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If any good can come from the fire that claimed more than 300 lives in Honduras this week, the tragedy must serve as a wakeup call that in many parts of the world , prison systems  represent nothing less than a humanitarian disaster. In many prisons in low income countries, the ever present danger of fires is just one of the hazards that threaten the lives of inmates.  Bare cables hanging loosely out of crumbling walls are compounded by prisoners’ improvised efforts to divert a bit of current to heat food or power a radio. The acute risk of sudden fires is accompanied by chronic exposure to infectious disease and violence which are commonplace in many of the world prisons. While the horrors of life inside may have multiple causes, the most prominent is overcrowding and congestion.

The international community in general and donors in particular tend to shy away from prisons. Despite honourable exceptions such as Open Society’s work to reduce unnecessary pre- trial detention, penal reform is a relatively neglected field. Just as there are thought to be “no votes in prisons”, so investment in the penitentiary sector is seen to produce relatively few benefits and carry huge reputational risks.

A decent prison system is an essential component in upholding the rule of law, without which a stable democratic society cannot function. Prisons should be used sparingly, to hold suspects facing serious charges before a timely trial and as a sentence in cases so serious that no other penalty will suffice.   Too often they are not used in this way and do not fulfil their proper functions. This is an international institutional failure with dire consequences.  An international initiative is urgently needed to focus attention on that failure and to develop a sustainable programme of reform. Without such work it will be only a matter of time before the next disaster.

A recently retired UK prison governor this week joined the growing chorus of voices calling for a radical reform of prisons for women. The levels of damage and distress he found among the women he imprisoned at Styal prison near Manchester were simply too high to cope with in a prison setting. The self –inflicted deaths of two teenage boys in UK prisons within a week has also called into question whether prisons are appropriate places for young people of either sex who are under the age of 18.    There is nothing new in calls for changes in the treatment of vulnerable people deprived of their liberty. Five years ago a major independent review of women’s prisons, set up after a spate of suicides at Styal Prison, recommended a thorough overhaul of criminal justice for women.

All but one of its recommendations were accepted by the government and the intervening years have seen serious and welcome efforts to strengthen community alternatives and reduce the numbers of women going to prison . The recommendation rejected by the government, as neither feasible nor desirable , was that the existing system of women’s prisons should be dismantled and replaced by smaller secure units for the minority of women from whom the public requires protection.

Similarly in 1997 the Chief Inspector of Prison argued that the Prison Service should relinquish responsibility for all children under the age of 18. This radical proposal was rejected and instead the new Youth Justice Board was given a role in commissioning secure places for juveniles. Some improvements have resulted in youth justice since then, not least the sharp reductions in the use of custodial sentences over the last four years. But conditions in young offender prisons have changed relatively little and apart from a handful of especially created small units are simply unfit for purpose.

Finding more suitable alternative placements for the 4,100 women and 2000 under 18’s in prison should not be an impossible task. For juveniles the law allows custodial sentences to be served in a wide range of accommodation authorised by the Government.  Why not extend this provision to women? Responsibility for commissioning places could then be moved from central to local government .Local authorities, health and social care providers and the voluntary sector could be invited to establish a range of small, suitable facilities. There would need to be standards   but untethered from Prison rules and regulations which provide an often irrelevant and incongruous regimen for the care of young people and of women. Making local agencies accountable for the costs of custody could also incentivise efforts to develop community based alternatives which reduce unnecessary demand for secure places.

This approach would be much more likely than the  current system  to meet the requirements of international law. The new Bangkok Rules say that alternative ways of managing women who commit offences, such as diversionary measures and pre-trial and sentencing  alternatives, should  be implemented wherever appropriate and possible and that where deprivation of liberty is needed , women  should  be allocated to prisons close to their home . The European Rules for Juvenile Offenders say that the number of juveniles in an institution should be small enough to enable individualised care and organised into small living units.  Institutions should also be located in places that are easy to access and facilitate contact between the juveniles and their families. They should be established and integrated into the social, economic and cultural environment of the community.
In almost all countries, juveniles and women represent a very small proportion of the prison population. This means that their needs are seldom properly met by prison systems. But it also provides an opportunity for bold measures of prison reform.

