Peter CostelloEveryone deplores the state of our modern prisons. But grim though they are, they are a great deal better than, say, those in Peru or Indonesia. In any case they are, ironically, enough the product of 19th Century Christian-inspired reform. The move to abolish the death penalty in part or totally has for many made prison the only possible punishment.
In previous centuries prisons hardly existed. Such was the state of the law that rogues were either executed at once for an extraordinary range of crimes, such as stealing a loaf of bread or a handkerchief, or they were physically punished for a short time in the stocks. Prison was used only for such people as debtors, and even those regimes were nothing like today’s.
Long term imprisonment, which is taken for granted today – especially in the USA where people (often poor Blacks and Latinos) are quite routinely locked up for long periods – was in former times reserved for the most important kinds of political prisoners.
The celebrated “Man in the Iron Mask” is a case in point. The Bastille, where he was detained, which many seem to have imagined filled with the groaning poor, was in fact reserved for a mere eight important prisoners of the French crown.
Some time ago I had an opportunity of talking about this with John Lonergan, in the light of a play put on by prisoners in Mountjoy, which I had enjoyed. I remarked that I was against large modern prisons. The ideal prison, if we must have prisons, was that they should be small and local county prisons. This would meant that prisoners were kept in contact with their families and could be treated, even educated, on a more one-to-one basis than in the Joy. Prisons would cease to be colleges of crime.
Cost of prisons
John Lonergan agreed with me, but remarked that I should try that argument on members of the Dáil. It was all a matter of cost. But the increasing cost of prisons is caused by a failure to invest in the early lives of the disadvantaged. Crime can only be prevented by social change.
The confusion is illustrated by the way in which “white collar criminals”, thieves of a much higher order often than a burglar, are treated. We need to revise our ideas about “the criminal classes”, which have now come to include the mentally ill and the inebriate.
But as regards cost, the fact is that even to have a need of prisons is a confession of failure. This collection of papers examines the current state of prisons and prisoners across Europe, where more and more people are being sent to prison. Yet one wonders at the usefulness of sending a mother of four to gaol for a few weeks, or imprisoning someone for not paying his TV licence.
These papers were presented at the Scribani International Conference 2012 organised by the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice in Dublin, attended by a motivated audience of over 200 prison counsellors, inspectors and directors, juridical consultants and human rights activists, representatives of probation offices, social welfare services, religious organisations and policy makers. This volume should be essential reading for anyone at all concerned, not just with crime, but with social justice.
Here in Ireland we all too often to think in terms of Great Britain and the USA when it comes to many social issues. What makes this book of great interest is its Europe-wide dimension.
Fresh thoughts from Finland and elsewhere will enlarge our thinking. A future without crime and prisons may seem an impossible ideal, but then Christianity is all about what the world sees as “impossible ideals”.
This is a book which ought to be widely read, but which one suspects will be taken to heart only by those who are already experienced in the field. Whether many members of the Dáil will attended to it is doubtful.