VCSIA Winner — Sophie Ellis
Prisons are part of our society, yet we rarely treat them like other institutions. We do not welcome ‘efficiency savings’ for schools or talk about making hospitals ‘tougher’. But almost all of us have been to school or stayed in hospital. We understand what they are for, and our experiences inform our views of what we want them to be like. They are ‘our’ institutions, and despite some political differences, there is a basic shared notion of their value.
On the other hand, most of us have never been to prison. At the end of last year in England and Wales, there were 79,092 people detained in prisons and 34,267 people working in them, as well as 5,899 people detained in other secure institutions — totalling 0.2% of the population altogether. But though most of us rarely pay a visit, we collectively agree to use prison as our main tool of punishment. We also pay and elect people to decide what happens inside prisons, and upon release. However, despite being part of our social fabric, prisons are rarely seen as ‘our’ institution. Instead, they are seen as a place where ‘they’ go: an invisible institution of exclusion.
And yet the shadow of the prison hangs over society. It can often be an unspoken presence. We might have a cup of tea and discuss impressions of our latest hospital visit or parents evening. We are less likely to discuss our latest trip to prison (unless you are a criminologist, and regularly treat your loved ones to this conversation). But an estimated 200,000 children per year have a parent in prison, and an unknown, but greater number have a family
member who has been incarcerated. In my public talks about prisons, I am sadly accustomed to being approached by someone who quietly tells me a story of personal connection with prison. They usually say that they have not spoken about it to anybody outside of their close family.
I joined the Prison Service, as Psychology Assistant, when I was 21 years old. I left nine years later, having grown familiar with prisons’ inner workings, culture, problems, and the people who live and work in them. But anybody familiar with prison rapidly learns that there is a tide of misinformation presented to people who have not been there. Without first-hand experience, it is hard to contextualise the tabloid headlines that seethe with outrage about
‘holiday camps’. While rare incidents of stranger murder outside prison are seized upon, the scale of injury and death inside prison goes unmentioned. Public knowledge of prisons is therefore largely refracted through the media.
This presents a conundrum of how to inform the public about prisons in a way that treats them not as passive media consumers, but an important stakeholder in criminal justice, with a forum for them to fulfil that role. Since I left the Prison Service, I have made small efforts to provide such a forum, to around 500 people so far. I am not using the word ‘small’ out of modesty, but because I deliberately adopt a strategy of talking to small, local community
groups. Such groups tend to be deeply invested in their fellow citizens, and while not always as diverse as I wish they were, they tend to represent a slice of ‘ordinary’ people, well outside the echo chamber of prison scholarship and policy. They are community-minded organisers, learners, carers, helpers, and voters. And they bake good cakes.
The topic of prison takes up a substantial amount of space in the library at the Institute of Criminology. Reducing decades of study to an hour is challenging. I have learnt to listen carefully to what people really care about, resulting in (I would like to think) not talking at people, but fostering dialogue with people about an institution that we have a mutual stake in. We no longer have the death penalty, and we give out relatively few whole life sentences. That means most people in prison will eventually again be somebody’s neighbour, parent, friend, or employee. A returning citizen. I therefore start with the basic
premise that, regardless of the precise views you hold about prison, it is in everyone’s interests to care about it.
With that established, I ask people some questions: how many prisons do you think we have? How many people are in them? How many do you think are there for a serious violent crime? Do you think we send more or less people to prison than other countries? How readily do you think we send people to prison for life? People routinely:
- Underestimate how many prisons we have (117).
- Underestimate how many people are in them (nearly 80,000).
- Overestimate how many people are in prison for a violent offence (39%).
- Think we send fewer people to prison than other European countries (the UK has the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, and the highest number of life- sentenced prisoners).
- Underestimate how much the prison population has increased in the last 30 years (70%).
These basic facts challenge people’s perception that we are ‘soft’. They spend quite some time engaging with the dissonance provoked, particularly around the rise in life sentences. ‘But life doesn’t really mean life does it?’ ‘Don’t other countries just kill them instead?’ These are questions that deserve proper consideration and factual accuracy, which I try to provide. But underlying these discussions is a relationship between punishment and national identity. People wish to be ‘tough’, but think we are benevolent — a source of pride. They are therefore quite unsettled by the notion that we are actually a punitive outlier compared to our near neighbours. I also ask people what they want prisons to be for. Without needing to give a lecture on theories of punishment, people instinctively articulate its main theorised functions: to censure past wrongdoing (proportionally), to deter future wrongdoing, to protect the public, and to rehabilitate. A lively discussion generally ensues. But silence falls when I ask ‘How do you do all those things within the same four walls?’
This question has occupied those who govern prisons for a very long time. Prison is simply not the catch-all answer to a safer society. But what ministers seem to underestimate is that people get it. When asked what they want prisons to do (and given some evidence on how good they are at doing it), it is a joy to observe public discussion achieve more nuance than in Westminster. People want to know more about who is in prison, what happens to them there, and afterwards. They ask why we don’t implement the ‘obvious’ solutions to reducing reoffending. They express shock at a system where, for example, having learnt a trade in prison, any kind of insurance is either prohibitively expensive or unavailable for ex- prisoners. Or where thousands of people are released homeless or without ID, and therefore cannot open a bank account to receive wages. Suddenly prison looks a bit tougher.
I also try to provoke empathy for the experience of prison. I invite people to stand within a space that reflects the dimensions of a cell, and ask them how confined it feels. Then I give them a ‘pad mate’ and ask again. Before Covid, I drew upon a comment made by a friend who, having observed a set of prison windows, said that it seemed ‘rather like a Travel Lodge’, and surely not too bad. Since Covid, I no longer need to painstakingly lead people through imagining exactly what it might be like to be involuntarily detained in a Travel
Lodge (and that is still nothing compared to prison). In the absence of direct experience, it is hard to truly ground people in the sensations of confinement. But providing even fractional insight provokes them to reflect on the dissonance between the idea that prisoners should ‘turn their lives around’ and the impoverished conditions that we give them to do so. Providing a space for dialogue about prison is, in my view, vital for civic life. It empowers people to hold their elected officials accountable, and it prompts them to consider their role in punishment and reintegration. Not everybody can involve themselves directly with perpetrators, nor should we expect them to (victims need more attention too). But community reintegration is a crucial part of moving away from crime. There are lots of organisations that help to connect former prisoners with their community, or provide mentorship for young people on the cusp of imprisonment. The Independent Monitoring Board is composed of members of the public who monitor conditions in their local prison.
For people who own companies and property, there is plenty of guidance on how to safely employ and house ex-prisoners. I try to leave people with better knowledge of prisons, and how to help in whatever way they see fit. I try to avoid politicising, but I do encourage people to make prisons part of their politics, and let their politicians know that the public care about prisons in ways that transcend being ‘tough’ or ‘efficient’. When it comes down to it, humans are very ready to care about the fate of their fellow humans even under the most complex and painful moral circumstances, if given the opportunity to collectively think it through.
I am extremely grateful to the Cambridge Institute of Criminology for providing such an intellectually nurturing environment. The Prisons Research Centre in particular has an unfailing commitment to richly describing modern imprisonment, and all the complex humanity within it. But the only way I can reconcile having access to such a stimulating place is to give back to the communities that academia should serve. I am particularly pleased to have won the local impact award, because while I value Cambridge’s support to think ‘big’, there is something far more poignant about creating dialogue in the local village halls and community centres where people will later vote on ‘big’ issues that affect us all. And I hope my efforts mean that more people will consider prisons when making their choice.
