Alternatives to the lock em up and hang em high approach. Recommendations given to a parliamentary committee by Liberty (The National Council for Civil Liberties). There's a lot or reading and plenty of links to sources.
The current system is failing and will continue to fail without reform There's other regimes with alternatives, the UK can cherry pick those that best suit.
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/75450/html/
Recommendation 1: Focus on rehabilitation
- The two-year reconviction rate in the UK is around 53% – significantly higher than that of many other European countries. Countries which consistently achieve the lowest recidivism rates and have the best offender reintegration record are those which focus on rehabilitation. Norway, for example, emphasises open over closed prisons, and even in high-security branches of the prison system each prisoner has a ‘contact officer’ dedicated to ensuring both security within the prison and reintegration on release.[1]Norway’s two-year reconviction rate is more than half that of the UK, at 20%.[2] The average reoffending rate for all Scandinavian countries is around 27%.Similar measures are reported in German and Dutch prisons, with prison officers trained to provide support and rehabilitation rather than just maintain order.[3] More open regimes are promoted, with greater provision of home leave to speed reintegration.[4]
- Whilst comparison of national recidivism rates poses difficulties, some conclusions can be drawn. At the very least, there is no perceptible connection between more punitive prison regimes and lower reoffending rates. In fact, the data suggests the opposite. For example, the USA’s reoffending rate appears to be between 40 and 70% of prisoners released. That of Norway is only 20-30%.[5]In fact, a US Government report found in 2007 that harsher prison regimes have the opposite effects to those intended – they actually increase reoffending.[6]
- Norway’s prison system is famous for not only its more open and humane character but also its world-beating rates of reintegration and recidivism. Even its highest-security prisons offer “education, training and skill-building programmes”, with inmates reported to live in “small "pod" communities within the prison, limiting the spread of the corrosive criminal prison subculture that dominates traditionally designed prisons”.[7] At its maximum-security Halden prison, the treatment of prisoners is said to be “wholly focused on helping to prepare them for a life after they get out.”[8] Bastoy Island, in which serious offenders form a semi-open community in which education and employment is pursued, has reportedly the lowest reoffending rate across all Europe – a mere 16%.[9]
Recommendation 2: Significantly reduce the UK’s unprecedented prison population
Recommendation 3: Uphold equal treatment to reduce reoffending
Recommendation 4: Make prisons safe for rehabilitation and reform
Recommendation 5: Restore legal aid for prisoners
Recommendation 6: Finish the reform of indeterminate sentences under the ‘imprisonment for public protection’ regime
Recommendation 7: End immigration detention in prisons
Recommendation 8: Stop relying on private firms to run prisons
Recommendation 9: Safeguard the mental health of those in prison and leaving it
Recommendation 10: Implement the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee into the Draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill
