The first prison as we know them today was opened in 1829 in the United States. Before that, jails were overcrowded and squalid, and were simply used to hold people before physical punishments or death could be administered, or for people who owed money.
The modern prisons were devised during the period known as the Age of Enlightenment. Crimes were no longer seen as an affront to God and King that needed to be punished; instead, they were acts that needed to be deterred or prevented.
Prisons, then, were designed as places where rational people in the right conditions could be reformed.
The idea was enthusiastically embraced in both Europe and America. While all prisons were constructed to be clean and orderly, there were competing philosophies as to how they were run. English philosopher Jeremy Bentham devised the panopticon, a circular prison with multi-storeyed cells around the outside, with a tower in the centre that could observe the prisoners at all times. The thinking was that such constant observation would instil a sense of always being watched that would stick with the prisoners on their release.
Two competing systems, both devised in the US as radial structures, found most favour. The Separate System kept prisoners in almost total solitude, with little else than a Bible to read, while the Silent System allowed prisoners to mingle for periods of work but they were prohibited from speaking to one another.
The ambition of these large new prisons was astonishing. They were seen as a humane solution to the problems of crime. So convinced of their efficacy, one chaplain wrote that all people would benefit from time inside: “Could we all be put on prison fare, for the space of one or two generations, the world would ultimately be better for it.”
As it happens, keeping people in total solitude didn’t reform them but sent them crazy. And while our enthusiastic chaplain didn’t get his wish to send everybody to prison to straighten them out, so many folks were sent to the new prisons that they quickly became overcrowded and any thoughts of rehabilitation became impractical.
The dream that these wonderful new institutions would easily solve complex problems was at that point dead in the water. Yet the prisons, still physically designed in much the same way as those of the Silent and Separate systems, have endured. New Zealand prisons exist on that blueprint.
Prisons uphold important functions besides rehabilitation (they punish and separate us from the dangerous), but the rehabilitation angle, the primary purpose of the modern prison, is largely left wanting. Gang recruitment and criminal connections that are made inside can often exacerbate rather than improve problems.
For people under the age of 20 who are imprisoned, more than 75 per cent will be convicted of another crime two years after release.
As the politics around crime come increasingly to the fore, prison will be offered as a solution by many. I am far from sure that it is.
To genuinely make inroads into the problems of crime, we must get ahead of it. Currently, we tend to wait for a crime to occur – creating victims – and then we pour money into punishment, a large chunk of which is in the running of prisons with their revolving doors.
A smarter way would be to fortify situations before the crime occurs. A significant part of this would be the targeting of at-risk kids. As Frederick Douglass once said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Tackling the drivers of crime won’t just reduce the number of victims, but it will also create better, more vibrant and healthy communities.
Such an approach would take a significant reimagining of our approach to crime and justice, and it would also require a long timeframe to implement. So be it. I am convinced that this is the best, nay, the only viable option for genuine success.
We shouldn’t take prisons out of the equation, of course, but policies that see them as an answer alone ought to be viewed with suspicion.
When the election campaigning kicks off in earnest later this year, I’d like to hear as much talk about prevention as prisons, but I’m not holding my breath.
Long timeframes and complex solutions do not make good campaign strategies. The fact of the matter is this: the public responds to easy-sounding solutions.
So that’s what we’ll get.
- Dr Jarrod Gilbert is the Director of Independent Research Solutions and a sociologist at the University of Canterbury.
