Chapter 40.
Research shows that investing in earlier preventative support can save more than £3 for every pound spent, with potential public purse total of up to £11.1 billion if scaled across the country. This stark financial efficiency stands in sharp contrast to our current penal landscape which is struggling to meet its most fundamental objectives and ironically perpetuating the very problems it claims to solve. Why? Far from being primary instruments of justice or genuine rehabilitation, prisons appear instead to be a convenient, if costly, place for inconvenient people.
These are individuals, or indeed entire groups, whose actions, circumstances, or, crucially, whose dissent, are deemed disruptive to the prevailing social and political order. This isn’t merely about managing criminal behaviour; it’s about managing perceived threats to the status quo. And in doing so, the very nature of our penal systems—often framed as a simple ‘stick and carrot’ mechanism for crime and punishment—reveals itself, upon closer inspection, to be far more intricate and, at times, deeply paradoxical, often overlooking its own stated aims of public safety and personal transformation.
This uncomfortable truth is strikingly illuminated by the recent, profound evolution of UK laws specifically designed to limit civil protest and curtail dissent. Over the past few years, the legislative landscape has shifted dramatically, granting unprecedented powers to the state while simultaneously narrowing the space for legitimate public expression.
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 (PCSC Act) and the subsequent Public Order Act 2023 have fundamentally reshaped the British streets, turning once-tolerated forms of direct action into criminal offences punishable by significant prison terms. The PCSC Act, expanded police powers to impose conditions on protests based on the potential for “serious disruption,” a term deliberately broadened to encompass even minor inconvenience. It introduced new offences like “intentionally or recklessly causing public nuisance,” a charge that carries a maximum sentence of ten years, a stark departure from previous common law interpretations.
This was then bolstered by the Public Order Act 2023, which further criminalised specific protest tactics, introducing new offences such as “locking-on” (attaching oneself to objects or people), “tunnelling,” “obstructing major transport works,” and “interfering with key national infrastructure.” These offences are framed with broad language, allowing for wide interpretation and severe penalties, often up to 12 months in magistrates’ courts or even three years in Crown Court for tunnelling-related offences. The Act introduced Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs), essentially protest banning orders, which can impose intrusive conditions on individuals, even if they have not been convicted of a protest-related offence, based merely on a likelihood of causing disruption.
Human rights organisations have been vocal and unwavering in their condemnation of these legislative changes. Liberty, a leading civil liberties advocacy group, has meticulously documented how these laws represent a “draconian assault on protest rights,” highlighting their impact on peaceful activists receiving what they describe as “unprecedented prison sentences.” They argue that the broad and vague definitions within the Acts, particularly concerning “serious disruption” and “recklessness,” create a significant “chilling effect” on public assembly and expression. This fear of disproportionate punishment deters ordinary citizens from participating in demonstrations, even those addressing critical societal issues like climate change or social justice.
Amnesty International UK has consistently campaigned against these laws, asserting that they violate fundamental human rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, particularly Articles 10 (freedom of expression) and 11 (freedom of peaceful assembly). They point to instances where the new powers have been used against peaceful climate protestors or those demonstrating in solidarity with international causes, leading to arrests and convictions that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
The Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol), providing vital ground-level intelligence, has reported extensively on the aggressive application of these new powers. Their analyses frequently highlight instances where police tactics and the legislative framework combine to create an environment of intimidation, suggesting that the systematic curtailment of dissent through legal and state apparatuses is becoming alarmingly commonplace, effectively moving towards a form of state repression rather than mere public order management. For example, recent data from the Home Office revealed that between June 2022 and March 2024, the Metropolitan Police alone applied conditions to 448 protests under the amended Public Order Act 1986 powers, leading to 277 arrests for breaching those conditions, illustrating the heightened proactive control exerted over public demonstrations.
The irony embedded within this expanding punitive system is often profound and deeply human. Consider the compelling case of Morgan Trowland, a Just Stop Oil activist, who in October 2022, scaled the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge on the Dartford Crossing with a fellow protestor, leading to a highly disruptive 40-hour closure of the bridge. Convicted under the very Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 for intentionally causing a public nuisance, Trowland received a three-year prison sentence – a term described by his lawyers as “the longest ever” given for a peaceful protest in modern times. This was a clear message from the state: disruptive direct action would be met with severe consequences, reinforcing the ‘stick’ aspect of the penal system.
