In his excellent book '
A Criminal History of Mankind', Colin Wilson writes: "Rats placed in stressful situations and given Librium or Valium (benzodiazepine drugs) reacted less well than rats given no drugs. The latter were 'toughened up' and built an immunity to stress. (We have to be careful of course jumping to definite conclusions, but . . . ) the lesson seems to be that all animals can develop resistence to stress."
On the human level it is well-established that 'bad' stress can harm your health whereas some people can thrive on 'good' stress; taking a person's job as an example, they ". . . should learn to soak up the worries of the job and build up their tolerance to pressure. Maybe this helps us to understand what it is that distinguishes the criminal to the rest of us. Like the rats fed on antidepressants, the criminal fails to develop 'stress resistance' because he habitually releases his tensions (antisocially) instead of learning to control them. Whether violence is used or not, criminality, is a short-cut."
To my mind this is useful to bear in mind when discussing the effectiveness of different approaches to the way prisoners are treated. One could make a generalisation that whereas at one time men in prison came from a harsh background where poverty was rife and they'd been toughened up, resorting to petty crime for economic reasons, now in western countries where the standard of living is greatly improved, many men are in prison because they are anti-social and haven't learnt to control their aggression. Society has changed too, consumerism is all-pervasive, as are the blame and compensation cultures. Standards have slipped, school-leavers are less and less equipped to cope with life's pressures outside the cocoon of childhood. One often hears of deferred adulthood, how adolescence has been extended into the late twenties.
With the gulf between the haves and have-nots so clearly obvious and being rubbed in peoples' noses, more and more people are going to be tempted to take the short-cut. A good example is the hoped-for short-cut to fame - programmes like the X-factor are very popular. Winners can come from nowhere to be catapulted to fame and fortune.
Fast forward to a young man who's tried to take a few short-cuts. He's never learnt to control stress - heaven knows he may well have been subject to plenty of it whilst growing up, probably through no fault of his own, but the simple fact is he hasn't managed to control those stresses and his lashing out against society is predictable and utterly futile. One thing i can say with certainty, and I admit I have never set foot in a prison, and that is his introduction to prison life will be a real shock, it isn't going to suit him one jot. He'll be a resentful, sullen, frightened, withdrawn young man subject to violent outbursts at any moment. Britain has just such a place for disruptive young men:
Hindley Prison opened in 1961 as a Borstal. In 1983 it was re-classified as a Youth Custody Centre. Hindley was then re-classified as an adult prison and in 1997 it became a joint prison and Young Offenders Institution.
In 2002, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons recorded many good initiatives taking place at Hindley, particularly in suicide prevention, drugs strategy, sentence planning and joint work with the police service to monitor and act on racial incidents. However the Inspector criticised inadequate reception procedures, insufficient purposeful activity and patchy help with resettlement at the prison.
(as of the present time)...Hindley Prison holds convicted and remand juvenile males (aged 15–18) . Accommodation at the prison is made up of seven secure units, on the Young People site there are two units, all with single occupancy accommodation.
Hindley is a combined establishment with a regime that offers opportunities for inmates to gain qualifications, address offending behaviour, and reintegrate into society on their release. Regime provision includes learning and skills, as well as workshop places (which include construction skills) and physical education.
Hindley also operates a listener and peer support scheme for those who may be at risk of suicide or self harm. The prison's medical provision includes an in-patient healthcare facility and a mental health day care centre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindley_(HM_Prison)
Frances Crook of the
Howard League for Penal Reform, writing in her blog, wrote:
Inspection report on Hindley prison
The chief inspector of prisons has published an inspection report on Hindley, the biggest prison for children in Europe. Firstly, we should be ashamed that in England we have the biggest child jail in Europe. There are nearly ten times the number of children incarcerated in this one prison than in the whole of Italy. I just don’t believe that English children are more beastly than Italian or German or French children – it is with English adults that the problem and responsibility lies.
Hindley prison holds 440 boys aged from 15 and is now only holding young teenagers; until recently it also detained young adults. As with many of these places, considerable effort has been expended in trying to make it a decent place when it first opened. I remember the same thing happening with Lancaster Farms prison, and that quickly went downhill and experienced terrible violence and deaths.
Even with all the effort, Hindley is still forcing children to strip to be searched as the very first thing that happens to them as they arrive. They get out of the revolting (and often urine soaked) sweatboxes having travelled for hours from court and their first hello is to be forcibly stripped to be searched. Perhaps I could assure the prison authorities, they have no weapons of mass destruction. When the Howard League asked Lord Carlile to conduct a review of the strip searching of children in prisons, the best the authorities could come up with was that sometimes children smuggle in cigarettes. Automatic strip searching of adult women going into prisons has been ended, yet it continues for children. Shame on them.
There are other worrying aspects to what happens to children in this prison. The use of force by staff is high and physical restraint is used by staff to get children to comply with instructions – something that is probably illegal. But then, am I being naive if I expect prisons to uphold the law?
http://www.howardleague.org/francescroo ... ley-prison
Here is a brief report on the suicide of one young man recently:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/ ... nging-cell
HIndley is a bit like dipping your toe in the water. It just houses male children aged 15 - 18. If we don't have the answers to the problem of how to successfully treat them, how on earth can the authorities have any hope of faring any better with older adolescents, young adults and adults? With more and more people not being able or flatly not wanting to take control of their lives - 'opting out', and more of those people turning to crime, the situation can only get worse.
So, what is the best way to treat people in prisons and Young Offenders Institutes? I really have no idea! The Howard League seem a decent enough organisation, and no doubt Britain's Home Secreary is a decent enough woman, but somewhere between them lies an unbridgeable gulf.
I've already gone on long enough, but that raises another problem. (How often does not being able to solve a problem cause yet another one!?). The other side of the coin, just how may people that really ought to be in prison, or at least receiving suitable treatment, are not?
