[Carly Hilts]
At this moment, eighty-one thousand people in England and Wales are in prison. That’s a hundred and forty eight in every hundred thousand, the highest prison population in Western Europe. Why is this?
Some would have us believe that it is because we are too “soft on crime”, in particular that our prisons are too luxurious to act as any kind of effective deterrent. I beg to differ. Prison conditions are not easy. Our prisons are catastrophically overcrowded, and the suicide rate amongst prisoners has soared by forty percent since last year.
Instead, I would argue that the average prison inmate committed their crime because they do not have the qualifications to support themselves through an honest job. Statistics drawn from a recent survey in The Independent illustrate this: eighty-two percent of prisoners in British jails have a reading age below that of the average eleven year old. With falling child-literacy constantly in the papers, this has serious implications for both our education and prison systems.
If most prisoners are only just literate and have trouble finding employment (some sixty-seven percent of inmates were unemployed at the time that they were imprisoned) it suggests that it is the most socially disadvantaged who commit crime. These are people from poorer areas, raised in overcrowded, underfunded schools, who may not have had the same advantages as others in life, or access to a decent education.
So all those who argue that prison conditions aren’t hard enough, and advocate a return to damp stone and bread and water, have failed to notice something very important. Statistics suggest that the average prisoner is not an evil individual who needs to be punished, but an unfortunate soul who would have behaved differently under less desperate circumstances.
I’m sure some will dismiss me as a bleeding-heart liberal, but consider the facts. Of the total prison population in England and Wales, seventy percent arrived in prison with a drug problem. Eighty-five percent of young prisoners aged between sixteen and twenty have signs of personality disorders. Thirty percent of convicts have nowhere to live after being released. The majority of our inmates are not murderers or rapists, but thieves and fraudsters. It seems fairly clear, therefore, that most of these are disadvantaged people who are supporting themselves in the only way they believe they can: crime.
The solution? Education. Equal access to decent, free and suitable education is the key to self-esteem and social mobility. It is those who feel hopeless about the future who slip through the net into a life of crime. We must ensure that there is adequate support for those who are not traditionally “academically able”. There should be vocational training to help them get jobs of which they can feel proud.
There must also be enough resources in poorer areas for gifted children to achieve their potential, whatever their economic background. And there must be sufficient adult education schemes within prisons themselves to help those eighty-two percent of inmates who can barely read or write. Such schemes already exist to a degree, but it seems many individuals are unable to find a fulfilling way to support themselves after leaving prison. Some sixty-four percent of those released reoffend within two years of release.
If we are to decrease our prison population, we must strike at the heart of the problem. This means improving the quality and accessibility of education.
We must provide education tailored to the needs of all children, not just a one-size-fits-all curriculum. We must make sure no one leaves school feeling unable to find fulfilling employment. And we must help older generations to acquire the qualifications they need to find the confidence to lead self-sufficient, productive lives.
To be effective, prison must be as much about rehabilitation as punishment. Inmates need to leave prison with a sense of self-esteem and hope; they need to believe it is possible for them to start again and to lead an honest life. Dark cells, and bread and water will not do this. Qualifications will.
Carly Hilts
