Does prison work?

Well, it depends what you want it to do, doesn't it?

If you want to lock people up and forget about the problem, and if you are prepared to turn over more and more space and energy into building and maintaining prisons in order to accommodate larger and larger numbers of people, then yes, I suppose you might think that it does. If you have any other take on the problem then I would suggest that the answer must be a resounding NO.

If you've ever met me or read my views before, you might be unsurprised to know that I take a back to fundamental cause and effect view of this.

When I was doing my PGCE (post-graduate certificate of education) I did an extended study on the identification and treatment of the gifted child in schools. There are certain statistics which I learnt in the course of that which really stuck with me. First of these was the fact that the most important factor in how well you will do in your education is what your father does for a living. The achievements of children at the same school will vary along broadly demographically socio-economic lines. This is a stubborn statistic which government after government has tried to address with initiative after initiative. The second is that the prison population has a higher than average number of people with IQs significantly higher than the national average.

Personally I think these are linked. The one mantra which was drummed into me during my course was Children live up or down to their teachers' expectations. Children who may come into the classroom with less than impeccable manners and attitude may be viewed with suspicion by a teacher, who will make assumptions about their intellect based on their behaviour. They will be given undemanding work in the hope that they would be able to do it and would not give trouble. They may then become bored, and boredom breeds disaffection. So the behaviour may deteriorate and they may be removed to the lower sets so as not to get in the way of the 'good kids'. From then on the 'give a dog a bad name' syndrome kicks in.

Now I'm not saying this happens all the time by any means, but in large overcrowded schools where teachers are expected to teach what should be taught at home as well as their subject curriculum, it is understandable that they must set their own priorities. However, from a societal point of view we cannot allow the potential of great tranches of talent to seep out into bad behaviour and the remedial classes. Imagine how much talent sits confined in dismal cells in ghastly prisons around our realm.

It may be a knotty problem, but it's one of the most important issues to address and the fact that we haven't succeeded in unravelling it yet should only add urgency to the task.

(This is, incidentally, linked to my 'philosophy for all' campaign - teach logic, cause and effect, abstract thinking and maybe, just maybe, children will feel more in charge of their own lives as they go through school and come out the other end.)