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Before that I'd spent the last year researching

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prison systems and general entities,

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so I thought I'd take you on a journey through what I've found.

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At the end I would like you to celebrate with me the fact that I can now leave

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this disgusting, horrible, painful, dangerous system behind me;

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and we'll all go out and have a drink and celebrate the fact that we,

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ourselves, actually can leave it behind unlike some.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that one can measure

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the degree of civilization in society by entering its prisons.

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While this may be true, I think that in all senses

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we see prison as separate from society, parallel to society,

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not a product of that society but a neighbouring entity.

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This is partly a product of the nature of the modern imprisonment paradigm:

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a delineation of walls, barricades,

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halted access in circumscription of its structures,

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its necessary opaque methods of administration.

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The anatomy of a prison system comes into existence

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or is defined by its separation from its surroundings;

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it's cut off from the external.

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At the same time, these institutions we wish to understand

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and the system as a totality, house what is seen by the general public

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as an alternative population, a branch of humanity that has transgressed

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whatever that society has placed into the paradigm of legal activity.

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This perception aids us in divorcing the prison system

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and the whole concept of the imprisonment system from our daily lives too.

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Few problematic consequences arise, I think, from this.

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First off, it has become very hard to criticize the prison system.

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You are less likely to see the root causes and consequences of social issues

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and the effect of social pressures on the people

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who ultimately become inmates in the prison system

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if you don't see the prison system as a product of a certain kind of society.

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It's not independently involved,

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and yet we quietly slip into the habit of this impression.

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More specifically, and as I want to argue, all attempts at social criticism

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of the method of imprisonment need to flow from an understanding

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of the historical precedence that came to produce the prison.

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This is rarely done academically and never in mainstream media.

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This notion of separation also allows for the methods of the prison system

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to be transferred to a general society whilst maintaining a certain doublethink

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that these methods are not being used.

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Ever-increasing and ever-powerful surveillance

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is quite an embedded part of life now,

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and yet it goes unnoticed by many because we are 'outside the prison',

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therefore we must be free.

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Comparisons of the school system with a prison are met with a priori cynicism

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and are mostly made half jokingly by students who are only quietly aware

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that the school system much more closely resembles the coercive organization

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of prison than people would comfortably admit.

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But, the reinforcer is there: You are not in a prison, you are outside;

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and even though you may be in another social institution,

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the logic and methods of the prison system

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in your life are made to appear non-overlapping.

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You should be thankful that you are not in prison.

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This is a powerful enforcer against critical engagement with prison as well.

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The 3rd and final effect of dividing up prison and society I want to dwell on

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concerns the reform movement towards prison.

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While it may seem an odd thing to say,

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the debate against prisons' various failings or successes

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is automatically framed as an argument for increasing its abilities.

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The demand for reform, improvements, inspections, accountability

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are all impulses of the same core values that gave birth to the prison itself.

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Thus we easily slip into solving the problems of prisons

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with a debate framed within the assumptions of creating more imprisonment,

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in a sense that the attributes of surveillance, structured administration

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and the demand for improvement and tracking of a subject that we see in the prison

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are all reasserted on the prison itself, magnifying it more.

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Let's give prison the context we need in order to understand it.

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What came before the practice of the prison?

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What happened to people caught in transgressions of the law in pre-carceral days?

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What were the development pressures of imprisonment,

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and how have they continued up to the present day?

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What does it actually mean, in social terms,

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to be living in a society that makes use of a prison system?

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In his book 'Discipline and Punish | The birth of the Prison'

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Michel Foucault recalls a famous case of public execution in 1757

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of a regicide named Robert-François Damiens.

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On the 1st of March, 1757,

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Damiens the regicide was condemned to make the 'Amende Honorable'

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before the main door of the church of Paris, where he was to be taken

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and conveyed in a cart wearing nothing but a shirt,

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holding a torch of burning wax weighing two pounds.

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Then, in said cart, to the place de Grève

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where on a scaffold that will be erected there, the flesh will be torn

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from his breasts, arms, thighs and cleaved with red-hot pincers,

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his right hand holding the knife with which he committed the said parricide,

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burnt with sulphur; and on those places where the flesh will be torn away

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poured molten-lead, boiling oil,

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burning resin, wax and sulphur melted together,

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and then his body drawn and quartered by four horses,

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and his limbs and body consumed by fire, reduced to ashes

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and the ashes thrown to the wind.

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The account covers in detail the final moments of this goring.

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Then the executioner, his sleeves rolled up, took the steel pincers

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which had been especially made for the occasion

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and were about a foot-and-a-half long,

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pulled first the calf of the right leg,

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then of the thigh, and from there, the two fleshy parts of the right arm,

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then, at the breasts.

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Though a strong, sturdy fellow, the executioner found it so difficult

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to tear away the pieces of flesh that he set about the same spot

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two or three times, twisting the pincers as he did so;

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and what he took away formed at each part a wound about the size

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of a 6-pound crown piece.

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Stories like the one of Damiens are extremely common

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for this time period and for the hundreds to thousands of years before it.

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Indeed, in the pre-modern era we often find stories

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of the beheaded, treasonous characters from history

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having their heads placed on London Bridge's entrance.

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The stories of Henry VIII, his misadventures towards his wives,

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the methods by which Guy Fawkes was placed on the rack

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and then ultimately hanged: These are common to our historical understandings.

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I think it is with seemingly great relief

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that many parts of the world have now abandoned public torture and execution.

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On the face of it, this has been a humane move,

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informed by design, not to see wanton, visceral bloodshed

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performed by the State on its own people

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in those societies that have abandoned either the death penalty

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or any other overt public torture or execution.

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However, before we move away from staged state violence,

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the following points need to be made which help us understand this transition.

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Public executions are just that: public.

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As a spectacle, the event consists of a singular criminal

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or defined set of criminals usually raised on a stage for better viewing,

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surrounded by gazes of the onlookers.

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In fact, there are historical precedence of crowds of expectant onlookers

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rioting because a certain execution was held in private

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or organized with limited or obstructed viewing.

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Such was the expectation of the public to have a visible event.

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Events were also explicitly ordered for

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and performed by agents of the state.

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The hanged man is not an aggressor so much as the showman for the crowd

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and an employee of the state.

