? 1. Role & Purpose of Prisons in the 21st Century has changed from the auspice of Gladstone (1895). If this is the case then what is the purpose of prisons today? Critically discuss. At the heart of imprisonment stays one of the most valued features of human life, the depravation of individual liberty. Historically, prisons served as places of detention for people who waited to be tried, waited for a fine to be paid or for another court directive to be implemented. However, prison as a direct way of punishing by imprisonment is a rather modern invention, having existed for less than 300 years (Morris & Rothman 1995). In order to find out what the use of imprisonment is nowadays, its purposes must first be defined. To find out if prison achieves its purposes, a full understanding of what these purposes are is needed. At least four traditional purposes have been suggested: punishment, deterrence, reform and protection of the public (Coyle, 2005, p. 12). One of the purposes of imprisonment is to punish those who committed crime, by taking away their liberty. This is the harshest punishment in existence in the United Kingdom, and there are strict rules set by the criminal law to restrict prison sentences imposed by the court: The court must not pass a custodial sentence unless it is of the opinion that the offence, or the combination of the offence and one or more offences associated with it, was so serious that neither a fine alone nor a community sentence can be justified for the offence. (Criminal Justice Act 2003, S.152) It is therefore obvious that imprisonment should only be used as a form of punishment in the case of the most heinous of crimes (e.g. murder, rape). Imprisonment can also serve as a deterrent. Thus, to those who are tempted to commit a crime, the thought of risking imprisonment as a consequence of their actions will be enough to deter them from committing a crime. Increasing the efficiency of the deterrent is simply a matter of increasing the punishment. Deterrence takes two forms: individual and general (Coyle, 2005, p. 15). When a person thinks ahead of the consequences they are going to suffer if they commit a crime (i.e. imprisonment), that is called individual deterrence. General deterrence is when seeing someone else being imprisoned for an offence makes a person decide against committing a similar offence for fear of suffering the same fate. However, deterrence is not as effective in practice as it is in theory. For instance, the Home Office (2005) reported a 67.4% re-offending rate for those released from prison in 2002. This is an indication that deterrence is not as efficient as desired. Reformation within prison is a rather new concept that grew from the nineteenth century onwards. The idea of prisons being places where criminals can be helped to alter their behaviour takes the focus off the concept of negative punishment of the criminal and transforms it into a positive justification of the punishment. If those who commit crime are seen as a small group of people, different from those who abide by the law, then changing that group’s behaviour as a result of imprisonment should lead to less crime being committed after their release. However, while this idea of changing criminals into better, hard-working persons, opening more options to them as soon as they are released, is a sound one, there is always the question of whether it can be achieved in a prison. Is prison a suitable environment for reformation to be achieved? It is obvious how, for people with problematic lives like most felons have, a few months spent in prison will not change them for the better. “Personal change comes as a result of a personal decision; it is not something which can be imposed against an individual’s will” (Coyle, A. 2005, p. 16). In an environment where individuals are constrained to follow strict rules and routine, a truly free decision