Prison service

1
Prison service
2
Prison population at record level

• There are almost 7,000 people behind bars in
  Scotland and a record prison
• population of 77,008
• in England and Wales
• According to Home Office projections, the prison
  population could top 90,000 by the end of the
  decade

3
Think about why we send people to prison

• Punishing the individual
• Protecting the public
• Deter others from committing crime
• Change their behaviour

4
Is prison achieving his aims?

• Prison is achieving to punish and protect but it
  is not Deterring people or Changing criminals
  behaviour

5
Prison suicides

• When serial killer Harold Shipman committed
  suicide he became one of the 95 people who killed
  themselves in prisons in England and Wales last
  year
• Suicides in prison are high e.g. Styal womens
  Prison in 2006 reported 6 suicides in the last
  year (BBC2 documentary, women on the edge)

6
Prison suicides

• This can be due to lack of family support inside
  prison and drugs dependency which increases the
  risk
• Suicide is also the acute symptom of overcrowding
  as this can lead to failure to meet basic needs
  which can result in depression
• What is needed is a rehabilitative regime where
  there are good relations between staff and
  prisoners - that means less crowded conditions
  and access to education, leisure and long term
  high quality psychiatric care.

7
Cost of prison

• expensive to send someone to prison- 23,000 for
  one year
• Cost of prison is 12 times higher than the cost
  of a probation or community service order and no
  evidence to suggest a difference in re-offending
  rates

8
Rehabilitation is important to change criminals
behaviour

• However 6 out of 10 ex-convicts re-offend
• 58 re-offend within 2 years
• Some people change others become hardened
  criminals- new contacts made

9
Why should we continue to send criminals to
prison?

• the average prisoner commits about 140 crimes a
  year, therefore you are stopping them if they are
  in prison
• Prison also reassures members of the public and
  victims that something's being done about crime