Prisons as Acute Hospitals: The Economic and Social Benefits of Sentencing Reform

Last week on the BBC show, Sunday Morning Live, Lord Ramsbottom used a metaphor to compare prisons to acute hospital wards – places that should only ‘admit’ those with the highest amount of need. This makes sense, as many people who conduct research into prison reform refer to the so-called ‘schools of crime” theory, which suggests that low-level offenders, who commonly serve sentences of less than 12 months, essentially learn how to commit crimes in a more effective manner.

This claim seems to have some resonance when you consider reconviction rates following these short-sentences – around 60% of those serving less than a year in prison are found guilty of another offence within twelve months.

So what could the answer be?

I think Lord Rambottom has got it exactly right. We should use our prisons sparingly – only detaining those who pose a distinct risk to the general public. In the UK we have a fantastic army of probation workers and forensic social workers, who, instead of being the final part of a long and painful process, should be embedded into the criminal justice system at a much earlier stage. They are the professionals best placed to advise the courts about how community initiatives could contribute to rehabilitating low-level (typically acquisitive or drug-addicted) offenders.

Indeed, community sentences lead to more favourable reconviction rates than the short-term prison sentences mentioned earlier. According to figures released by the Ministry of Justice from 2011, there was only around a 34% reconviction rate for those serving sentences in the community – almost half compared to custodial sentences of less than 12 months. In addition, community sentences make economic sense. According to an informative fact sheet produced by the Howard League for Penal Reform, a typical 12-month community order, comprising of both punishment and rehabilitation elements, costs £4,000 to administer, compared to the cost of £37,500 for sending a person to prison for the same period of time. If we were to completely remove all prisoners serving a custodial sentence of less than one year (approximately 7,500 as at June 2012) and replace their sentences with community equivalents, the public purse would be spared a little over £281million every year.

The importance of a saving such as this should not be underestimated, especially when we consider the scale of recent Government spending cuts. If the public feared that this approach would make them less safe, this could be addressed by re-assigning some of this saving to sure-up staffing levels of the probation serving, meaning that increased numbers would be in employment, paying tax, and helping some of society’s most vulnerable people to reintegrate and move away from crime.

So what would prison be for?

I would advocate that prison should be a place for those convicted only of the most serious offences – murder, manslaughter, sexual offences, domestic violence, and cases of particularly violent robbery. In line with the risk-need-responsivity model of offender rehabilitation, these prisoners require the highest level of intervention and, by removing low-level offenders, professionals working within HMPS will be able to focus their attention on these individuals.

This approach may be seen as liberal, and wouldn’t be supported by tabloid heavyweights (such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express), but that should not be a consideration when setting criminal justice and public policy. Yes, of course it would be nice for everyone to agree with Government decisions, but criminal justice is far too important a topic to allow the emotion of, for example, being a victim interfere with due process, sentencing, and effective rehabilitation. It is only by piloting such schemes that we can evaluate their efficacy.

Naturally, there should be clear guidelines for reporting of potential changes to the criminal justice system – scaremongering by right-wing populist press outlets have the potential to be counterproductive to attempts to reform the prison system, and, in line with what is predicted by desistance theory, could have an opposite effect on reconviction outcomes (due to a lack of opportunities for sentenced offenders to reintegrate back into society through their community orders).

In short, we should trial potential changes to the criminal justice system in order to allay public concerns and test effectiveness. Changes should be reported sensibly and without political agenda, as doing so could jeopardise any initiatives introduced. Finally, removing from prison those serving less than 12 months could save millions of pounds, and significantly reduce rates of reconviction.

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9 thoughts on “Prisons as Acute Hospitals: The Economic and Social Benefits of Sentencing Reform”

Hi Craig, I very much agree with your approach to prisons and the discourse through which we view criminals I.e. as those in need of treatment as opposed to simply being ‘bad’ and thus requiring punishment. Indeed, I wrote my Master of Laws dissertation on prison reform in light of new deterministic evidence in psychology and what that should mean for the role of prisons. I would like to play devil’s advocate now though.

Firstly, do you believe that community sentences, whilst producing lower recidivism, actively give the offender new skills? Would you like to see community based sentences have appropriate correctional treatment parts to them as well as simply cleaning up a local area, for example?

Secondly, do you feel that a system where only the most dangerous offenders were incarceration would command sufficient legitimacy in the eyes of victims and the general public? Would a ‘softer’ system with more offenders on the streets, as you propose, suffer from a lack of legitimacy, and if so, how would you combat this?

lincpsychuk says:

October 21, 2012 at 9:55 AM

Hi, thanks for commenting!

On your first point, I would like to see more constructive community orders, with a much greater emphasis on education and employability for offenders. What would be especially helpful would be collaboration with private companies – this could break down the stigma around employing ex-offenders as well as providing vital employment experience for the individual concerned.

Secondly, I understand that this kind of approach would be seen as ‘soft’ initially, but this is predominantly due to the skewed representation of crime and offenders in the mainstream press. That is why I suggest smaller-scale pilot studies in order to present tangible results in terms of the effectiveness of these schemes. The British public are very good at making up their own mind when presented with evidence – so that is what we should aim to achieve.

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