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As is particularly the case with treason, the crimes that have been committed

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are seen as against the monarch or the head of state.

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The violence retribution that takes place is at once the expunging of the crime,

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often symbolically as with Damiens whose hand held the knife

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with which the attempted murder of the king was made.

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It's also a reassertion of the power of the monarch or state head,

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which has been undermined by the transgression of one of the laws

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that the monarch has made, and which defines the power

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to which the serfs are indeed subject.

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The sovereign's power is acted out physically on the subjects

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and the gaze of the onlookers at once empowers the event as theatrical,

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noteworthy and central, whilst one would think

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also forming a strong negative reinforcement to the witnesses.

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This is what happens if you disobey the laws of the land.

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To move away from this kind of punishment

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to an organization of corrective institutionalization and surveillance

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is often considered as one driven by the enlightenment

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or a new set of human-based values and understandings towards human behaviour

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or the nature of what we call 'evil'.

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It is seen predominantly as the melioration

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of the viciousness of the punitive mechanisms of the social order,

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a more humane form of interaction between society and the criminal individual.

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Indeed, the move from torture to punishment and imprisonment

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as the main corrective function occurred in Europe in under 80 years,

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making it a very speedy and almost sudden move in the force of punishment.

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It demonstrates that large changes in the social organization can happen,

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but in this case the move was not driven predominantly

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by these values at all, but by something else.

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The morphing of societal methods of treating transgressions occurred in tandem with

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the development of an economy more closely founded

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on the ideas of private property and ownership.

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A reorganization of power occurred that relocated the point of application of power

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from the body whose physicality was tied up in a more agricultural

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and labour-based economy to what people often term as 'the soul'

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or the more inner light of the delinquent products of that society.

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Theft and other property-related crimes belong to the physical,

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but once more ideological crimes come into play, like an up-tick

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in the amount of fraud that occurs as a market-based economy

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and a monetary paradigm begin to dominate, the more the power becomes effective

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if it is relocated to the behavioural

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rather than the physical side of the human being.

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Consequently, we see the following:

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The gallows are largely replaced by handcuffs,

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and the public spectacle that was overt, punitive violence

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and state termination of bodies has now been replaced by

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an inverted spectacle that is worth noting.

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Where once the lone criminal was gazed upon by a multitude,

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by and by the institutional form of correction

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has inverted this model into the modern recognizable prison organization:

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a multitude of prisoners, all confined, separated, a crowd of individuals

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rather than a throng surrounding a central, all-seeing tower

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which allows constant supervision of the inmates,

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but whose watching eye is itself not identifiable.

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It is unseen, invisible. Indeed, as Foucault himself put it:

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"Visibility is a trap."

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This then was the invention of the 'Panopticon'

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by a cheerful chap called Jeremy Bentham (there he is),

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a structured excluding building that would house always-visible criminals;

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and although the Panopticon is most famous for its central tower

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and often round nature of the buildings,

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actually over time surveillance has become digital,

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and as such the ever-present centre can now be aided by CCTV

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and similar measures rather than the need for direct line of sight.

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So, even though today's prisons look rather different to this model of operation,

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we can see how surveillance is the thing that has most empowered itself

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in our punitive measures; and we can also see

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that those measures are totalising, born of a central tower,

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now morphed into a hi-tech control room.

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No longer are the crowd watching the criminal.

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A crowd of criminals is now being watched, isolated independently by cells

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and the larger layout of the prison;

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and yet made uniform by literally, uniforms,

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shared rules and statuses.

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They can be both entirely separated from the world in solitary confinement,

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and yet have every move and behaviour inspected and supervised.

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In fact, the word 'super-vision' has its roots in literally overseeing;

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those two meanings of regulating an event

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as well as having complete views of it are preserved in the modern phrase.

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Such a system is always defended (especially by politicians)

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as something that works in reducing crime and making society safer.

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Indeed, the inbuilt, psychological effect of locking up human delinquents

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is to bestow an ill-conceived feeling of being protected from them,

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and indeed this feeling of needing protection itself becomes an engine

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for the maintaining of such a system of punitive function.

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Incarceration is also broadly characterized in two ways

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which maintain its persistence as an accepted function in society.

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One is the negative reinforcement:

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People believe that peoples' experience of prison,

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of being deprived of liberty, should correct that behaviour

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so that upon their release they will integrate with that society,

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or others exclaim "Some are just so bad

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that you should just lock 'em up and throw away the key!"

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This view essentially chooses to see the prison system

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as a permanent container for the permanently dangerous.

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It is maintained in the pro-imprisonment rhetoric

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that prisons ought to be pacifying the criminals,

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to be normalizing them so they can be potentially released in most cases.

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This, of course, presupposes

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that they be non-violent enough to be trusted with freedom.

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One of foundations of being able to coexist with the wide population

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is the curbing of violent behaviour towards the self and others;

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such an impulse and tendency should be implicitly generated by a system

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that is built to be the normalizer of human beings for social coexistence.

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Yet, I want to impress upon you the following:

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The prison system, its structure, its foundational ideology of punishment

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through negative reinforcement, its governing legal mechanisms,

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and its criminal, administrative and interpersonal hierarchies

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are implicitly those that instill, promote,

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require, enable and affect violence.

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It is no longer the priority of the prison,

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nor was it likely ever the main priority

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to sustainably and correctly adjust human beings

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to a society in a cooperative manner; and even if it were,

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the main, actual effect of prison is in large part

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the worsening of human social integrity.

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I'll break this down into the following subheadings:

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1) Prison's meta-social effects

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This is the evidence of prison's negative effect upon all inhabitants

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including the guards, whether they are criminals or not

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(that's a key point that I'll explain in a moment).

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2) Decisions and governing methods

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The methods by which decisions are arrived at within the correctional body;

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that body, including the legal system, the courts and their associated costs,

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00:14:32,574 --> 00:14:35,525
the rehabilitative organizations that work in tandem with the prison

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during the release and transition of prisoners back home,

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and the hardware, nutrition,

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buildings, telephony and everything else.

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This sounds distant from the topic at hand, but you'll see shortly

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that all of these considerations lie at the heart of what correction actually means,

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how we run it, and in what direction.

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What are we building in there?

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1) Prison's meta-social effects

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James Gilligan, head of the Harvard University Department

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for the Study of Violence, spent decades working in prisons.

