Evaluating Modern Prison Service Aims

Introduction

The prison demographic patterns have continually increased over the past three decades. Feeley, (2014) observed that penal practice and ideology ascended from increasing prison population patterns. Besides, there has been a shift in the political valence concerning the constructs of penal policies in the areas of, objectives, discourse, techniques and conception of penal policies. It is along such paradigms that this essay rests. This essay intends to critically evaluate the different aims of the modern prison service and the impact of changing objectives on penal practice. This essay will consist of two parts. In part I, we will look at theoretical debates surrounding the aims of prisons as we seek to determine what the appropriate goals are for imprisonment. This section maintains that useful penal purposes and practices ought to be extracted from historical cultures and traditions and that “minimal ground” should lay the foundation for punitive goals and practice. According to the minimalist theory, the most effective aims of imprisonment should be to embedded on three propositions namely; reconstituting of spatiotemporal, minimum freedom, and stakeholder theory. The second section of this essay will borrow insights and arguments from the first section and explore how shifting perspective from the old penology to new penology changed the penal practice in four fundamental ways in the contexts of UK and USA.

Old Penology: A Case Study of Good and Useful Life Formula

The provisions of old penology become visible when one regards that which has been shared across the viewed areas of opposition in contemporary criminal law and corrections. The first case study is on the good and useful life formula, which was implemented within the English Prison Rules 1949. The case forms a crucial tracing point for the ancient penology. According to Sir Lionel Fox (1952), the ‘Useful and Good Life’ formula is integrated with the ideologies of training and treatment and seeks to equip prisoners with skills to rebuild a normal life and ‘earn an honest living.’ This formula is heavily tailored to individual prisoners and seeks to diagnose and treat deviance and anti-sociality. However, this paradigm did not remain unchallenged. Bottom (1990) outlined four main criticisms concerning the ‘Good and Useful Life’ formula.

The first criticisms are that this formula is extracted mainly from the prisoners' perspectives on the purpose of imprisonment. The aim of rehabilitation appears to be out of touch and idealistic. The primary aim of imprisonment is to fulfil its punishment role (Scott 2007). Courts send the wrongdoers to prison, not for any so-called training, but rather to pay for their crimes. Prisoners regard imprisonment as ‘captivity.’ This detachment tends to give rise to low participation in voluntary and rehabilitative programmes among prisoners. Crew and Wright (2017)'s study of long-term imprisonment found that the majority of prisoners harboured feelings of resentment and depression about their predicament and refused to participate in any meaningful training. Second, the ‘good and useful life’ formula is too vague to be effectively translated into practice (King and Morgan, 1980). The terms “good” and “useful” are very much open to interpretation. For example, one prisoner might define a good life as being able to live well after their release, while another prisoner might explain a good experience as being able to earn at least £2000 per month. Accordingly, the conclusion can be drawn here that the aim of imprisonment needs to be realistic and actionable. As Roy King and Rod Morgan (1980) correctly pointed out, any clear statement of penal objectives has to be made in operational and actionable terms which define the procedures necessary to bring these objectives about. Any statement necessarily carries with its implications about the appropriate ways of mobilising and distributing scarce resources. In the aftermath of World War II (the age during which the ‘Good and Useful Life’ formula was enacted) the infrastructure and structural conditions of some British prisons were inhospitable to fulfilling the mission of guiding prisoners towards a better life.

Third, it has been pointed out by Dunbar (1985) and Bottom (1990) that the Good and Useful Life formula applies only to sentenced prisoners and does not include other groups such as remand prisoners. Given that about a fifth of prisoners in England were remand prisoners in the 1990s; which failed to provide an equal footing to all prisoner groups. The little number was a result of a few numbers of immigrants settling in the country. Arguably, the principle of treatment and training of Rule One should not be criticized for not including remand prisoners in its formula. As this essay stated earlier, appropriateness depends on the context. Remand prisoners only amounted to less than 10 % of the total imprisoned population in 1949 (Downes and Hansen, 2007). Thus, it is not surprising that Rule One did not give remand prisoners enough penalties in its formulation.

New Penology: A Case Study of Managerialism

The new penology seeks neither to punish nor rehabilitate individuals but intends to identify and manage unruly individuals (Liebling, 2008). The new penology is founded on the threshold of proper manageralism which seeks the achievement of public security through (a) managerial control and (b) surveillance and control of risk groups. In other words, public safety and the protection of society are the main purposes of imprisonment under managerialism. Feeley and Simon (1994, 2003) assert that two fundamental presumptions underpin the paradigm. The first is that crime is a healthy and socialised risk, which is comparable to other threats such as illness or unemployment, and will jeopardize social security (Feeley and Simon, 1994). Second, crime can be viewed as a technical problem (Scheingold, 1984) and its effects are more critical than its causes. As such, the ultimate goal of imprisonment is to minimalize the negative consequence and occurrence of crimes through systemic management (Chantraine, 2004). However, managerialism is by its very nature an instrumental approach for viewing the contemporary prison. It fundamentally examines its impact in terms of the reduction of crime and the incapacitation of offenders. A helpful approach focuses on the emphasis of what works; at what cost as opposed to what is right and for whom. In the execution of managerialism, penal issues are framed in a way that is susceptible to technical solutions. This thereby tends to fend off fruitful lines of inquiry and risks prioritizing means over ends. Utilizing an effective approach opens up the possibility of creating a demonstration of progress, though success is not guaranteed. It prioritizes calculation and comparison of different available situations before administering a punishment. However, new penology drifts away the attention from essentials such as the ethics of imprisonment and the role of prison in modern contexts. According to Garland (1991) the objectives of a penal system are shaped by a cultural style and a historical tradition, which are of critical purpose.

