Brilliant BBC drama exposes moribund nature of prison system

Official poster for Series 1

The brilliant BBC drama Time about a young persons detention centre raises questions about incarceration and the criminal justice system. Written by Jimmy McGovern and starring David Tennant and Siobhan Finneran, Time brings home the violence and terror of prison. The understaffing, meaning the prisoners end up locked in cells for 23 hours a day. This exasperates many already big problems with the youngsters.

Efforts to rehabilitate, such as literacy provision, go by the wayside. The staff are on the edge, becoming more violent themselves. This is the third series of Time, the first focusing on adult male prison, the second adult female prison and now the youngsters.

This final series is possibly the most hard hitting. It is often a difficult watch but fantastic drama, with McGovern's brilliant writing highlighting an important contemporary issue.

The concern, though, is that despite such drama and other documentaries, the public understanding of crime and punishment seems to have changed little. The populist belief seems to be that offenders should be locked away for as long as possible - out of sight, out of mind.

Note, the frankly ludicrous outcry over the recent decision to release some prisoners early to make space in the prisons for more inmates. The releases were a matter of weeks earlier and will have made little difference to the offenders concerned.

The point missed amid the public clamour to keep people locked up was that the system does not work.

The individuals will offend again because that is what prisoners are bound to do if they are not rehabilitated, if they remain locked up for 23 hours a day. Some 30 to 40 per cent of offenders reoffend on release.

Prison does not work, it simply makes individuals into better criminals on release. (It was unfortunate in Time that it was during one of the more progressive moments to promote reconciliation that a murder occurred.)

As a former Chief Inspector of Prisons noted sooner or later all but a handful of prisoners will be released and each could be living next door to you or me. It is in everybody's interest to rehabilitate prisoners. But this is not happening.

There have been efforts made to cut incarceration by the present government, and the previous David Cameron Conservative administration, but both have been confounded by media led public outcry. The latest being the reaction to the early release program.

The stock response then from the politicians is to promise to build more prisons and incarcerate more people.

The countries that incarcerate fewer people, using other methods to punish and rehabilitate are doing better in addressing offending.

Unfortunately, for sometime, the UK has been set on following the barbarity of the United States approach, though, fortunately not as far as public execution.

The present situation, as exposed in Time needs addressing. Building more prisons, locking up more people for longer is no solution. Community- based sentences, restorative justice, rehabilitation and efforts to address the root causes of what drives crime in the first place are what is needed.

There will be mistakes and problems along the way but in the end society will be served much better, than by the present approach of simply warehousing people in increasing dangerous and volatile institutions. All this leads to, eventually, are prison riots, prisoner suicides and better equipped prisoners being released to commit more crime on the streets. Time to think again.