Who is the Archetypal Prisoner?
By: Jamie Bean
Tags: Crime, Criminal Justice, Prison, Politics, Society

The Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers of the world are the face of prison, not its populace.

Who comes to mind when you think of a prisoner?

Prisons are a somewhat mystical concept most people have no personal experience with outside of the evening news or cop shows on Netflix. ‘Criminal’ is a label we would never assign ourselves, despite the fact that the vast majority of us have drunk underage, smoked a joint, or gotten a speeding ticket.

If you’ve spent most of your life on the right side of the law you’ve probably never given much thought to the prison population outside of what you hear from the media.

The crime you hear about on the news is cherry-picked to shock you with the sensational and unthinkable. Journalists of most major news outlets aren’t trying to accurately portray the inner workings of the criminal justice system. They’re trying to maximise clicks on their articles, which means stoking moral panic by highlighting only the worst and most depraved instances of crime.

What is the first thing to come to mind when you consider who might be behind bars? A serial killer, like Ted Bundy. A terrorist, like Osama Bin Laden. A murderer, a rapist, a child molester. They’re the thing that goes bump in the night, and they’re the reason why your older relatives preach on Facebook about the need to be ‘tough on crime,’ or complain about criminals getting a ‘slap on the wrist.’

In response to this, politicians make commitments to ‘crack down on crime,’ vague and directionless promises aimed to quell the fears of the voting public, not address the societal, psychological, and socioeconomic causes of crime.

You would think all of this talk, stemming largely from the older generations, of the so-called ‘soft approach’ to crime would mean prisons are sitting unfilled and criminals are running around doing as they please. The truth is far from it.

Prisons in Australia, even more so in the United States, are massively overcrowded. Penalisation continues on an upward trend, and a prison sentence is becoming a first response rather than a last resort. This is contrary to the fact that crime is generally decreasing.

While extreme cases may be the face of the prison, they are not its population. They are an incredible minority within the criminal justice system who serve to legitimise prisons and punishment. The vast majority of the prison population in Australia consists of those who have committed low-level offences, such as unpaid fines, possession and use of illicit substances, or unlawful entry.

Prisons are disproportionally comprised of people with serious mental health issues, illicit drug addictions, or both. Australian prisons also significantly overrepresent Indigenous Australians. These three categories paint a picture of who is really behind bars; a picture that is pretty bleak if the intention of imprisonment is anything other than retribution.

*Note that I am discussing the following primarily in regards to the Australian prison population; however, the basic concepts apply to other first-world nations such as the UK and the US, whose criminal justice statistics are similar.

The Mentally Ill

Approaches to addressing mental health concerns have seen a massive overhaul within the last century. Deinstitutionalization of mental health treatment through the dismantling of asylums and changes to psychiatric care means treatment of the mentally ill has ‘improved’, although by undoing damaging practises — not by replacing them. There remains, in Australia and worldwide, a huge gap in societal ability to address mental health.

In response to this lacking prison seems to be the (ineffective) solution. A study conducted in a Melbourne gaol found that 82% of its respondents had at least one kind of mental disorder. Prisoners in Australia are two to three times as likely to suffer from a mental health condition than the rest of the population, and they are ten to 15 times as likely to have a diagnosed psychiatric disorder.

To restate an earlier made point, the first response to figures like these is often to argue ‘if they did the crime, they should do the time.’ Except the crime in most instances is not extreme violence, and is not an act so heinous that incapacitation is necessary. It is a response to inadequate treatment of mental disorders, a response that is criminalised — often self-medication through illicit substances. This leads to the next category.

Drug Users

The criminalisation of drug use and possession is one of the main reasons prisons are so overcrowded. As highlighted by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, around 65% of Australian prisoners have used illicit drugs in the past year (at the time of writing, September 2019). Within the general population, the figure is around 16%. The so-called ‘war on drugs’ has led to heavy policing efforts against illicit substances, resulting in greater criminalisation and imprisonment of drug offenders.

It is clear the war on drugs is a losing effort. You only need to look at the recidivism rates, indicative of a prison cycle that repeats itself over and over, to see that. It is common knowledge drugs are readily available within prisons. A prison sentence for a drug user does little in the way of detox, can lead to greater risk of death from blood-borne diseases resulting from shared needles within prisons, and strips offenders of any support networks which may have facilitated recovery.

