With the recent election and the fact the Tories, who ran a campaign on getting tougher on crime, won an overall majority I thought I’d upload this article on rehabilitation in prison.
A Treatise on Surviving Prison & The Rehabilitation of the Fittest.
What is prison actually for?
Among the accepted reasons are the protection of the public, retribution against or punishment of the offender and the rehabilitation of the offender in order to facilitate a safe and productive reintroduction to society.
What is often forgotten is that losing one’s liberty is punishment. The mere fact of being in prison serves to protect the public and to penalise the offender. It is only right that there are sanctions that can be imposed for failing to comply with the prison regime. However, assuming that offenders abide by prison rules, they should not face routine punishment within prisons.
But while in prison, quantifying rehabilitation it is a tricky concept, and I am reminded of Shakespeare’s opening lines to The Merchant of Venice, “But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, What stuff ‘tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn.”
What is rehabilitation? Who decides if it has been achieved? Perhaps more importantly, who can find rehabilitation in prison? I guess the answer is that anybody has the potential to find rehabilitation – but it is damned elusive.
In my personal journey I have had to work hard to gain access to restorative pathways – in order to even start the process of effecting change. I was a first time prisoner, remanded for murder. From the very first instant I knew that I would be spending years, if not decades in prison – the only thing to be decided was how long a tariff I would be serving.
I had killed somebody but I couldn’t at that time figure out how events had escalated into my perpetrating such an explosive act of brutal violence on another person. I was in shock – I didn’t know if I had a serious psychological condition, perhaps a Jekyll & Hyde style faulty gene? I sought help – I asked for advice, I needed to understand what had happened. But everywhere I turned I met with brick walls.
Despite my admissions, according to the prison system, as an un-convicted prisoner I could not be rehabilitated. I had to spend the first six months on remand waiting for the judicial process to run its course. When I was convicted and sentenced I could finally apply to engage in Offending Behavioural Programmes.
I was knocked back. I didn’t even get to the interview and assessment stage. I was simply told that I didn’t meet the criteria for the courses that were being offered in my first prison.
This was how I first became aware of ‘OASYS’, a mysterious algorithm that calculates my risk levels. It draws information from a variety of reports and observations and is used to quantify who I might pose a risk to, my potential triggers, risk categories and my likelihood of re-offending.
While I was obviously High-Risk in areas, paradoxically I had a very low overall risk of re-offending, somewhere around 9%. At that time it was unlikely that you would be accepted onto behavioural programmes with a re-offending score lower than 50% – there was such demand placed on these programmes that only the highest risk and most prolific offenders were eligible. Ironically, prolific and lifelong criminals were often unwilling to engage with the psychology and programmes teams. If you have read certain of my other blogs you will know that I am partial to a delicious irony – and this is a beauty.
Those prisoners that are determined and motivated to change are often unable to access Behavioural Programmes, while attendance is mandatory for those that are unwilling to engage or disinterested in change.
I was fortunate in two regards. First that I am a fairly articulate and literate man; second that my case was given to a very supportive and pro-active Offender Supervisor within the prison. He advised me on the best avenues to pursue, the courses of action to take and I was able to correspond with the programmes teams to make my case.
I was told that I might be able to have my case ‘weighted’, perhaps there may be some elements of my lifestyle and offending that would enable the programmes team to apply for a ‘Clinical Over-ride’ in order to include me on their courses.
But I had no criminal associates. I did not have a high-risk lifestyle. I had no addiction issues. I understood the concept of actions and consequences. I had worked all of my life. I had a home. While I did illicit some sympathy from those I spoke to, there was little they could do. It was reminiscent of Little Britain’s “Computer says no.”
My Offender Supervisor explained that I would have to take ownership of my own rehabilitation – my progression was in my own hands. I’ll always remember the advice he gave me.
“So far you have been a model prisoner and I have no expectation that you will be anything else but a model prisoner for the remainder of your sentence. That will be noted by the parole Board. But they key question they will ask is – ‘What will happen if we recommend this guy for release and he ends up in a similar situation again?’ If you haven’t done behavioural work you will not be able to show them that you have changed. They won’t take a risk and you will never be approved for parole.”
When I was eventually re-categorised from B-Cat to C-Cat I had a difficult decision to make. I could apply for a move to C-Category prison that was still in the area. By all accounts it was a decent prison and I would still be close enough to keep getting visits from my friends. I could run down years of my sentence there and worry about my parole closer to the end of my tariff.
My other option was to apply for a move to a prison more than 200 miles away that would enable me to work on my sentence plan and engage with the behavioural work that I would need to complete in order to progress. But I would lose contact with the majority of my friends. God knows life gets in the way – I can hardly think of more than three people that would have been worth a 400 mile round trip to spend an hour with in a visit hall.
My need to progress was greater than my need for visits. I made the big move. It took months to arrange but eventually I landed in HMP Erlestoke. I took inspiration from Shawshank’s Andy Dufrane and wrote a stream of applications and letters to the programmes team in the prison. I was extremely lucky that there was a riot in the prison which saw two wings closed down and around 150 prisoners being shipped out to other jails. I subsequently jumped up the waiting list overnight. All in all it only took 18 months of weekly letters and a riot to secure my place on my first Offending Behavioural Programme.
Some courses can run to 20 weeks or more – meaning they are limited to two sittings per year with 10 prisoners participating in each sitting. There may be as few as three prisons that deliver a particular course. The numbers are pretty straightforward – there may be as few as sixty men that can start a particular behavioural course each year. Now imagine if you are told that you are number 245 on a waiting list for that course.
I regularly meet lads who have been waiting 5 years or more to achieve the targets on their sentence plan. I’ve met lads who have waited years only to be told at the assessment stage that they don’t meet the criteria for ‘Course A’ after all. Perhaps they should consider investigating if they are suitable to take part in ‘Course B’ like snakes and ladders they are back to 245 on a new waiting list. As a result, many men have served years past their tariff and are still years from progression to open conditions and ultimately to parole.
When I got my place on behavioural courses it was partly through random happenstance and partly at the expense of others – a zero-sum game & Darwinian parallel – for in our prison life, while most will survive, rehabilitation is the preserve of the fittest and most determined.