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He has stated amongst many others than prisons are, in fact, engines of violence

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which can turn non-violent criminals into violent ones

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right in time for their release.

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Several factors play into this effect, one key element being

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the implicit shame and debasement of becoming subjected to overt coercion.

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Playing into this for some prisoners is the social stigma of being a criminal:

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You are opposed to the social structure as an individual.

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Indeed, the ordered and structured communal nature of prisons

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establishes a powerful educational environment for criminals:

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a school of crime, which spits out shamed, deprived

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00:15:42,314 --> 00:15:46,113
and dangerous individuals into a society that understands neither them

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nor the institutions from which they emerge.

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Equally, those sent to prison leave on the outside families

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00:15:52,979 --> 00:15:55,964
that are more greatly impoverished by the loss of a breadwinner,

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thus there is the built in downgrading of social cohesion

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at the very point of which the system of punishment meets society.

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Further crime and the psychosocial effects

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00:16:05,029 --> 00:16:08,427
of the shame of an imprisoned family member greatly distort an already

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very likely problematic and stressful background of that same family.

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00:16:13,225 --> 00:16:15,781
Of course, we abhor violence

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00:16:15,921 --> 00:16:19,110
precisely because it generates more violence,

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but closing off many violent people within a confined space

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produces violent effects.

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To quote Gilligan from 'Psychiatric Quarterly'

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describing the Massachusetts' prison system:

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"By the 1970s, the Massachusetts' prison

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had degenerated into a virtual war zone.

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In addition to riots within the maximum security prison alone,

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there were periods in which there was an average of a murder a month

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00:16:42,052 --> 00:16:45,671
and one suicide every six weeks in a 600-man prison.

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00:16:46,222 --> 00:16:49,873
The decade as a whole ended with a total of more than 100 violent deaths

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in one prison alone, and throughout the prison system as a whole,

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00:16:53,692 --> 00:16:56,661
there was an epidemic of riots, arson, hostage taking,

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murder followed by suicide and other violence in which inmates,

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00:17:00,749 --> 00:17:05,643
prison staff and even visitors were being killed, raped and injured.

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00:17:05,782 --> 00:17:07,961
The federal court investigation that followed

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00:17:08,101 --> 00:17:11,968
determined that much of this violence was precipitated by untreated,

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00:17:12,108 --> 00:17:17,430
undiagnosed mental illness. Much of it was itself precipitated

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00:17:17,569 --> 00:17:20,895
or at least exacerbated by conditions within the prison."

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00:17:21,412 --> 00:17:24,747
Gilligan, who found himself placed in charge of this chaos,

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00:17:24,887 --> 00:17:27,646
instigated over 10 years of psychological treatment

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00:17:27,787 --> 00:17:30,337
and therapies that encouraged and nurtured self-respect

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through positive reinforcement.

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It was a value shift in the approach of rehabilitation.

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00:17:35,348 --> 00:17:38,736
He reported "During the first 5 years of our program there were no riots

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00:17:38,876 --> 00:17:42,162
at any prison, though there were two serious hosting taking incidents

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00:17:42,302 --> 00:17:45,255
both of which we were able to resolve without any deaths.

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00:17:45,395 --> 00:17:47,413
No staff members or visitors were killed,

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though 7 inmates throughout the prison system as a whole

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00:17:50,344 --> 00:17:52,268
died from homicide or suicide.

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00:17:52,408 --> 00:17:55,872
During the second five years there were no riots, no hostage taking,

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00:17:56,012 --> 00:17:58,454
one homicide and two suicides.

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00:17:58,971 --> 00:18:03,351
That is, there were some entire years with no violent deaths."

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00:18:04,170 --> 00:18:06,633
Gilligan's project was unfortunately unraveled

321
00:18:06,773 --> 00:18:09,761
after 10 years with the refocusing of the new governor

322
00:18:09,901 --> 00:18:13,774
on reintroducing prisoners to the joys of busting rocks.

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00:18:14,293 --> 00:18:17,510
We see the system resetting down to its origins

324
00:18:17,650 --> 00:18:22,399
with a greater focus on structural violence regardless of provable outcome,

325
00:18:23,271 --> 00:18:25,377
but for this assertion to be valid,

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00:18:25,517 --> 00:18:28,593
that the prison system is itself inherently a nurturer of violence,

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00:18:28,733 --> 00:18:32,984
one would have to see non-violent people turn violent in a prison, for one;

328
00:18:33,124 --> 00:18:36,523
but most helpful would be to see that the encouragement of violence

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00:18:36,663 --> 00:18:40,731
might also manifest in a controlled scenario with non-criminals.

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00:18:40,871 --> 00:18:45,167
For the first point, that non-violent people may become violent,

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00:18:45,307 --> 00:18:49,096
the US prison population is now at some two million people in strength.

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00:18:49,236 --> 00:18:51,935
This population quadrupled in the 1980s

333
00:18:52,075 --> 00:18:55,530
fueled by the war on drugs' mandatory minimum sentencing,

334
00:18:55,670 --> 00:18:59,453
which prolongs sentences on average to a preset term or longer,

335
00:18:59,593 --> 00:19:02,084
and by 'truth-in sentencing' which more or less eliminates

336
00:19:02,224 --> 00:19:06,301
the ability for rewarding better behaviour with parole or similar programs.

337
00:19:06,441 --> 00:19:08,898
The 'three strikes' law also ensured that repeat offenders

338
00:19:09,038 --> 00:19:12,054
for crimes including drug-related crimes (non-violent ones)

339
00:19:12,194 --> 00:19:15,882
would see a quicker jail time now, as well as they'd be in for longer.

340
00:19:16,564 --> 00:19:20,284
Around half of US convicts are in [prison] for non-violent offences

341
00:19:20,424 --> 00:19:22,443
(around 20% drug offences);

342
00:19:22,583 --> 00:19:25,067
but as James Gilligan reminds us, most prisons do more

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00:19:25,207 --> 00:19:28,071
to stimulate violence and crime than they do to prevent it.

344
00:19:28,211 --> 00:19:30,423
Prisons have often been termed 'Schools of Crime';

345
00:19:30,563 --> 00:19:33,045
I'd call them 'Graduate Schools of Crime'.

