Argument: Rehabilitation can only succeed in prison

Rehabilitation programmes are not a panacea – nor are they instantly or reliably effective. The risk of an individual committing crime can only be reduced by long-term engagement with such schemes.

Under these circumstances, the best location in which to rehabilitate offender is prison. Prison serves, in some cases, to separate prisoners from poverty and desperation, and to help them access training and education that they may have failed to engage with previously. Prison can also quarantine offenders from the influence of gangs and other sub-cultures that may compete with the positive behaviours fostered by rehabilitation. This is particularly the case for high risk offenders.

It seems ridiculous to assume that dramatic changes in an individual’s behaviour can be brought about without a correspondingly dramatic change in their environment and lifestyle. Criminality frequently develops as a survival strategy within hostile or chaotic social environments.

For many crimes, family may also be the root cause. Problematic relationship with relatives can further hinder the rehabilative process. How can we still expect family members to help facilitate the rehabilative process when they may be the reason reason why the offender committed crimes.

If there are minimal restraints put on an offender’s freedom while he rehabilitates, it will be easier for him to avoid complying with rehabilitation programmes. It will also be easier for the offender to avoid complying with other, more punitive measures, such as fines and community service orders.

As a last resort, a prison term prevents offenders who refuse to engage with rehabilitation from committing crimes for the length of their sentence. Given that a UK home office survey conduct in 2000 found that, on average, offenders committed 140 crimes a year, even a brief sentence represents a significant disruption of criminal activity [i] .

[i] Civitas, Fighting Crime: Are Public Policies Working?, February 2010, p.1, http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/CrimeBriefingFeb2010.pdf

Candidate 1: "The opposition argument assumes that punishment must be proportional only to the suffering caused to the victim of a particular crime. Opposition state that for a sentence to be truly proportionate, it must reflect the subjective responses of the victim. This analysis fails to acknowledge that the definition of proportionality extends beyond the victim.

The four objectives of criminal sentencing are complimentary, not mutually exclusive. The aspect of a sentence that seeks to punish should be proportionate to offender’s crime, but in addition, it must not obstruct the functioning of the other objectives of sentencing.

A burglary may be upsetting for the victim, and incarceration of the burglar may seem a proportionate response. However, when that sentence is weighed against the imperative to rehabilitate the burglar, we discover that rehabilitation in prison would be less effective than rehab in a community setting. When custodial punishment is weighed against the imperative to protect the public, we discover that non-violent criminals who have been incarcerated are more likely to engage in violent crime following their release. The greater cost of incarceration- to the criminal and to the efficacy of the rehabilitative process- renders the sentence disproportionate.

The comparative popularity of imprisonment has distorted our understanding of which criminals it is most suited to."
Candidate 2: "Families and other social networks can play an important role in supporting and encouraging an offender as they rehabilitate. Wives, husbands and children can effectively monitor the behaviour of an offender when trained staff are unavailable. Given that the imprisonment of an adult family member is emotionally traumatic and financially damaging, families have a strong incentive to ensure that rehabilitation is successful.

Disruptive family environments are also catered for by the proposition resolution. Where family breakdown is a cause of criminality, social workers and rehabilitation specialists will be able to “treat” the family alongside the offender. Underlying drug or alcohol addictions can be addressed. ‘Therapeutic programs’, as they are termed, enable offenders to be rehabilitated by and within the community in a ‘living-learning situation’ [i] .

Prison on the other hand is an unsupportive environment where offenders are blamed for their behaviour and sometimes coerced into rehabilitation programs [ii] . In a prison context, an offender would be treated in isolation, without the opportunity to address underlying familial issues that might cause reoffending. Prison can be iatrogenic (increase risk) by removing offenders from their source of social support, families, jobs and accommodation; rehabilitation is more likely to be effective when it is used in conjunction with those factors, not apart from them. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that prison staff hold ‘rather unsympathetic’ attitudes towards prisoners [iii] , inferring a culture unfavourable to effective rehabilitation.

Although an offender may be prevented from committing crime for the duration of a prison sentence, this does not represent a significant advantage over the proposed resolution. For the reasons set out above, a prisoner released from a custodial sentence is likely to be incentivised to engage in crime (due to a lack of employment opportunities and social isolation), and will commit more serious types of crime.

