So there’s good news and bad news on the prison front this month.
The good news is that the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, has declared that “there is a role for the arts” in criminal justice. He believes it’s a good idea. In an interview with The Times on May 25th, Mr Gauke said “the creative sector is a big employer, you hear stories of someone involved in a prison production who ends up in the West End as a lighting technician…” He wants “a culture of rehabilitation” that encourages “drama, writing and painting in prisons.”
For a prison service that is close to breaking point, this is good news indeed. And Mr Gauke is making sense in other areas too. Twenty five years ago the prison population was 44,000, now it’s 84,000. He wants it to drop. He recognizes that in terms of rehabilitation, short sentences do not work. Tagging could be one alternative to incarceration. There should also be alternatives for many women and mentally ill prisoners. He believes in the power of work to change people’s lives. Apparently he also wants to start a wider debate about “what punishment means”.
It’s all good stuff. So what’s the bad news?
It’s not exactly bad, it’s just not as good as it sounds. Mr Gauke is the fourth person to occupy the position of Justice Secretary in the three years since Michael Gove (love him or hate him) self-imploded taking with him all his well-received proposals for prison reform. Mr Gauke’s ideas are not new. They are ideas that most people in the sector have been voicing for decades. Fighting for even. For many of us, they are so obvious that it is baffling that politicians are able to voice them with the earnestness that they do.
Reforms like these have been promised again and again but nothing ever actually gets done. So while I welcome Mr Gauke’s words and intentions, I will only applaud them and regain hope for our dire prison system when I see action. That will be the genuinely good news so many of us are waiting for.
To read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/24/david-gauke-prisoner-employment-strategy
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-and-employment-strategy-2018
angela findlay blog 