THE AIMS OF THE PRISON SERVICE

Amongst the major challenges facing the prison service today, the confusion about its aims and objectives is one of the most crippling. There are now clear indications that unless one gets out of this confusion and formulates a clear-cut and an adequate statement of aims, one will not be able to produce a good practicable regime for those who live and work in prisons. This paper, therefore, aims to outline some historical developments and theoretical debates concerning the aims of the prison service in India and the United Kingdom. The importance of unambiguous and clear-cut aims has been emphasised, and an attempt has been made to make the proposed statement of aims fulfil the requirements of reality, brevity and practicality. This essay lies in many ways within the framework of the modern consensus that imprisonment as a matter of public policy is itself a negative experience and that every attempt should be made to make that experience as positive as possible.