[i] Day, A., Casey, S., Vess, J. &amp; Huisy, G., “Assessing the Social Climate of Prisons”, February 2, 2011 from Australia Institute of Criminology, Page 8/Page 32

[ii] Day A. &amp; Ward T., “Offender Rehabilitation as a Value-Laden Process” in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (June 2010: Vol 54. N.3) Page 300

[iii] Day A. &amp; Ward T., “Offender Rehabilitation as a Value-Laden Process” in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (June 2010: Vol 54. N.3) Page 294"
Candidate 3: "Incarceration is expensive, rehabilitation is not

Many of the rehabilitation and intervention schemes made available in prison are replicated in community settings by social services and charities. The cost of delivering these programmes in prison originates from the concept of prison itself. The expense of building, equipping, staffing and monitoring a prison vastly outweighs the cost of rehabilitative activities. Research conducted by Steve Aos has shown that rehabilitative programs designed to reduce crime can be cost-effective [i] .

Prisons should be used only where the imperative to protect society from criminal behaviour cannot be met by the imperative to rehabilitate. A minority of offenders will be incorrigibly violent and uncontrollable, but under the status quo, these dangerous offenders not represent the majority of the prison population (see statistics above).

The yearly cost of incarcerating a young offender in the UK is now £140,000, almost three times the annual fee charged by an elite public school [ii] . Diverting this money to intervention programmes delivered to families, in homes and in schools would avoid the harms of incarceration (described above), while retaining the benefit of rehabilitation. The focus should therefore be prevention and early intervention rather than punishment.

[i] Aos, S., The Comparative Costs and Benefits of Programs to Reduce Crime, Washington State Institute for Public Policy, May 2001, http://barry.mo.networkofcare.org/library/costbenefit.pdf

[ii] “Punishing Costs” The New Economics Foundation, 2010, p18"
Candidate 4: "A modern liberal state’s duty is to pursue policies and promote values that will have a real and lasting impact on its citizen’s lives. The resolution is such a policy. The opposition’s argument has been tried and failed; in the US, ‘increasing punitive measures have failed to reduce criminal recidivism and instead have led to a rapidly growing correctional system that has strained government budgets’ [i] .

Pandering to populist thinking in the name of maintaining confidence in a particular government is a short-term strategy. It is an approach designed to win elections rather than bring about social change. The most effective way for a government to fulfil its obligation to protect its citizens is to reduce deviance effectively and efficiently, even if that change has to come at the expense of political capital.

The penal system operating under the status quo brutalises individuals and entrenches criminality in communities in the name of law and order.

[i] Andrews, D.A. &amp; Bonta, J., “Rehabilitating Criminal Justice and Policy” in Psychology, Public Policy and Law (2010, Vol. 16, No.1). Page 39"
Candidate 5: "Prisons create criminals

The prison environment is harmful to many offenders. Consider the risk of developing a drug or alcohol addiction while incarcerated in the UK (15% of the inmates of one of the UK’s largest jails tested positive for drugs in 2006) [i] ; the risk of being subjected to sexual violence in an US prison (217,000 prisoners were subjected to sexual violence in American prisons in 2008) [ii] ; the rise in gang motivated violence and killings within prisons on both sides of the Atlantic.

Prison brings together individuals with a wide range of social and behavioural problems that incline them towards deviance and violence. These individuals are placed in closed conditions with restricted access to productive activities. In many western nations, a lack of funding and staff means that most prisoners have little to fill their time, and may be confined to their cells for up to twenty three hours a day. The privations of prison make prisoners more, rather than less likely to engage in violent or exploitative behaviour. Prisoners in overcrowded, understaffed jails are more likely to develop mental illnesses and less likely to have such conditions diagnosed and treated. The brutality of their surroundings makes prisoners more likely to seek the protection and comradeship offered by gangs or the comfort of intoxicants.

Furthermore, the shame and isolation associated with incarceration cause prisoner’s non-criminal social networks to decay. Relationships with partners or spouses may break down. Contact with children may be limited. Families may shun the offender, leaving him with a social circle comprised mainly of fellow inmates. These associations can prove toxic, leading offenders to validate each other’s behaviour and share knowledge about criminal activities.

Finally, the stigma of criminality extends to employment. Businesses may be unwilling to employ those with criminal records, limiting ex-offenders’ opportunities for social reintegration.

[i] “Inspector finds gangs and high level of violence in jail”, The Guardian, 11 July 2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jul/11/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation?INTCMP=SRCH

[ii] “Combating rape in prisons”, The Economist, May 5 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18651484"
Candidate 6: "Deterrence is a myth

The deterrent effect of prison is uniformly overstated. It is popularly thought that the indignity and strictness of the prison environment will discourage criminal behaviour. Further, exposure to the harsh realities of prison is thought to discourage former inmates from re-offending. These assumptions do not reflect most offenders’ reasoning, nor do they reflect the contexts in which most criminal behaviour occurs. Punishment of the type offered by prisons doesn’t meet the criteria for reinforcement of behaviour that one would associate with behaviour change; the punishment happens long after the behaviour, and is therefore futile [i] .

