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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/17/uk-brutal-prisons-failing-violence-drugs-gangs?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Young Abdullahi Yusuf found his way into extremism, but was put into a unique 'ideological rehab' program instead of prison - with successful results

bdullahi Yusuf was having an identity crisis. Culturally marooned between home life with his traditional Somali parents and immersion in his everyday American school life in Minnesota, the Muslim teen gradually found his way to terrorist propaganda online.

In 2014, Yusuf was arrested before he could board a plane at Minneapolis airport, heading off to Syria to join Isis.

He had become part of a rare but not entirely unfamiliar pattern in which children of some immigrant families in North America and Europe feel alienated from society and a small but concerning few turn to jihad.

It was almost too late for Yusuf. But his story has had an unusual outcome.

Young extremists like him typically end up dead in the war zone or serving long prison sentences at home. But Yusuf, 21, was released by a judge in November and allowed to return to his parents in a suburb of Minneapolis.

In this extraordinary case, he is being integrated back into society after being sentenced to a unique "ideological rehab" program. He has spent the last year in a federal halfway house, reading philosophy, biography and literature, writing essays and poetry and reflecting on his life, his choices and his future. He was encouraged to debate with mentors and Muslim community leaders.

"It was a deradicalization program that was basically invented for Abdullahi as it went along," said Jean Brandl, one of the lawyers on his defense team.

Yusuf had pleaded guilty to supporting a foreign terrorist organization and had testified against friends in a major trial of a group of Somali American Isis converts in 2016 in Minneapolis. Others who admitted wrongdoing and turned state's evidence got lengthy prison terms. Only Yusuf has been deemed trustworthy enough for release, after two years incarcerated awaiting trial, then 12 months in the counseling program. He will be closely monitored by the authorities for the next 20 years and has restrictions on his internet use. He aspires to go to college.

"His transformation has been incredible. He went from being a surly, closed-down kid to this really open, warm, intelligent, thoughtful, introspective young man, who recognizes why he'd been attracted to Isis and why there are so many other options for him," Brandl told the Guardian.

Leading experts on extremism say there should be much more focus on developing such rehabilitation as an option for dealing with homegrown budding terrorists, and warn of the dangers of ignoring its potential.

"The US, unfortunately, is about 20 or 25 years behind European countries in building these kinds of networks and programs. Intervention to counter violent extremism is really missing," said Daniel Koehler, a fellow of George Washington University (GWU) and director of the German Institute on Radicalization and De-radicalization studies. He went to Minneapolis at the request of the judge in Yusuf's case to assess the defendant before sentencing, including the risk of recidivism.

Koehler is prohibited by the court from discussing the case in detail. But he told the Guardian of his wider concerns.

"All signs that I see in the US are telling me there is a massive increase in homegrown extremism," he said.

As a fraction of a Muslim population in the US estimated at 3.3 million, the numbers are minuscule but worrying to experts.

Koehler cited GWU's program on extremism, which tracks criminal cases relating to Islamic State in the US. It measured 61 terrorism-related arrests in the US in 2015, the most in a year since 11 September 2001, and noted there have been 147 charged and 88 convicted of offenses related to Isis since March 2014.

Yet he was worried little was being done to prevent radicalization or to re-educate radicalized individuals when they are caught funding or trying to join Isis or while plotting attacks in the US.

Under the Obama administration, in 2014 three projects were launched to explore ideological rehab for people like Yusuf - in Boston, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. But they are barely under way and the future prospects of even this token effort are dubious under Donald Trump, Koehler said.

European anti-extremism re-education programs started in the early 1990s in Germany and Scandinavia, to deal with far-right white supremacists. Now those government projects have been adapted to try to return violent Islamists, or those who were determinedly heading that way, to productive society.

Britain has the government Prevent strategy, which is designed to intervene early when signs of radicalization are reported, though critics regard it as a form of community surveillance and stigma. But there are no official "rehab" programs for those convicted of crimes further down the extremist road.