The Gevangepoort (Prison Gate) in The Hague was used to detain the Count of Holland’s prisoners as far back as the 15th Century. Now a museum, up to 15 people were held in each of its dark and often cold cells, with serious and minor suspects mixed together sometimes for many months before a verdict was reached. Those who had money could pay for better conditions. In 1672 Cornelius de Witt accused of plotting to murder a prince spent two weeks in the deluxe knight’s chamber at the cost of 227 guilders- the annual wage of an artisan.

In some respects this is a world we have thankfully lost. In Europe at least, many of the penalties imposed on the guilty –humiliations, banishment, corporal punishment and death -have disappeared. Officially sanctioned torture is no longer used to extract confessions. The role of the mob – that took the law into its own hands and murdered De Witt after what they perceived to be an unduly lenient sentence – is much diminished.

But in other respects the use of pre trial detention itself has changed little.  Over the last two years the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) has reported on prisons within EU countries that lock up remand prisoners in their cells 23 hours a day, where oppressive and stultifying regimes damage mental health and offer little in the way of activities for juveniles. Further afield in Europe and Central Asia , accusations of beatings and life threatening conditions are not uncommon in the Sizos of former soviet countries. In Africa and Latin America matters are much worse with overcrowding, torture and corruption which would not have been out of place in the 17th century Gevangepoort . Those with money can like De Witt buy better conditions or even their freedom. Those without can end up lost in the system spending longer waiting for a court decision than they could have served as a sentence.

Next week UN member states meet in Vienna to consider revising the Standard Minimum Rules for Prisoners (SMR’s). Justice and Prisons has argued that whatever the case for revision, promoting and sustaining practical reforms on the ground need to be a priority if conditions of detention for the world’s ten million prisoners are to be improved.This is particularly true for pre- trial detainees. The current rules require a special regime that reflects the presumption of innocence. This goes well beyond the separation of untried from convicted prisoners and the young from adults. But how many of the world’s remand sleep singly in separate rooms, are offered opportunity to work (and be paid for it) or are given all reasonable facilities for receiving visits from family and friends?

While the priority must be to reduce the excessive use of pre trial detention,- through legal aid and advice, reforms to criminal procedure, diversion of petty offenders and time limits for proceedings, conditions for those who are detained must not be forgotten.  One way forward would be for the UN to propose that over the next three years member states should undertake a detailed audit of their compliance with the SMR’s.  The Declaration from the 2010 UN Crime Congress in Brazil confirmed that countries should use UN standards and norms for the treatment of prisoners as a source of guidance in the development or updating of their national codes of penitentiary administration.  Justice and Prisons thinks that they should be used in addition as a benchmark for measuring and improving prison conditions and regimes, starting with the treatment of pre trial detainees.

2012 marks sixty years on the throne for Queen Elizabeth II. In many countries this kind of anniversary would be marked, amongst all the celebrations, by a prisoner amnesty. Whether as a gesture of benevolence or a safety valve for congested jails, amnesties are fairly widely used around the world. The King of Thailand pardoned almost 30,000 prisoners on his 80th birthday in 2007.  Morocco marks special royal occasions by prisoner releases and only last week North Korea announced pardons to mark the new leader’s birthday. Cuba is planning to free 3000 from prison to mark the Pope’s visit in March.

These may not be countries to which we would ordinarily look for lessons on human rights but let’s not forget that collective pardons were regular features of Bastille Day in France until very recently while the US gives both Presidents and state governors powers to grant clemency to individuals. Bulgaria marked its accession to the EU with an amnesty as an act of humanity and mercy to the convicted.  The King of Norway, the country which ranks top of the global rule of law index for effective criminal justice, has a constitutional right to pardon criminals after sentence has been passed.

In the UK, the monarch as head of state can exercise a royal prerogative of mercy to eliminate the pains, penalties and punishments which follow a conviction. On the rare occasions it is used nowadays, pardons or commutations of sentence are made by the Government. Why not consider a more wide-ranging act of clemency to recognise the diamond jubilee and propose this to the UK and Scottish parliaments? The proposal could be extended to countries where the Queen is head of state and the entire Commonwealth.

