Why our prisons aren’t working, and what’s needed

Despite the imposition of “special measures”, “urgent notifications”, “improvement plans”, and “change agendas” in our prisons, something we mortals are doing is not “quite” working there. This is despite some very good humans doing their absolute best, with all their human strength and might!

We as Christians are called to care deeply about the state of our prisons. There are many references in the Bible to prison and imprisonment (both actual and metaphorical). And we are given a very clear instruction in the book of Hebrews (13v3): “Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.”

Wherever you sit on the theories of imprisonment debate (punishment or rehabilitation etc), it is probably fair to say that the headlines about “releases in error” from some of our high-profile prisons have risked bringing confidence in our criminal justice system, and in our safety as a nation, to an all-time low.

Even those who believe that the best way of keeping society safe is by locking humans up and throwing away the key might be shaken to hear that on every level, it really isn’t working. It isn’t working for victims, perpetrators, staff, politicians or the tax-paying general public. Through a range of complex processes that have evolved over the years in our prisons, (and a continual reduction in resources, training and experience), some of these individuals are inadvertently bouncing back out of prison before their time is served, and before there has been any attempt at rehabilitation or assessment of risk. There is no suggestion of sabotage or corruption here; it is just that, despite best efforts, “the system isn’t working”.

The truth of our prisons today is that they are severely overcrowded, and that in the main part, the day job is not “rehabilitation”, but “bed management”. The fabric of our buildings was mostly constructed in Victorian times, and was designed with the aim of responding to crimes of petty theft in situations of poverty. Our walls and infrastructure were never designed with highly-organised gangs of drug dealers, mobile phones and unmanned drones in mind. And even in “the dark old days”, a cell designed for one man in the UK, would hold one man, not three (as sometimes today).

Despite advances in what we understand about trauma, neurodiverse needs, drug addiction, restoration, rehabilitation, plus the evidence for “what works” in rehabilitative criminal justice systems such as Scandinavia (where the crime epidemic is in decline), our criminal justice system in Britain continues, in the main, to be built on punishment and incapacitation, not (as many of us would like to believe) rehabilitation, restoration – or any other science that supports a reduction in criminality, crime and future victims.

So, if humans are doing their best and it’s not working, do we need to find some new versions of “special measures”, “urgent notifications’”, “improvement plans”, and “change agendas” – plus more public enquiries and reviews? Or are our prisons and our criminal justice system a hopeless lost cause that we just need to accept and get used to, along with the impact on both those who live and work in prisons, and the communities that these people belong to and return to?

The good news is that the solution does not lie with good humans, grafting even harder and digging even deeper, relying on our limited human strength to turn things around. Prisons, and imprisonment are highly Biblical topics that Jesus knew and cares a lot about. Despite coming from a scientific background of Forensic Psychology, and overseeing and observing many psychological interventions in my time leading and governing prisons, and the marginal gains that come from these programmes, I have been able to observe pockets of something much more profound happening in our prisons. This is when Jesus is invited into the bleakness and brokenness of our prisons and the lives of individual prisoners.

It’s now much overlooked, but the design of our Victorian prisons was perhaps far ahead of its time when it came to the solution: there was the leadership structure having a Christian leader (the Chaplain) working at the top of the organisation alongside the Governor, the high windows forcing a prisoner to look up to God and not out into the world, the solitude of single cells aimed at providing opportunity for ‘repentance’ and the radial design with the large chapel in a central location, putting faith at the core of the regime.

Psalm 107v13-16 (NLT) says: “‘Lord, help!’ they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He led them from the darkness and deepest gloom; he snapped their chains. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. For he broke down their prison gates of bronze; he cut apart their bars of iron.”

In my 20 years serving front line in prisons, the only time that I have seen someone in prison absolutely, permanently turn their life around, is through a relationship with Christ. This is because only through Christ can a human being become totally reborn and made into “a new thing’”. Only through Christ can we repent of our sins and be truly forgiven – and then free of the burden, the history, the baggage, the trauma and the judgement that humans might always hold. Only through Christ can we be totally forgiven, and my observation is that only through Christ do victims, perpetrators and our wider society have hope of being entirely “restored” in their earthly life.