Traditional management in prisons

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CHAPTER 2 THE HISTORICAL AND PHILISOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRISON MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION

In this chapter the philosophy, origin and dynamics of case management will be addressed. One has to consider what case management entails. Firstly, it is the managing of a case, which in this scenario is the offender. However, it differs from the past when the offender was given a number and was called not by his name, but by the number the authorities gave him. The origin of case management needs to be explored and we need to determine whether it is a workable system when implemented on its own. Finally, case management is a departure from past systems because it aims to enhance the human dignity of the offender.
In order to understand the system called case management, one has to understand the prison system. Criminals are imprisoned for committing certain crimes, crimes that have been defined by the state and the community. This resulted in the need for prisons and the development of systems in the prisons to deal with the offenders. Prisons are the same all over the world. They consist of buildings in which one group of people deprives another group of people of their liberty. They may do it brutally and callously, or it can be caringly and humanely. The latter is made possible by a good management system. The aim of this chapter is to explore the origin of imprisonment and to understand the implications of the management of prisons.

TRADITIONAL MANAGEMENT IN PRISONS

The opposing sides of an age-old argument expressed by Phillips & McConnell (1996: 3) can be used as a point of departure in the history of prison management.
Argument two: “Good management is good management no matter where it’s practised. What worked elsewhere will work in a correctional organization as well.”
The first argument focuses on the environment, thus agreeing that “prisons are sufficiently different to permit a completely different approach to management” (Phillips & McConnell, 1996: 4). When considering the second argument it is clear that the focus is on the management process, thus agreeing that “good management is good management no matter where it’s practised.”
Prisons are small cities each functioning on their own with their own set of rules. It consists of the government, made up of the correctional officials, and the community, made up of the offenders, and it has its own governing rules. The difference between a ‘prison city’ and an ‘ordinary city’ lies in the management of the cities. In a prison city, there are limitations to freedom, association, privacy and life in general. The community in the prison did not choose out of their own free will to be part of that community. An act of crime against the set rules of an ordinary community forced the offender into imprisonment. The ordinary community expects the prison government to punish the offender.
Rabie (Rabie & Strauss, 1985: 6) described two characteristics of punishment: firstly it is an intentional infliction of suffering upon an offender; and secondly it is an expression of the community’s condemnation and disapproval of the offender and his conduct. According to De Wet (De Wet & Swanepoel, 1975: 199) punishment is the consequence of guilty person’s crime and it can be regarded as the injury inflicted on the offender by the state.
The concept of punishment can be defined as follows:
“….as the disadvantageous action imposed on the convicted guilty person by a court
of law after a trial and conviction of an offence and which is carried out by the state without the offender having any control over it” (Du Toit, 1981: xxi).
Hawkins (Grupp, 1971: 8) stated that the disapproval and conviction that the community expresses against crime and the offender is the essence of punishment.
The purpose of punishment is one or more of the following (Neser, 1993: 45):
• Retribution:
The offender should suffer for the damage caused by the crime to the community. Reichel (2001: 51) argued that retribution is a formal penal sanction seeking equity and just deserts. The main concern of supporters of retribution is simply that society carries out its moral obligation to punish people who commit a crime.
• Deterrence:
According to Cole (1989: 15) deterrence is the discouragement of criminal behaviour for the offender as well as the community. In other words, punishment saves the social order by showing the criminal that his action was unacceptable because it brought him more pain than pleasure. It also shows others who are considering a criminal act that they also will suffer painful consequences if they commit a wrong.
• Rehabilitation:
These are the attempts that are made to change the future behaviour of an offender by trying to change the current behaviour. A more thorough discussion on rehabilitation will be found in chapter six under paragraph 6.7.
• Prevention:
To prevent the offender from committing any further crime by incapacitation through further imprisonment. When prevention or incapacitation is used as a punishment, an individual’s ability to move around freely is restricted (Reichel, 2001: 41). The idea is that by removing a criminal from free society, that individual is prevented from continuing to cause harm to people.
There are two different theories about punishment, namely the absolute theory and the relative theory. The absolute theory entails only retribution whereas the relative theory encompasses prevention, deterrence and rehabilitation. According to the relative theory, punishment is only a means to a purpose, whereas according to the absolute theory, punishment is an end in itself (Snyman, 1995: 18). The main purpose of each of these theories is punishment. The absolute theory or retributive theory focuses on the past or the crime that has been committed. On the other hand, the relative theory, through deterrence, prevention and rehabilitation, focuses on the future with the emphasis on the object, for example rehabilitation, which is to be achieved by means of punishment.
According to the Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary 2001 a prison is “a secure place where somebody is confined as punishment for a crime or while waiting to stand trial”. It clearly shows that this is no ordinary place. A prison is a place where security is important, where confinement is the norm, where punishment is practised and where crime is the reason for the offender’s presence there. This links up to the purpose of punishment which concludes argument one: that a prison is different from any other place, because a prison is for the punishment of criminal behaviour.
It is true that ‘good management is good management no matter where it’s practised’ as is stated in argument two. To implement good management, the four basic management functions need to be applied (Kroon, 1995: 9). The four basic management functions are discussed in detail in chapter 4.
To summarise briefly, the four basic principles of management are:
• Planning:
Planning involves a conscious deliberation and visualisation of what the business and its departments should achieve within a particular time, in order to be successful. It also includes policy formulation and interpretation and the establishment of programmes, schedules, procedures and methods, budgets, standards and rules and regulations.
• Organising:
Organising deals with the grouping and allocation of activities to main functional divisions and subdivisions, as well as with the creation of posts within these divisions and determining their duties, authority and responsibilities.
• Activating:
Activating comprises of effective leadership, motivation and communication. It is the process of influencing people in such a way that they will enthusiastically contribute towards the work activities in order to achieve the departments’ goals as effectively as possible (Koontz et al., 1982: 29).
• Controlling:
The task of control is to ensure that the carefully structured plans are not upset because of various problems, such as insufficient inventory and conflict with workers. It is also the process by which the execution of plans and instructions can be recorded and controlled through a management information system.
If these four functions are applied meticulously, good management will be the result. The second sentence in argument two states that ‘what worked elsewhere will work in a correctional organization as well’. According to the explanation of what a prison is, it is clear that it is no ordinary place. Can it then be assumed that the management of a restaurant and the management of a prison will be the same? In a restaurant the clients are there of their own free will, but in a prison the clients are there for the purpose of punishment; but good management occurs when the four basic functions are implemented successfully, irrespective of the organisations where it is implemented. Although management principles are universal, a manager in a correctional environment cannot be unidimensional. Houston (1995: 1; Luyt, 1999:
31) emphasises the confusion between management of the organisation and offender management.
This research will show that a good management process, such as case management, can be implemented successfully in a prison environment. When implementing a management system the why and how need to be known. Why is a specific management system being implemented in a prison and how can that system be implemented successfully. Knowing how prisons were run in the past will help us to understand how to run them better in the future.

