Wandsworth prison, which has an experimental, Scandinavian-inspired rehabilitative prison wing. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty View image in fullscreen Wandsworth prison, which has an experimental, Scandinavian-inspired rehabilitative prison wing. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Prisons and probation Letters What gets in the way of prisoners’ rehabilitation Anthony Goodman argues that probation officers have increasingly lost their autonomy, while Joe Sim says rehabilitation will not work in a society divided by brutal social divisions. Plus letters from Chris Parsons and Tracey Burley
Your editorial on overcrowded prisons and probation ( 13 October ) was most welcome as it highlights a crisis in community justice that shows little sign of abating. You say that problems date back to the failed part-privatisation of the probation service, but in reality political interference has been happening for far longer than that.
Having worked for years as a prison probation officer and then in an aftercare and resettlement unit for ex-offenders, I saw good practice and ongoing practical and emotional support that demonstrated all the important points raised by Enver Solomon in his recent Guardian article.
Staff visited prisons and got to know inmates before they were released, which involved in-depth discussions of their offending history and what was needed for successful resettlement. Staff visited wet day centres for problem drinkers and established links with community organisations. They did not see themselves as the exclusive purveyors of rehabilitation.
In 1984 the government produced a “statement of national objectives and priorities” that made work with prisoners low-profile, and the aftercare unit closed a few years later. When I tried, as part of my doctoral research, to interview probation staff in the 1990s about their role in prison resettlement, I found that such work had stopped.
Since then, probation officers have increasingly lost their autonomy – and the opportunity and permission to get to know the people they supervise. Risk has become the driving force, resulting in an incredible rate of offenders breaching their licence conditions and being returned to prison.
Probation staff are told to be more professionally curious and to give hope to offenders. The service has struggled to hit its targets, but has surely lost the point of its work, which is not the fault of its hard‑working staff. Action is required, now. Anthony Goodman Professor of community justice, Middlesex University
Your editorial on rehabilitation in prison makes some important points. It is also worth noting the political hypocrisy around this issue. The Barlinnie Special Unit, which did change people in prison, was closed in 1994, while the rehabilitation policies pursued in Grendon Underwood, which opened in 1962, have rarely been extended into the main system.
Why? Because these places challenged the decades‑long political obsession with punishment and deterrence. Whether or not the “Scandi” units at Wandsworth and Pentonville in London, which pursue a similar philosophy to Barlinnie and Grendon, will also be marginalised and ignored remains to be seen.
More broadly, rehabilitation will not work in a society divided by brutal social divisions, a point made by Victoria Law in her book “Prisons Make Us Safer”: And 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration : “What does it mean to rehabilitate a person to their former state if that state involves poverty, racism…