With the government's Offender Rehabilitation Bill being debated in Parliament (and widely criticised for the lack of evidence supporting the proposed policies and rushing to privatisation), and as Labour's Parliamentary Candidate for Meriden, I thought I would share my thoughts on what rehabilitation could look like in the UK. I set out my ideas here, largely for debate and as an exploration of the possibilities. After all, I couldn't yet claim to be an expert in the realities of prisons, although my experience working with the police makes this an important issue to me.
The UK prison population is a growing body of people who have been let down by society. Society pays the price, quite literally. Our prisons cost the country a huge amount of money, whether it is the cost of keeping people locked up or the expense of piecemeal rehabilitation programmes.
I believe that our country should not give up on anybody no matter how serious their crimes. No one, in my view, was born evil. Committing heinous acts is as a result of poor upbringing, damaged life chances and/or complex psychological disorders. Therefore, for me, rehabilitation should be the key focus of the UK’s penal system. This does not mean that we should release people who are a danger to the public. I accept that we have to be realistic and that not everyone will be able to overcome their problems and function in normal society; whatever ‘normal’ means. However, I do believe that the majority of people could leave jail in a vastly improved condition.
Most of those who have committed serious crimes have been subjected to abuse in their lives, suffer from psychological disorders (including depression, anxiety and schizophrenia) and/or have lived more socially deprived beginnings. Many do not believe in themselves and many certainly do not picture themselves living in a nice home, with a nice family and leading a pleasant life. It is easy to sit ensconced in middle class pleasantness and ask how people can do these things, be it mindless petty vandalism or a violent assault. And it is right that these acts should be condemned, and right to avoid slipping into the mind set of somehow using poor social upbringing as a justification for all acts. However rather than taking the easy route of simply explaining away such things as some kind of evil divorced from our own lives, we should take the route of a truly mature society and seek to achieve change through properly understanding why these things happen. Imagine you had grown up in a world where breaking the law rather than achieving good grades brings you the respect of those your admire, where from the earliest of stages you are fed the poison of the perception that you are a certain type of person, and where the only routes that seem realistically open to you seem to be the wrong side of the law. When everything you have ever known has taught you to view yourself and your world in a certain way, it becomes increasingly easy to understand the hows and the whys.
How is this remedied? Let the state give these people the chance to become a useful member of society. Teach them that they can be valuable and that they are more capable of performing in a respected role than they ever realised.
Please now let me change the subject slightly; it’s relevant. It also so happens that many industry commentators point out that the UK is behind global leaders on national infrastructure. To continue to be a world leading economy, it is commonly cited that the UK needs to be able to operate at high speed and efficiently. Whether its super-fast rail networks, high-speed communications infrastructure, airport extensions or renewable energy foundations, there is lots to be done. The problem is, this is an expensive process and right now the government is concerned about investing billions of pounds into projects that take many years to demonstrate fruitful returns. This is not to say the government is not investing, it is. However, we need to ask, could they be investing in superior infrastructure more quickly?
What I ask now is for you to imagine the incredible benefits that could be taken from the prison population. Training many of the prison population the work skills necessary to turn these infrastructure dreams into an economically viable reality is surely a sensible idea. Far from being an exploitative measure for cheap labour, it is killing two massive fat birds with one small pebble. Rehabilitation meets economic productivity. Tell the prisoners enrolled that this is their big chance to give back to society while also feeling proud of what they can achieve. Provide these people with the skills they need to bolster the labour markets when they get out. Give them the chance that they didn’t get at the start of their lives. Best of all, save the state money by using prison labour to create the infrastructure the country needs to stay competitive in global markets.
Sure there may be practical difficulties: supervision, the training itself, the initial and on-going costs of putting this together and the claims that this labour pool will steal from honest workers outside of the prison walls. However, I simply say that nothing truly good comes easily. The money saved (or produced by the economic advantages of high quality infrastructure) and the reduction in costs associated in reoffending or welfare dependency on release mean that supervision and training is affordable. This is aside from the fact it is the morally right thing to do in any event. In terms of stealing the jobs of honest citizens, I say use this prison labour pool for projects that would be hugely beneficial but which would not happen without an additional cheaper labour source. Jobs wouldn't be taken they would be created. As with many other regeneration projects, government money becomes vital when commercial enterprise can’t economically justify the investment alone. With the right assistance, projects and regeneration can go ahead which in turn creates economic benefits (such as tax revenues) which the state would never had had without the initial investment. Pay a bit at the start, get more later.
I do not advocate poor working conditions. I do not advocate for anyone being overworked. The health of prisoners is of paramount importance, otherwise the state would be compounding the injustice often already suffered by these people. However, for those that argue against such projects as being an incentive to commit a crime in order to go to jail and receive free training, I highlight that any plan of mine would not be an easy route. Prisoners have still committed crimes. Things should not be easy, because people must know that what they have done has caused damage to innocent people’s lives. As such, any labour I propose would be intense and it would require grit and determination to come out of the other end. With the right help and support, such a scheme could see society with repaired people and an infrastructure fit for purpose.
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