THE HISTORY OF PRISON MANAGEMENT

Since the early days, criminal behaviour has been punished and imprisonment was only one of the ways in which punishment was inflicted. Imprisonment as a punishment in its own right is a relatively new phenomenon. Prisons and imprisonment were known to people in medieval times, although prisons were used then as a place where a criminal was detained before trial. Marvin Wolfgang (Barnes & Teeters, 1959: 329) stated that many criminals were sentenced to prison for a certain time and because of a certain crime at the Florentine prison, Delle Stinche, which was built in 1300.

CHAPTER 1: THE RESEARCH
1.1 Background to the study
1.2 Literature review
1.3 Theoretical key concepts
1.4 Demarcation of the study
1.5 Main purpose of the study
1.6 Research question
1.7 Methodology
1.8 Methodology design
1.9 Population
1.10 The sample
1.11 Data collection
1.12 Data analysis
1.13 Validity and reliability
1.14 Problems encountered during the investigation
1.15 Conclusion
1.16 List of references
CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORICAL AND PHILISOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF PRISON MANAGEMENT
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Traditional management in prisons
2.3 The history of prison management
2.4 Development of the unit management perspective
2.5 Case management defined
2.6 Development of case management in prisons
2.7 Purpose and objectives of case management
2.8 Conclusion
2.9 List of references
CHAPTER 3: THE CASE MANAGEMENT PROCESS
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Sentence planning system
3.3 Case management as a process
3.4 Case management intervention
3.5 The phases of case management
3.6 Elements of effective care
3.7 Advantages of case management
3.8 Disadvantages of case management
3.9 Conclusion
3.10 List of references
CHAPTER 4: TRADITIONAL AND CONTEMPORARY OFFENDER ADMINISTRATION
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Traditional offender administration
4.3 Contemporary offender administration
4.4 General prison management
4.5 International guiding principles for offender administration
4.6 Offender administration in correctional systems
4.7 Common case management factors in correctional systems
4.8 Restorative justice
4.9 Conclusion
4.10 List of references
CHAPTER 5: THE SOUTH AFRICAN CASE MANAGEMENT SCENARIO
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The application of case management
5.3 The case plan
5.4 The case file
5.5 Case management and security
5.6 Roles and responsibilities within the case management process
5.7 Advantages of case management
5.8 Status of unit and case management
5.9 Conclusion
5.10 List of references
CHAPTER 6: ROLE OF THE CORRECTIONAL OFFICER IN CASE MANAGEMENT
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Role clarification in case management
6.3 Duties and responsibilities of correctional officers
6.4 Assessment of the offende
6.5 Classification of the offender
6.6 Counselling of the offender
6.7 Correctional treatment
6.8 Conclusion
6.9 List of references
CHAPTER 7: THE ROLE OF THE OFFENDER AND THE COMMUNITY IN CASE MANAGEMENT
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Integrated offender administration
7.3 The role of the offender during assessment and classification
7.4 The offender and case management intervention
7.5 The role of the offender during counselling
7.6 Family involvement and other role players
7.7 Conclusion
7.8 List of references
CHAPTER 8: RECORD-KEEPING AND DOCUMENTATION IN CASE MANAGEMENT
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Record-keeping and documentation
8.3 The role of sentence plans in case management
8.4 Case work in case management
8.5 The case file in case management
8.6 Documentation in case file
8.7 Conclusion
8.8 List of references
CHAPTER 9: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Recommendations
9.3 Conclusion
9.4 List of references
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