Few would support the earlier than normal release of serious or violent offenders. Italy’s 2006 amnesty reportedly led to an upsurge of crime.  But many of the two thousand people received into prison each year in the UK for fine default and among the 40,000  sentenced for 6 months or less could be released early without putting the public at risk. The same is true of the thousands of prisoners in former British colonies serving short periods of detention for infringing by laws or committing misdemeanours.

Some countries use amnesties to free juveniles, mothers with children, and elderly, sick or disabled prisoners. Others prioritise those who have behaved well in prison and gained educational qualifications, prisoners with particular skills as doctors, teachers or artists, or military veterans.

Selecting such prisoners for release could bring problems- the need for a disproportionately complex process of assessment and the risk of resentments among those not chosen. It would do little to provide a lasting solution to the overcrowding problem which affects two thirds of British prisons and a much greater percentage in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia.

A more sustainable step would require systematic initiatives to reduce imprisonment. Action to reduce pre trial detention and develop alternatives to custody is much needed particularly in low income countries, but as Fair Trials International has shown in Europe too. But a more straightforward measure is often overlooked which would bring more certain falls in prison numbers in any jurisdiction rich or poor- reducing sentence lengths.

A parliamentary commission has recently agreed that the prison year in Lebanon should consist of nine rather than twelve months and reductions in prison terms (“rebaja de penas” )  have been established in several Latin American countries.  Calculating resulting sentence lengths in a way that is fair to current as well as future prisoners is no doubt a challenge.  But one way or another getting to grips with sentence inflation is long overdue.

Notwithstanding the political and practical difficulties, the jubilee year could be an opportunity if not to offer an amnesty then at least to start considering a more generous regime of early release after years of longer and longer sentences.

The deaths of 31 inmates in Mexico’s Altamira prison this week once again illustrate the horrors of gang related violence in the country’s jails.  The bloodbath reportedly erupted after members of one drug gang invaded a section of the prison dominated by another. Earlier in the week two prisoners were killed in Costa Rica’s largest prison apparently as a result of gangs on the outside settling their scores on the inside.

The presence and activities of organised gangs is one of the most challenging problems facing prison administrators not just in Latin America but in many jurisdictions around the world.  Over the last year, prison systems as far apart as India and Canada, South Africa and the Philippines, Australia and Denmark have sought to introduce measures to cope with gang problems.

Gangs in prisons are not only   responsible for acts of lethal violence against prisoners and staff, but for corrupting the way many prisons are run and orchestrating serious criminal activities beyond the prison walls.  Without effective measures to respond to gangs, prisons are unable to provide safety, security, control or justice. In many countries, the wholly inadequate staffing levels mean prisoners have little choice but to join a gang in order to obtain some measure of protection.

The extent and nature of gang problems in prisons of course reflect and often exacerbate what is happening in wider society, where at worst gangs can exercise greater control and demand stronger allegiance than the forces of the state. The roots of gang activity may lie in drug trafficking, in extreme political or religious views or in ethnic background.

The answers to the broader problems of gangs lie well away from prisons. A non criminal approach to drugs as recommended last year by the Global Commission on Drug Policy (which included former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and past presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia) would make perhaps the biggest difference. Social, education and economic policies which offer decent prospects for young people and minimise exclusion are likely to provide   the best way to stem the recruitment of gang members.

But in many countries, the answers are seen in increasing enforcement. From next week, in the UK courts will be able to impose gang injunctions against 14- to 17-year banning them from associating with friends or wearing certain colours. A breach of the ban could lead to a custodial sentence. Proposals to extend the length of prison sentences for offenders who are gang members are also being considered. Such approaches could make gangs a bigger problem in UK prisons than they already are.

There is in any event a special duty on prison administrators the world over to try to develop solutions to the gang problems which are manifested in places of detention.  They have a duty to protect all prisoners, to uphold the rule of law and contribute to the reduction of crime.  But although gang problems exist to a greater or lesser extent in all parts of the world, there is currently a limited exchange of perspectives among those working in justice systems to deal with them. Although there is some sharing  of  experience   among police forces, those working in prisons and corrections have less opportunity to reflect on their practice with peers from other systems and to  learn about differing approaches.

