When I got sent to an old and overcrowded prison in 1982 I shared a cell built by Victorians for one convict with two other men (‘Prisons need reform’: service lets down those who need help, freed inmates say, 10 September). At that time there was capacity in the system for about 35,000 and at 40,000 it was beyond full. In 2008 when I was researching prisons as a criminologist there was capacity for about 70,000 and the system was full. Most of the men I met in 1982 regarded prisons with a fatalistic mixture of contempt and derision. Same in 2008.
Now I work with other men and women with a double exposure to prison, academic and actual. It’s called convict criminology because we know a thing or two about prison. Bloated and bulimic, prison is perhaps the most profoundly misunderstood publicly funded institution. One of our aims is to shift the public and the government from an unhealthy fixation on prison as an effective response to crime. It isn’t. The anxious compulsions that fill our prisons to overflowing must be abandoned.
Dr Rod Earle
School of health, wellbeing and social care, Open University
Your headline highlights police claims that they will suffer the fallout from the early release of prisoners (Police ‘left to deal with fallout’ of poorly planned early release of 1,700 prisoners, 10 September). Certainly they’ll have some extra arrests to make soon, but just now the burden will fall on already overstretched probation staff, desperately chasing records and risk assessments, not to mention beds and benefits, for such short-notice release. Robert Jenrick: building more prisons is not the answer. I was a probation officer for many years, yet never ceased to marvel at the lack of public awareness of the role.
Cassy Firth
Morley, West Yorkshire
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