Koehler said family therapy was key to ideological rehab and cited unofficial groups such as the UK's Families for Life, started by Nicola Benyahia after her son became radicalized and died fighting for Isis in Syria.

There are numerous deradicalization programs in Saudi Arabia, which claim to be very successful, and one in Sri Lanka.

But there is no reliable research analyzing the outcomes, said Jessica Stern, a professor at Boston University, specializing in extremism, and the author of Isis: The State of Terror.

"The Saudis have reported very low recidivism but they have also had some significant failures and they've never made their data available for scrutiny. Also, they have strategies that are not going to be replicated elsewhere, such as finding the men a wife, buying them a car and getting them jobs," she said.

Experts are watching Yusuf's case with great interest, as it is understood to be the first of its kind in the US. "It's an important experiment," said Stern.

She pointed to a recent report citing statistics from the federal government's National Counterterrorism Center that at the end of 2016 there were 300 terrorism offenders in US prisons, 90 of whom are due to be released in the next five years.

"At least some will probably reengage in terrorist activity ... because they either remain radicalized or are susceptible to re-radicalization," the center states.

Stern said there should be deradicalization programs in prison.

She has conducted research among the Somali-American community in Minnesota, where she found refugee families suffered disproportionate levels of economic hardship and discrimination.

Yusuf was born in a refugee camp in Kenya after his parents fled conflict and eventually made it to the US.

"I realized that mothers think their kids are safe when they see them inside on the computer but it turns out that's where they can be most at risk from extremist propaganda," she said.

"Some kids are almost living in a different world from their parents and then they are stolen away to be used as cannon fodder in someone else's war. It's heartbreaking," she said.

Many of the disenchanted youth who turn to Isis reject the mainstream Islam they grew up with, as well as the secular and mainstream Christian American norms around them, and they become engulfed in the ideology of violent fundamentalism.

"They think they are getting the crack cocaine of Islam in Isis, they think they are doing something glamorous by going off to join the group - it's five-star jihad to them," she said.

Yusuf is currently barred from talking to the press. He completed his high school diploma and performed community service while in the counseling program.

The US district judge Michael Davis warned him that he risked being ostracized by parts of his community after testifying against some of the nine in his group of local extremists.

Yusuf's main defense lawyer, the federal defender Manny Atwal, recalled an eruption in court as boys in the public gallery called him a liar and a traitor and got into a shouting match with Yusuf's mother as he was testifying against his former friends.

"There was quite a ruckus and the judge saw that there was some backlash from the community," she said.

His ideological rehab program was devised by a not-for-profit group in Minneapolis called Heartland Democracy, which specializes in civic engagement courses, particularly for alienated youth. He read and discussed the works of Sherman Alexie, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and the French philosopher Michel Foucault, trying to work through barriers, both mental and societal, to a sense of place in the community.

"Ideological rehab is astonishingly difficult to do in practice and requires one-on-one focus; it's not just flicking a switch in the mind," said John Horgan, professor of global studies and psychology at Georgia State University. "But there's an urgent need for early intervention and alternatives to prison, because we're losing the battle to prevent people becoming involved in terrorism."

Yusuf's lawyer Atwal is rooting for her former client, who is now under the supervision of the probation service. She gave him books by Mindy Kaling, the Indian American comedy writer and actor, and helped tailor his program at Heartland Democracy, after traveling to Europe to look at programs there.

"It was extremely brave of the judge to do this with Abdullahi," she said. "But what are you going to do, just keep locking up these troubled 18- and 19-year-old youngsters?"
Topics

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'An incredible transformation': how rehab, not prison, worked for a US Isis convert

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Young Abdullahi Yusuf found his way into extremism, but was put into a unique 'ideological rehab' program instead of prison - with successful results bdullahi Yusuf was having an identity crisis. Culturally marooned between home life with his traditional Somali parents and immersion in his everyday American school life in Minnesota, the Muslim teen gradually found his way to terrorist propaganda online.

