Humane prisons

236 Pages·2018·21.963 MB·English

by  Jones, David

Humane Prisons
Edited by
David Jones
Foreword by
Craig Haney
Boca Raton London New York
CRC Press is an imprint of the
Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
First published 2006 by Radcliffe Publishing
Published 2018 by CRC Press
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© 2006 by David Jones
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ISBN-13: 978-1-85775-720-0 (pbk)
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Typeset by Anne Joshua & Associates, Oxford
For Maria, Kazimir and Dominic who generously tolerated my
obsession and preoccupation and for my parents, Bob and Peg,
who would have been more than a little surprised at what I have
persuaded others to achieve.

Contents
Foreword vii
About the editor xi
About the contributors xii
Acknowledgements xvii
Introduction
David Jones xviii
1 Is there a future for humane imprisonment?
Hans Toch 1
2 First impressions
Kathy Page 11
3 Life inside
Erwin James 19
4 Psychopathological considerations of prison systems
David Jones 29
5 How to create madness in prison
Terry A Kupers 47
6 Resolving prisoner conflicts before they escalate into violence
Kimmett Edgar 59
7 Can there be 'best practices' in supermax?
Lorna A Rhodes 73
8 The UK Prison Service Close Supervision Centres
Mark Morris 87
9 Creating the elements of a humane prison system
Ernest L Cowles 101
10 Women's imprisonment: how getting better is getting worse
Sunny Marriner and Dawn Moore 115
11 Governing a humane prison
Peter Bennett 129
12 Clinical supervision for staff in a Therapeutic Community
prison
Liz McLure 141
13 Psychotherapy in prisons: a supervisor's view
Tilman Kluttig 151
vi Contents
14 Peer-review and accreditation
Sarah Tucker and Adrian Won all 159
15 Independent inspection of prisons
Anne Owers 177
16 Humane prisons: are they worth it?
Fiona Warren 191
Index 205
Foreword
I spend a fair amount of time inside maximum security prisons. Usually I have
gone to evaluate the psychological effects of particular conditions of confine­
ment - increasingly, in one of the 'supermax' prisons or special units that have
been erected in many different parts of the United States. This process always
includes interviewing a sample of prisoners who may have been adversely
affected by the way they were kept or treated inside. I have been doing this for
a long time - the better part of the last three decades. Whatever else can be said
about this kind of activity, it has brought me into contact with a wide range of
penal institutions. Talking at length with prisoners who are housed through­
out the vast state and federal prison systems in the United States has also
provided me with a rare opportunity to witness some of the human costs and
consequences of current penal policies - to hear about the shattered lives, to
see the wounded psyches and to marvel at the unexpected signs of resilience.
Little that I have seen or heard has left me optimistic or hopeful about our
ability to create truly 'humane prisons'. That is, not until I came upon the
present, remarkable volume.
The goal of creating prisons like the ones that are described and envisioned
in the chapters that follow is a daunting one. Frankly, it has become much
more daunting as a result of correctional policies and perspectives that
emerged over the last several decades. The United States, it could be argued,
played a key role in leading the rest of the world down this pessimistic path
toward a dark place in the history of corrections. It was the first modem
industrial nation in recent years to strike out in an openly and exclusively
punitive direction - to introduce increasingly draconian sentencing policies
that greatly expanded the numbers of people who were imprisoned and the
lengths of time that they stayed behind bars. It also was the first to implement
a host of correspondingly harsh prison practices that abandoned any hope of
accomplishing anything beyond the inevitable punishment of prison - to reject
rehabilitation not only as a goal that we had failed to fully achieve but also as
one not remotely worth the aspiration.
Some prison policymakers (and even some academic experts) tried to dignify
this politically expedient approach to crime control by claiming that 'punish­
ment for punishment's sake' was some kind of new correctional 'philosophy',
as if the goal of locking up the most people possible for the longest time
possible could be portrayed as an 'advance' in anyone's thinking. Nonetheless,
despite the lack of any compelling evidence that spreading the pains of
imprisonment could accomplish its alleged purpose - a reduction of crime
that was remotely commensurate with the resources we invested in these
hurtful policies - spread them we did.
It would be impossible for anyone who has not seen these changes firsthand
to fully grasp or appreciate the extraordinary increase in the sheer scale of
imprisonment that has occurred over the last several decades. Similarly, it
would be difficult to capture in words - for people who have not felt or
viii Foreword
absorbed the depth and breadth of the transformation - how attitudes have
hardened among staff members in many of these institutions, the way
corrections has become a business that too often trades in human suffering,
and the new matter-of-factness that characterizes the callous mistreatment
occurring inside a number of penal institutions. Those of us who have lived
through this period sometimes forget how significantly the atmosphere in
prison and the norms of confinement have changed.
By virtue of their sheer size and the many self-justifying rationales that
surround and permeate them, prisons have a way of conveying a sense of
inevitability. Not only, 'this is the way things are', but 'this is they way they
always have been', and, even more uncompromisingly, 'this is the way they
must be, the only way they could be....' Only people with long experience and
good memories can give lie to these assertions, and only those with active
imaginations can think past their implication.
In the face of all of this, what can the chapters that follow do to inspire
