Cost of jail not worth the price

In the 30 years that I have worked in social work I have interviewed many people, mainly between the ages of 16 and 26, who have been serving prison sentences of less than six months.

Personally, one of the most depressing and difficult tasks I have found is to engage people in this situation and to help them look forward to what might be different for them when they are released.

Young people when they are locked up follow a routine and follow instructions and this diminishes their ability to think constructively and fails to enhance their problem-solving abilities.

Many of them are there through substance abuse and because they have been stealing to maintain a habit. Or it could be that, uninhibited by drink or drugs, they have committed an assault through losing control.

IT is more than just the cost of keeping a person in prison that must challenge us to change our understanding of what is achieved by a prison sentence of less than six months.

In the 30 years that I have worked in social work I have interviewed many people, mainly between the ages of 16 and 26, who have been serving prison sentences of less than six months.

Personally, one of the most depressing and difficult tasks I have found is to engage people in this situation and to help them look forward to what might be different for them when they are released.

Young people when they are locked up follow a routine and follow instructions and this diminishes their ability to think constructively and fails to enhance their problem-solving abilities.

Many have been brought up in complex disjointed families and have no solid base or support. They have become drifters in our society and the substance they used prior to going to prison has helped lessen the pain of their lives in the community.

So what is there on their release? More often than not, it is mainly more of the same, so they are back inside in just a few months. The call from Tony Cameron, the retired head of the prison service in Scotland, for more community and less prison sentences, particularly for this part of the prison population, I believe, is welcome.

When there is nothing offered by the short-term sentence other than basic warmth, food and shelter and a reprieve from having to think for oneself, he is right to question whether we could deal with the problem in a different way.

In response, David Crawford, the president of the Association of Directors of Social Work, commented that there are too many different types of sentencing order and they need simplifying so that we are clear about what we are trying to achieve.

Figures from seven years ago show that it costs anything from 300 to 550 per week to keep a person in prison so, given inflation, the figure must be much higher now.

If these funds were transferred into community sentences then we would all be better off and we would be looking at over 5 million of additional help in our communities.

I would be most effective as a social worker who could meet with a person to determine what we needed to do to help them change their pattern of behaviour or their lifestyle so that they could contribute towards the community in which they lived.

This would be far more effective than interviewing someone in a prison cell who has not had to think about where the next meal was coming from, about how to conduct social relationships or what to do for work or pleasure.

• Ruth Stark is an Edinburgh-based social worker who is also the professional officer for Scotland for the British Association of Social Workers.