Book - "Criminal: How Our Prisons Are Failing Us All"

INDIVIDUAL

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 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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GROUP

LIFE CHANCES LIFE SKILLS (mental) health learning disability acquired brain injury post traumatic disorder ...	Personalised medicine: "If you use substance 'x' or this class of drugs, then there is a 'y' probability that 'z' will happen." ... ... future ...? Traumatic Brain Injury Screening
Collective Life Chances Society ...? Life Skills 'fit' for 21st C. EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION Pre-School! Pre-School!! Pre-School!!! equity Social Justice

I heard Angela Kirwin being interviewed about her book on Times Radio earlier today.

Prisons have changed. Haven't they? Prison reform 'happened'. It is a fact of history after all - Elizabeth Fry et al.? At least according to Social and Economic History GCSE in the 1970s.

Mental asylums changed. They have closed. 

Prisons have (apparently) changed markedly since the 19th - 20th century.

With the 'asylum system' of institutionalised 'care' they share a few things in common..

The 'estate' was Victorian (Winwick Hospital is long gone - leaking, cockroach infested, red carpet at the main entrance - with frequent reference to custodial care and how to change - challenge this.).

Now community care, or care in the community (take your pick) holds sway. 

We are a fifth of the way into the 21st century - can you believe it?

Decades from now will they look at the prison system now and see it as archaic as we see the 'lunatic asylums' pre-20th century (terrible for much of the 20th in fact), and yet we often forget the rationale for their original establishment?

From a mental health perspective what do the social determinants (of health) mean?

Mechanistically speaking, it seems determinism is very much doing its work - too many enter the political system and it's not the one - to represent the community in Parliament.

I've viewed Hodges' model as a resource to highlight parity of esteem at an individual level (physical AND mental health).

Increasing in relevance, I can see its utility in the pursuit of collective parity of esteem.

The most troubling commonality here: care in the community is unfinished. It sort of got started. It fledged, but never took flight.

There were many compassionate, caring, professional staff in the asylums. Exceptional role models. They saw the theory - practice gap. Pointing it out. Aptitude - Attitude. They were the heart in the Victorian shell, even as science struggled (and still does) with the ghost in the machine.

Historically speaking the ‘workhouse’ is closer than we think.

The UK rightly lauds its National Health Service, created in 1948. The Poor Law was also abolished in 1948 (Hillam and Bone, 1999).

Prisons, mental health care, preventive health, health education and community care .. so much still to do.

This sounds an interesting new book too! :-)

Hillam, Christine., and J.M. Bone. THE POOR LAW AND AFTER: workhouse hospitals and public welfare. Liverpool: Liverpool Medical History Society, 1999. ISSN 1364-999x