What has just happened?
The recent statement from the European Commission has thrown the UK rehabilitation system into the spotlight. Illuminated in a recent study on detainees’ experience of incarceration, interviews with inmates informed of an emerging culture of “learned deception”,[1] where participation in classes arises not out of a want for learning or for change, but simply out of an understanding that these present “a possibility of getting out quicker”.[2]
What does this mean?
This lack of dignity that plagues the modern detention context in many ways renders rehabilitative objectives redundant. Despite the emerging liberal optimism for a transformation of the prison context, engendering an experience of self-development and reformation, penological studies demonstrate an overwhelming obstacle. Certainly, the advocacy for rehabilitative programmes in the form of education and training workshops; vocational seminars; counselling sessions; etc., unquestionably present opportunities for detainees to target their criminogenic needs and prevent recidivism, yet without a basic respect for human dignity, these objects are futile.
Without the necessary respect for detainees’ individuality and identities, courses such as these are viewed primarily as seeking to render detainees “submissive, passive and compliant.”[3] Owing to the State’s obsession with the ‘rehabilitation rhetoric’, detainees face insurmountable pressures to detach from their previous identities and pursue intense methods of “self-creation”.[4] In the prison context, many detainees’ “language and identities [are] unrecognisable”.[5]
In theory, rehabilitative vehicles of ‘support’ and ‘guidance’ present encouraging possibilities for detainees to gain new life skills and knowledge to prepare for social reintegration and prevent recidivism.
Yet in reality, such alienation and detachment from their identities leave offenders lost, disoriented and “condemned to disadvantage”.[6]
Instead of approaching rehabilitation meaningfully, detainees report that these schemes feel “more like playing a game”.[7] Cluing up to the opportunity these schemes present for release, detainees learn to adopt the right “language, demeanour and skills”, ultimately allowing these schemes to become tools for manipulation, rather than meaningful devices for rehabilitation.
This rehabilitation rhetoric continues even upon release. Upon reintegration, stingy and unforgiving social policies, combined with the effects of austerity,[8] leave ex-offenders largely alone to fend for themselves in a world they (often) no longer recognise.[9] In this way, many detainees continue to live a life “behind the slab”.[10]Condemned to disadvantage, these vulnerable groups live “in a world of perpetual threat”,[11] “always being wrong-footed in the process of progression”.[12]To actualise rehabilitation in the penal process, the UK must endeavour to meaningfully engage with individuals upon their reintegration in society.
Starkly observed by Liebling, “[p]risoners understand their perception as the ‘dangerous other’.”[13] Where identity is stripped away by the prison experience; where friendships are broken, and families are torn apart; where privacy is invaded; violence is pervasive, and loneliness is perpetual; one must ask: what kind of an individual does the penal experience rebuild? What kind of a rehabilitative system can battle against these abrasive circumstances, mitigate the “pains of imprisonment,”[14] and foster real and meaningful individual rehabilitation? Against the backdrop of such degradation, the rehabilitation rhetoric lives on.
Written by Holly Crowder
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References:
[1] Liebling, A. ‘Moral Performance, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Prison Pain’ (2011) 13 Punishment and Society 530, 531
[2] Ibid.
[3]Liebling, 537.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid 538.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Liebling et al (2011b)
[8] Ismail, N. ‘Contextualising the pervasive impact of macroeconomic austerity on prison health in England: a qualitative study among international policymakers’ (2019) 19 BMC Public Health 1043.
[9] Gaines, S. ‘Lack of Support Puts Prisoners at Risk of Re-offending, Says Report’ (20th March 2007) The Guardian <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2007/mar/20/homeaffairs.politics> Accessed 15th January 2021.
[10] Liebling., 538.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Liebling, 544.
[14] Crewe, ‘Depth, Weight, Tightness: Revisiting the Pains of Imprisonment’ (2011) 13 Punishment and Society 509.
Disclaimer: This article (and any information accessed through links in this article) is provided for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.