prison

i listened to a podcast from a bbc radio 4 series called all in the mind, and a psychiatrist called lucia valmaggia was talking about psychosis in prison. the programme she works with has the primary goal to improve prisoners' mental health rather than trying to prevent them from reoffending and i think that's really commendable. anyway i learnt that depending on the prison, prisoners are only allowed out of their cells for 2-6 hours a day! i think that's a bit outrageous. what's the point of prison if nobody is going to communicate with the prisoners and try to educate, understand or even rehabilitate them, if it's needed? i don't think it's effective to lock people up in a drab, frightening environment and let their brains literally waste away, then expect them to eventually rejoin society and 'conform' or cooperate. if the reading age of a prisoner is 11 there should be something going on to raise their literacy - not because everybody should read novels or whatever, but because i think being able to read well increases your understanding of the world and makes you more observant and therefore more aware, and that is not always a bad thing. of course there are good things that come out of prisons, for example in the case of malcolm x. and some time ago i read a newspaper article about a woman who ran weekly writing workshops in an american men's prison. but these little occurrences don't outweigh the negative things that go on in prisons and i wonder what's being done about it.
i don't know much about the prison system but i would like to. i want to understand why it's only okay to lock people up in the name of the law. i have probably over simplified the whole thing and i view it more negatively than most people do, i think. i'm going through this phase where i'm questioning loads and loads of things. the world and humans are incredibly intriguing and complex. i'm curious about it all.