Teenagers need the power to step off the trouble train
No one who has power, status and security wants to give it up. And it’s especially had for anyone who makes policy or implements it to admit that they should share their power.
The people who run the country generally only talk to, and are influenced by, others like themselves: graduates with good grammar and a history of working hard and doing well. So it felt like a historic day last month when I went into No 10 Downing Street with a bunch of teenagers who don’t fit that mould.
To read the full article please click to the link below
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2009/apr/15/mark-johnson-inside-out
http://www.mark-johnson.org.uk/about/
Why are we turning Prisoners into Drug Addicts?
We spend millions helping drug-dependent inmates – then send them to open prisons where narcotics are a way of life.
Twenty-six-year-old Shane Brown’s heroin addiction had cost him and his local community dear. In March 2004, after numerous thefts to feed the habit that he’d begun as a teenager, Brown*, from Manchester, robbed a corner shop. He was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.
Housed in a secure wing at Forest Bank, a medium-security prison in Salford, Greater Manchester, Brown began to turn a corner. Segregated from other inmates and therefore unpressured by dealers among them, he underwent a rehabilitation programme ad started to come off drugs. He was ready to begin a more productive, crime-free life. But in April 2006 he was transferred to Kirkham open prison in Lancashire. In this more relaxed regime heroin use was rife and segregation non-existent. Brown found the pressure from dealers almost impossible to bear. “He pleaded not to be sent to an open prison and when he got there he informed a prison officer about his concerns, but nothing was done,” says his former barrister Phillip Martin.
The following month Brown decided the only answer was to commit yet another crime – abscond while on a visit to his family – in order to get back to a secure prison. “He told everyone he was going to walk out and walk he did,” says Martin.
He was duly sentenced to a further four months at Forest Bank. He has now been released, but his legal advisers do not know if he has finally conquered his addiction – or whether he has returned to crime.
Brown’s case is not unique. Criminal lawyer Simon Creighton has one client who has absconded five times to get away from the drugs in open prisons. One ex-prisoner reported inmates self harming or blockading themselves in their cells for the same reason.
These desperate manoeuvres are a consequence of the criminal justice system’s incoherent policy towards addicts. We now have a record 81,000 people in prison, more than six out of ten of them hardended drug users. Well over half of the total prison population will go back inside repeatedly after reoffending to feed their habit. To combat this problem, we spend £80 million annually on intensive drug-rehabilitation schemes for those in higher-security prisons then we destroy the benefit by transferring them to open institutions where drug use is endemic and rehab almost unheard of.
“Open prisons undo all the good done on drug-misuse programmes,” says Bobby Cummines, Chief executive of the ex-offenders’ charity Unlock and himself a former prisoner.
“They’re helping to fuel a drug war on our streets and we have beggars, muggings, cars and houses broken into, all to get money fro narcotics.”
Phillip Martin claims that the authorities are complicit and the like in open prisons. “They do little about it because a stoned population is a happy population. It makes prisoners easier to manage.” The authorities, of course, deny this, but according to Mike Trace, chief executive of the Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust, what is certain is that drug screening and other security measures need to be stepped up.
But with the prison service told to make savings of £80 million a year on its running costs for the next three years, controls over access to illegal drugs will inevitably become harder to enforce – and rehabilitation programmes will be squeezed.
In Trace’s view, transferring prisoners with drug problem to open prison make no sense.
“Addicted offenders should only be transferred from higher-security prisons if they’ve completed rehab,” he says. Others would go further and have such offenders skip the open prison stage entirely. Most have served the majority of their sentence and it would be sensible to put many straight on to community punishment orders.
“These allow offenders freedom with strings attached,” says criminologist Roger Moore of Nottingham Trent University. “A requirement for regular drug testing can be inserted. They are cheaper than prison and more likely to be successful.”
Trace too would like to see more post-prison care so that vulnerable offenders are not thrown back into their old drug-using social circles without support and counselling. At present, prisoners over the age of 22 may get an “offender manager”, responsible for making sure they resist temptation, but only if they are sentenced to 12 months or more. Sentences for petty offender are usually too short for them to win a place on – far less complete – a rehabilitation scheme.
But solutions like these require a significant change in politicians’ attitudes. Egged on by the tabloid press, minister are anxious to have seemingly tough policies for drug offenders, rather than recognise that a greater emphasis on treatment can benefit both drug users and taxpayers.
