Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
previous hands-off policy of intervention at early stages in the development history
of 'at risk' children that often leads to criminal actions and then jailing of offenders
who are caught. This often ends up by habituating adults to a life of crime, with
huge costs, not only to the victims of crime, but to the taxpayers that fund the justice
and prison system.
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Tertiary Behavioural Treatments
Many have observed that high recidivism rates are a result of some people being
criminal-minded, with lack of respect for the rights of others, concluding that only
aggressive, intrusive policies seem to work in reducing crime. Yet it is increas-
ing obvious that jails brutalize rather than rehabilitate inmates and rarely prepare
those incarcerated for a life outside prison, making the situation worse for those
imprisoned, although organizations, such as the John Howard Society in the U.K.,
have a long history of helping offenders to readjust to society. Studies of those who
reoffend in the U.K. (HMSO 2002; CSJ
2009a
) have shown that many have poor
reasoning and thinking abilities, with low levels of literacy and numeracy, as well as
few employable skills, which means they have great trouble in finding employment
and housing, while in the U.S.A. a report for the Dept. of Justice revealed that 16 %
had mental health challenges. Such information shows that there is a great need for
more rehabilitative measures, which have been limited until politicians began to
realise that the escalating and heavy burden of prison costs was becoming too much
for the public sector to bear. One result has been a proliferation of reports describing
ways in which rehabilitative measures can help reduce rates of re-offending (HMPS
2002
; Centre for Social Justice 2009). Within jails Gilligan and Lee (
2004
, p. 323)
have emphasized that the provision of therapy and education, especially using cog-
nitive methods for anger management and control, not punishment, in centres for
human development, have produced major changes, concluding that: “if it seems
utopian to dream of replacing prisons with schools, let us remind ourselves that pris-
ons already are schools—schools in crime and violence”. More recently a practical
demonstration of the consequences of high recidivism rates and the effectiveness of
policies to reduce recidivism was shown in a report entitled
Through the Gate
(PBE
2010
), which calculated that crime by released prisoners costs the British economy
ﾣ 11 billion a year. However it was shown that the St. Giles Trust, a London-based
charity, reduced the rate of re-offending in a sample of 583 prisoners by 40 % after
providing intensive services to criminals before, as well as after, their release from
jail, in which help from reformed offenders was a crucial feature in creating trust for
the prisoners. The support consisted of finding accommodation, providing drug and
alcohol addiction treatment, training in various vocations, giving advice and access
to role models. The study estimated that ﾣ1 spent on rehabilitation brought a ﾣ 10
return in lower crime costs, so that a 10 % reduction in re-offending rates would
save ﾣ 1 billion a year. Similar striking results have also been shown in many U.S.
studies but as yet there is not enough money or staff in most countries to implement
such schemes on a wider scale, though Scandinavian countries have been far more
progressive than most in this regard.