Yet, within the confines of his prison cell, Trowland’s narrative took an unexpected turn, showcasing the enduring power of human agency and the potential for positive contribution even within a punitive environment. While serving his sentence, Trowland, a former structural engineer, did not succumb to despair or idleness. Instead, he channeled his energy into enriching the lives of fellow inmates, forming a prison choir and regularly playing the piano and organ for chapel services. This story, widely reported by various media outlets, stands as a poignant counterpoint to the notion that individuals incarcerated for dissent are simply “inconvenient” troublemakers, incapable of positive social engagement.
This raises profound questions about what truly constitutes ‘nuisance,’ the underlying motivations of those who protest, and the ultimate aims of a justice system that can condemn individuals to lengthy terms while overlooking his capacity for genuine, uncoerced contribution. It illuminates a critical disconnect: a system designed to punish often stifles potential, while human spirit frequently finds ways to flourish despite the constraints.
Such cases underscore a deeper systemic flaw that extends beyond protest: sentencing itself can often be arbitrary and, crucially, contrary to the very concept of rehabilitation. The Ministry of Justice’s own data on proven reoffending rates in the UK frequently illustrates this troubling reality. For instance, the latest available statistics for January to March 2023 reveal that adult offenders released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months had a proven reoffending rate of 56.9%. Alarmingly, for those serving sentences of six months or less, this figure rises even higher to 59.5%.
This significant disparity strongly suggests that the disruptive ‘stick’ of a brief prison term, often insufficient for meaningful rehabilitative intervention, breaks crucial societal ties—such as employment, prison accommodation, and family connections—making successful reintegration profoundly difficult and a swift return to criminal behaviour more likely. The eminent legal scholar Andrew Ashworth, in his definitive work Sentencing and Criminal Justice, meticulously unpacks the complexities of UK sentencing law, highlighting the inherent tensions between various aims: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. He demonstrates how judicial discretion, while seemingly allowing for individual circumstances, can lead to inconsistencies, while rigid sentencing guidelines or mandatory minimums, intended to ensure consistency, can strip judges of the ability to consider individual pathways to reform.
Ashworth’s analysis, alongside reports from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, reveals a constant struggle to balance proportionality with the dynamic and often unpredictable process of individual change. The concern persists that some individuals serve disproportionately long sentences, while others, still posing a risk, are released simply because they have ‘served their time,’ a testament to a system that prioritizes fixed terms over a holistic assessment of genuine transformation or ongoing societal safety. This fixed-term mindset often overlooks the criminogenic effects of incarceration itself, hindering rather than helping the journey to desistance.
The often punitive nature of our penal system demonstrably feeds recidivism. Criminologists like David Garland, in his work The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society, extensively documents the societal shift towards more punitive and managerial forms of justice in Western nations like the UK and USA. He argues that this intensified ‘culture of control,’ rather than fostering true social order and reducing crime, often exacerbates societal fragmentation and makes successful reintegration exponentially more difficult. When prisons primarily focus on incapacitation or retribution, they often fail to adequately address the underlying issues that drive offending – whether it’s addiction, mental health challenges, lack of education, or vocational skills deficits. For many, prison becomes a revolving door. The inherent stigma associated with a criminal record, the loss of social capital, and the severely limited opportunities for former prisoners in terms of employment and prison accommodation create a fertile ground for reoffending.
Jeremy Travis, a leading expert on prisoner reentry, and his colleagues have extensively shown, the challenges faced by individuals returning to society are immense. Without robust, sustained support systems for prison accommodation, employment, and mental health, combined with a genuine commitment to rehabilitation during and after incarceration, the likelihood of a return to crime increases significantly, undermining the very public safety the system purports to protect. Research consistently indicates that purely punitive environments, stripped of meaningful rehabilitative programmes, can actually worsen an individual’s prospects for desistance, creating a more hardened and alienated individual more prone to future offending.