One victim of such short- term thinking is the West Country charity C-Far, which provided residential rehabilitation programmes for young male offenders. C-Far reduced reoffending rates among its 120 participants to 40 percent against a national average of more than 80 percent for this age group.
Nonetheless, the Government withdrew most of its funding two years ago, suggesting that at £16,500 per trainee, C-Far was too expensive – overlooking the fact that, since it costs £37,000 a year to keep just one person in prison, C-Far had in fact saved the Government an estimated £16 million over four years of operation.
“Looking up addicted offenders and then releasing them without support is just crisis management, with millions of taxpayers’ money being wasted,” says Trevor Philpott, founder and former chief executive of C-Far.
But without a major shift in government focus, Prison’s revolving door for drug-fuelled offenders is set to keep on spinning.
By Lois Roger, Reader’s Digest
Online vote to set tasks for criminals
Do you want to see criminals picking up litter? Or should they get their hands dirty removing graffiti? Now you can have a say how the 55,000 given community orders should best spend their time. From today, people can vote via a website on community service scheme for criminals. And the most popular will be adopted by the probation service. Effective in pilot schemes in 54 areas, effective in pilot scheme in 54 areas, the scheme aims to encourage more involvement in the justice system. A MORI poll found people mostly want offenders to clean streets and remove graffiti. Vote at direct.gov.uk/CommunityPayback
Source: Metro, Dt 30.03.09
Give convicts a fresh start, pleads Aitken
The former cabinet minister jailed for perjury has written a landmark report on prison reform
Thousands of prisoners could be released into the community and some ex-offenders allowed to wipe their records clean under landmark proposals from Jonathan Aitken, the former Conservative cabinet minister.
The findings from the former inmate of Belmarsh jail, who served seven months for perjury, mark a significant shift in Conservative ideas on law and order, putting the emphasis on giving criminals a second chance.
He told the Observer that creating an alternative to the “human warehousing” of offenders in overcrowded prisons wit no means of rehabilitation should reduce reoffending. “Punish, yes. But punish thoughtfully, punish constructively,” he added.
His report, to be published tomorrow by the think tank the Centre for Social Justice, will recommend the introduction of supervised halfway homes in the community for some low-risk inmates – women, those recovering from mental illness and ex-service personnel.
Aitken said it would not be a “lax, free-and-easy” regime, but inmates could work and rebuild ties with the community. He also urged reform of the Rehabilitation of offenders Act, reducing the period for which ex-offenders are required to disclose criminal records to any prospective employer. Some convictions, such as murder, never become spent, but minor offenders should be able to wipe the slate clean earlier, Aitken said.
His report, which also suggest prison governors and probation officers be paid bounus for reducing reoffending, was commissioned by the former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith and is being taken seriously in senior Tory circles.
The shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, said yesterday that he was studying plans to use former army camps as halfway homes for offenders which were “in many ways parallel” to Aitken’s proposals, and backed his calls for reform of spent convictions, hailing the report as a “very interesting contribution”.
Aitken said his conclusions were influenced by the experience of his former cellmate, Mickey Aguda, whose funeral he attended last week. “He was a guy who came out of prison with an absolute intention – which he stuck to – of going straight. He had changed, and what he most wanted was to get a job.
“Like most prisoners, the moment they say, ‘And where have you been for the last five years?’ And you disclose it, people just don’t give you an interview.
It’s sometimes just a bit daft not to say that there is a time after which people should be able to have a fresh start.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Aitken also dismissed right-wing claims that prisons are too “cushy” and defended early-release schemes – which the Tories have pledged to scrap – and tagging. The real punishment was deprivation of liberty, not harsh conditions, he said.
“The only people who have TVs in cells are lifers and in my experience TV was one of the worst sources of tension; there are all these arguments about what channels to watch. Prison should be a Spartan experience, but… we are going back to the treadmill if you are going to invent punishments.”
The report also criticises prison officers for turning a blind eye to drugs and home-brewed alcohol in jails. Aitken said his own prison was noticeably quieter at weekends, when drug testing was not conducted, as many inmates got high – followed by frantic attempts on Mondays to flush their systems.