Among the very practical issues that face prisons are these: whether gang members should be accommodated apart or together? What efforts should be made to encourage prisoners to shed their gang affiliations? How can staff be protected from threats or inducements which are made by gang members? How can gang violence be reduced in prisons? What work should prisons do with agencies in the community to help to resolve the problem?

There are no easy answers and approaches based simply on repression or military force – seen most starkly in the invasion of Pavon prison in Guatemala in 2006 – can inflame rather than resolve the problem.

There is a strong case for questions about the best ways of addressing gang related activities in prisons to be raised.  In 2012 Justice and Prisons plans an international forum for the exchange of lessons and good practice in limiting the growth of, and damage caused by, gangs in prison.

The West’s efforts to help rebuild Afghanistan have included considerable investment to strengthen the criminal justice process. Taxpayers in the USA, Canada, Australia and the EU have seen funds spent on drafting new criminal laws, training judges, constructing and renovating prisons. A bewildering range of UN and international non-governmental organisations have given increasing priority to establishing a coherent countrywide system based on rule of law.

Despite all this work, Human Rights Watch‘s assessment is that Afghanistan’s justice system remains weak and compromised with poor governance, lack of rule of law, impunity for militias and police, laws and policies that harm women, and conflict-related abuses.

As for prisons, 14 new centres constructed in the last two years have helped to improve conditions and cope with a sharply rising prison  population. But there have been many well publicised crises with hunger strikes, riots and allegations of torture all too frequent.

Unit 10 at Pulhi Charkhi prison was built to accommodate “high value drug targets”- the drug barons who were to be processed by Special Counter Narcotics Courts staffed by supposedly incorruptible judges meting out harsh penalties. The maximum security prison lay empty for some time after it was constructed- and embarrassingly for the UK and Canadian governments who funded it was then used to hold prisoners on death row. It is now fulfilling its intended role but the prison system as a whole is struggling to do so.

The two key challenges facing the prisons are perhaps most clearly illustrated by its   two biggest disasters- the mass escapes from Sarposa prison in Kandahar three years ago and in April this year.

The 2008 escape followed a heavily armed assault by Taliban insurgents which freed over a thousand prisoners. Holding former combatants alongside criminal prisoners presents enormous challenges in post conflict countries with prison administrators having to find the right balance between security and rehabilitation.  The option of keeping insurgents in security prisons brings with it dangers of torture and ill treatment- such as those alleged by the UN this year with consequent hand wringing in western countries whose military have transferred detainees into the centres. Undue security can create alienation which pushes prisoners more firmly into the arms of the Taliban.

This year’s escape by 400 Taliban through a hundred metre long tunnel focused attention on the second set of problems. These relate to corruption and collusion by prison staff.  Many observers find it hard to see how the tunnel was constructed without the knowledge or suspicions on the part of the authorities. While improvements in pay and conditions of prison staff may reduce financial corruption, staff commitment to the formal justice system may diminish when faced by threats and intimidation or the strength of family and tribal loyalties.

With a seemingly confused Government policy towards the Taliban, it is little wonder that the prison system – and the Western nations which support it- struggle to define a clear approach to the detention of insurgents.

There are analogous problems with the wider justice system in which traditional shuras and jirgas   deal with the majority of family, land and criminal disputes, often through oral procedures. For many like Human Rights Watch human rights abuses are endemic within the traditional justice system.  Certainly the lack of respect for the rights of women in many of these forums needs somehow to be addressed -although the fact that half of the women in prison have been sentenced for so –called moral crimes suggest that the formal system is not delivering much better justice.

For the US Institute for Peace the future lies in working to create linkages between formal and informal systems so that the quality of justice can be improved, disputes resolved and rights protected. If such a hybrid approach to justice is indeed best suited to the needs of Afghanistan, so too perhaps would be a more customised approach to the use and practice of imprisonment. Before building any more jails, donors should be looking at ways to develop that approach.

