What is prison for? I’ve wondered that a lot, these past five years. In February 2020, just a few days after the UK left the European Union, and as scientists worked to agree an official name for the ‘new coronavirus’, I was sentenced to 45 months in prison for a fraud I’d committed in 2014. During my time inside I discovered a system that did almost everything badly and didn’t seem to know its own purpose. Meanwhile our jails remain a mystery to those who haven’t been there. Since my release I’ve written and spoken to help people understand our prison system. I believe there is a better way of doing things, which would protect the public, provide value for money, reduce crime and help people who’ve committed crimes turn their lives around. So it was with great interest that I listened to Prison of the Mind, Jenny Okolo’s documentary for the BBC World Service, which airs today and is available on BBC Sounds.
Jenny is an occupational therapist with experience in forensic mental health settings. This means that she works in situations where mental health intersects with the criminal justice system, including prisons. In Prison of the Mind she seeks to answer the question: ‘In what sense are we… caught up in a narrow way of imagining what justice and rehabilitation might look like?’ It’s an important question. Our justice system doesn’t work. The ‘proven reoffending rate’, the government’s preferred statistic, suggests that over a quarter of released prisoners reoffend within a year. This underestimates the true number: only those proven to have committed a further offence are counted, and in an environment where just 5.5 per cent of crimes lead to a charge, most offenders are simply missed. Indeed, some research suggests that 75 per cent reoffend within nine years. Six years ago the government estimated that reoffending cost more than £18 billion a year. The true number now must be significantly higher.
Charlie, a man I befriended in prison, taught me that many murderers are not the monsters of story and myth, but quite normal men who had appalling childhoods
I saw our reoffending culture in prison. Inside I met so many men who had been in and out of jail for decades. They had wasted years of their lives, created countless victims and often caused harm to their families by their absence – we know that the children of prisoners often experience worse mental health and find school more difficult. Meanwhile we spend £50,000 per prison place per year. We need to find a better way.
Jenny spoke to Rivelino Rigters, a Dutch man who was imprisoned in the 1990s. On release from his first sentence he was ‘welcomed as a young hero’ and kept offending. No intervention sought to change his life; he was simply caught and punished. Jenny discovered that ‘30 years on the story in his country is quite different’. According to Marrit de Vries, clinical director of the Dutch Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology, the Dutch now focus on understanding the route of people’s offending. They look at substance abuse issues, mental health problems, housing status, social networks and employment.
This makes a great deal of sense. Our prisons are full of people who’ve experienced horrendous childhood trauma. A quarter of prisoners have been in the care system and over a quarter of male prisoners were abused as children. I’ll never forget ‘Charlie’, a man I befriended in prison. He was 14 years into a life sentence for a brutal murder. From a young age he had been abused and drugged with heroin by his mother. Charlie taught me that many murderers are not the monsters of story and myth, but rather quite normal men who’d had appalling childhoods.
I spoke with Jenny after listening to the programme. She advocates for a system like the ‘risk, need, responsibility’ model, which seeks to treat and restore people, helping them to change their lives and stay away from crime. In the British system, she believes that we need far more mental health and therapeutic support in prisons.
Many people will object to this. Aren’t prisons for punishing bad people who’ve done wrong? The reality is that our prisons aren’t even effective on that measure. Most prisoners spend 22 or more hours a day lying on their bunk beds. An effective system would ask more of prisoners, and give more. What we have now merely warehouses people, often exacerbating their underlying mental health and substance abuse issues, and almost ensures that they will commit more crime and create more victims. Prison of the Mind shows that we can learn from other countries and do much better.
Rivelino now runs a foundation which helps young people who are involved in crime. He credits his transformation with finding faith, joining a church and starting to create rather than destroy. True transformation often comes from surprising places.
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