Prison does not work...

is one of the many things we talked about in class while studying social work. Prison is about punishment and retribution. It also does not seem to hold that threatening fear factor either as many people who serve their sentence end up back in prison yet again which I believe is called recidivism. The idea is sure you lock them up to serve the sentence for their crime but you let them back out into the same environment which was part of the reason for them committing a crime in the first place. So the idea is that you need a more holistic approach when supporting people. Well that is the very simple explanation of it all anyway...

The reasons for these thoughts as well is from watching the UK version of the ever popular TV show 'Law and Order' (yes thinking deeply while watching TV if you can imagine that). It was about a very difficult topic actually, children murdering children. Two young girls who take a little boy away to play and end up killing him. Well one of the girls ends up strangling the little boy while the other watches and is then coerced by her friend to initial the first letter of her name into his belly. For me I don't know what was more disturbing the idea that a little girl only aged 9 or 10 could think of doing this or the fact that the public and high public officials were braying for her head on a platter as justice. Then the mother sells her story to the tabloids (a very true reflection of real life I might add) saying that her daughter was evil from birth. The surprise for all comes when the mother of the dead little boy did not see imprisonment and punishment of the girl as the answer. She did not identify with the general public who were sending her letters of comfort who did not even know anything about her little boy. She wanted the little girl to get help, for the reason to be identified as to why this little girl would do such a terrible thing.

How it all ended for me by then became irrelevant as I watched the woman's tears. I was a bit impressed of the ability to look at this type of scenario from a different angle from a popular TV show. The other day I also heard it said that it is not the drug problem that is a crime, it's an illness, it's what people do to fund it or as a result of it that is the crime. It becomes even more difficult when we think about serious offenders like serial killers and paedophiles. So I guess the question raised for me is not how we punish people for what they have done but how we help them so that they never do it again and well how possible is it?