The state of the prisons. Lessons from America: research in the prisons can bring peace.

Abstract

American quakers invented imprisonment as punishment, and America now contains one or two of the world's best prisons as well as some of the worst. About 432 000 people are imprisoned in the United States. This means that 177 Americans out of every 100 000 are in prison, roughly two to three times the British rate. The imprisonment rate has almost doubled since 1972 and is the highest since records started in 1925.1 Most of the prisoners are state and the im? prisonment rate varies widely among states?as does the quality of the prisons. About 26 000 of the prisoners are held within the federal prison system, which is probably the best of the American systems despite containing some of the most difficult prisoners.2 To be a federal prisoner carries status in the criminal world. The jewel of the federal prison system is the Federal Cor? rectional Institution at Butner, North Carolina, which I visited last year. The staff there wanted me to point out that Butner was only a jewel among many rubies, but it is clearly some? thing special.3 It contains three populations of prisoners: about 120 prisoners who either are mentally ill or are being assessed for mental illness; about 150 prisoners, long term prisoners who have already done one sentence or who have committed violent crimes; and about 60 ordinary prisoners who come from the local area, peppered among whom are a few especially difficult prisoners. Butner could thus fancifully be thought of as smaller versions of Parkhurst, Broadmoor, and Wandsworth prisons all mixed together within one secure perimeter. The three populations mingle together, and all, apart from the 15 or so who at any one time are being punished or who are too disturbed to be let loose, have the keys to their own rooms. As I sat in the canteen where both prisoners and staff eat, I looked out of the window on to the central compound, which looked more like part of a British university than prison, and although I could see about 50 prisoners I could not see a single correctional officer (the equivalent of the British prison officer). Butner has an unusually relaxed atmosphere for a prison containing such a potentially dangerous population, and it has a discipline staff of 160 for the 330 inmates: for comparison Wormwood Scrubs has a discipline staff of 400 for 1300 many of whom are locked up for much of the day. Butner is not perfect, and the federal prison system has plenty of problems, including the familiar ones of too many prisoners and too few resources, but the system seems to provide a few lessons that might be useful to those who run the British system. The first lesson is that high quality research within the prison system can produce rich rewards. Other important lessons have to do with accepting it as inevitable that a prison system will contain some mentally ill prisoners who cannot easily be shunted off elsewhere and so provision should be made for them; paying close attention to selecting and training all st ff; working hard to avoid barriers between discipline staff, caring and teaching staff, wardens (governors in British terms), and the bureaucrats who run the system; and keeping the system open to public, media, and political scrutiny.