Life in prison

One vital part of the process of rehabilitating convicted criminals is the allocation of prison jobs. Engaging in work while inside often allows inmates to learn new professions or trades during their life in prison. This helps them improve their chances of finding work after they are released. The skills they learn can include sewing, car repairing, carpentry and other types of manual labour. Prison jobs do provide a small income however; working in jail may not be a matter of choice for inmates but an obligatory duty.

Any improvement to a prison system is a prison reform. They may be aimed either at making life in prison better, raising the penal system’s effectiveness, or establishing alternatives to incarceration, such as probation or community-based sentencing. It can also focus on pre-trial detention under which someone is accused but not yet convicted of committing a crime. Overall, prison reform aims to maintain an effective balance between punishment and rehabilitation for convicted offenders.

In Russia, convicted female criminals serve their time in all-women prisons. In some women’s prisons, there are “Mother and Child Houses” – nurseries for kids born while their mothers are serving a sentence. Babies share their mother’s life in prison until they turn three, when they are either taken in by relatives or sent to an orphanage.

Perhaps, the best-known and most individual form of prison art in Russia, and elsewhere, is the prison tattoo. Each tattoo has a specific meaning and can indicate a prisoner’s criminal history, his status among other inmates, his attitude to authority or his aspirations. Prison tattoos play an important role in a Russian inmate’s life in prison. 

The largest Christian organisation providing support for prisoners is called Prison Fellowship International. The group works with inmates in more than 170 countries both during and after their term in prison. It also helps prisoner’s family members. The group sets up churches inside jails to allow inmates to practice Christianity during their life in prison and to receive psychological support.

Suitable conditions for inmates’ to successfully re-integrate into society after a life in prison are vital if a pattern of reoffending is to be prevented. This is why Prison rehabilitation programmes play such a vital role in the penal system. Inmates who are given safe prison conditions, the chance to maintain contact with the outside world and to learn new skills to facilitate employment are significantly less likely to reoffend after being released.