Having done time limits job opportunities, access to accommodation, and social connections. Whatever personal problems drove users into taking drugs in the first place are only enhanced and cemented by a prison sentence.

Indigenous Australians

Stemming from a history of colonisation, Australia has a sordid history involving its treatment of Indigenous Australians, reflected today in the criminal justice system. Despite making up just 3% of the general population, Indigenous Australians comprise over a quarter, 28%, of the prison population. In some states such as Western Australia, this figure is even higher. Despite a national inquiry into Aboriginal deaths in custody conducted during the 1990s, which provided many recommendations centred around reducing imprisonment rates of Indigenous Australians, little has changed. Indigenous Australians remain the single most imprisoned race in the world.

Again, the Australian public is wont to attribute this to a simplistic answer — Indigenous Australians must commit more crime, which is why they are imprisoned at such absurdly high rates. The truth is more complicated than that when taking into account factors such as over-policing, inherent bias within the criminal justice system, and inevitable longstanding tensions that will always come into play in colonised nations.

As with the other categories I mentioned, the crimes that send Indigenous offenders to prison are often low-level. The fastest-growing demographic of Australian prisoners? Indigenous women. One of the reasons these women are increasingly being imprisoned is because of unpaid fines. In remote communities, there tends to be a ‘local law’ on the roads that doesn’t sit with state regulations. This is because they are isolated areas with little need for extensive road rules. Despite this, Indigenous Australians are often policed harshly for driving offences.

Breaches such as not wearing a seat belt, driving an unregistered vehicle, or driving unlicensed result in fines which many people of lower socioeconomic statuses are unable to pay. Eventually, unpaid fines result in prison time. This comes at a much greater cost to the taxpayer than any revenue amassed through a fine, and at a great personal cost to the individual who now has a criminal record.

Who is the prisoner, and what is the prison?

While considering these demographics it is important to also keep the nature of prison in mind. Prison is the harshest sanction we have to impose upon an individual, aside from the death penalty, which has been banned in all Australian jurisdictions since 1973.

It is the complete removal of personal liberty and freedom, something we place great value upon in Western nations. It is immersion into an often brutal and harsh environment, where the risk of violence from both other prisoners and guards is common.

Its effects are also not limited to time spent in prison alone. Prisoners leave with little hope for job opportunities, nowhere to go, and no money. If they did not already struggle with mental health problems or drug addiction, the prison environment may well cause them to do so. A better understanding of the realities of prison calls into question who we should be subjecting to it.

Once a criminal, always a criminal

A major theory discussed within criminology is labelling theory, a theory originating from the sociological concept of symbolic interactionism. The theory proposes that imprisonment fixes a label of ‘criminal’ to an individual, one which they will begin to self-identify with, leading to further acts of crime. The identity of being a criminal creates a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, especially amongst younger offenders.

Prison creates a sense of normalisation around being a criminal when you are surrounded by other criminals. Humans are social in nature. It is widely accepted within social learning theories that our actions are a reflection of those around us. Placing someone who just committed a crime into an environment where he is surrounded by others who have committed similar or worse crimes makes little sense if you want to achieve anything other than creating more of those same behaviours.

Prison is also not purely about punishment and incapacitation. It is a rejection of the individual by a society who approves of the offender’s liberties being taken away. It is a statement that criminal behaviour is incompatible with living within a given society, a sentence which lasts beyond time spent behind bars. The label of criminal may not always be a permanent fixture, but it is a difficult one to erase.

Now, to revisit the question I asked earlier. Who, exactly, is a prisoner?

A prisoner is someone with a mental illness who is disregarded by the healthcare system, and so instead turns to self-medication through drug use. A prisoner is a young Indigenous man caught with a bag of weed, who was already 17 times more likely to end up in prison than non-Indigenous youth. A prisoner is a single mother of three kids who was unable to pay her speeding fine and missed her court date because she had no one to care for her children.

A prisoner is someone whose chances for rehabilitation, reintegration, and active participation in society are greatly hindered by having been to prison.