346
00:19:33,185 --> 00:19:35,891
People often have to become violent in order to survive in them;

347
00:19:36,031 --> 00:19:38,747
or even if they're not attacked by others,

348
00:19:38,887 --> 00:19:42,192
they are subjected to conditions of degradation, humiliation, intimidation

349
00:19:42,332 --> 00:19:45,967
and threats that I think might drive the most saintliest of people

350
00:19:46,107 --> 00:19:48,723
to become more violent in response.

351
00:19:48,863 --> 00:19:52,947
But, what if there's no criminals in prison but simply ordinary people?

352
00:19:53,087 --> 00:19:55,571
Does the problem of violence disappear?

353
00:19:55,711 --> 00:19:58,875
The theory that prison precipitates violence would predict

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00:19:59,015 --> 00:20:03,010
that ordinary people should become distorted by the institution.

355
00:20:03,150 --> 00:20:06,454
Thankfully, this has been tested and proven valid,

356
00:20:06,594 --> 00:20:09,423
most notably by Dr. Philip Zimbardo

357
00:20:09,563 --> 00:20:12,620
and his Stanford Prison Experiment.

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00:20:12,760 --> 00:20:16,193
Making use of a disused cellar wing of [a] Stanford University building,

359
00:20:16,333 --> 00:20:19,331
he and some colleagues constructed a rudimentary cell block

360
00:20:19,471 --> 00:20:22,277
with locks on the door and secret audio surveillance so that inmates

361
00:20:22,417 --> 00:20:26,500
could be monitored for their reactions to the environment and other inmates.

362
00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:29,229
An ad was placed in the paper asking for paid volunteers

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00:20:29,369 --> 00:20:33,580
to take part in a 7-14 day experiment at $15 per day.

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00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:38,136
Those chosen for the experiment were picked for their mental stability:

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00:20:38,276 --> 00:20:41,613
non-aggressive and non-dominant characteristics.

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00:20:43,550 --> 00:20:45,443
24 local males in all

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00:20:45,583 --> 00:20:48,565
were randomly assigned to be either prisoners or guards.

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00:20:48,705 --> 00:20:51,328
Prisoners were stripped of their name and given a number.

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00:20:51,468 --> 00:20:54,416
They were given hairnets and other ways of shaming them,

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00:20:54,556 --> 00:20:58,151
and they were deloused. There wasn't real delousing powder;

371
00:20:58,291 --> 00:21:02,819
in fact, that whole delousing process is mostly to shame them on the way in.

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00:21:02,959 --> 00:21:05,859
The rules stated: A guard's orders must be obeyed;

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00:21:05,999 --> 00:21:08,672
timetables must be kept; house rules were enforced

374
00:21:08,812 --> 00:21:13,107
and learnt by rote for public recitation, either in order or in part.

375
00:21:13,679 --> 00:21:17,205
The resulting outcome of this was a practical 'reign of terror'

376
00:21:17,345 --> 00:21:20,947
by the guards who began with tiresome and deliberately tedious exercises

377
00:21:21,087 --> 00:21:25,532
such as reciting their prisoner numbers backwards, forwards, in reverse, etc.

378
00:21:26,283 --> 00:21:29,859
But, as these mentally stable, ordinary boys

379
00:21:29,999 --> 00:21:33,310
slipped further into their roles as domineering or the domineered,

380
00:21:33,450 --> 00:21:35,647
more cruel results became apparent.

381
00:21:35,787 --> 00:21:39,404
Clashes between inmates and guards, hunger strikes, disobedience,

382
00:21:39,544 --> 00:21:42,982
destruction of prison property and inter-prisoner unrest

383
00:21:43,122 --> 00:21:45,960
soon gave rise to essentially forms of torture,

384
00:21:46,100 --> 00:21:48,863
cruelty, sleep deprivation and more.

385
00:21:49,003 --> 00:21:53,693
One inmate folded after two days of subjection and was replaced.

386
00:21:53,833 --> 00:21:55,971
All forgot it was an experiment.

387
00:21:56,111 --> 00:21:59,559
One of the rules even stated that it would not be referred to as such.

388
00:21:59,699 --> 00:22:02,859
Even Zimbardo (as a fictional prison superintendent)

389
00:22:02,999 --> 00:22:07,258
ended up seeking snitches, convincing upset prisoners to stay on

390
00:22:07,398 --> 00:22:09,691
and subject themselves further, etc.

391
00:22:09,831 --> 00:22:12,260
The experiment collapsed after five days,

392
00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:14,284
and does it remind you of anywhere?

393
00:22:14,424 --> 00:22:16,154
Google thinks so:

394
00:22:16,642 --> 00:22:18,487
It says Abu Ghraib.

395
00:22:19,432 --> 00:22:21,970
Hand-in-hand with Zimbardo's experiment

396
00:22:22,110 --> 00:22:25,764
comes the direct association with Stanley Milgram, whom we've had mentioned today;

397
00:22:25,904 --> 00:22:28,871
and indeed Milgram and Zimbardo were at one time high school friends.

398
00:22:29,011 --> 00:22:31,496
Milgram's experiment showed that over 90% of people

399
00:22:31,636 --> 00:22:34,377
who were placed in the experiment would apply what they believed

400
00:22:34,517 --> 00:22:37,458
to be mortally dangerous electric shocks to unseen victims,

401
00:22:37,598 --> 00:22:41,675
when commanded to do so by a white-coat-uniformed head of the experiment.

402
00:22:41,815 --> 00:22:44,494
Zimbardo shows us that ordinary people within a prison structure

403
00:22:44,634 --> 00:22:46,462
can produce tension and violence.

404
00:22:46,602 --> 00:22:49,768
Depersonalization runs right through the whole schema of command,

405
00:22:49,908 --> 00:22:53,049
and coercion, and power administration within a structure.

406
00:22:53,189 --> 00:22:57,900
We turn the ordinary into exactly the kind of distorted creature

407
00:22:59,443 --> 00:23:01,874
by treating them in a distorted way.

408
00:23:02,014 --> 00:23:06,457
Milgram, on the other hand, shows us how people can be led to punish others.