Justice and Prisons were in Astana last week to contribute to a major conference on the future of the penal system in Kazakhstan. What Solzhenitsyn called the country of the camps in soviet times made remarkable progress in reforming its prisons in the first decade of this century.  A gradual process of decriminalisation and the introduction of alternatives to imprisonment led to falls in the prison population that ten years ago ranked among the very highest in the world. In 2008, the UN Committee against Torture was among several observers to note an improvement in conditions of detention. The statutory system of public monitoring of prisons is the first in Central Asia and juvenile justice is being radically transformed. While the system remained far from perfect, to its credit the Government appeared to recognise the need for further reforms. A willingness to engage with fresh thinking and bring about change based on human rights standards was marked by the transfer of responsibility for prisons from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of Justice in 2002 with pre trial detention centres following suit a year later.
It is clear that these changes remain highly fragile. Out of the blue and without consultation a Presidential decree this summer returned the prison system to the Ministry of Interior. The Ministry of Justice it seemed had failed in its duty with too many disturbances in prisons and too many escapes – although ironically perimeter security has always remained a job for the Interior Ministry. The country had apparently been too ready to listen to international experts and to humanise the system. As a result crimes had increased and in particular prisons had become hot houses for violent extremism. Returning Prisons to the Ministry responsible for policing and security would offer better protection.

Last week’s conference represented an effort by civil society to make the case for continuing the process of reform in this new era. The prospects are confused. There are revisions to the Criminal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Penal execution Code underway.  From some corners there are strong calls for the wider and more imaginative non custodial sanctions, a probation service, the reduction in sentence lengths and the transformation of the colony system. But heightened concerns about security threaten further progress in these directions. A religious law passed recently has banned prayer rooms in any state buildings, including prisons with the result that    even small churches have been prohibited from running rehabilitation programmes.

Amidst this confusion, one unplanned intervention at the conference showed with utter clarity the need for further action to bring justice into prisons. An uninvited but passionate speaker described the death of his brother in custody. He described the range of mortal injuries and circulated photos of his brother’s body that clearly showed the extent of a brutal assault.  He also described the lengthy and so far inconclusive investigation process in which he clearly had little faith. The conference organisers, showed considerable credit in permitting the intervention and the authorities and civil society who he identified as lacking in fulfilling their responsibilities responded as best they could. Of course, in the face of such grief and a matter of such profound importance, no rushed verbal response could be sufficient.What the intervention illustrated is that despite the progress that has been made in prison reform, violence and a culture of impunity are a constant danger in any penal system. A tougher approach to the use and practice of imprisonment is often justified in terms of security. But security is not simply a theoretical political idea but something that is tangibly measured by the security of each of its citizens, individuals who should be free from brutality and injustice- and that includes those who are detained or imprisoned whether for a matter of hours, days weeks or years.

Criminal justice has only a part to play in tackling the political and social challenges facing Kazakhstan and many other countries. Combating poverty, improving education, developing health and social security and eliminating discrimination are more likely to reduce extremism than tougher penal policies. The same is true of drug misuse and violence more generally. All too often over reliance on criminal punishment proves counter productive. But the case for prison reform is not just about effects but about values. As the then Chair of the Penitentiary Committee in Kazakhstan put it in 2003 “what is our priority: the interests of crime detection or the rights and freedoms of citizens? “. For Justice and Prisons it is the latter.

Nigeria and the United Kingdom are signatories to the Scheme for the Transfer of Convicted Offenders within the British Commonwealth. The Scheme allows for the transfer of prisoners between Nigeria and the United Kingdom where the consent of both states and the prisoner is obtained. A separate compulsory transfer agreement is under consideration which would not require the prisoner’s consent. This week’s decision by the Nigerian lower house of Parliament brings closer the prospect of some of the Nigerian citizens being held in prison in England serving the remainder of their sentence in one of Nigeria’s 148 prisons.

