Prisons affect many lives and are very expensive to maintain, but it is equally important that justice is always served.
So how does UK’s current prison system work? Is it a deterrent of crime or a place for rehabilitation? Recently alternatives to prison have also been suggested, for example, more focus on community sentences for less serious offences that have attracted a custodial sentence. However, for some the need for retribution is a greater need than rehabilitation...
What do you think? Should prison be a punishment to deter crime, or a place for rehabilitation?
Kofi Odei Addo is a lecturer at the Hertfordshire Law School, University of Hertfordshire. He studied his PhD at the Department of Sociology, University of Essex, where he also worked as a teaching assistant.
Prior to coming to Essex, Kofi worked in a number of organisations; this includes the British Armed Forces, Logistics Organisation, and also within the Private Policing Sector. After an exemplary Military service (2001-2006), for his second undergraduate study, he read Criminology/Sociology at Anglia Ruskin University (2009), and at the University of Cambridge, Institute of Criminology, he took Criminological Research at Darwin College and obtained MPhil in 2010.
Kofi’s interest lies in, Policing (police confidence, corruption and legitimacy), Private policing, War Crimes, State Crimes, Psychology of Criminal Behaviour and Crime Control, Procedural and Restorative Justice, Cross-Cultural Criminology, Sociology of Prison Life, and Deviance and Social Control. In my spare time, listen to music, do a lot of DIY. I also have an interest in football, boxing, hockey, skiing and cooking.