This chapter reviews the main options available to the sentencing court which do not entail immediate custody. It therefore deals with fines, reviewing the difficulties posed by differential ability to pay, and community orders as well as suspended prison sentences. It discusses the tensions between imposing proportionate punishment—a retributivist aim—and delivering rehabilitation programmes—a utilitarian approach. It therefore discusses the theory and practice of rehabilitation that underpins these initiatives. However, because punishment and rehabilitation also take place in the community for those released from prison, this chapter examines supervision and the new ‘beyond the gate’ programmes for prisoners released on licence. The chapter therefore, covers the policy trends in relation to fines, the ‘rehabilitation revolution’, the privatisation of the delivery of community penalties, and the new and old utilitarian theories relating to rehabilitation.
Chapter
10. Punishment and rehabilitation in the community
Chapter
8. Justice in the modern prison
This chapter focuses on the treatment of adult prisoners, examining a number of aspects of prison life as well as considering the aims of imprisonment. Key developments since 1990 are considered, including the Woolf Report, managerialism and privatisation, the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998, and the debate on prisoners’ right to vote, to assess whether the just treatment of prisoners has been achieved. While substantial improvements in prison regimes have been made since the early 1990s, there has also been considerable pressure on them from the expanding prison population. The problem of reconciling respect for the human rights of prisoners with the administrative needs of the prison system and the deterrent function of prisons will be highlighted. The potential to limit prison expansion in the current political climate will also be considered.