The UK Ministry of Justice has made clear its aim to stabilise or even reduce the size of the prison population in England and Wales over the next few years, yet the numbers have hit record highs over each of the last five weeks. With each prison place costing an average of GBP 45,000 per annum and budget deficits to overcome, transferring, without consent, some of the 600 Nigerians in prisons must seem an attractive way of  making a quick saving. There is something to be said for prisoners having the opportunity of serving  their sentence close to their own communities. Of at least equal importance are the conditions of detention which they will have to endure .

Since Justice and Prisons first visited prisons in Nigeria in 1999, the Nigeria Prisons Service (NPS) has made some genuine progress in reducing the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. Prisons are less the closed institutions they once were and the NPS has formed constructive relationships with civil society and international bodies interested in their work. Initiatives have been undertaken to renovate prison facilities and to improve the performance of prison personnel. Yet terrible abuses and life threatening conditions continue to characterise many parts of the prison system. It is not only international observers who have passed damning comment; even national authorities have documented their grave concerns. The Nigeria National Human Rights Commission’s National Prison Audit carried out in  2007-2008, reports  old facilities, filthy accommodation  ‘hardly fit for human habitation’, lack of medical personnel and medicines, inadequate water supply and severe overcrowding. The NPS are themselves among the many who call for urgent reforms to address the chronic problem of overcrowding.

The responsibility for this situation does not rest solely with the NPS. The failure of other agencies in the criminal justice system to function effectively has led to the well documented scourge of overcrowding .The awaiting trial prisoner population averages at around 70%, though this can be significantly higher in urban prisons. Since 1999 the total prison population has risen slightly but Nigeria’s overall rate of imprisonment at 31 per 100,000 is not particularly high. The problem is with the percentage of remand prisoners that has increased despite efforts to bring it down.  Many of those awaiting trial are detained on a ‘holding’ charge, having been first brought before magistrates court not competent to hear their case. This continues to push up the remand population, placing immense strain on the prisons’ infrastructure, much of which dates from the early 20th century. The total prison capacity in Nigeria is only marginally exceeded by the current prisoner population but this disguises the fact that  prisoners are not distributed across the prisons system. There are intolerable conditions due to overcrowding in many urban prisons, while Open Prisons may remain seriously underutilised.

The failure of the criminal justice system in Nigeria has been further undermined by apathy of legislative bodies, notwithstanding the surprisingly swift progress so far of the prisoners transfer legislation. Draft prisons bills have been before parliament for nearly ten years, but modern  legislation that will equip NPS to respond to new and evolving challenges has simply not been given the priority it requires. Proposals to introduce alternatives to prison such as Community Service have also been failed to reach the statute book. Following Nigeria’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture in July 2009, the Attorney General of the Federation launched a draft Policy Against Torture. More than two years later, the new National Committee on Torture is still not fully able to fulfil its mandate to monitor places of detention.

The Nigeria Prisons Service and Nigerian prisoners need the sustained attention of national legislators and not simply on the prisoners transfer scheme. Nigerian prisoners should not be viewed as a convenient mechanism for reducing a burden on the UK Ministry of Justice. The forced transfer of prisoners to serve their sentence in harmful conditions threatens to contravene  national and international standards and norms. Without a serious programme of reform it will place yet further strain on a prison system  unable to cope with existing commitments let alone new ones.

I have recently returned from a conference in Singapore called “Unlocking the Second Prison” organised by the International Corrections and Prisons Association.  Participants from 70 countries discussed how to build a culture of rehabilitation and reintegration into prison systems- the second prison refers to the barriers in the community that face prisoners , particularly long term prisoners , when they have left the first prison. The event was held to coincide with Yellow Ribbon Day an annual campaign to promote a second chance for offenders when they leave prison.

There is a paradox here of course. Singapore is a death penalty country and has a very high rate of imprisonment, although it has fallen by a fifth in the last 5 years or so. And there is still caning .But alongside these violations of human rights there is a serious commitment to rehabilitation which is demonstrated at the level of individual prisons, the broader criminal justice system and even in  society as a whole.

Building a rehabilitative culture into prison has an important instrumental purpose for those who are going to be released. It is in everybody’s interest that prisoners return to the community with the attitudes and skills that will enable them to stay out of trouble in the future.
Even for those who are subject to natural life terms or life with no possibility of parole there is also an instrumental case for rehabilitation – things may change, cases may be commuted, or reviewed, pardons considered, amnesties granted.

