When arguments for prison reform and rehabilitation come about, advocates often find that they can be tough sells. The public does not find the case for prison reform and rehabilitation to be very sympathetic ones. The fact that it costs more to rehabilitate an offender than to simply let them languish in prison, serves as one of the main determinants to seeing any holistic approach towards prison reform.
While there has been a slow crawl towards the introduction of these programmes over the years, we are still lagging far behind what is needed. As it stands, academic and vocational rehabilitative efforts for small sections of the prison population have been implemented with some success. This is a good step towards the fostering of a culture that treats its imprisoned as citizens capable of growth. Given that large amounts of prisoners are uneducated and impoverished, gaining essential knowledge and skills can go a long way in contributing to positive changes in their lives during and after release. Decades of research has proven that prisoners who are exposed to and participate in prison rehabilitative programmes are more likely to not reoffend after their release. Given how tremendously high the cycle of recidivism/repeat offenders are in our society and the impacts of this, it is high time we reform and rehabilitate our prison system.
With persons being imprisoned daily for the most miniscule of crimes, this has led to the urgent issue of overcrowding within the prisons that leads to a host of other problems to be addressed. Given the size of the prison population – both convicted and on remand – there is a commingling of persons from all walks of life and criminal levels. With no separation, violent and non-violent offenders exist in the same space often resulting in the influencing, recruiting and hardening of non-violent offenders.
Our reluctance to admit the necessity of rehabilitative programmes lies in our belief that someone who is imprisoned automatically relinquishes their right to basic humanity. They face a certain stigmatization and banishment that makes it difficult for them to live and earn. Prisons are cesspools of physical and psychological trauma, yet some offenders prefer to return behind iron bars because of how difficult stigma and attempts to reintegrate as a law-abiding citizen can be.
There are always those who argue that the prison system as it exists is necessary to fight the high levels of crime we experience. While there certainly should be measures in place to hold the criminally inclined accountable, our prison system as we know it does more harm than good. This is of course tied to the principles of racist and capitalist exploitation from which the prison system emerged. Prisons themselves are not the problem, but rather the entire justice system which was founded upon and is still based on systematic bigotry and class divisions. While during enslavement, punishment and commoditization of black bodies were done by slave owners, with emancipation, this role would be taken up by the colonial state. Indentureship would bring a new set of people whose bodies and labour were to be controlled and profited off by the state.
The colonial state was ruthless in not only detailing the most innocuous of things such as loitering, vagrancy crimes but also ruthless in persecuting its target victims for said crimes. It was based largely on not only control of population, but particularly labour. This is why much of what is defined as crime and the state’s responses to it are still today rooted in capitalist class interests. Anything that might provoke social unrest, threaten property relations or politically challenge the status quo is criminalized and effectively shut down.
The history of our justice and prison system would show how it is no coincidence that those who are languishing behind prison bars are overwhelmingly poor and black. The justice system is set up to extract wealth from those who are least able to afford it. What this does is further contribute to the perpetuation of individual and community poverty that leads to the further stigmatization and disenfranchisement of the targeted groups. The class prejudice of capitalism underlies all of this. While the rich and powerful are frequently allowed to defraud, rob and kill with impunity, the poor and the working class who are often pushed to crime through desperation are sent to languish in jail.
Persons who are imprisoned are not devoid of humanity or the capacity to grow and develop. Effective systems must be put in place to ensure that those who live behind bars are provided with opportunities to rehabilitate and explore other options outside of the one in which they have been confined.
