Are our prisons rehabilitating offenders?

I WAS a prison visitor at Dartmoor for years and thought that conditions in the jail were too soft. Many prisoners enjoyed a better standard of living than they had known outside: a warm bed, three good meals a day and periods of ‘open association’ in which to smoke and enjoy TV, snooker and other games. ‘Where is the punishment for their crimes?’ I asked myself. ‘Where are the consequences for wrongdoing?’ I would introduce shorter, but much tougher, sentences. I’d like to see a three-tier prison system with all criminals entering at the first tier — a harsh regime, including hard labour with few privileges. Then a second tier, with a mixture of hard labour, reeducation and some small privileges; then a third, consisting of a large element of education and training, developing new skills to widen their job opportunities on release. To qualify for tiers two and three, a prisoner would have to behave. Any misconduct would see the offender revert back to tier one to start the qualifying process all over again. Meanwhile, I would initiate from infant school a process of making a person aware of the consequences of misconduct from the earliest age. We need tougher sentencing, combining punishment with retraining and education, not easier sentences and ‘better’ prison conditions. We simply fail to ‘punish’ people for breaking the law.

Name and address supplied. YOU don’t get people to behave well by treating them badly. Prisons should be about equipping and motivating people to live a good and useful life, but what they learn is how to survive prison — or not, which can lead to frustration, self-harm or suicide. Ann Widdecombe is spot on when she says many prisoners need basic literacy, numeracy and work skills, and every week in prison should be spent working and/or getting an education. What she leaves out is that there is no way prisons can deliver enough courses while so many people are in prison. For less serious offenders, courses should be provided, under supervision, in the community. She may be too optimistic in relying on volunteers; it will be hard to recruit enough, even if there are sufficient prison officers to escort them to classrooms.

MARTIN WRIGHT, London SW2.