Treat prisoners as citizens and maybe we’ll get same in return
CRIME and punishment. What do those words mean to you? Is it simply a “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” thought or is it “do the crime, do the time” kind of thinking?
After all most citizens don’t care what happens inside prison – but we should.
When Justice Secretary Keith Brown said this week that we need credible alternatives to prison it set the cat amongst the pigeons as we have one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe. This, despite, many promises by the SNP to sort the issue.
Fair play to Brown – he threw up his hands and admitted they’ve “got a job on our hands”.
I turned to my colleague, Professor David Wilson, himself a former prison governor and asked him if there is a credible alternative?
Are we really that dangerous a country that our prisons are full to overflowing? Is our default setting “straight to jail and don’t pass go”?
David gave me some food for thought. He said: “Think about Norway. We are no more prone to crime than Norwegians but it’s just Norway chooses not to send so many offenders to jail. Their maximum sentence is 21 years and they gave that to their worst serial killer who murdered 23 people.”
I’m not sure that’s a good example, David. Most of us want harsher sentences for serious crimes not less.
“That’s my point,” he added. “Where does your attitude come from and why doesn’t it exist in Norway? Think of the Special Unit!
A radical change of thinking is urgently needed to prevent offenders repeating the same crimes
Why did we close it when it was so successful? Because it offended a sensibility.”
The Special Unit was an experiment set up in 1973 in Barlinnie to rehabilitate the most violent offenders considered “unmanageable” using art and therapy.
The men included Jimmy Boyle and Hugh Collins, whose prison lives consisted of stabbing warders, assaulting other convicts, dirty protests and riots. They were humans treated as animals. Could a new approach change them?
Inside the unit they were given access to the kitchen to make tea, cell doors were open for 15 hours a day, they wore their own clothes and saw visitors when they wanted. Instead of a prison it was a home.
They had access to counselling – and this took the form of art. Both
Boyle and Collins became successful artists and sculptors on release. Neither offended again.
There’s a magazine inside the National Library of Scotland, The Key. It contains writing, drawings and poetry by the men incarcerated in the unit. It was meant to be distributed to other prisoners but this was vetoed by the prison department so only three editions exist.
But this magazine, published in 1974, might hold the answers. Boyle and Collins found art and expression freed them from their destructive violent natures.
Perhaps ‘the key’ to unlocking rehabilitation methods lies in this sentence from an anonymous resident in the Special Unit.
“Our experience has shown that if a person is treated in a decent, humane manner then he will reciprocate in like fashion. The aims of the unit will follow the official line whereby the inmates are helped to become better CITIZENS and not better PRISONERS.”