Beyond the ethical and social failings, the current punitive model carries a colossal and often overlooked financial burden, representing a significant drain on public resources that could otherwise be invested in genuine societal betterment. In England and Wales, the overall average cost for running a prison place for a year was £51,724 in 2022-23. When considering the total expenditure, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spent £3.554 billion on prisons in 2023–24 alone, making it the largest single area of expenditure for the department. Moreover, the government’s commitment to building 20,000 additional prison places by the mid-2020s comes with an approved estimated funding of £5.2 billion.
This considerable expenditure is not merely for prison accommodation; it also encompasses the broader costs associated with reoffending itself. The total economic and social cost of reoffending in England and Wales is estimated at approximately £18.1 billion per year. This staggering figure includes costs related to detecting, sentencing, and re-imprisoning individuals. A significant portion of this (over £9.3 billion) is attributed to the cyclical costs associated with theft, the most common re-offence. The fact that offenders released from short sentences (less than 12 months) contribute an estimated £5 billion to these reoffending costs, compared to £1 billion for those serving longer sentences (12 months or more), highlights the inefficiency of brief, punitive stints that fail to break cycles of crime.
Contrast this immense outlay with the demonstrated financial efficacy of alternative, rehabilitative, and restorative approaches. Take restorative justice (RJ), for example. Analysis by the Restorative Justice Council and Victim Support has shown that providing restorative justice in 70,000 cases involving adult offenders could deliver £185 million in cashable cost savings to the criminal justice system over just two years, primarily through reductions in reoffending. One independent expert analysis of RJ for young offenders found that diverting them from community orders to a pre-court restorative justice conferencing scheme could produce a lifetime saving to society of almost £275 million (£7,050 per offender), with the cost of implementing the scheme being recouped within the first year.
Investing in preventative social services and community-based solutions has a strong economic case. The Local Government Association, in partnership with key leaders in social care, reported that investing in earlier preventative support can save more than £3 for every pound spent, with potential public purse savings of up to £11.1 billion if scaled across the country. These interventions include physical activity support, social prescribing, housing-related support, and community-based care—all elements of a holistic approach that Angela Y. Davis champions. The average cost of an additional person on a probation caseload (community orders and suspended sentence orders) is approximately £3,150, significantly less than the £51,724 annual cost of a prison place. This stark financial contrast underscores that a future aligned with Davis’s vision of addressing root causes and investing in communities is not just an ethical imperative, but a profound economic opportunity, potentially unlocking billions of pounds that are currently trapped in a failing, expensive, and counterproductive carceral system.
These critical examinations of the prison system’s efficacy, fairness, human impact, and profound financial drain lead inevitably to a powerful and unsettling question: Are prisons truly serving their purpose, or are they, in fact, obsolete? This is the challenging inquiry eloquently posed by Angela Y. Davis in her impactful 2003 book. Davis systematically argues that prisons are not a natural or inevitable part of human society, but rather a relatively recent historical construction, inextricably linked to specific systems of social, economic, and racial control. Predominantly drawing from the US context but with arguments resonating globally, she contends that the prison industrial complex (PIC) fundamentally fails in its stated goals of reducing crime and rehabilitating offenders. Instead, she posits, it perpetuates cycles of poverty, violence, and marginalization, disproportionately impacting already vulnerable communities.
Davis’s work shifts the conversation from merely reforming prisons to the far more ambitious, yet vital, task of envisioning a world without them. By exposing their inherent flaws, their historical contingency, and the systemic harms they inflict, she compels us to move beyond incremental adjustments and ask “what next?” If prisons are indeed obsolete, what could genuinely replace them? This abolitionist perspective, while radical and often met with initial skepticism, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths about our societal reliance on punishment and imagine alternatives rooted in: restorative justice, which focuses on repairing harm through dialogue and community-led solutions rather than simply punishing the perpetrator; addressing root causes of crime by strategically shifting resources from incarceration to investing in fundamental social goods like universal housing, quality education, accessible healthcare, comprehensive mental health services, and robust economic justice initiatives; and fostering community-based solutions for accountability and safety that empower local networks to manage conflict and uphold justice without resorting to state-sanctioned confinement.
Next Chapter: Addiction: What we get wrong
Bibliography
Ashworth, A. Sentencing and Criminal Justice. (2010)
Davis, A.Y. Are Prisons Obsolete?. (2003)
Garland, D. The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. (2001)