Knowledge and attitudes to imprisonment
A Survey of Public Knowledge and Attitudes
A new (18 November 2024) research report from the Sentencing Academy shares the findings from a survey of public knowledge and attitudes on two key questions: Who’s in prison and what’s the purpose of imprisonment? Authored by Julian Roberts, Lilly Crellin, Jonathan Bild & Jade Mouton, the report is based on an online YouGov survey of 1,871 adults undertaken in January this year.
Survey findings
Survey respondents were asked how much they know about prisons. Almost three quarters said their knowledge of prisons was limited; 63% said they knew “not very much” about our penal institutions and 10% said they knew nothing at all.
Sources of information
The national media was cited as the main source of information about prisons by the highest percentage (36% of respondents). Films and television accounted for the next highest percentage (15%). Surprisingly, perhaps, social media was cited as the principal source of information by only 5% of respondents. The authors conclude that these findings suggest that public legal education initiatives should focus on national media in order to reach the widest public.
The survey was split into two halves. Firstly, the public’s knowledge of various facts and figures relating to who is in our prisons and their offences; the second part examined attitudes to the purpose and nature of imprisonment.
Cost of incarceration
The annual cost per prisoner in England and Wales in 2022-23 was approximately £51,000. Approximately one-third of survey respondents provided an approximately accurate estimate within the range of £40,000-£60,000. Around one-fifth (21%) significantly under-estimated the cost of imprisonment (estimates under £30,000) and about the same percentage (20%) significantly over-estimated the cost (£70,000 or higher).
Women in prison
The proportion of prisoners who are women has remained stable at between 3% and 5% for decades (it is currently 4.1%). However, most people over-estimated the percentage of female prisoners; indeed over half (53%) estimated a percentage in excess of 30%. The mean and median estimates of the percentage of female prisoners were 30% and 35% respectively, both significantly higher than the true figure.
What are people in prison for?
In order to understand public knowledge of the composition of the prison population the survey asked respondents to estimate the percentage of prisoners in three common categories: drugs; violence; and sexual offences.
Although offenders sentenced for a drug offence account for fewer than one in five (17%) sentenced adult prisoners, almost two-thirds (61%) provided an estimate of 40% or more.
Similarly, while violent offences account for around one sentenced prisoner in three (32%), most respondents provided an estimate of 40% or more.
Respondents also generally over-estimated the proportion of prisoners serving a sentence for a sexual offence (currently 21%), with 40% estimating that offenders sentenced for these offences accounted for at least 30% of the sentenced prison population.
Perceptions of reoffending
More than seven respondents out of 10 estimated a re-offending rate for all prisoners of 40% or more. Almost half estimated the rate to be 60% or greater; in reality it is 37%.
The purpose of prison
Survey respondents were also asked “What is the most important purpose of imprisonment?” with the responses shown in the chart above which I have reproduced from the report. As you can see, just over two out of five (42%) felt that removing offenders from society was the main rationale for imprisoning offenders.
Prison conditions
Respondents were asked: “In your opinion, are living conditions for people serving sentences in prisons too easy, about right, or too harsh?”. Almost half (49%) thought that conditions were too easy, with just one in twelve (8%) saying they were too harsh.
Effectiveness
The survey asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of two key objectives: punishment and rehabilitation. The public appear to have little confidence in the effectiveness of imprisonment to achieve either objective.
Over half (53%) responded that imprisonment was ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ effective in punishing offenders for their crimes. Only approximately one-third thought prisons were an effective punishment, almost all respondents in these categories choosing ‘fairly’ rather than ‘very’ effective.
Perceptions of effectiveness were even more negative with respect to rehabilitation. Approximately three-quarters (73%) chose ‘not very’ or ‘not at all’ effective. Thirteen percent perceived prisons to be ‘fairly effective’ and only 3% responded ‘very effective’ at achieving rehabilitation. The net difference for rehabilitation was -57%.
Conclusion
The report’s authors conclude that Louis Blom-Cooper’s famous 1976 saying:
‘Although prisons are sited in the centres of dense urban populations, prisoners are out of sight and out of the mind of the public’
remains true. They urge the Government to make a greater effort to provide the public with the information necessary to make informed judgements about sentencing practices in England and Wales.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
