Rethinking Crime and Punishment and ACT Agree on Prison Rehabilitation

ACT's acknowledgement that attempts to rehabilitate prisoners who don't want to be rehabilitated have failed in New Zealand and elsewhere, is a positive step forward in our relationship", said Kim Workman, Project Director, Rethinking Crime and Punishment. He was referring to a media statement by David Garrett, ACT MP and Sensible Sentencing adviser, who claimed Rethinking did not agree with that view, published in a recent article by Dr Greg Newbold.

"Rethinking and Prison Fellowship have always held that view, and Dr Newbold would be aware of that. In 2007, Prison Fellowship sponsored Professor Andrew Coyle, of the International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, to speak at a National Conference and at a series of seminars. He made it clear that rehabilitation and imprisonment are incompatible.

"A Prison Governor for more than thirty years, Andrew Coyle put it this way.

"There is a dangerous influence at work and that is the proposition advanced by some people who work in and around the prison system that good can come out of imprisonment; that it can be an important method of changing the behaviour and attitude of those who are sent there, so that they will come out better people and much less likely to commit crime as a result of their experiences in prison."

"Study after study has shown that penal measures and long-term incarceration have been made acceptable to society, if they are disguised as treatment, training or pure help to suffering individuals in need of such measures. "

Now that ACT, Sensible Sentencing and the Rethinking project agrees that rehabilitation does not work in prison, we should work together to consider alternatives.

Mr Garrett claimed in his media release that I had complained to the Journal of Criminology about Greg Newbold's article. That is untrue, as is his assertion that referring to Greg as a penal historian, in any way diminishes his contribution to the literature. Anyone reading Dr Newbold's "The Problem of Prisons" would agree with the value of his work.

ENDS

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