sent to prison in the UK has more than doubled over the last two decades. There is a clear need to reduce demand on a system that is not only expensive, but also failing the public with high reoffending rates and record levels of violence and deaths by suicide," Andrew Neilson, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform told Sputnik.
I'll be talking for @TheHowardLeague on where we are with prison reform and why it is more important than ever. https://t.co/mUyyqtfX6U
— Andrew Neilson (@neilsonandrew) September 19, 2016
On the other hand, there are a number of high profile criminal cases such as that of hate preacher Anjem Choudary, who was given a sentence of five and a half years in prison for supporting Daesh (also known as ISIS) as well as inciting terrorism-related hatred. There was a huge public response with many believing the sentence was too lenient.
In the case of Anjem Choudary, locking him up and throwing away the key is certainly not a legal possibility for the level of crime he has been sentenced for, but locking him up for the timeframe he was given is both expensive and counter-productive in terms of what it is likely to achieve.
"I can understand victims of crime thinking that a community sentence is a soft response to the loss or injury they've faced. However, new tracking technology gives us the opportunity to get prisoners out during the week, working and earning, as they come towards the end of their sentences or even as an alternative altogether," she wrote in an article for the Radio Times.
Adding to the high costs of rising numbers of people being kept in prisons, are the social issues related to the marked deterioration in already-less-than-ideal prison conditions in the UK.
The UK charity Samaritans has just called for government action to also tackle sharp rises in the rates of self-harm and suicide in jails in England and Wales.
"A number of schemes are in place in court systems that are designed to make a difference in reducing long prison terms, but these are unlikely to affect the issue of prison numbers in any meaningful way. The bigger picture is one where the use of prison has increased to the point that the system simply isn't working and this must be addressed sooner rather than later," Mr. Neilson told Sputnik.
A combination of new legislation and a recruitment drive for skilled prison officers could curb some of the many social problems caused by prison overcrowding, but in the meantime, the revolving cycle of crime seems to be behind the rising numbers.
Today begins our 3 wk series of commissions exploring privacy, surveillance & prison reform https://t.co/DUZ5epyFOD pic.twitter.com/GpahrdiYTJ
— NewHive (@NewHive) September 19, 2016
As the current Tory government preoccupies itself with the Brexit agenda and leading opposition MPs in the Labour party are struggling with their own in-house political careers, wider society in Britain is more on its knees than ever — with no sense of stability or future direction provided by those said to be in charge.
"The problems to be found in overcrowded prisons can be overcome. But it will require imaginative thinking and bold action by the powers that be to stop throwing so many people into these failing institutions. Here they are predominantly swept away into deeper currents of crime and into wider social detriment to themselves due to the inhumane conditions in which they are then kept," Mr. Neilson told Sputnik.
