Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
Surfing the Crime Net: The Use of Imprisonment Worldwide Kieran Flynn One of the great advantages of the Internet is that it opens up access to up-to-date material for students as well as academics and practitioners. This is of particular benefit where library facilities, and thus access to conventional material, are limited. In this special feature, the author, a student from the small island of Jersey, discusses the availability of material on the use of imprisonment. Searching the Internet for information on the use of imprisonment in the major English-speaking western countries is not difficult. There is a large body of on-line information posted by governments, academics and reform groups in the UK, the US, and Canada. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to find the same information in non-English speaking countries: 80 per-cent of all web-sites are in English, and therefore the vast amount of information on most topics will be relevant to an English-speaking audience. A smaller amount of information can be found on most non-English speaking countries in Europe and some countries in Africa and Asia. However, most of this will not be found on sites referring specifically to the country in question, but on more general sites such as the Penal Lexicon, or Beyond Prisons 2000. Another problem occurs when attempting to compare the use of imprisonment in different countries, where different ways of measuring the use of the prison system confound the issue. I will discuss this problem later. For now we can start by looking at some sites that contain a useful overview of the use of imprisonment worldwide. The International Center for Prison Studies, at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/rel/icps, based in Kings College, London, provides a useful starting point. The site contains, on its ‘work’ page, a list of the various studies that they are undertaking, or have undertaken in the past, and the results of these findings. These documents contain material on: •
the concept and principles of imprisonment;
•
its history;
•
its effectiveness;
•
various models;
•
non-custodial alternatives.
Here you will also find the ‘world prison brief’ in the form of a map of the world, which allows the user to click on any specific region and access a brief of the prison system in that area. This brief contains the names, addresses and telephone numbers, of the ministry responsible for the prison system, as well as some prison statistics for that region, although the information is not very extensive. Also based at Kings College is the Penal Lexicon organisation, which provides a useful site at http://www.penlex.org.uk. The site contains a huge body of information on ‘matters
Copyright © 2001 Perpetuity Press Ltd
Page 65
Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
concerned with prisons, the criminal justice system and penal affairs’. At present, the main focus is on prisons in England and Wales, but there is also considerable information on European systems, and a couple of pieces on the use of imprisonment in the US, South Africa, and Australia. The site is very comprehensive, containing a search engine, a ‘best of the press’ section, links to a wide range of official government documents, from both Britain and Europe, and detailed statistics. This site is also relatively easy to use. For example, if you scroll to the section ‘Europe— drugs, prison, and treatment’, you will find a brief of the prison system in each of the EU countries. A third site based at Kings College is the web-site (http://www.penlex.org.uk/pages/istdorg.html) of the Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency (ISTD), a useful resource for academics interested in the treatment of offenders. It contains summaries of conferences organised by the ISTD, and an on-line version of the quarterly magazine Criminal Justice Matters. The conference Beyond Prisons: International Symposium, held in Canada in 2000, covered many of the issues surrounding the use of imprisonment worldwide. The text of the speeches and presentations from this conference can be viewed on-line at the Correctional Service of Canada web-site http:// www.csc-ssc.gc.ca. When you enter the web-site, indicate which language you wish to view it in, and then scroll down to ‘international forums’. On this page you will find the link to ‘beyond prisons’. When you have opened the page, click on the link to ‘speeches’ and view the text of speeches on many aspects of prisons from representatives of 13 countries worldwide. As I mentioned before, a major problem with many of these sites is that although they claim to cover the use of imprisonment worldwide, in reality they only cover a small range of countries. For example, the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge (http:// www.law.cam.ac.uk/crim/iocpris.htm) gives an extensive list of prison research projects, and the list appears to include many issues relevant to the study of imprisonment worldwide. However, the projects only focus on a few of the major western countries. As well as this, the site contains only a very brief summary of the methodology and findings of these projects, and nothing more. Another site that at first appears to be useful is http://www.prisons.com, offering links to a wide range of international criminal justice sites, including the major agencies involved in different countries, statistics, research, and some international links. Unfortunately, of the eight international links it offers, two are British, and three are from the United Nations, two of which are the same and the other denies access to certain users! There are several sites that contain statistics on the use of imprisonment worldwide, but you must be aware of the problems involved in the comparison of international statistics of this kind. The World Prison Populations list can be found on the UK Home Office web-site at http:// www.homeoffice.gov.uk, and contains the findings from Walmsley’s latest prison population survey. The research findings show, in both table and text form, details of the number of