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