RSA Transitions: building a rehabilitation culture

British Journal of Criminology, 2014

2012

This paper explores punishment and rehabilitation from both Prisons and Community Service Orders from a critical perspective. The research looks at how effective both methods are in terms of rehabilitation, recidivism, cost to state and public opinion.

Prisons should help prisoners rather than just punish them.-John Howard, 1726-1790 When we speak about crime , we often focus on preventing it rather than looking at the source of the social problem. People who commit crime against women might be hailing from backgrounds that are crime-prone, where women are not respected equally, where the family unit has disintegrated. Parallel this with studies that show that a vast majority of prisoners across India return to a life of crime upon release from prison. There is therefore a constant cycle between the committers of crime and society, and it doesn't end when they are put in prison. More often than not, prisons are breeding grounds for further crimes, for resentment. By creating an unhealthy prison environment, we are therefore cultivating more crime, which in turn is brought to society sooner or later because many released prisoners are not able to reintegrate into the society. To put an end to this vicious cycle, it is very important to understand the potential of education in the prison environment in preventing crime, at the source. We, as a society, seldom question the causes and the reasons of crime and criminality but react to it all the time on the basis of what's popular rather than what's right. There is a direct correlation between criminality, the social circumstances of people and the education as well as poverty. It's generally people from the lower socioeconomic classes that end up in prison. High rates of unemployment and poverty drive people to commit petty crimes, at the same time also making it more difficult for them to deal with the legal system. Once we look at the statistics and the evidence, we need to ask if there are there ways that we can reduce the number of people committing crime? And if we can say yes to that we will automatically reduce the number of victims and it's far better to prevent people from being victims of criminality rather than responding to it. Instead of seeing prisons as a revolving door of punishment, we can see it as an on-ramp of opportunity so that our communities can be renewed all over the country. Education can be a wonderful opportunity for exploring and discovering. It is transormative and reinventing. We need to change the prison paradigm and for that we first need to clear the misconception that we have about crime and incarceration. You see, we think that crime is the problem but the truth is they are actually just a symptom warning us of a problem in our society. We see that in the disproportionality of our justice system, the failings of our educational system and our socioeconomic inequalities. Many crimes are merely a symptom of these problems and trying to solve them to mass incarceration is not the cure. Sure it might give us a solution temporarily, but it is not going to fix the problem, which is the society. The lack of education is at the heart of the many problems that lead to prison; and it is believed that the lack of education contributes to incarceration and recidivism. If there is a direct correlation between them : Why don't we turn prisons into schools? This way we can address the symptom which is crime, and at the same time address what many would call the heart of the problem : Lack of education. We need to cutivate the prison into a place of learning, a place where prisoners can work with the community to give back in a real way. The whole purpose of punishment should be to teach and educate the prisoners so that they make different choices. Prisons are supposed to be teaching a lesson, educating so that these men and women make better choices in the future, but somehow we become so fixated on the punishment part that we miss the whole point. Prisons should be able to cultivate the positive aspirations of these people. First thing we need to do is open them up to the public. Let the community see the actions that prisons are making towards atonement and the steps institutions are making to facilitate and hold prisoners accountable. After all, it's our community that's at the heart of our society. It's where these prisoners were raised, where they committed their crimes and where they will eventually be released. These communities have as much right, responsibility and duty to be a part of this process as the correctional staff. Custody levels should be replaced with grade levels; where the higher the grade level achieved to the completion of educational programmes further the access for reintegration, allowing the prisoners to use what they have learned in the prison to earn back their place in the society. By doing this we could take the general public's lack of information, the growing communal fear regarding the prisoner's release and transform them to a graduation, an acceptance back into the society, supported by the community's knowledge of a prisoners's personal progress. Just like to grow a tree, it's not enough to just sow the seeds in the ground; we need to fertilize it, we need to till the soil, water it and if the environment is not conducive to producing the type of plants we want,we make a greehouse.

2021

The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014 extended post-release supervision to the short sentence population, a cohort who have historically been neglected in penal discourse and were introduced as a part of the Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) reforms. The purpose of this thesis is to explore how resettlement is enacted by practitioners and experienced by individuals serving short sentences. This empirical research was undertaken in one case study area in England and Wales. The experiences of 35 practitioners and service users were captured, in order to gain a rich qualitative perspective of the newly re-designated resettlement prison; the experiences of transitioning through-the-gate into the community; post-sentence supervision; service user perspectives of navigating resettlement; and practitioner perspectives of on the ground practice in the Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC). Findings from this research reveal a dissonance between the aims and ambitions of TR and the real...

International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, Vol 4, No 1 (2015), 2015

In this contribution I briefly outline some of the historical and current trends in prison research and question how a prison researcher can work towards influencing policy and practice. I discuss the current role of ‘what works’ research and the way it is sometimes utilized in a time of penal populism and rising prison populations. I argue in favour of a broader approach which recognizes the wider societal effects of imprisonment and I provide a concrete example of how one can attempt to plan research and project work in order to facilitate progression from research and knowledge production to action and implementation. Finally I discuss some of the scientific and ethical implications which can arise when working with reform and implementation projects.

Springer eBooks, 2018

THIS ARTICLE offers a brief overview of a desistanceoriented approach to supporting community reintegration in the state of Tasmania, Australia. While community service is typically discussed in terms of ‘payback’ as a form of punishment, it can be harnessed in creative ways to support prisoner reintegration and desistance processes. Compelling contributions from desistance scholars (see, for example, McNeill and Weaver, 2010; Schinkel, 2014) advance the recognition that people with offending histories benefit from multi-faceted supports over time to change their lives, living conditions and life chances. Through this lens, the remit of supporting reintegration extends from a traditional blinkered focus on securing essential items to aid survival post-release, to include pursuit of identity change, relationships and resources which enable sustained desistance and human flourishing. In collaboration with community-based stakeholders, Tasmania Prison Service offers prisoners opportunities to take part in a range of community service activities and restorative ‘giving back’ projects. Some of these are undertaken entirely within prison facilities, and others use the rehabilitative and reintegrative leave permits for day release.