Prisons

• Prisons

  Philosophy

  • Main agencies of social control in the UK
  • Managed by HM Prisons and Probation service responsible for preventing victims by changing the lives of offenders
  • Through rehabilitation while still protecting the public from dangerous offenders
• Prisons - Aims and objectives

  1. Protect public from harm
  2. Help people who have been convicted of offences to rehabilitate so they can contribute positively to society
  3. Hold prisoners securely and implement the sentences and orders of the court
• Funding - Paid by government through general taxation

  • 2018, total budget approx £ 3 billion - 16% lower than 2010
  • Resulting in cuts to staffing levels, 15% fail in number of prison officers between 2010 and 2018
• Funding

  • More experienced officers left the service by 2020, almost 1/3 of staff had less the 3 years experience
  • Average of cost of keeping a prison in 2019 was £42,136 per year
  • £42,591 private prisons
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  The prison service deals with higher risk offenders who are deemed unsuitable to serve their sentence. Range of seriousness of offences varies greatly, from Murder to theft.

  Four categories of prison - A to D. Category A prisons hold the most dangerous offenders
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  Category B : Do not require maximum security, but for whom escape still needs to be made very difficult
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  Category A: High Society
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  Category C: Cannot be trusted in open conditions but unlikely to try to escape
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  Category D: Can be reasonably trusted not to try to escape
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  2019, total of 121 prisons, holding around 80,000

  • 106 public sector prisons, run by Government
  • 15 private prisons, run by three private companies sodexo, G45 and Serco
• Types of Criminality/Offenders

  Prisons have been criticised for their lack of opportunities for education, training and work experience

  • 2020 Chief inspector of prisons said that the prisons inspected had too few programmes of useful activity