409
00:23:06,597 --> 00:23:10,095
As such, we have to decode the behaviour of the brutal prison guards,

410
00:23:10,235 --> 00:23:12,920
not as one of corruption of the prison methodology,

411
00:23:13,060 --> 00:23:16,327
but in fact another symptom of its effect on human beings

412
00:23:16,467 --> 00:23:19,345
regardless on which side of the law they stand on.

413
00:23:19,895 --> 00:23:22,399
Part ll: Decisions and Governance

414
00:23:22,539 --> 00:23:26,662
What steps are we taking to adapt prison? What are we adapting it towards?

415
00:23:26,802 --> 00:23:28,929
What governs the development of prison now?

416
00:23:29,069 --> 00:23:32,844
Many would contend that it would still be the eradication of criminal behaviour

417
00:23:32,984 --> 00:23:36,326
or the paying of a social debt in some way.

418
00:23:36,466 --> 00:23:40,348
Since my claim is that the culture is what births the prison,

419
00:23:40,488 --> 00:23:42,851
we should also be able to predict the following:

420
00:23:42,991 --> 00:23:47,204
A culture in society rooted to a great extent in the profit mechanism

421
00:23:47,344 --> 00:23:50,792
should see its prison system reflect this tendency

422
00:23:50,932 --> 00:23:53,507
of profit before every other consideration,

423
00:23:53,647 --> 00:23:57,273
i.e., collusion, fraud, and so on, in a similar manner.

424
00:23:58,424 --> 00:24:00,211
So, it comes as no surprise

425
00:24:00,351 --> 00:24:03,026
that we do find the evolution of privately-run prison

426
00:24:03,166 --> 00:24:06,874
as a powerful dominant force in the system of correction today.

427
00:24:07,014 --> 00:24:11,635
American entities Wackenhut and CCA (the Correction Corporation of America)

428
00:24:11,775 --> 00:24:14,773
and their international subsidiaries in Australia and elsewhere

429
00:24:14,913 --> 00:24:18,755
are now prominent, but much well less known than one would think,

430
00:24:18,895 --> 00:24:23,163
sold into society as 'cheaper alternatives' than state-run institutions,

431
00:24:23,303 --> 00:24:26,535
but being more 'efficient' because of corporate backing.

432
00:24:26,675 --> 00:24:30,796
CCA, for example, is now at the point where an offer is on the table

433
00:24:30,936 --> 00:24:33,252
to run the entire correctional apparatus

434
00:24:33,392 --> 00:24:36,433
in the 48 states of the United States.

435
00:24:36,871 --> 00:24:38,861
A key element of the offer

436
00:24:39,001 --> 00:24:43,015
is the promised occupancy rate of at least 90%.

437
00:24:43,938 --> 00:24:47,952
In other words, we are now measuring the success of the prison system

438
00:24:48,092 --> 00:24:50,804
by economic indicators that run counter

439
00:24:50,944 --> 00:24:53,965
to the welfare of the inmates and the wider population.

440
00:24:54,105 --> 00:24:58,526
It is now valued by its larger size rather than its smaller size.

441
00:24:58,666 --> 00:25:03,455
It is valued by the money it saves, not the lives it saves.

442
00:25:04,106 --> 00:25:07,219
The maintenance of at least a stable prison population

443
00:25:07,359 --> 00:25:10,538
and at best a growing prison population

444
00:25:10,678 --> 00:25:14,808
has become built into the welfare of thousands of satellite industries.

445
00:25:14,948 --> 00:25:17,633
Two million prisoners eat six million meals a day,

446
00:25:17,773 --> 00:25:20,983
meaning literally a captive audience for catering services.

447
00:25:21,123 --> 00:25:23,983
The telephony company Sprint has made large contracts with prisons

448
00:25:24,123 --> 00:25:26,933
to provide communication services. Inmates get sick,

449
00:25:27,073 --> 00:25:30,922
allowing for private health companies to thrive servicing the population.

450
00:25:31,062 --> 00:25:34,275
Wackenhut and CCA trade their stock on Wall Street

451
00:25:34,415 --> 00:25:36,715
based on the size of the prisoner population,

452
00:25:36,855 --> 00:25:39,856
the larger the better for the economy.

453
00:25:39,996 --> 00:25:42,737
Now, I already mentioned the 3 US laws:

454
00:25:42,877 --> 00:25:46,670
the Three Strikes Law, Truth in Sentencing, Mandatory Minimum Sentencing,

455
00:25:46,810 --> 00:25:49,194
all of which have an effect on prison population.

456
00:25:49,334 --> 00:25:52,707
It's interesting to note that these laws and many like them

457
00:25:52,847 --> 00:25:55,851
are actually drafted by an organization called

458
00:25:55,991 --> 00:26:00,484
the American Legislative Exchange Council (amusingly ALEC, for short).

459
00:26:00,624 --> 00:26:03,831
Hundreds of state laws are passed each year

460
00:26:03,971 --> 00:26:09,014
under the banner of being the 'Unsung Heroes' of American public policy.

461
00:26:09,817 --> 00:26:11,857
ALEC states that its agenda is to:

462
00:26:11,997 --> 00:26:16,631
promote free markets, small governments, state rights and privatization.

463
00:26:16,771 --> 00:26:18,602
During these closed meetings,

464
00:26:18,742 --> 00:26:22,340
hundreds of delegates from the prison industrial complex like Wackenhut

465
00:26:22,480 --> 00:26:27,601
pay large dues to sit at the table together and eek-out pre-written templates

466
00:26:27,741 --> 00:26:30,835
for state laws, that are then brought back by the state reps

467
00:26:30,975 --> 00:26:33,515
to their own states, where they're then dressed up

468
00:26:33,655 --> 00:26:36,635
and passed as the conclusions of that state representative

469
00:26:36,775 --> 00:26:39,939
instead of the corporation gaining off their passage into law.

470
00:26:40,079 --> 00:26:43,634
Do you now see why I don't trust the idea of government?

471
00:26:45,029 --> 00:26:47,068
It's built in!

472
00:26:47,208 --> 00:26:49,262
[Applause]

473
00:26:51,590 --> 00:26:54,940
Truth in Sentencing and widely spread Mandatory Minimum Sentencing

474
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:59,424
and the Three Strikes Law have all been promoted heavily into acceptance

475
00:26:59,564 --> 00:27:02,957
by ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force, which included CCA

476
00:27:03,097 --> 00:27:06,234
(which now claim as of last year to have left ALEC), and others

477
00:27:06,374 --> 00:27:09,870
in a bid to insure a growing and robust prison population

478
00:27:10,010 --> 00:27:15,281
which in turn insures the viability of the private prison enterprises involved.

