Britain could learn from Texan prisons

Before I was sentenced to prison I imagined it as a place of discipline, where we who had broken society’s rules would be taught to be better men. I could not have been more wrong. One of the most toxic, and least-understood problems with the British prison system is the moral code it teaches. Terrible, antisocial behaviour is often rewarded. From my time in Wandsworth I think of the man who beat his elderly cellmate so badly that the man was hospitalised while his attacker was rewarded with a single cell, and the most desirable job in the gardens. Another man trashed his cell and was placated with an Xbox. It’s a pleasant surprise to me that the government is trying to fix this perverse incentives structure — there are reports today that it wants to introduce a ‘Texas-style points system’.

Part of the reason that Britain’s prisons don’t work is because of understaffing.