Jonathan Aitken is an author, broadcaster, lecturer and campaigner for prison reform. He was a Member of Parliament for 23 years and a Cabinet Minister. In 1999, having pleaded guilty to charges of perjury, he served an 18 month prison sentence.
Jonathan Aitken is a director of several prison charities including Prison Fellowship International and Caring for Ex-Offenders. He speaks and writes extensively on prison reform matters. In 2009 he chaired and authored a 270 page report commissioned by the Centre for Social Justice: Locked Up Potential: A strategy for reforming prisons and rehabilitating prisoners.
Prison reform is rising on the agenda of politics in many countries. In Scotland radical ideas for reform were put forward by the Scottish Prisons Commission in 2008. Other proposals in the same area have been put forward by various organisations in England and Wales including the Centre for Social Justice whose widely reported Locked Up Potential: A strategy for reforming prisons and rehabilitating prisoners was chaired and authored by Jonathan Aitken. There have been similar reports and pilot schemes in other parts of the world.
Jonathan Aitken is well placed to comment on the signs of rising interest and growing momentum in favour of prison reform. He has learned about his subject at the sharp end of imprisonment. He is also the author of books, articles and lectures on prison life, a subject he has studied academically having received degrees in law and theology from Oxford University.
Mr Aitken's talk will cover both the principles and purposes of penal policy as well as examining several of the practical issues directly relating to prison reform.
Speaking on the subject of prison reform, Mr Jonathan Aitken addressed the Society on 10th of March.
The Problems of British Prisons
The issue of prison reform, as ever though especially now, is a pressing one. Mr. Aitken reminded the society, just prior to his speech, that the Audit Commission had issued figures estimating the cost of reoffending to be £10 billion. Scandalously, about 50-70% of middle aged, and some 90% of young prisoners re-offend. In obvious concordance with this, the earlier but still recent McLeish Commission has recommended that imprisonment should be reserved for only the most dangerous offenders.
Public opinion is against such a move, and is reflected in the promises of the current government to end early release. However, the government has itself been using this policy to control increasing prisoner numbers, since otherwise all prison accommodation would be exhausted in about three to four months. How then should we approach prison reform, in order to reduce reoffending and take the correct attitude towards criminals?
The problems found in the British penal system are many. Aitken vividly illustrated them with anecdotes from his own experience of prison. On his first day, he was approached by a young man who was unable to read a letter that he had received. Aitken was able to tell him it was an eviction notice for his home, and to advise him that he had time to appeal against the ruling. By the following day his fame had spread, and he became the prisoners' informal reader, writer, and legal advisor. About a third of all prisoners cannot properly read or write. Drug abuse is rife, and is difficult to combat, and alcohol abuse is perhaps even more of a problem. Often when released, even if they have been through detox, prisoners lack the friends and family they need for support. In the absence of such networks, the drug-dealers cynically draw them back under their wings.
Reform?
The situation is not hopeless, but requires a sensible approach to reform, which may clash with public opinion. Some of the resources needed already exist. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act of 1974 allows convictions to be treated as spent after a certain period of time and so not referred to when applying for jobs. Innovative restorative justice schemes, which confront offenders with the victims of their crimes, have, when employed, been successful. Prisoners can be given mentors - both before and after release - in order to help them to continue their lives. Befriending schemes are in principle even less taxing: their goal is simply to see that the prisoners have people to look out for them after they are released.
But this kind of work is largely done by volunteers. The people who might undertake the work are by and large unaware of it, as it is poorly advertised. The prospects for progress in this area are considerable, and such schemes may end up being fairly cheap when a proper cost-benefit analysis is performed. But the looming overcrowding puts such hopes in jeopardy, and the next government will have to act quickly in order to prevent the problems in our prison system from becoming any worse.