But there is also a normative case.  Offering the chance for these life prisoners to reform is the right thing to do, to help to make their lives worth living and to make the conditions of captivity more bearable. As the German Federal Constitutional Court has put it   “prison institutions also have a duty in the case of prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, to strive towards their resocialization   to preserve their ability to cope with life and to counteract the negative effects of incarceration…” The ICCPR requires prisons to comprise treatment of prisoners the essential aim of which shall be their reformation and social rehabilitation. This requirement does not exclude the treatment of life or long term prisoners, even those who may spend their whole life locked up.

What does this mean in practice for prison systems?   What is needed is what in the English speaking world we call a  progressive system in which life and long term sentenced prisoners are given planned opportunities to qualify for increasingly less restrictive conditions and levels of security so that ideally  a life prisoner is released from Open Conditions . Most will serve the first part of their sentence in high security. But this should only be for as long as this is justified by the risk of and the potential consequences of escape.

Many countries have low security or open prisons to prepare prisoners for re-entry at the end of their sentence.   In Africa many will be farms where prisoners can learn agricultural skills and even take produce to market.   In Rwanda,   community service is used for the second part of long sentences,  served in camps where prisoners do unpaid work of community benefit and also have access to educational opportunities. Conventional classroom teaching takes place in many prisons while vocational training  can be particularly important in helping prisoners to obtain skills relevant to job opportunities on release.

Maintaining family contacts, where it is possible to do this, and providing treatment for specific conditions which may lie behind offending are also important tasks for the rehabilitative prison.   There is also a place for  restorative approaches which can bring home to offenders the human consequences of their actions and provide a positive experience for victims. But perhaps the biggest challenge is “normalisation” – providing experiences in long term custody which enable prisoners to live as normal a life in prison to prevent institutionalisation.

A rehabilitative culture should not be limited to prisons but must apply to the operation of the broader criminal justice system in which prisons play their part. As part of the Singapore Conference last week, we visited a Halfway house which prepares prisoners for release. But physical infrastructure is only part of the answer. Research on desistance from crime is increasingly showing the crucial importance of strong supportive relationships whether from professionals, family members or peers in helping offenders to change their lives around and to give up crime.

Recently the King Of Morocco was reported to have inaugurated the  Marrakech post-prison support and reintegration centre set up by the Mohammed VI Foundation with some interesting features .Wages generated by prisoners through their work will be handed over to them when they complete their  prison terms and some forms of social insurance will also  be provided.  According to the report, the Ministry of Rehabilitation and Prisons Reforms   is focusing on how the inmates can be given a new life when they return back to society after concluding their respective prison terms.

In most cases a new life is not something that can simply be given to a released prisoner. Successful rehabilitation is a complex two way process. But in some particularly serious cases, a new identity and location do need to form part of a rehabilitative culture. How frequently that is required depends on the wider social acceptance of rehabilitation and whether effective measures can be taken to prepare communities for the safe return of serious criminals. Sometimes there will be cultural requirements to make amends to the family of the victim of a serious crime and indeed in some countries prisoners cannot be released until this is accomplished. Handling the return after serious and particularly after notorious crimes are difficult matters and require leadership.

When there is no real and tangible prospect of release   many believe, the punishment to be cruel and unusual. Replacing the death sentence with another form of penalty in which a prisoner inevitably will die in prison is only a partial success for those of us interested in reform.  As abolition of the death penalty gathers momentum, working on what happens instead arguably becomes a more important issue.

In Singapore they told me that they can have a commitment to rehabilitation because the public is confident that the system delivers harsh and strict punishment and once the debt has been paid then , offenders deserve to be given  a chance . The implication is  that in countries that adopt a more measured approach to punishment it is harder to win public support for rehabilitation. The challenge for us is to help develop systems that do not require such harshness as a pre condition for rehabilitation and particularly in the case of the most serious offenders offer a much better balance between the various objectives of criminal justice than we see in many countries around the world.