Appropriate aims of Imprisonment

This essay maintains that it is not possible to assign the most appropriate aims without assigning a reference to its particular historical tradition or cultural style. Besides, there should be a ‘minimal ground’ which allows concrete goals to be built on. This idea is inspired by the concept of human containment (King and Morgan, 1980) but revised to a more realistic and pragmatic basis. The aims stated in mission statements of either the UK or US Prison Services tend to be silent on the needs of particular prisoner groupings, such as those on remand, women, juveniles, foreign nationals, and those sentenced to die behind bars and those affected by imprisonments such as prisoners families and staff. We should recognize that these groups may pose particular challenges and require bespoke aims instead of merely being name-checked in the mission statements. This basis is built on the stakeholder theory, which stresses the interconnected relationship between external and internal interested groups who are affected and have a stake in the organisation (Feeley, 2014). If we transplant this idea to a prison context, it is argued that the aims of prison should create value for all impacted stakeholders, not just those who serve their sentences, as figure 2 suggests.

Besides, prisons should bear an overall neutral effect. Prisoners have been sentenced as a form of punishment, not for punishment’s sake alone. If we want to define the term ‘worse off’ by taking a prisoner’s harm in comparison to the risk posed, then the implication is that prisoners should be kept safe while serving (Hollin and Bilby, 2007). External associates including families and friends of the prisoners’ voices will persist that wish to underplay the plight or considerations of prison occupants. However, even such sounds would not wish harm or discomfort to prison employees, or the surrounding communities. Preferably, the ultimate purpose and goal of any prison system should be to act pre-emptively to prevent harm from being imposed on the groups involved (Burnett, and Maruna, 2004).

Furthermore, imprisonment is ultimately a withholding of liberty from the imprisoned, but not the deprivation of human rights (O’Donnell, 2014). Therefore, fundamental human rights such as freedom of religion should still be guaranteed. Though religion does not usually enter the discussion at large, it is an essential facet to those who find comfort in following the teachings of Christianity, and increasingly so the same for many in Islam. To summarise, imprisonment aims to reorient a prisoner’s spatiotemporal world while avoiding unnecessary harm. Such a minimalist statement is often said to serve as a foundation for prison organizations that are geared in the direction of the future, and that pay heed to the fact that all prisoners can change as individuals. Dunbar and Langdon (1998) suggest that the answers to "what prisons are for" lie in two major propositions. First, punishment has an ‘expressive' function. According to Functionalist theories, punishment is intended to pursue two main purposes. First, a penalty is an approach through which society grows together in social solidarity and a widely accepted manner, such that the role of punishment is to control societal members to act within the provision of widely accepted codes. Secondly, a penalty is a mean of achieving reduced crime rates within the societal constructs. To practically break down the two pillars, there is a consensus that the main justifications for prisons boil down to four aspects, as figure 1 illustrates.

Judging from an examination of Prison Service policies in the UK and the US, it is noticeable that our penal institutions have undergone a significant paradigm shift from concerning basic operations (old penology) into the modernised way of executing punishment unto the perpetrators of crime and breakers of established order and norms. Concerning these findings of two case studies, this essay argues that the aims of imprisonment should be built upon a ‘minimal ground’ (Cheliotis, 2006). Concepts of rehabilitation seemed to fall by the wayside sometime in the 1970s, shifting more towards ideas of incapacitation, deterrence, and retribution as the primary focus. This is a large part of the shift from the Old Penology to the New Penology. Though the meaning of such changes is still debated, with a desire to understand the principal causes that instituted such an evolution, penal practice and the institution itself is fundamentally altered, while being faced with practical and ethical issues that were not commonly encountered in the past. According to Feeley and Simon (1992)’s propositions concerning the New Penology, the primary strategy is to focus on populations of offenders at large. According to the two scholars; criminals or prisoners are now seen as ‘statistics’ rather than individuals. This has arguably been a significant contributor to the issue of over-incarceration. Therefore, the impact is mostly bored by those serving sentences. The total number of prisoners in 1992 was 45,000 and had risen to 84,000 by 2013 (British Academy, 2014). This has been accompanied by an increase in the proportion of those accused who are actually sentenced from 1 of 7 to 1 of 4. One issue associated with mass-incarceration is profiling. Classification is key to the operations of the modern penal enterprise (Robert, 2001, 77), which is widely used to ensure management (surveillance and control) of risk groups. It has its roots in preventive practice, with police agencies making use of them and thus alters the input into the penal system from the law enforcement field. These risk profiles influence the decision-making process during sentencing as well, being used during the production of guidelines. However, the use of profiling and classification indirectly encourages institutionalized racism. Certain groups such as American Africans are overrepresented in the prison because more likely to be arrested due to target and predictive policing, and the public opinion shaped by the influence of media. Hartney, (2006) maintains that the US witnessed a disproportionately large percentage in minority incarceration of African American in 2005. For example, African Americans are more than six times as likely to be imprisoned as whites while Latinos were over twice as likely. Profiling is responsible for institutionalized racism. However, it is undeniable that the rise of the New Penology contributes to threaten the equal distribution of justice.