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Part 2 is good too

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Foucault: Crime, Police, & Power | Philosophy Tube

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Part 1/2 - What is prison for? How has crime and punishment changed in the last 250 years? Philosopher Michel Foucault says the penal system - that's law, courts, police, surveillance - exists to protect the power of the ruling class, but what does that mean? Subscribe!

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Diepiriye Kuku-Siemons

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Michel Foucault, 'whiteness' in Discipline & Punishment

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Whiteness & the condemned black body in Michel Foucault's seminal 1975 'Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison' but not Angola.

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(start 20 minutes in)

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Angela Davis on Women, Privilege and Prisons Part I

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Follow us on Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/EmoryUniversity Follow us on Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/EmoryUniversity Follow us on Google+: http://www.Gplus.to/Emory Renowned civil rights and womens rights leader Angela Davis spoke at Ebenezer Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta on March 24, 2009 for the keynote address of Emory Universitys Womens History Month.

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This is "Girls Behind Bars - Episode 1 (Low)" by Sarah Kelly on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

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Baronness Corston

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Issued:17/01/16

Mothers who have their babies with them in prison are often not taking up places in supportive units which can help them deal with a number of complex issues while in custody, a new report suggests.
Researchers from Hallam Centre for Community Justice (HCCJ) at Sheffield Hallam have highlighted how mothers and babies in prison can often benefit from residing in a supportive Mother and Baby Unit (MBU) in a new report published in collaboration with Action For Prisoners' and Offenders' Families.

The report says mothers in prison face high levels of mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, self-harm and domestic abuse.

Women whose babies have been taken into statutory care during a prison sentence are particularly vulnerable and are often unable to access appropriate support.

The report, Enhancing Care for Childbearing Women And Their Babies In Prison, also outlines some of the problems faced by mothers and stresses the need for "through the gate" support as the women prepare for release.

The Right Honourable Baroness Corston, who published the influential review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system in 2007 says in this report: "MBUs, and how they fit into the treatment of women prisoners, have been the subject of debate in CJS circles for decades, but there has been no serious analysis or overview for many years.

"This is not a straightforward subject to tackle and this report does an excellent job of putting MBUs and mothers in prison firmly back on the agenda".

Lead author Caroline O' Keeffe, from HCCJ, said: "Nearly 10 years on from Baroness Corston's report we are still failing to address many of the issues facing women in prison and their families.

"The benefits of prison MBUs need to be actively promoted to external staff, to mothers and also to non-MBU prison staff while mothers in prison need programmes which address self-esteem and healthy relationships.

"Crucially, release from prison needs to be viewed as a process not as an event. The sentence planning of women prisoners who are also mothers needs to include support on release and a 'whole family' approach where appropriate."

Nearly 10 years on from Baroness Corston's report we are still failing to address many of the issues facing women in prison and their families.

The report comes amid uncertainty in the criminal justice system as a result of the Government's Transforming Rehabilitation reforms.

With the closure of some MBUs and other MBUs under threat, the future for mothers and babies in prison is uncertain and the options for many women in prison, particularly those serving longer sentences, to keep their families together remain extremely limited.

The report highlights some of the challenges and also opportunities for caring for mothers in prison and their babies, within the context of these changes.

Anastasia de Waal, Chair of Family Lives, which runs APOF, said: "It is clear there are no easy answers or 'quick fixes' in caring for mothers in prison and their babies. The government should urgently examine why the very limited number of Mother and Baby Units, a diminishing but potentially vital and valuable resource in prisons, aren't being fully utilised.