hopefulness? Most of all, they contain the voices of people who care. They
convey the insights, observations, and concerns of scholars and professionals
who have refused to succumb to the 'new penology', one that my colleagues
Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon have described as serving a despairing
and demeaning 'waste management' function. Far from succumbing, they urge
us in an opposite direction. These authors are sober and realistic analysts, to be
sure, yet they are also compassionate and dedicated reformers who refuse to
sacrifice imagination for practicality. They seek "humane prisons" at a time in
corrections history when too many others aspire only to maintain 'secure' and
'controlled' spaces - the kind of security and control that too often come at the
price of humanity, it saddens me to say.
'Think Security. Get Back to Basics' were the ironic words written on large
signs strategically placed throughout a large maximum security prison I toured
just a short time ago in the midwestem United States. Ironic because, looking
around this cruel and hostile place, it was painfully obvious that security had
been its only concern. Too often, this 'basic' goal - admittedly important -
dwarfs all others in the minds of many correctional policymakers, and even
academic thinkers with the luxury of imagining a better future.
Not so the authors of the chapters that follow. Of course, they are realistic
enough to concede that, even in humane prisons, guards and prisoners alike
may still lack sufficient opportunities for meaningful activity and constructive
purpose. They know that even well-treated prisoners can come out of prison
seemingly fit and resilient, yet return to their 'unsettled' lifestyles - lifestyles
forced on them as much by their unforgiving surroundings as any personal
choices they might make about the directions they pursue. They admit that
there is still a sense - pervasive in some places in spite of the humane
intentions of those in charge - that the environment systematically under­
mines the sense of self or shared humanity among those confined inside.
Indeed, the authors are realists who lament the continued existence of
prisons where fear, idleness, and callous treatment are still capable of creating
or exacerbating prison madness, and ones where violence is seen by prisoners
as commonplace, conventional, and even something that is expected of them.
And they concede that the transfer of coping skills developed in prison - even
the best of them - will rarely assist prisoners in successfully reintegrating into
Foreword ix
free society. Indeed, they know that prisoners typically re-enter a world that is
not only vastly different from the one they have become accustomed to in
prison, but one that, by virtue of their incarceration, has grown even more
foreign and hostile to them.
Yet, despite this realism, this is a book full of honesty, of insight, of heart,
and of imagination - all things that have been sorely lacking in much writing
about prison policy and prison practices over the last several decades. Many of
the authors are visionaries, grappling with the best ways to get from where we
are to where we might - and should - be. Others are practitioners, laboring to
make sense of whether and when their good intentions can be translated into
actual policies and practices that reflect their humane values. Part of the
inspiration that readers will glean from this book comes directly from the
boldness and authenticity of the quest - to create 'humane prisons' at a time
when so many others have given up on the goal! The seriousness with which
each author engages this challenge is unmistakable.
In addition to the sheer inspiration, many of the ideas that follow have
direct, practical applications that can be pursued in other less enlightened
prison systems. For example, American readers will find the prison inspection
process used in British prison to be remarkable and worthy of emulation, not
only because of the 'robust independence' with which it proceeds, but also the
sophisticated perspective that it brings to bear. Indeed, British prisons are
inspected regularly and without warning, and the results - on the culture and
decency of the institution - are a matter of public record. In addition, prison
inspectors do confidential, random surveys of all prisoners before each
inspection, and have a comparative base - both between different prisons
and for the same prisons over time - that allows for a measure of performance
from the prisoners' point of view. The inspectors' goal, explicitly stated, is to
determine whether prisoners are being housed safely, treated with respect,
engaged in purposeful activity, and being prepared for their return to the
community. There is certainly much more to this story, and I should not
belabor it here, but the value of such a straightforward intelligent practice
seems difficult to dispute.
The therapeutic community perspective that is reflected in many of the
chapters is one important approach to creating humane prisons. Of course, it is
not the only one. Legitimate concerns have been expressed about the logic and
practice of therapeutic prisons, and they are acknowledged here. Crime is not
necessarily caused by the damaged psyches of its perpetrators, and psychother­
apeutic interventions in prison do not necessarily prepare prisoners for the
transition to the free world or assist them in overcoming the socioeconomic
and other barriers they will confront there. Moreover, even a good idea - or
otherwise effective intervention - can be badly or poorly implemented in the
difficult environment of prison. And, as one of the authors wisely reminds us,
the inherent tendency for treatment (or any intervention) to become punitive
when it is 'married to structures of control' must not be overlooked.
Yet, there is still something to be said for an analysis of these total
institutions that recognizes the ways in which the extreme and sometimes
extremely cruel, punitive treatment to which prisoners are exposed interferes
with and impedes personal growth of any kind, therapeutic or otherwise. And
there is certainly something to be gained from listening to authors who