479
00:27:15,421 --> 00:27:19,190
Further (it gets better), forced labour, either for a pittance

480
00:27:19,330 --> 00:27:22,927
or no pay at all, means that companies now regularly use prison labour

481
00:27:23,067 --> 00:27:26,514
to produce the products more cheaply in order to sell at a higher cost

482
00:27:26,654 --> 00:27:29,536
(or greater profit) to the non-imprisoned population.

483
00:27:29,676 --> 00:27:33,035
There's only a mild difference there, isn't there?

484
00:27:33,175 --> 00:27:36,913
This is more economically efficient if profit is your guiding light,

485
00:27:37,053 --> 00:27:39,806
not if we're talking about the viability of prison

486
00:27:39,946 --> 00:27:42,667
as a tool for social rehabilitation.

487
00:27:42,807 --> 00:27:46,779
This should be termed what it is, Ladies and Gentlemen: Slavery 2.0!

488
00:27:46,919 --> 00:27:50,287
It is the wholesale refocusing of the measure of success

489
00:27:50,427 --> 00:27:53,800
of this system into economic indicators that are based on deprivation,

490
00:27:53,940 --> 00:27:56,794
restricted access and control in the first place.

491
00:27:56,934 --> 00:28:00,913
It has spread to corporate prisons in the UK, Australia and beyond.

492
00:28:01,053 --> 00:28:03,307
If prison is a microcosm of the society

493
00:28:03,447 --> 00:28:06,185
as James Gilligan has stated in his book 'Preventing Violence'

494
00:28:06,325 --> 00:28:10,099
and which Dostoyevski essentially alludes to in my opening quotation of him,

495
00:28:10,239 --> 00:28:13,981
then we can expect this to magnify as our paradigm becomes more predatory

496
00:28:14,121 --> 00:28:17,202
and as the dominant for-profit forces seek to own

497
00:28:17,342 --> 00:28:20,316
and deflect media attention and influence policy

498
00:28:20,456 --> 00:28:23,096
as we have come to expect from every other avenue

499
00:28:23,236 --> 00:28:26,202
which has been taken, and profitized, and commodified,

500
00:28:26,342 --> 00:28:29,380
and altered into a machine for economic viability

501
00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:32,003
instead of viability.

502
00:28:33,442 --> 00:28:35,235
[Applause]

503
00:28:40,725 --> 00:28:42,756
What's the alternative then?

504
00:28:42,896 --> 00:28:46,341
About two years ago I was speaking with a cab driver (as I'm wont to do)

505
00:28:46,481 --> 00:28:48,768
about the Utah man sentenced to death,

506
00:28:48,908 --> 00:28:51,442
who chose to be killed by firing squad,

507
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:53,613
in 2010!

508
00:28:54,270 --> 00:28:57,791
Now, seguewaying into punishment and its effects, I suggested

509
00:28:57,931 --> 00:29:00,875
that the violence of the penal system encourages the violence of more crime,

510
00:29:01,016 --> 00:29:04,688
more social division, more social ills. The cab driver replied:

511
00:29:04,828 --> 00:29:07,832
"What do you want to do then, give 'em all a medal?"

512
00:29:07,972 --> 00:29:10,457
This dualistic vision of reward and punishment,

513
00:29:10,597 --> 00:29:12,646
is quite easy to fall into,

514
00:29:12,786 --> 00:29:15,491
but we are trying to solve the problem of crime,

515
00:29:15,631 --> 00:29:17,677
not ignore it or celebrate it.

516
00:29:18,181 --> 00:29:21,829
Solve it, not manage it within a power framework that perpetuates

517
00:29:21,969 --> 00:29:25,186
the violence that gave birth to the criminal behaviour in the first place

518
00:29:25,326 --> 00:29:29,682
and foster a society that less provokes crime and violence to begin with,

519
00:29:29,822 --> 00:29:32,842
not simply extend the prison bandage further.

520
00:29:33,490 --> 00:29:36,635
As the work of James Gilligan, Wilkinson and Pickett in the book

521
00:29:36,775 --> 00:29:40,467
'The Spirit Level' and the work of many others now makes it clear:

522
00:29:40,973 --> 00:29:44,507
to mistreat a human being, to deprive, limit and shame a human being

523
00:29:44,647 --> 00:29:48,274
is a sure-fire way of developing more aberrant and violent behaviour.

524
00:29:48,414 --> 00:29:51,549
Shake a glass jar with ants in it and they will fight.

525
00:29:51,689 --> 00:29:55,926
Shake it as a punishment, they'll just fight some more, ad infinitum.

526
00:29:56,843 --> 00:29:58,970
So, I took up the cab driver's challenge

527
00:29:59,110 --> 00:30:02,731
and looked for alternative prisons or other approaches.

528
00:30:02,871 --> 00:30:06,951
I didn't have to look too far. Nestled in the mountains of Styria in Austria,

529
00:30:07,091 --> 00:30:11,251
in the little mining town of Leoben, lies a prison so unrecognisable

530
00:30:11,391 --> 00:30:14,449
that it actually made viral email rounds in 2008.

531
00:30:14,589 --> 00:30:17,805
Comments to the effect of: "Perhaps I should go and commit some crimes

532
00:30:17,945 --> 00:30:21,534
so I can get into this holiday camp!" were rife in the description

533
00:30:21,674 --> 00:30:24,869
and even ended up echoed under the byline of a New York times article

534
00:30:25,009 --> 00:30:27,698
that described the prison and talked to the architect.

535
00:30:27,838 --> 00:30:30,320
So, I thought I'd go and have a look at this place

536
00:30:30,460 --> 00:30:33,389
and ask the prison warden what his thoughts on the feasibility, function

537
00:30:33,529 --> 00:30:36,670
and the role of prison were. So, Ladies and Gentleman, I went to prison,

538
00:30:36,810 --> 00:30:39,234
(which I'm sure you're pleased about.)