"Hopefully the report can create the opportunity for reflection and will flag up the potential for positive change in both policy and practice. It is vital that all training provision around childbearing women and their babies and indeed women offenders more generally seeks to heighten awareness of the link between women's often dual role as victim and offenders."
Notes for editors:
1. Hallam Centre for Community Justice will host a conference, Improving the Lives of Women and Girls in the Criminal Justice System on Tuesday 8 March. For more details, contact HCCJ at hccj@shu.ac.uk

For press information: Laurie Harvey in the Sheffield Hallam University press office on 0114 225 2621 or email pressoffice@shu.ac.uk

Related experts

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Mothers who have their babies with them in prison are often not taking up places in supportive units which can help them deal with a number of complex issues while in custody, a new report suggests.Researchers from Hallam Centre for Community Justice (HCCJ) at Sheffield Hallam have highlighted how mothers and babies in prison can often benefit from

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Example of the panopticon in action.

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Parents are keeping their children at home in protest against a Merseyside school's decision to remove the front wall of a girls' toilet block, which they say is making pupils feel "scared and unsafe".

A privacy row has erupted between St Mary's College in Wallasey and parents after the exterior wall was removed to make the toilets open plan.

Pictures sent to The Independent show that the toilet cubicle doors are now exposed to an open corridor, and are in clear sight of at least one classroom and a CCTV camera.

It is believed that the decision has been made by the school in a bid to stop smoking, bullying and truancy, with the new layout meaning pupils can no longer hide in between lessons.

Tara Hodgson Jones, who has a daughter in year 11 and a son in year 9 at the school, saw the toilets for herself when she attended a parent's evening at the school on Friday.

She told The Independent that she is keeping her daughter at home as she does not feel safe with the new toilet layout.

"My sister and neighbours are doing the same with their daughters," Ms Hodgson Jones added.

"Apparently they are starting on the boys' toilets next week, so I'll be keeping my son off too if they do the same.

"My daughter told me about it on Thursday but I thought she was making a big deal over nothing until I saw it for myself.

"We tried to talk to my son's head of year about it but he said he couldn't comment and that we would have to make an appointment with the head teacher on Monday, which we will be doing.

"I want this resolving - my daughter sits her GCSEs this year so this is an extreme measure on my part.

"If the problem is bullying, smoking and skipping class they could have approached it in so many other ways.

"My daughter was bullied in year 10 and that was in the classroom, the yard and the lunch hall, so thinking that taking a toilet wall down will stop it is stupid.

"As for smoking, put alarms in. As for skipping class, use frosted glass so teachers can see shapes when they walk past.

"My daughter feels scared and unsafe - it's shocking."

St Mary's College is a voluntary aided academy for 11- to 19-year-olds, meaning it is not governed by a local authority.

Online, the Catholic school describes its mission as being "inspired by the spirit of Jesus Christ" and that the school is "for the personal development of every member through service to each other".

On Twitter, one parent wrote: My daughter has come home [the] last two days from this school and feels appalled by this, and says she has no privacy."

Whereas another took a different viewpoint and said: "My daughter attends this school and I don't see it as a bad thing - I do believe it's for the protection of the students and school safety.

"Really don't know what the fuss is about?"

Another parent reportedly told the Liverpool Echo that the removal of the toilet wall was "absolutely disgusting".

"They clearly haven't considered what girls past puberty have to deal with, so to have only one door for privacy without the added security of a room is terrible.

"There are classrooms opposite the toilets, there is even a camera facing them - for girls between the ages of 11 and 16, it's unacceptable."

The Independent has contacted St Mary's College for comment.

Reuse content

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School removes wall from girls' toilets and parents are keeping children at home in protest

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Parents are keeping their children at home in protest against a Merseyside school's decision to remove the front wall of a girls' toilet block, which they say is making pupils feel "scared and unsafe". A privacy row has erupted between St Mary's College in Wallasey and parents after the exterior wall was removed to make the toilets open plan.