UK Justice Secretary Ken Clarke promised to choose his words more carefully after his claim in June that some rapes were more serious than others. His article about the riots in the Guardian this week suggests he has not heeded his promise.  The Victorian feel of his analysis of the disturbances as an “outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes” should perhaps not surprise us when research has shown that   people in Britain last lived lives as unequal as today in Charles Dickens’ times. But Clarke’s talk of “a feral underclass” is unworthy language for a senior minister whose responsibilities include strengthening democracy and safeguarding human rights. The terms have rightly been repudiated by London’s acting Police Chief.

The substance of Clarke’s article makes two somewhat surprising points. The first   is that the riots are a symptom of a broken penal system. His evidence for this is that three quarter of the adults charged in the wake of the riots had at least one conviction –in Clarke’s words individuals and families familiar with the justice system who haven’t been changed by their past punishments. While this appears a striking statistic, it needs to be seen in context.

For one thing the police will have rounded up the usual suspects first – we must wait for a thorough analysis to see whether the proportion of known offenders among all of those eventually charged remains as high. But we must also remember that having a conviction is not uncommon. A third of all males born in England and Wales in 1953 had been convicted at least once by 2006. The proportion in the most deprived areas is likely to be much higher.  But  more than half of those known offenders have been convicted on only one occasion- evidence perhaps of  that the  criminal justice system is having a more positive impact than it’s usually given credit for. Almost certainly many more people with convictions living in the areas affected did not take part in rioting than did.

Clarke is no doubt making the point to bolster the case for his rehabilitation revolution which is aimed at improving outcomes among more persistent offenders whose rates of re-offending are high despite periods in prison or subject to community penalties. The recipe he describes in his Guardian article is almost certainly right –“It’s about having a job, a strong family, a decent education and, beneath it all, an attitude that shares in the values of mainstream society.”

But many are sceptical about how this can be cooked up for ex offenders in a climate of growing unemployment and shrinking budgets for the agencies working in the field. The Conservative Daily Telegraph called for a greater investment in the prison estate, not the savings Mr Clarke is being forced to find by the Treasury. But it is really the opportunities outside prison that make or break successful desistance from crime. It is hard to see how Government plans to allow courts to suspend social security benefits as part of a penalty for rioters or to evict them from their homes will prove anything but a disaster in this respect.

Clarke’s second rather unexpected point is that “what the riots really illustrate is the need to make sentencing and other areas of the judicial system more transparent so that the public can understand the decisions that have been reached.” The answer he has come up with seems to be to televise sentencing decisions.  While it is difficult in principle to argue against broadcasting to a wider public the workings of an institution to which individual citizens have free access, it is not at all clear that the mass of TV viewers will in fact accept the decisions that courts reach in the way that he hopes. Doing justice is an inherently contested process.

Take the sentencing of the riot offences .The country’s chief prosecutor has said that “we should not treat these cases as a separate category to be dealt with differently. We should treat them as we do any other case.” The Recorder of Manchester who took it upon himself to produce sentencing guidelines for riot cases in his city took a different view – “that any participation whatsoever of whatever duration in the criminal activities of that night   irrespective of its precise form, derives its gravity because it was carried on by one of those who by sheer weight of numbers subjected the commercial areas to a sustained onslaught of burglary, robbery, theft, disorder and other related offences.”

There is of course a legitimate argument to be had about the right approach to these and indeed to any sentences- the law allows for a range of sentencing purposes, most offences have maximum sentences way above what is the so- called going rate and Sentencing Guidelines are far from binding. One can all too easily envisage likely viewer reaction inhibiting, consciously or unconsciously, decisions which show any hint of apparent leniency, or take any risks however appropriate they might be. The outcome may well be   inflation in the   use of imprisonment and in the length of sentences. Adding any further pressure to a creaking prison system facing ambitious savings targets could derail the rehabilitation revolution before it is underway.

Clearly the frequent failure of prison and community sentences to prevent repeat offending needs very significant attention, from all sectors of government and society. While Clarke identifies some of the key issues in crime prevention, his remedies, including televised sentencing, fail by a considerable way to promote the kind of policies and practice to make sustained and positive change.