Human Rights and Prisons - Rethinking Crime and Punishment

For instance, overseas studies (Crawley, 2004; Piacentini, 2004) have
illustrated that prison officers are not always keen to engage with rights, for
varied reasons, including that:
Officers view that prisoners have „too many rights‟ – that prisoners get
more rights than they do, or that rights should be „earnt‟ privileges;
Human rights signify external or managerial interference – it is not a
part of the remit of officers „on the ground‟, who are „doing the job‟.
Instead, rights are viewed as part of the „do-gooder‟ agenda,
established by people who do not understand the prison culture or who
want to „shame‟ prison officials. Subsequently, rights standards are to
be ignored, circumnavigated or met with defensiveness;
To secure rights can be seen as an act of weakness or of „social work‟;
it contradicts the prison ethos of security and control. Human rights
standards can be undermined through the conflicts of interests
between respective providers of care and control;
Human rights may represent more work. They are viewed by officers
as an administrative burden – officers become concerned about the
numbers of complaints; the completion of forms; the need for further
meetings, and so on. Further, maintaining rights standards often
requires extra effort or creativity. From this perspective, human rights
reform is a commodity, rather than a way of thinking about the prison
experience;
Human rights can be a frustrating experience – prison officers can
become dispirited when some prisoners are provided with opportunities
that they do not, then, develop. For example, an officer may invest
large amounts of time and energy on certain prisoners – to, say,
develop their employment options – and then find that the prisoner
returns to prison soon after release. In these circumstances, some
officers might think „why should I bother?‟;
Human rights are viewed as window-dressing and become a „tick box‟
exercise. After all, even if we have prisons that can tick all the boxes –
and that can cover all minimal standards – that does not necessarily
mean that prisons will have positive outcomes in terms of rehabilitation
practices or the long-term attainment of rights at community or societal
levels. Given this, it seems useful to consider rights practices in prisons
in terms of outcomes and not just process (Coyle, 2007; Owers, 2008).
From these arguments, some of which may have resonance in New Zealand,
it is evident that human rights policies (that can, on paper, appear as a
rational and appropriate means of attaining positive relations) may face
hurdles at an operational level. Prisons are places of discretion and human
rights are continually contested. Thus, while prison managers certainly „set
the tone‟ for rights standards, human rights are established and maintained on
the ground level. Rights are, after all, about relationships between people. In
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