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Lecture by Ben McLeish

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Out of the Box: Prisons, Punishment and Profit

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"Visibility is a Trap." - Michel Foucault The modern incarnation of the prison system is evaluated at its root value set, and core functions. Discussed are the origins of prison in torture and public spectacle, its inversion into modern incarceration models, and the morphing of the carceral model into one which reflects the dominant economic value system - profit before intended function, and its resulting violent social costs.

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An Introduction to Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish - A Macat Sociology Analysis

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The purpose of this upload is to make it available to Spanish speakers. You can access the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci61KBsZVbI

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Capital Punishment by Chloe Deambrogio

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Does the death penalty pose moral dilemmas that force us to commit uncritically to the preservation of life, irrespective of broader intellectual and practical implications? In a passionate and engaging lecture titled 'Thirty Years on Death Row: When Reality Confronts Critical Theory', Bernard Harcourt explored this and other complex questions, inviting us to reflect on the ethical choices we, as researchers, lawyers, and ultimately human beings, are forced to face when the life of another individual is at stake.

As a critical theorist, Harcourt has dedicated significant thoughts and efforts to highlighting how liberal values contribute to reinforce traditional social hierarchies and power structures. At the same time, as a death penalty defence lawyer, he has unwittingly reinforced the same values he has tried to deconstruct through his scholarship. This contradiction, as Harcourt acknowledges in a deep self-reflection on his role as a researcher and a defence lawyer, poses significant questions about the possibility of reconciling an intellectual critique of the universality of human rights with a professional activity dedicated to safeguarding due process, equality before the law, and other constitutional rights.

Alongside his academic commitments, Harcourt has dedicated almost 30 years to the defence of death row prisoners in Montgomery, Alabama. His decision to leave a prestigious clerkship at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and move to Alabama came as he faced a difficult family loss: the death of his father. This personal tragedy prompted him to reflect on the incommensurability of life and to feel the moral necessity of defending the lives of the disadvantaged that our criminal justice systems traditionally penalise.

During the Roger Hood lecture, Harcourt investigated the nature and implications of this moral necessity, starting from the discussion of the case of Doyle Hamm, a man detained on death row at Donaldson Correctional Facility, in Bessemer, Alabama. Doyle was convicted and sentenced to death in 1987 for a robbery and murder that resulted in the death of Patrick Cunningham, the night clerk of the motel where the robbery took place. Two accomplices testified against Doyle, and stated that, while they had helped him in the robbery, he was the one who had pulled the trigger. While there was insufficient evidence to support the accomplices' statements, the jury believed their testimony and sentenced Doyle to the electric chair.

Doyle's case is a typical example of inadequate legal representation, a widespread problem that affects many indigent defendants charged with capital crimes in Alabama and other death prone jurisdictions. In the penalty phase of the trial that led to Doyle's capital sentence, the defence lawyer presented his mitigating evidence in only nineteen minutes. He called no mental health experts and presented no medical or educational records. His evidence was limited to the testimony of two witnesses: Doyle's sister, who provided very little information and stated that the brother had no educational problems, and Deputy Sheriff Johnson who only said that Doyle had been cooperative during his arrest and detention. The same day, after a long lunch break, the jury issued a death verdict by a majority of 11-1: in Alabama the law does not require a unanimous decision to sentence a defendant to death. The jury never heard any mitigating evidence about Doyle's past and, after just four hours of trial, were ready to decide that his life was not worth sparing.

After having taken up the case in 1991, Harcourt started investigating Doyle's past to paste together the life that was never presented to the jury. By tracking down witnesses close to Doyle and his family, and collecting hundreds of pages of medical and educational records from his birth in 1957, Harcourt discovered that Doyle had been raised in a very poor family in Alabama, by a tough grandfather and and even tougher father. His father, Major Edward Hamm, suffered from a debilitating alcohol addiction, used to beat his eight sons, and was repeatedly arrested for disorderly conduct, intoxication, and assault. He used to tell his sons: 'if you don't steal you're not a Hamm'. Unsurprisingly, all eight boys got into trouble and served time in the Plantation Penitentiaries of Mississippi and Alabama.

