Regarding your article (Prisoners thank Andy Burnham as they leave jail in first wave of early releases, 1 October), Michael Bogle’s story should make us ask a bigger question than whether prisoners are being released too soon.
Bogle, 38, has 100 convictions and has been jailed five times. He told the Guardian that he turned to shoplifting after becoming homeless, in order to eat. On leaving prison, he said that there was a risk he would shoplift again.
At Revolving Doors, we work on systems change with people whose lives follow precisely this pattern – repeated contact with the criminal justice system, often for relatively low-level offences, driven by combinations of homelessness, addiction, poor mental health, poverty and trauma.
We can keep arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning people like this. But after 100 convictions, surely we are entitled to ask whether doing the same thing for the 101st time constitutes a serious public-safety strategy. A prison place without stable housing, treatment and support on release simply sends people back through the same revolving door.
Pavan Dhaliwal
Chief executive, Revolving Doors
There has been much in the media on the early release of prisoners, how full our prisons are and sentencing. I work at the end of the line, in a men’s open prison. It is my personal and strong opinion that we need to look at children and how we are failing to care for them. This is where a criminal life often begins, through neglect, abuse, trauma, the witnessing of violence and rape in the home, and so on.
Many of the prisoners who I work with enter the care system at an early age, leave care without the support they need and end up in prison. For a large number of them, prison is the only life they know. I would urge anyone who is interested, and truly cares, to read Justice on Trial by Chris Daw KC. He suggests some radical solutions, which give hope that we might, one day, be able to prevent so many going to prison and, equally as important, reduce the number of victims of crime.
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