An excellent article from Theodore Dalrymple in The Times.
The idea that giant institutions are efficient is a primitive superstition that daily experience disproves, so is just the kind of thing that British governments are inclined to believe.
I do not often agree with the Prison Reform Trust, but on the proposed construction of giant prisons - the criminal justice system's answer to giant casinos, I suppose - I do wholeheartedly.
The dangers of gigantism in prison are very great. Running a prison without resort to brutality requires a delicate balancing act. The necessary co-operation of prisoners cannot be obtained by brute force alone, but staff need to maintain the upper hand. As every prisoner knows, most brutality in prison comes from prisoners, not staff. When the staff lose control, brutality increases.
I've seen this for myself in extreme form when I visited Lurigancho prison in Lima, Peru, years ago. It had 7,000 inmates. I visited the comparatively salubrious part, el jardín, the garden, so-called because there was a tree somewhere in it. Brutal as it was, it was like a garden party compared with the part reserved for the worst prisoners, where the staff never ventured. I observed it from a roof, and within a few minutes saw one prisoner try to kill another with a huge shark hook. Food was thrown over the wall to the prisoners.
. . . and although the Government will claim that it will never cut corners to produce the same conditions in Britain, who will believe it? The temptation to park large numbers of prisoners together and leave them to get on with it will be great, especially in times of economic stringency. And most times are times of economic stringency.
Of course, some might think that more unpleasantness is just what prisoners need, that our prisons are much too soft.
The main purpose of prison is to keep wrongdoers off the streets for as long as necessary, which is usually much longer than our courts acknowledge. It is not to brutalise or humiliate prisoners, which vast and impersonal prisons are more likely to do.
As one prison officer said, not to me, I read this but cannot remember where, “Men (I expect he included women) don’t go to prison to be punished within, their punishment is the curtailment of their freedom by going to prison”.
My experience of prisons as an official of the Lord Chancellor's Department was wider than most of my colleagues though as nothing compared with Dr Dalrymple who spent many years as a prison doctor. And my post for the 8 years prior to my retirement did not involve any prison visits at all. However I recall the concern among Prison officers at the money saving closure of workshops, prison farms, constructive classes (literacy, woodwork, printing) and suchlike and the increase in “banging up” in cells for 22 hours a day. The phrase “Satan makes work for idle hands” is a bit old fashioned (though true) and I am not calling for the chain gang or labour camps. But it has proved to be a false economy to cut down on the greater level of supervision needed to engage prisoners in constructive dignified work.
That is where money should be spent, not on cumbersome Titan prisons.