Impacts are also evident in terms of shifting perspective towards sentencing. In one way, sentences are often decided based on statistical averages and standardized formulas. A great many sentencing schemes currently make use of guidelines focusing on the seriousness of a given offense, while taking into consideration past criminal history. Meanwhile, concerns of public safety seem to have fallen off the radar when the sentencing time comes around. Arguably, the Criminal Justice Act of 1991 was the starting point of these changes. It adopted proportionality as one of the main principles of the sentencing systems imposed by the CJA. The CJA of 2003 followed which introduced many policies that were designed to make sentencing harsher. This has led to progressively more severe sentences being handed out, on average. For example, one change is the introduction of statutorily defined minimums for certain classes of convictions, such as life imprisonment for different murder categories. They stand significantly more severe than previous standards (Home Office, 2003). This trend poses the risk of continuing to undermine proportionality as a rue brick for determinations of sentencing (Dingwall, 2008). Moreover, considerations of probability and risk have taken precedence over critical reviews. The tort law, for example, holds the notion of fault and negligence high, less based on concepts of individual responsibility and more on strict liability or fault-based liability. This stems from ways of thinking about how to handle public safety and incidents in real terms. To take it further, the economic significance and implication have been further emphasized in the damages of tort. Under the influence of the New Penology; Posner (1987) refines the law of tort and suggests that it is mainly concerned with examining the allocative effects which result from the application of different liability regimes. Liability rules, on the other hand, can be interpreted as a legal attempt to establish incentives for parties to achieve social efficiency objectives. Insurance cases illustrate how risk management functions through actuarial at an ultimate level (Hans-Bernd Schäfer, 2017). For example, in unilateral accidents, the social objective function is presented the form of: as min c (x) + d (x) (accident prevention costs are denoted as c and the level of care is marked x, and finally after abstracting from administration costs and assuming risk neutrality d presents the total amount of expected damages). This clearly shows that penal practice is drifting away from individual liability to management according to perceived dangerousness.

Lastly, an increasingly controlling system seems to become the desired end. Private prison sector has continued to grow, both in terms of management and infrastructural development. Quality improvement has taken a back-seat to cost reductions, drawing much criticism. This gives rise to a bevy of other issues, as Anderson (2009) argues. These new problems include "skimping on food, staffing, medicine, education and other services for convicts. It also means fielding poorly trained ill-equipped, non-unionised and often brutal guards" (Anderson 2009). Though such claim may be exaggerated, efforts to minimize costs certainly appear to have given way to more than merely a loss of comfort for prisoners. In Birmingham Prison scandal, the government's chief inspector of prisons expressed shock at his observations that "filthy common areas with rubbish piling up; fleas, cockroaches and rats; blood and vomit left overnight; and cramped cells “not fit for habitation” (the Economist, 2018). In light of the apparent facts that the modern penal system emphasizes cost-reduction and efficiency, infrastructural rehabilitation; these factors pose questions of effectiveness and morality. In particular, many prisoners face challenges including mental health issues, learning difficulties, abuse, homelessness, drug addiction, and chronic unemployment. These challenges better addressed by shifting perspectives on penal practice as illustrated in the above arguments.

Conclusion

Conclusively, there are distinctive challenges associated with attempting to define the aims of imprisonment in a way that will take account of the prison's relationship with other cultural institutions, historical trajectory, the need to accommodate a variety of stakeholders’ perspectives, and any pragmatic considerations surrounding the specification of targets and tasks that are derived from the aims. It is, however, a contradiction concerning the prisons normative. As such, appropriateness of purposes depends upon the circumstance. As demonstrated above, there is a need to assign the most appropriate aims without assigning a reference to its particular historical tradition or cultural style. Instead, a ‘minimal ground’ should allow concrete goals to be built on.

The introduction of the New Penology has largely reshaped the four areas of penal practice. However, it is argued that the quality of prison and the interests of prisoners have been largely disregarded. This cost-effective and efficiency compromises the moral legitimacy of imprisonment. As presented above, the goal of detention should be geared more towards rehabilitation and the return to a ‘normal life.’ Finally, Bottoms (1990) points out that the ‘starkness' of good and useful formal life and the rejection of a possible utility of imprisonment through rehabilitation has led one influential liberal commentator to consider this aim to be ‘ontologically insufficient.’ Such a position is not without trouble, being faced with the failure to provide any sufficient moral justification for why prisons should rightly exist in the first place, as well as the question of political objections which point to proportional punishments amid an unjust society (Hudson 1987).

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