Build prisons not eco-towns says the Telegraph

[Blagsta]

nearly two thirds of the males sentenced, and half of the women sentenced fitted a diagnosis of personality disorder.

http://www.mind.org.uk/Information/F...atistics+8.htm

72% of male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders. One in five prisoners have four of the five major mental health disorders.

Mental health issues amongst prisoners are often linked to previous experiences of violence at home and sexual abuse. About half of women and about a quarter of men in prison have suffered from violence at home while about one in three women report having suffered sexual abuse compared with just under one in 10 men.

http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/subsection.asp?id=438

 

[Blagsta]

Literacy is also a big problem in the prison population

Half of the 72,000 prisoners in England and Wales have serious problems with reading, and four-fifths with writing, according to the Government

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/socialinclusion/adults/indexpris.html

 

[Blagsta]

More than 70% of the prison population has two or more mental health disorders. Male prisoners are 14 times more likely to have two or more disorders than men in general, and female prisoners 35 times more likely than women in general
- Social Exclusion Unit (2004) quoting, Psychiatric Morbidity

Among Prisoners In England And Wales, (1998)



The suicide rate in prisons is almost 15 times higher than in the general population. In 2002 the rate was 143 per 100,0001 compared to 9 per 100,000 in the general population.2

1 The National Service Framework For Mental Health: Five

Years On, Department of Health (2004)

2 Samaritans (2004) Information Resource Pack (2004

http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/information/mental-health-overview/statistics/#offending

 

[Azrael]

Given that the majority of people in prison suffer from some sort of mental health issue, how is an austere regime going to help. This is what I want you to respond to.

I have, by saying ill prisons should be excused, and pointing out the obvious point that I don't want "people in prison" to undergo hard labour, but convicts, a specific category of prisoner. Your majority appears to include people on remand and female prisoners to bump up the numbers, which isn't relevant to hard labour for convicts.

Your link says that 39% of sentenced males have "significant neurotic problems". It mentions another study that says 12% of convicts are unwell. Neither is a majority.

Detailed studies of the type of criminal who's mentally ill would been to be done. If it's petty crooks, then it wouldn't effect hard labour, used against serious criminals. And it's effectiveness would depend on the type of mental illness/anxiety/phobia. Alone, they've very broad categories. And as I asked above, what safeguards are there to catch out prisoners who malinger?

 

[Azrael]

The Prison Reform Trust links are referring to this report, which in turn gets its figures from the "SEU", which I take to be the Social Exclusion Unit. In addition to wanting to know how the figures were collected, I'd have to read a detailed breakdown on the broad category of "personality disorder" and "mental disorder" used in the report before I can comment how hard labour would affect the afflicted convicts. Is drug addiction included, for example? Given that they had the mens rea to be convicted, this report clearly isn't referring to the totally insane.

It's well known that prison is too often used as a dumping ground for mentally ill people who used to be sent to the asylums. These need to be rebuilt anyway, albeit not in the way they were.

If the majority of criminals are unsuited for hard labour, there's still a significant minority (30% even by the broad criteria in the Reform Trust's report) who are quite sane and can be set to work.

 

[Bakunin]

I have, by saying ill prisons should be excused, and pointing out the obvious point that I don't want "people in prison" to undergo hard labour, but convicts, a specific category of prisoner. Your majority appears to include people on remand and female prisoners to bump up the numbers, which isn't relevant to hard labour for convicts.

Your link says that 39% of sentenced males have "significant neurotic problems". It mentions another study that says 12% of convicts are unwell. Neither is a majority.

Detailed studies of the type of criminal who's mentally ill would been to be done. If it's petty crooks, then it wouldn't effect hard labour, used against serious criminals. And it's effectiveness would depend on the type of mental illness/anxiety/phobia. Alone, they've very broad categories. And as I asked above, what safeguards are there to catch out prisoners who malinger?

Hard labour has been tried and has failed. If it worked, Dartmoor (and prisons like it) wouldn't be the outmoded penal concept it is today.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...tor-damns-prison-that-time-forgot-752198.html

And, if you're thinking of a hard regime with maximum security and minimum privileges, then Alcatraz didn't work out too well either:

http://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp

 

[Azrael]

Hard labour has been tried and has failed.

This simply isn't so: hard labour was steadily abolished for ideological reasons, early in the 20th century. When we had it the prison population was around 14,500 (in 1900) and crime was generally thought to be low. Dartmoor is "outmoded" only in the sense it's been allowed to become overcrowded and pointless, both a direct consequence of abolishing the purposeful regime of punishment we used to have. Prison should be used both as punishment and for punishment.

How would you have convicts treated?

 

[tbaldwin]

I agree about persuading people to make the right choices, although I'd say it should be a combination of carrot and stick, not just encouragement. I've no problem with remission for hard word or good behaviour in general, so long as it's not too much (the old system allowed up to one-sixth remission). What do you have in mind when you say convicts should have choices about how they serve their sentences?

Yeah i'd say a combination of carrot and stick too.
What i have in mind by choice is that prisoners should get as many choices as possible. Choice of prisons some where they would work for 12 hours a day and have lesser sentences.
The work they do and the choices they make should prepare them for life outside.
I would also sell off most of the prisons in inner city areas or rebuild them maybe as hotels! And the majority of new prisons would be built miles from where most criminals live.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

We've had a Government claiming to have been doing that for the last 12 years.

Sadly, Labour's major achievement in crime has been to facilitate the importation of foreign criminals.

British crime for British criminals.

 

[Blagsta]

The Prison Reform Trust links are referring to this report, which in turn gets its figures from the "SEU", which I take to be the Social Exclusion Unit. In addition to wanting to know how the figures were collected, I'd have to read a detailed breakdown on the broad category of "personality disorder" and "mental disorder" used in the report before I can comment how hard labour would affect the afflicted convicts. Is drug addiction included, for example? Given that they had the mens rea to be convicted, this report clearly isn't referring to the totally insane.

It's well known that prison is too often used as a dumping ground for mentally ill people who used to be sent to the asylums. These need to be rebuilt anyway, albeit not in the way they were.

If the majority of criminals are unsuited for hard labour, there's still a significant minority (30% even by the broad criteria in the Reform Trust's report) who are quite sane and can be set to work.

I'm pointing out that there is a link between mental health/emotional problems and crime. A lot of mental health problems have their roots in childhood abuse. How is an "austere" regime going to help. You still haven't answered.

 

[Blagsta]

four out of five women in prison have a mental health problem, many are drug and alcohol dependent, around half report being victims of childhood abuse or domestic violence, a third sexually abused, and 20% have been in care. Women recently released from custody are 36 times more likely to commit suicide than the general popultion

http://www.equalities.gov.uk/media_zone/press_releases/women_in_prison.aspx

 

[TheDave]

Article written by the same bloke who thinks Harry Potter is a lefty-liberal conspiracy. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/e...urprise-the-whole-thing-is-a-liberal-fantasy/

 

[Blagsta]

Twenty-three percent of the adult prison population has spent time in care, although care leavers account for less than 1% of the total population; 30% of children in custody have been in care.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/apr/20/care-system-failures