Home      Login

Abstract: 

“Common-sense” justifications of prison suggest that “prison works” by incapacitation—it takes people out of society and thus gives communities a rest from those who have broken the law; through individual and general deterrence—it makes those who might be thinking about committing a crime think again; by punishing those who do actually commit crimes; and by rehabilitating—it helps those who have committed crimes to think through the causes of their offending so as to change their behavior by developing new skills, which they are then able to put to good use on release from custody. These justifications are now so widespread and accepted among our politicians, media commentators, and the public that no one bothers to question whether they are actually true or not—whether they are “nonsense” rather than “common sense”—and the one place where we can forget about “evidence-led practice” in relation to public policy is when prisons are discussed. It would be easy to unmask these false justifications by patiently pointing out the realities about who gets imprisoned and who does not; the relationship—or otherwise—between the crime rate and the rate of imprisonment; what happens to people when they are inside; and, especially, what happens to them after they are released in relation to being reconvicted. But we know all of this; we know that prison fails by almost every measure that it sets for itself; we know that prison is a useless, outdated, bloated Victorian institution that is well past its sell-by date; we know, in short, that prison is a fiasco. How, then, do we create a skepticism about what prison was and now is and what is claimed for it by its supporters—that broad coalition of media commentators, big business, and politicians of both parties whom we might term the “prison-industrial complex”?

Keywords: 

Affiliations:  1: Birmingham City University.