I said, quite truthfully, from referrals. Clients who are in jail refer others in jail to me.
Which got me thinking about jails and deterrence and rehabilitation.
What happens in jails? People sit around, in often grossly overcrowded conditions and talk. They have little else to do. They discuss law, lawyers, life and, of course crime. People with a limited criminal background meet other, more seasoned, criminals and learn about their experience.
Toss into the mix the availability of street drugs and alcohol and you have a breeding ground for crime.
I'm not sure any prison can rehabilitate an offender but I am sure that the prisons we have cannot. Sending more people to prison now just creates more crime.
Canadian prisons are pretty awful -- triple bunking for those on remand (three men in a cell rather small for one) is common enough -- so there may be an element of deterrence (assuming criminals act rationally which is a big assumption) but beyond that prisons are counter productive.
So why don't we have prisons that forbid crime talk and block drugs?
Cost is a factor -- a prison where prisoners were kept apart from each other except under close scrutiny, where security was sufficient to keep out drugs, where prisoners had actual training and treatment would be very very costly.
Institutional inertia is a factor too -- our prison system is pretty well unchanged from the late 1930's. Changing a well established system that few realise is broken is hard.
That said, is putting people in jail is costly now the cost of a jail that might work would at least double current costs. And you can bet the changes needed would be opposed by those with institutional status to protect.
This may be money and effort well spent -- if prisons become places of punishment for crime, and not schools for criminals, then sending people to jail might make sense.
But before we start to 'get tough on crime' we better think about what getting tough means.
No comments:
Post a Comment