The report marks a personal attempt at redemption for Aitken as well as a political intervention. He was a high flying cabinet minister when the Guardian published allegations that an Arab hotel in violation of ministerial rules. He resigned to sue for libel but was exposed as a perjurer.
Since his release he has campaigned for prison reform. He told the Observer that he would “blush with shame” over his views on prisons during his previous life: “I wasn’t quite ‘local them up and throw away the key’, but I was in that band. I’m bang to rights: I plead guilty to not being thoughtful enough”.
Aitken said jail has “chastened and humbled” him and made him think deeply about his life. Did he consider himself rehabilitated? “In the conventional sense of that word I’m obviously rehabilitated: I am living again, I am not offending, I hope not likely to offend and I’m having a fulfilled, happy, interesting and peaceful life.”
But he denied any wish to resume public life. “I would love to have an influence somewhere, but not in any formal sense. I would love to do something: I have no ambition to be somebody.”
Written by: Jonathan Aitken
Source: The Observer, Dt 22.03.09
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Give prison officers bonuses to rehabilitate
Prison officers would be given cash bonuses to rehabilitate criminals and cut reoffending under new Tory proposals.
A major review of prisons’ policy for the Conservatives by Jonathan Aitken is proposing that prison and probation workers should be rewarded for reductions in the reoffending rates.
Repeat offenders are currently costing the taxpayer at least £12 billion a year, according to the review. Up to three quarters of young offenders, and two thirds of other prisoners, are convicted of a new offence within two years of leaving jail.
John Coster, Editor on video
John Coster, Editor of Inside ‘n’ Out magazine talks on camera about his views on the Criminal Justice System.
Community Media Hub You Tube channel
‘Too many’ mentally ill in prison
Thousands of people with mental health problems are ending up in jail rather than receiving treatment, the Prison Reform Trust has said.
Offering mental health and social care instead of custody would relieve pressure on prisons and could cut reoffending rates, the trust argues.
It says figures show one in 10 inmates has a “serious mental health issue”.
The government said it had made it clear that offenders with severe mental illness should be treated not punished.
Is prison life too soft?
Prisons have become so comfortable that some offenders prefer to stay on the inside rather than face life outside, a prisons officers’ leader said yesterday.
Inmates themselves have admitted conditions are like those at holiday camps, with satellite television and video game consoles on offer as well as free bed and board. Prisoners also receive wages and cash bonuses for good behaviour, while drugs are cheaper in jails than they are on the streets.
Nick Herbert, the Shadow Justice secretary, said: “It is time for a fundamental shake-up of our failing prisons system.” What do you think?
Are British prisons too soft? What would our prisons be like if you were in charge? Should prisoners be denied television and other amenities or is the isolation from family and lack of personal freedom punishment enough?
Should prisoners who behave well earn rewards? Where should we draw the line between punishment and rehabilitation?
Telegraph.co.uk – Debate / Comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/yourview/1905125/Is-prison-life-too-soft.html
Prison ’so cushy inmates won’t escape’
Inmates enjoy such comfort in jail that they are ignoring chances to escape, a prison officers’ leader has claimed.
In one example, a drug dealer regularly broke into a Yorkshire jail over a six-month period, using a ladder to climb the walls and supply inmates with drugs and mobile phones.
The intruder walked across the yard with the ladder and used it to climb up to a cell window, which had been pulled apart with a crowbar and covered by a dummy grille.
Glyn Travis, the assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: “It was an extraordinary case because none of the prisoners inside tried to escape when no doubt they had the opportunity.
By Richard Edwards, Crime Correspondent, Telegraph.co.uk
25 Apr 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1903030/Prison-so-cushy-inmates-wont-escape.html
Government ‘criminalising young’
The government is too quick to criminalise young people for petty offences where informal punishment could be more effective, says a report.
Ex-Youth Justice Board chairman Prof Rod Morgan criticised an “extensive net widening” of the use of summary powers such as cautions and on-the-spot fines.
His report for King’s College, London, urged assessment of the development.
The Ministry of Justice said there was a reluctance to bring young people to court unless necessary.
The report for the college’s Centre for Crime and Justice Studies said: “There is a good deal of anecdotal evidence, for example, that behaviour, particularly that of children and young people, is being criminalised which arguably would be better dealt with informally (school-related misbehaviour, for example) and in previous times was.”