Firstly, it should be noted that among many inmates, especially young men, criminal actions, including public order offences, assault and petty theft, are carried out on impulse. Impulsive behaviour is often influenced by alcohol and peer pressure. Under these circumstances, deterrence is ineffective.

Secondly, empirical evidence indicates that it is the likelihood of being caught performing a criminal act, rather than the sentence for that crime, that deters potential offenders. If a potential offender believes he is more likely to be caught and convicted, he is less likely to engage in criminal behaviour. Meta-analyses such as the Cambridge Study on Deterrence [ii] have shown that the severity of a sentence only has a marginal effect on an offender’s decision to break the law.

In the light of these findings, deterrence can be seen as a matter of policing and detection, rather than a set of misleading assumptions based on an over-simplification of rational-actor theory.

[i] Andrews, D.A. &amp; Bonta, J., “Rehabilitating Criminal Justice and Policy” in Psychology, Public Policy and Law (2010, Vol. 16, No.1). Page 42

[ii] “Criminal deterrence and sentence severity: an analysis of recent research”, von Hirsch, A, and others"
Candidate 7: "Proportionality

A recent study conducted among prisoners in Florida found that from 1997 to 2010 the proportion of new inmates who had committed violent crimes (collating both state and federal prisons statistics) fell by 28% [i] . Meanwhile, the number of first time prisoners who had committed non-violent offences rose by 189% [ii] .

It is argued that imprisoning individuals found to be guilty of non-violent crimes is a disproportionate response to their actions and does not serve the objectives of criminal sentencing set out above.

Criminal sentences must deliver a punishment in proportion to the crime an offender has committed. A disproportionate sentence- using the death penalty to punish theft, for instance- is less likely to be perceived as a fair or rational response to criminal behaviour. An offender who is punished excessively is more likely to see himself as the victim of injustice, and less likely to consider the impact of his own conduct. A law abiding individual who that fears that jaywalking may result in jail time will have no confidence in the criminal justice system, and may begin seeking other sources of security.

There are many alternatives to penal sentences available to magistrates and judges. Using fines and curfews to restrict financial and personal liberty, alongside restorative forms of punishment such as community service, can provide a much more efficient way of condemning an individual’s criminal behaviour.

[i] “Rough Justice in America”, The Economist, July 22 2010, http://www.economist.com/node/16636027

[ii] “Rough Justice in America”, The Economist, July 22 2010, http://www.economist.com/node/16636027"

Families and other social networks can play an important role in supporting and encouraging an offender as they rehabilitate. Wives, husbands and children can effectively monitor the behaviour of an offender when trained staff are unavailable. Given that the imprisonment of an adult family member is emotionally traumatic and financially damaging, families have a strong incentive to ensure that rehabilitation is successful.

Disruptive family environments are also catered for by the proposition resolution. Where family breakdown is a cause of criminality, social workers and rehabilitation specialists will be able to “treat” the family alongside the offender. Underlying drug or alcohol addictions can be addressed. ‘Therapeutic programs’, as they are termed, enable offenders to be rehabilitated by and within the community in a ‘living-learning situation’ [i] .

Prison on the other hand is an unsupportive environment where offenders are blamed for their behaviour and sometimes coerced into rehabilitation programs [ii] . In a prison context, an offender would be treated in isolation, without the opportunity to address underlying familial issues that might cause reoffending. Prison can be iatrogenic (increase risk) by removing offenders from their source of social support, families, jobs and accommodation; rehabilitation is more likely to be effective when it is used in conjunction with those factors, not apart from them. Furthermore, the available evidence suggests that prison staff hold ‘rather unsympathetic’ attitudes towards prisoners [iii] , inferring a culture unfavourable to effective rehabilitation.

Although an offender may be prevented from committing crime for the duration of a prison sentence, this does not represent a significant advantage over the proposed resolution. For the reasons set out above, a prisoner released from a custodial sentence is likely to be incentivised to engage in crime (due to a lack of employment opportunities and social isolation), and will commit more serious types of crime.

[i] Day, A., Casey, S., Vess, J. &amp; Huisy, G., “Assessing the Social Climate of Prisons”, February 2, 2011 from Australia Institute of Criminology, Page 8/Page 32

[ii] Day A. &amp; Ward T., “Offender Rehabilitation as a Value-Laden Process” in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (June 2010: Vol 54. N.3) Page 300

[iii] Day A. &amp; Ward T., “Offender Rehabilitation as a Value-Laden Process” in International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (June 2010: Vol 54. N.3) Page 294