prisoners held in 180 different countries, and differences in the levels of imprisonment used in these countries. This research document also points out some of the difficulties in comparing international statistics. For example, the data collected for this survey came from a number of different sources, and as a result not all was collected within the same year. Indeed in some cases, comparisons may be up to four years apart. This is further complicated by the fact that different countries have different ideas of who qualifies as a prisoner, or even what qualifies as a prison. The Beyond Prisons: International Symposium mentioned earlier, contains an article entitled The Diversity of Prison Problems in Asia, which outlines many of these problems. The web-site of the National Archive of Criminal Justice studies http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACJD/ home.html provides links to the statistics of the Bureau of Justice at the US Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice, both of which contain massive amounts of data on the use of imprisonment worldwide. However, you may find it difficult to access some of these resources. For example, to search the Bureau of Justice statistics archive for data on particular research titles requires that you give a valid e-mail address, and then fill out a questionnaire on why you wish to
Page 66
Kieran Flynn
Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
access this data. But it may be worth your while to complete the process, because the site is very comprehensive. The Bureau of Statistics also houses the World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems, an essential guide to criminal justice systems worldwide. You can access any given country by clicking on the name. You can find this by going into the ‘publications’ section, and scrolling down to ‘The World Factbook of Criminal Justice Systems’; alternatively you can enter the ‘corrections’ section, and click on ‘prisons’, to view a different version of this. Both contain a huge amount of detail on the entire criminal justice system of each country in the world, so you will have to search for the relevant material. You may notice that for some countries, such as Singapore or Sri Lanka, certain information on prisons is not available, which is probably because some of these countries are reluctant to publish such details. At the library of Congress, Country Studies (http:// lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html) there is a similar list, containing over 70 countries, with extensive crime and justice information on most of them. This site can also be accessed through the United Nations Crime and Justice Information Network (http://www.uncjin.org). According to most of the statistics, the US imprisons more people than most other countries in the world, and its prison population is constantly rising. This is of some concern to policymakers and policy analysts in the US, and consequently several web-sites are dedicated to the subject. The Justice Policy Institute has published an article The Punishing Decade, on-line at http:// www.cjcj.org/punishingdecade, that compares annual prison rates in the US over the past 100 years. It shows correlations between prison rates and crime rates, examines prison rates across racial dimensions, and considers the cost of the prison system within the context of annual government budgets. Another article worth reading on this subject is the first chapter of Elliott Curries’ book Crime and Punishment in America, which is published on-line at http:// www.nytimes.com/books/first. Or, for some extra textual analysis of US levels of imprisonment go to the Lindesmith Center on-line library at http://www.lindesmith.org/library. This contains an article called Americans Behind Bars, a substantial discussion focusing on the rates of imprisonment in the US. Other sites containing more topical issues about the American Prison System include http://www.calweb.com/~tnklbnny/pers.arg.private.prisons.html, on prison privatisation, a big issue in the US at present, or http://www.prisonactivist.org/women/womenand-imprisonment.html which includes an article on the experience of American women in the patriarchal prison system. For a very well maintained and updated site on American news and media articles relating to prisons, go to http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~tamamail/wire.html. More general information on prisons and the prison system in the US can be found at numerous sites, including http://www.ncpa.org, http://www.bop.gov, and http://www.jail.net. Britain, like the US, also has a great deal of information published on-line on this topic. Not only does Britain head the European league tables for rates of imprisonment, but according to an article published in the Guardian in February 2000 (http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/ 0,4273,3966435,00.html) British courts are among the toughest in Western Europe, with only Portugal giving longer prison sentences. This article provides a good review of the European league tables. The Research Development Statistics at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds also has a comprehensive list of articles on British prison statistics covering subjects such as the main characteristics of the prison population, sentence lengths and predictions of the prison population in Britain in years to come. Or, for a more critical look at the British criminal justice and prison system, the Asian Dub Foundation has published an article on-line called Criminal Justice under the Microscope; this can be seen at http://www.asiandubfoundation.com/satpal. Using sources ranging from official reports and documents to media articles, this piece examines issues such as racism within the system, deaths in custody, miscarriages of justice, and corruption amongst the prison authorities. Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, Official Correctional Service sites for Canada can be found at http://www.icpa/ca/home.html and http://www.csa-scc.gc.ca, or for South Australia, at http://www.corrections.sa.gov.au/default.htm.
