PENAL CONFINEMENT - THE SOLITARY SOLUTION
Article by Tony Cook (New Zealand)
There’s an old saying that goes, “Choose your friends carefully, for you will tend to become as they are,” In other words, fraternize with losers and you’ll likely tend towards the loser lifestyle. Or, fraternize with winners and you’ll more likely tend towards success and happy tax problems. Now my Catholic friend Jack bears me out on this one. He says there must be something in it, because most of his friends are not well to do, and just look at him, he’s as poor as a church mouse too. Being a good friend, I naturally agree with him and never mention the cost of raising his eight children.
Politically, to me, imprisonment is part of the welfare portfolio. It simply represents a certain treatment of a section of society that for one reason or another are not coping. The principle objectives of imprisonment are:
To temporarily /permanently remove offenders from society.
To punish and repay society for offence/s.
To rehabilitate offenders.
To reintegrate offenders back into society as appropriate.
To not have offenders re-offend.
At the distinct risk of sounding like a “do gooder” I wish to declare that I consider every human being, no matter how much of a scum bag he/she may appear to be, to be worthy of rescue and respect. Equally, I also consider the victims of offenders to be entitled, not to revenge, but to true actual compensation, (i.e. based on actual costs only) from the offender where that is possible and appropriate.
To this end, I consider the present prison system in most countries to be conducted in a manner which achieves very little of the foregoing.
I would therefore like to offer a very different approach to the problem.
To begin with, the moment a prisoner is allowed to fraternize with other prisoners his/her chances of tending towards better things is about zilch. In fact, even worse, he/she usually learns a great deal more about criminal activities. The worst aspect of fraternizing with other prisoners, however, is that he/she literally joins another community, another very undesirable strata of society (within a prison), where he/she is welcomed and accepted. This tends to reinforce the criminal element rather than the reverse. Not exactly a great recipe for incentive not to re-offend. Also the punishment effect is severely compromised.. The long record of this type of imprisonment has a sad and pathetic rate of success at the tax payers’ expense.
In my opinion, a different approach entirely is called for. Prisons should be redesigned to cater for solitary confinement exclusively, including exercise yards, work areas, visitation areas, everything. If you go to prison you will never meet or even see another prisoner. The only people you will see are trained prison staff, specially qualified social workers, priests (optional), and only people of positive influence. If personal visitors do not qualify, they do not visit. But just as importantly, prisoners’ accommodations should be designed to provide comfortable and stress free (not luxurious) living, including some entertaining amenities, but no phone.
Self-esteem is the most important aspect to maintain and/or re-build. Treating prisoners as being worthless by housing them in substandard old-world harsh accommodations is a pretty good way of ensuring their self-esteem will remain at zilch.
Finally, they must work for their keep. An apportionment of their earnings will be paid towards family support commitments where applicable. The balance of their earnings will go towards the cost of their imprisonment. After their release, any outstanding amounts will still be due and repayable, by installments or lump sum, as for standard unsecured loans. No passport will be available until this commitment is satisfied. Prison should not be free, or a tax burden on law abiding citizens.
First time offenders will enjoy shorter sentences than is given currently. (bearing in mind solitary confinement is a lot more onerous plus payment of time served is also due), and generous terms of parole. Re-offenders, however, will not likely enjoy progressively increasing terms that would apply, increased workloads, and ever increasing debt.
These suggested arrangements are expensive to provide initially, but the law breakers of society will be paying for their stay. In addition, the circumstances of re-offending are severely altered as to be most unattractive.
Under all these conditions it will be obvious that prison uprisings, riots and such would be well nigh impossible, just as the spread of drugs and other undesirable practices of current prison life. Prison security generally would be much easier to administer and control, thus providing better and less dangerous working conditions for prison staff.
Solitary confinement is not nice, even in very livable conditions. But it gives a meaningful “time out” for prisoners who obviously need it. It also removes them completely from the adverse environment that obviously contributes towards their antisocial behaviour, and allows time for appropriate trained assistance towards proper rehabilitation.
The repayment of their prison stay will serve to remind them that there really is a debt to society to be repaid for each and every time they visit.
Whereas, it may be true we’ve come a long way since Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” another update of the prison system is still long overdue.
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