539
00:30:39,374 --> 00:30:41,648
Magister Manfred Giessauf and the Chief Guard

540
00:30:41,788 --> 00:30:44,012
both gave two generous hours of their time,

541
00:30:44,152 --> 00:30:47,367
allowed me to record our interview and even showed me around the prison!

542
00:30:47,507 --> 00:30:50,799
It features a library, built-in artworks into the wall-space

543
00:30:50,939 --> 00:30:53,896
that were designed to be added to by prisoners, exercise rooms

544
00:30:54,036 --> 00:30:57,761
and outdoor areas which allow prisoners to become used to seeing distance;

545
00:30:57,901 --> 00:30:59,932
that's something you don't get, and people forget.

546
00:31:00,072 --> 00:31:01,713
We take distance for granted.

547
00:31:01,853 --> 00:31:05,848
The whole edifice is glass structured to deliberately allow light in.

548
00:31:05,988 --> 00:31:08,570
Consequently the prisoners, not shrouded in darkness,

549
00:31:08,710 --> 00:31:11,446
have at least some chance to feel that they're in an institution

550
00:31:11,586 --> 00:31:13,763
that is designed for rehabilitation.

551
00:31:13,903 --> 00:31:16,926
Consequent to the design, the courses on social reintegration

552
00:31:17,066 --> 00:31:20,939
offer to prisoners the basic foundation of the prison's modus operandi.

553
00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:24,793
Prisoner violence is much lower, as are the statistics on absenteeism

554
00:31:24,933 --> 00:31:27,871
for prison guards; it's about a quarter of what absenteeism is

555
00:31:28,011 --> 00:31:31,641
for guards in normal prisons, so they're also not suffering.

556
00:31:31,781 --> 00:31:34,462
The basic tenet of this prison is literally unavoidable,

557
00:31:34,602 --> 00:31:36,687
sandblasted onto the wall, it states:

558
00:31:36,827 --> 00:31:39,530
"Jeder, dem seine Freiheit entzogen ist, muss menschlich

559
00:31:39,670 --> 00:31:42,318
und mit Achtung vor dem Menschen

560
00:31:42,458 --> 00:31:44,712
innewohnenden Würde behandelt werden",

561
00:31:44,852 --> 00:31:48,561
"All persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity

562
00:31:48,701 --> 00:31:52,121
and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person."

563
00:31:52,261 --> 00:31:56,412
That comes from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

564
00:31:56,552 --> 00:31:58,066
[Applause]

565
00:31:58,206 --> 00:32:00,411
Yeah, give them a round of applause!

566
00:32:05,291 --> 00:32:07,710
(They're lovely people. They didn't even question

567
00:32:07,850 --> 00:32:10,103
what I was asking them for.)

568
00:32:10,243 --> 00:32:12,996
Leoben Correctional Center's budget was about €50 million.

569
00:32:13,136 --> 00:32:14,860
It was completed in 2007,

570
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,822
and had been commissioned through an architectural contest, actually.

571
00:32:17,962 --> 00:32:21,128
"But for €50 million," I asked, "why not just build more prisons

572
00:32:21,268 --> 00:32:23,440
or save money and build a cheaper prison?

573
00:32:23,580 --> 00:32:26,771
After all, isn't being economical to do with saving money,

574
00:32:26,911 --> 00:32:30,542
cheapening processes, cutting services, trimming the fat?"

575
00:32:30,682 --> 00:32:32,235
The answer came:

576
00:32:32,375 --> 00:32:35,880
"It all depends on if you count in the social cost

577
00:32:36,020 --> 00:32:39,195
to the social economy. You can always build cheaper prisons.

578
00:32:39,335 --> 00:32:42,568
You may well build a prison whose edifice is cheaper;

579
00:32:42,708 --> 00:32:45,290
but if you run a prison like the American Supermax Prisons,

580
00:32:45,631 --> 00:32:48,440
you build human time bombs.

581
00:32:48,580 --> 00:32:51,222
They are released at some point too, and who knows

582
00:32:51,362 --> 00:32:53,965
what the social costs are of such an act.

583
00:32:54,105 --> 00:32:57,717
At the very least, we cannot release prisoners who are worse

584
00:32:57,857 --> 00:33:00,418
than they were when we received them."

585
00:33:00,558 --> 00:33:05,303
I'll admit that Leoben is not a complete test case for prison reform or alteration.

586
00:33:05,443 --> 00:33:07,558
There are no 'lifers' in this system,

587
00:33:07,698 --> 00:33:10,036
and highly violent criminals are not sent there.

588
00:33:10,176 --> 00:33:13,095
Ironically, most of the criminals are there for monetary crimes,

589
00:33:13,235 --> 00:33:16,732
crimes which will most likely be repeated once they're on the outside

590
00:33:16,872 --> 00:33:19,209
since they're not likely to receive good job prospects

591
00:33:19,349 --> 00:33:22,948
and most likely have large debts for which they went to prison to begin with.

592
00:33:23,088 --> 00:33:26,307
It may be a gilded cage, but it is still a cage,

593
00:33:26,447 --> 00:33:30,080
and still limited in its use and abilities by the overall functioning

594
00:33:30,220 --> 00:33:34,658
or indeed the dysfunction of the society that ends up populating its buildings.

595
00:33:34,798 --> 00:33:37,897
It is still a bandage, but a bandage we can learn from,

596
00:33:38,037 --> 00:33:42,329
whose values come from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:

597
00:33:42,469 --> 00:33:44,635
the rights of human beings, therefore,

598
00:33:44,775 --> 00:33:47,900
being the starting point from which to work and not profit

599
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:51,366
or cheapness or anything so absurdly slavish

600
00:33:51,506 --> 00:33:55,476
as the US, UK or Australia's private prison enterprises.

601
00:33:56,605 --> 00:33:58,768
As a species, we have to understand

602
00:33:58,908 --> 00:34:02,062
that the desire to see others imprisoned is simply the same violence

603
00:34:02,202 --> 00:34:03,864
that we see in crime.

604
00:34:04,004 --> 00:34:06,710
The punishment we inflict on prisoners is the same violence

605
00:34:06,850 --> 00:34:09,536
we claim to be condemning by acting in that way.

606
00:34:09,676 --> 00:34:11,790
Above all, it needs to be realized

607
00:34:11,929 --> 00:34:14,860
that prison isn't there to solve any problems.