Kieran Flynn
Page 67
Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
On the other hand, as already mentioned, it is very difficult to find specific sites about the use of imprisonment in countries other than the major English-speaking ones. However, some of the basic information on the prison systems of other countries can be found on some of the previously mentioned sites. For a more in-depth look into the prison systems of Eastern Europe try http:// www.ncjrs.org/policing. This page contains the text of Policing in Central and Eastern Europe, edited by Milan Pagon, and the last chapter of part 3 is an informative piece called Corrections in the New Light: Developing a Prison System for a Democratic Society. The article examines the apparent rise in crime in central and Eastern Europe since the break-up of the USSR over the last decade. The article is written for the American academic audience, so it draws some useful comparisons between the prison systems of Eastern Europe and the US. Other Internet sites on the prison systems of third world and developing countries appear to belong to reform groups, and are generally critical of the systems. For example, http://www.malasya.net/dap/sg1527.htm is part of the homepage of Lim Kit Siang, the Malaysian parliamentary opposition leader, and provides a strident criticism of the Malaysian system, while http://www.penalreforms.org/english /article_stafrica.htm and http://www.penalreforms.org/english/article_senegal.htm, do likewise for the South African and Senegal systems. The Sunday Times published a report on the conditions in Sri Lankan prisons in December 1997, that can be found on-line at http://www.lacnet.org/ suntimes/971207/plusm.html. While some of the information in this report may be out of date, it nonetheless raises some interesting issues. There is more information on-line referring to prisoner’s rights, and calls for penal reforms. From the Amnesty International homepage at http://www.amnesty.org, you can access a huge number of articles of this type. Most of these sites draw attention to abusive systems of punishment in prisons around the world, for example, an article at http://www.amnesty.org/ ailib/aipub/1998/SUM/32200498.htm, outlines the ill-treatment of prisoners in Japanese jails, and calls on the Japanese government to investigate. Changemakers.net, a similar site, has an on-line magazine for those interested in social reforms. This site contains many articles on the need for prison reforms: go to http://www.changemakers.net/journal/99april/davidson.cfm to view an article on the need for change in the prison system of Bangladesh. The on-line magazine Prisoners Abroad at http://www.prisonersabroad.org.uk/document/articles.htm, contains some similar articles on issues surrounding human rights, in prisons around the world, as does the Critical Criminology web-site at http://www.sun.soci.niu.edu/~criticism/prisons/prisons/html. Other issues, such as racism within prison systems, are raised on sites like http:// www.proactivist.org and http://www.auslii.edu.au/special/rsjproject/rsjlibrary/rciadic/national/ vol4/192.html, while issues around the release of political prisoners are discussed at http:// www.xs4all.nl/~tank/prison.htm. All of these sites are worth mentioning, because they show both the diversity of problems experienced in prison systems and the extent to which similar issues are raised in different countries. Finally, there are one or two other sites that I feel deserve a mention. Firstly the World Socialist web-site at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/pris-j05.shtml, is the home of a interesting and thought provoking article entitled Prisons, a Booming Industry in the UK and the US. Prison privatisation, as already mentioned, is a subject of current debate across the world, and http:// www.ucc.uconn.edu/~logunl outlines prison privatisation in the US, the UK and Australia. Also worth mentioning is Mathew Yeager, an American criminologist, whose article Immigrants and Imprisonment, discussing the huge numbers of immigrants imprisoned worldwide, can be found on his homepage http://www.cyberus.ca/~myeager/art-1.htm. For some alternative perspectives on the use of imprisonment in general it is worth exploring the writings of Michael Foucault at http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~possible/foucault.html. These writings bring a broader critical perspective to the nature of crime and punishment. Good on-line articles on the subject can be found at http://members.home.net/fivecat/clock.htm, and http://www.geocities.com/Athens/ Agora/9095/index.html.
Page 68
Kieran Flynn
Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
If these sites are not enough and you want more hard-copy reading material or published research on prison systems across the world, then go to http://www.uncjin.org/country/GBOPS/gbops.html, where you will find the Global Bibliography of Prison Systems. Unfortunately this resource does not include the text of any of the publications it lists, but it will help you to find out what literature is available on the subject. The sites mentioned in this report cover most of the information that is available on the Internet about the use of imprisonment worldwide. While they introduce a variety of perspectives—from government reports to prison reform groups, from practitioners to academics—it is important to underline the fact that there is a huge imbalance between the amount of information available on countries such as the UK and the US, and the non-English speaking, and under-developed countries. At present, it is the nature of the Internet to exclude these countries; this is referred to as the ‘digital divide’, and for a good article explaining some of the issues involved in this subject, see http://www.digitaldividend.org/frame_about_dig_div.html. Kieran Flynn Highlands College Jersey
Kieran Flynn
Page 69
