The following article is an interview with Paul Cavadino, ex-chief executive of Nacro which sheds some light on the whole titan building argument.
Are the proposals for the titan prisons the correct response to the overcrowding problem in this country?
I think titan prisons are the wrong response, to the real crisis. The crisis is one of overcrowding and we have got a prison population of over 80,000 which is a record. We have a situation in which many prisons are overcrowded, in which frequently we have additional prisoners held in police cells, or court cells which are not designed to hold people for more than over night. But if you have got a crisis of holding too many prisoners in the accommodation available, then the right solution is to reduce the number of prisoners. It would make more sense to use prison more sparingly, reserve it for dangerous offenders that have to be lock up to protect the public and deal with many of those going into prison for shorter periods by other methods.
What are the alternatives to putting people in prison and how would you differentiate who is dangerous?
Dangerous people usually have committed serious sexual or violent offences and prison is needed to detain those people. But many of the people going into prison have committed offences not of the kind of level of seriousness as those dangerous offences. What they are is often persistent offenders committing petty, low level offences which cause a great deal of stress to people, but which do not make them a physical danger. The most affective ways of dealing with offenders to reduce crime involves highly focussed work and changing attitudes to offending. Helping offenders to restrain aggressive and emotive impulses that lead them into offending, getting them to stop and think. Building up empathy with victims and an understanding of the impact of what they are doing to victims. Some need drug and alcohol rehabilitation, because that is relevant to a lot of offending. Also, skills training as many offenders have been unemployed before going into prison, so if they are going to lead a law abiding life they will find it much easier to do so if they can find a job. It gives them a source of income, a constructive use of their time; it gives them a status in society and a way of achieving something without offending and breaking the law. If we could deal with many of the less serious offenders being sent to prison through that kind of programme it would increase the chances of stopping their re-offending. It would be better for the offender, it would be better for the community because the offending rate would be less then with the high rate of imprisonment that we have got now. It would also be better for the prison system, as if it was not overcrowded, it would mean that it would be better able to rehabilitate those who do have to be locked up.
How is Nacro helping persistent offenders to turn their life around?
People can become rehabilitated and many do if they are given the chance but it is often very difficult. For example, there is a Nacro project which accommodates crack users who have left prison and their crime has been bound up with their addiction to crack cocaine. They are given accommodation in this project, they are given support to try and turn their lives around, and they are given drug rehabilitation. Coming off of drugs and leading a drug free lifestyle is extremely difficult, it means not just the physical carving for crack that you have to try and overcome. It means that the whole of your lifestyle that has been geared towards the friends and the dealers has to change. Many of the people that go through that project are able to leave drugs behind them and the crime which is connected with the need to feed the drug habit. We need to work, not just with people who have become persistent offenders but with young people at risk from offending, in order to divert them away from offending into something more constructive. Up and down the country we have got staff members and volunteers who are doing that kind of work. Helping them towards education, towards jobs, helping them into accommodation and helping them to leave substance misuse habits behind them and it is difficult work but it is successful in a high number of cases. It has a double pay off as it stops the people themselves from wasting their lives in crime, but it also helps victims of crime because there are fewer of them as people are stopped from offending. So it does not only benefit the people who we are working with directly, it also benefits the community.
What is Nacro doing to influence the public?
Organisations such as ours, working with offenders and people at risk, who have practical experience in what works in diverting people away from crime, should be out there in the media. Not only explaining to the public the types of measures that could stop crime in our communities but we should sell our case to the media, so that there is another voice out there. So when politicians are making the populist, harsh, tough sounding statements, that there should also be voices from those of us who are putting another side to the story. We are telling people that harsh measures are not the same thing as affective measures and that constructive work with offenders and people at risk, is most likely to do the job of making our community safer.