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Charities running prisons - golden opportunity or poisoned chalice?

Fundraising | Andrew Scadding | 20 Nov 2009

Have you ever been in a prison? Most people haven’t. I believe that everyone should visit a prison at least once, especially those who think running prisons is an appropriate activity for charities, so they know what is done in their name. No-one who has set foot inside one of London’s bigger prisons can remain unmarked by the experience.   

As a callow youth I visited several. In those gentler days, the prison population was only half of what it is now. There was care, not in the community but at least somewhere, for the mentally ill, who were consequently less prone to drift into the arms of the prison service. Politicians were, perhaps, rather less eager to create imprisonable offences; there was no great confidence that sending people to jail would stop offending.

I learned that one side-effect of imprisoning people is that the convict meets a broad cross section of like-minded people.  With them he can swap news of interesting new crimes and clever new ways to commit old ones. Having thus honed his skills, he emerges to the always arid job prospects for ex-offenders, and the temptation to return to crime is both understandable and – in too many cases – frankly unavoidable. 

Disappointingly, we in the UK have shown ourselves unable or unwilling to devise or implement ways of stopping people from returning to jail. Instead we have demonstrated creativity and persistence in hatching ingenious new reasons to lock them up.

Underfunded for decades, abused, overcrowded and in too many ways discredited, our prison system is certainly ripe for reform if the will and the cash are there to do the job.  What a terrific time to float the idea that prisons may in future be run by charities.

Charities have a long record of constructive engagement with the prison service, dating back at least to the founding of the Howard League in 1866. Reforming charities have always believed that society and the prisoner have a common interest in rehabilitation so he or she does not return. Is this a golden opportunity to transform the system with vision and new energy?  Or is it perhaps a poison chalice? 

The snag is obvious. ‘If the will and the cash are there to do the job’. Do we believe that politicians will give charities the freedom and the funding to imagine and implement a new and better prison service? Or do we suppose charities managing prisons will just be non-profit making Serco clones? And does it matter to you?

I take the gloomy view. I cannot see that politicians will let contracting charities stray from the party line on imprisonment any more than they have let scientific advisers stray from their line on cannabis. Politicians like to be seen to be tough on crime. New thinking will be discouraged, additional funding will be unavailable. There is always a higher priority for public funds than prisoners. That is precisely why prisons are in a mess.

So we may end up with two sorts of charities working in the prisons field, with missions and philosophies diametrically opposed: those who mechanically implement state policy on the cheap, and those continuing to press for reform. If that doesn’t confuse the public, what will? 

Charities should not be suckered into doing the government’s dirty work. The public expects us to stand on the side of the losers in society, the poorest, the most disadvantaged; to act as a brake on the power of the state, not as its instrument.  Maybe we are part of the nation’s conscience. We depend on these positive, if romantic, perceptions for our fundraising.  Change that, and support may drain away.  

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