If You Need 'Support' To Stay Out Of Prison, That's a Warning Sign It's Where You Truly Belong

The flipchart in the corner of the staff meeting room, deep inside a prison in the south-east of England, tells its own story about what our overcrowded jails are having to deal with, day in day out. Under the heading “Challenges”, it lists gangs, the destruction of cells, prisoners exploiting each other and complex behaviours. Committed, hard-working staff talk about the high levels of psychosis, often combined with drug abuse. They provide examples of people actually committing crimes to go back into jail to get some respite from their chaotic, dysfunctional lives.

To tackle the current prisons crisis in England and Wales, planned changes to sentencing will see almost 2,000 people released early from Thursday and over the following month. It is the first tranche of the estimated 5,000 releases that will take place in phases over the coming year.

Hw of course has two things to focus on, both of which boil down to being soft on criminal excuses, as you'd expect for the 'Guardian':

As a first step, we need to address the staggering increase in people recalled to prison. The power that probation officers have to send someone back behind bars plays an important role in protecting the public, but with recall now accounting for one in seven of the prison population compared with one in 13 a decade ago, it is neither sustainable nor effective.Cases of people being recalled for missing probation appointments because transport was delayed or for moving out of their accommodation to get away from drug dealers and gangs, are too often punished with a return to custody.

There are rules and they expect people to follow them - sounds like they are the only State agents actually doing their job diligently to me. 

Second, we need to focus on the probation service. It is critical to fixing prisons and too often undervalued. Today it is a long way from its original social-work ethos to advise, assist and befriend those once described as clients but now always labelled offenders. The focus is much more on surveillance and compliance.

As it always should have been! 

The services need connecting. Fixing this cannot be achieved by the justice system alone. Public bodies from the NHS to local councils have a role to play in giving people the support they need to stay out of prison.

I don’t require any ‘support’ to stay out of prison, and nor do the vast majority of people, you know.