608
00:34:15,001 --> 00:34:19,462
It's another outgrowth of violence and systematized power and control.

609
00:34:19,601 --> 00:34:22,324
To solve crime, to live in a non-violent society

610
00:34:22,464 --> 00:34:26,137
is to live in a society in which prisons are eradicated.

611
00:34:26,277 --> 00:34:30,416
We concentrate our efforts on the positive therapies that prevent violence,

612
00:34:30,556 --> 00:34:32,664
and at the same time strive for a society

613
00:34:32,804 --> 00:34:35,560
that prevents violence from the outset.

614
00:34:35,699 --> 00:34:38,763
To do so is to solve the prison issue.

615
00:34:39,942 --> 00:34:41,713
[Applause]

616
00:34:46,179 --> 00:34:49,264
To base a physical institution on human rights is to seek

617
00:34:49,404 --> 00:34:53,541
the physical modification of that edifice in line with human needs:

618
00:34:53,681 --> 00:34:57,772
sunlight, space, social interaction; to base it on function

619
00:34:57,912 --> 00:35:01,072
rather than form requires the ignoring of the balance sheet

620
00:35:01,212 --> 00:35:04,779
in favour of the successful function of the system upon human beings

621
00:35:04,919 --> 00:35:08,359
and not the bottom line of some corporation that benefits some small section

622
00:35:08,499 --> 00:35:11,219
of society's populace that happen to be working for them at that time.

623
00:35:11,359 --> 00:35:13,714
Of course, it's not their fault, is it? The whole point of this

624
00:35:13,854 --> 00:35:16,851
is that they're also prisoners of the debt system which is then used

625
00:35:16,991 --> 00:35:19,657
and systematized and creates the prison system.

626
00:35:19,797 --> 00:35:22,300
Above all, to solve the problem of crime

627
00:35:22,440 --> 00:35:25,832
is not to build more prisons like is continually said

628
00:35:25,972 --> 00:35:28,169
on those Question Time things,

629
00:35:28,309 --> 00:35:30,623
any more than the solution to a disease is to spend

630
00:35:30,763 --> 00:35:33,716
more time in a hospital building, rather than treat the illness

631
00:35:33,856 --> 00:35:37,661
that is debilitating, obstructing and undermining the body.

632
00:35:37,801 --> 00:35:40,292
The solution to disease is the eradication

633
00:35:40,432 --> 00:35:44,108
or healing of its non-functioning elements.

634
00:35:44,596 --> 00:35:47,750
The solution to the disease of crime and the illness of society

635
00:35:47,890 --> 00:35:50,359
is a ground-up reorientation of social function

636
00:35:50,499 --> 00:35:53,223
to halt the consequences of social malfunction,

637
00:35:53,363 --> 00:35:55,150
or what we call crime.

638
00:35:55,290 --> 00:35:58,001
Until then, we change nothing

639
00:35:58,141 --> 00:36:01,404
until we change ourselves and what we value; and we make it known.

640
00:36:01,544 --> 00:36:05,735
Currently, we service problems as cheaply and as forcefully as possible.

641
00:36:05,875 --> 00:36:08,971
As such, prison is a cheap service of a problem

642
00:36:09,111 --> 00:36:12,176
not a correct fix to our issues of crime.

643
00:36:12,715 --> 00:36:16,247
Broadly speaking, prison is the social distillation

644
00:36:16,387 --> 00:36:20,666
of our attitudes to the human mind and the individual.

645
00:36:21,395 --> 00:36:25,476
One day, if our cultural assumptions and economic principles grow

646
00:36:25,616 --> 00:36:29,569
to a solution-oriented scenario with respect to social cohesion

647
00:36:30,182 --> 00:36:33,398
and true sustainability, our future population

648
00:36:33,538 --> 00:36:36,554
will look back at our era with arguably more horror

649
00:36:36,694 --> 00:36:39,748
than we now look back on the prior societies of torture

650
00:36:39,888 --> 00:36:43,528
and brute violence like we did at the beginning of this presentation,

651
00:36:43,668 --> 00:36:46,788
for we had the scientific understandings of what works

652
00:36:46,928 --> 00:36:49,046
and we did not act upon them.

653
00:36:49,603 --> 00:36:53,323
I want you to feel the gaze of future humanity

654
00:36:53,463 --> 00:36:56,717
looking back onto our era now, looking back onto when you were alive.

655
00:36:56,857 --> 00:36:59,859
Place yourself in the future and look now, backwards,

656
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,026
with the horror they will feel.

657
00:37:02,166 --> 00:37:04,882
Until we become the groundwork for that future population,

658
00:37:05,022 --> 00:37:08,086
they will not stop looking at us in horror, disbelief

659
00:37:08,226 --> 00:37:12,338
and with regret and pathos, for they will understand us better

660
00:37:12,478 --> 00:37:15,062
than we understand ourselves and our prisoners now.

661
00:37:15,202 --> 00:37:17,739
For them, indeed, we are all prisoners.

662
00:37:17,879 --> 00:37:20,211
Now, thank you very much, I'd like to thank all the speakers

663
00:37:20,351 --> 00:37:22,153
who spoke here today.

664
00:37:22,293 --> 00:37:23,811
[Applause]

665
00:37:32,209 --> 00:37:34,289
They do it for free!

666
00:37:35,509 --> 00:37:37,171
They do it because it's fun.

667
00:37:37,311 --> 00:37:40,705
I'd like to thank all of you for having come along.

668
00:37:40,845 --> 00:37:44,202
It's very kind of you; it is not taken for granted, ever.

669
00:37:44,342 --> 00:37:47,127
We are going to go down the road to a pub! Please join us.

670
00:37:47,267 --> 00:37:50,127
It's only about 300 yards away on the other side of the road; it's on a corner.

671
00:37:50,267 --> 00:37:53,068
Sorry, I've forgotten the name of it. We'll be there all night,

672
00:37:53,208 --> 00:37:56,607
drinking and answering questions and asking you questions, as well.

673
00:37:56,747 --> 00:37:58,248
Thank you again.

674
00:37:58,388 --> 00:37:59,894
[Applause]

675
00:38:00,490 --> 00:38:02,029
Thank you, Ben.