Doyle suffered from mental health problems and learning disabilities throughout his life. The school records showed that in fifth grade he read at a first grade level and dropped out of school. As a child, he suffered a traumatic head injury and abused a variety of drugs, initially glue and gas, and later on all sorts of hard drugs. He suffered from repeated seizures and was eventually diagnosed with epilepsy. The medical expert hired by Harcourt diagnosed Doyle with lateral brain damage and borderline mental retardation. According to his examination, he suffered from neuropsychological impairment, brain damage, as well as other deficits with a significant impact on daily functioning. Doyle's mental health and difficult upbringing was key to explain his impaired judgment and assess his criminal responsibility, and yet none of this crucial information ever reached the jurors' ears.

Following the state habeas corpus hearing held in 1999, in which Harcourt presented all the mitigating evidence he and his assistants had collected, the Head Prosecutor for the State of Alabama drafted an eighty-nine page document challenging all their evidence and the legal foundations of their claims. The prosecutor styled the legal brief as a proposed memorandum opinion, and the state judge signed the proposed opinion without a single modification, without even striking the word 'propose'.

Harcourt and his team have challenged this opinion in every possible federal court. However, all federal courts deferred to the state court decision, citing the United States AEDPA deference rule, which directs subsequent federal courts to defer to the state court on facts of law. Only once, in 2014, a judge on the Eleventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals challenged this decision. 'It bothers the heck out of me,' the judge said when discussing the case in court with his colleagues. 'I don't believe for a second that that judge went through eighty-nine pages in a day and then filed that as his own, as if he had gone through everything-went through his notes, the transcript, the exhibit[s], and the like,' he said. 'It just can't be done!' (Gonnerman 2016). Unfortunately, the judge's comment had no practical consequences: the judges called the opinion a procedural shortcut that had no bearing on the merits of the appeal of the case. Doyle's death sentence was confirmed.

At present, Doyle is still on death row and suffers from a malignant cancer that has spread throughout his body. There are only two possibilities before him: natural death or execution, which could paradoxically turn into a form of euthanasia that frees Doyle from the pain of his disease.

As a critical theorist, Harcourt has never made the death penalty the focus of his scholarship. He never felt he could reflect on it from the safe position of the intellectual: prompted by a pressing need to help the marginalized, he always felt the urge to engage with it, to contribute with his lawyering to the protection of the lives of the less fortunate. Yet, Harcourt recognizes that his activity as a lawyer might have indirectly contributed to legitimize the American capital punishment system. As Carol and Jordan Steiker argue in 'Sober Second Thoughts: Reflections on Two Decades of Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment' (1995), the litigation and regulation aimed at addressing the failures and contradictions of capital punishment since the mid-1970s might have legitimized the system rather than undermining it. With its long stream of rules and procedures, the law has indirectly contributed to humanize capital punishment in the eyes of the public, without substantially addressing the daily violations that the system regularly performs. Could it be that lawyers' attempt to defend defendants' rights and freedoms might contribute to the survival and preservation of the very system they are trying to defeat?

Harcourt admits that this is a real possibility, and yet he never gave up his work with Doyle. He felt that Doyle needed him and that at the same time he needed Doyle, perhaps to fulfil his human need to give a part of himself to somebody else. Perhaps the reason for this humanitarian urge lies in what Kant called the inviolability of life, Harcourt argues. Perhaps confronted with the necessity to save a life we have no choice but to defend due process and constitutional rights. Maybe, when facing the possibility of death we are confronted with something bigger than ourselves that urges us to make an ethical choice without asking whether this single action will have positive or negative implications for the system as a whole. Perhaps saving that one, single, life is all that matters in this specific instance, more than whether it will bring a substantial benefit to the cause of the marginalized as a broader social category. If you have the privilege and power to defend the rights of those in need, is it possible or desirable to refrain from doing it simply because it might reinforce the system as a whole?
Watch the 2017 Roger Hood Annual Lecture by Professor Harcourt References
Jennifer Gonnerman, 'The Long Defense of the Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm', The New Yorker, 13 September 2016, available here.

Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker (1995), 'Sober Second Thoughts: Reflections on Two Decades of Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment', Harvard Law Review, 109(2), 355-438.

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The Ethical Dilemmas of Capital Punishment: A Juxtaposition of Legal Defence and Critical Theory

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Does the death penalty pose moral dilemmas that force us to commit uncritically to the preservation of life, irrespective of broader intellectual and practical implications?

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Andrew Coyle lecture on Prisons

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Prof Andrew Coyle CMG (Session 2) Preventive Detention Conference - 28 July 2012

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Professor Andrew Coyle, International Centre for Prison Studies, University of Essex delivers: 'The Prison: Its contribution to punishment, rehabilitation and public safety''. Presented at Preventive Detention: Asking the Fundamental Questions, convened by The Centre for Law, Governance and Public Policy, Bond University, Gold Coast Australia.

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welcome to the world's nicest prison - cnn

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Welcome to the world's nicest prison - CNN

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Off Norway, murderers and rapists sunbathe and tend cows. Norwegians stand up for this brand of justice, even as the trial of an admitted mass killer is under way.

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Our families should be allowed to order us books as long as they don't promote violence or radical ideologies. Current restrictions are self-defeating

couple of years ago, I published an op-ed from Attica prison in the New York Times. A young man wrote me afterward, and we became pen pals. One time, he wanted to send me a book. The problem was, he couldn't simply buy it at a book store and mail it. Nor could he order it for me online. Plus it was a new release with a hard cover, and that wasn't allowed either. Yet we found a way.

A prison directive allowed for five printed pages to arrive in each regular mail envelope. So my friend broke copyright laws and photocopied 300-plus pages, stuffing them into more than 30 envelopes and sending them my way. He figured the publisher Spiegel & Grau, and the author Bryan Stevenson, wouldn't mind.

When the envelopes arrived on my cell bars, I spent the next few days reading Just Mercy, pacing my cell, grinding my teeth and crying. Stevenson explained how he got close to the problem, dedicating his life to saving the lives of men on death row in the south.

Up north in New York, convicted murderers like me are not put to death any more, but the state prison system does have its problems. In an attempt to curb contraband, corrections recently piloted a program in three prisons, restricting packages sent from family and friends. The new plan limited purchases to only six pre-approved private vendors that served crap food at seemingly gouged prices; none had a meaningful book selection.

A state corrections spokesperson defended the program, saying that 30 other jurisdictions in the US - including many in the south - have implemented similar policies. Advocacy groups pushed back. Journalists wrote stories. The public balked. Then Governor Andrew M Cuomo rightly tweeted that corrections got it wrong, and the directive went under review. New York has recently set itself apart from the rest of the country with criminal justice and prison reform. Why follow states with policies that exploit families of prisoners? What if corrections considered a prisoner's point of view before making big policy changes?

The book problem is not a new one. Over 20 years ago, people in New York maximum-security prisons were offered a quid pro quo deal: forgo privileges to receive packages from home, in exchange for an in-cell "TV program". (The directive still allowed non-TV prisons to receive care packages - food, clothes, books - mailed directly from home.) Today, 11 of 17 maximums have the TV program.

Prisoners in these institutions have to order all items through their personal disbursement accounts. But most receive little money from home, and jobs in the joint pay about 20 cents an hour. So books have become less of a priority. "They gave us TVs, and now our people can't even send us books," one prisoner told me. "They want to control us with TVs, to keep us stupid, so we come back."

You see, some of our people would rather send us books than money. What if we buy drugs with the money? They know what goes on in here, they watch those dopey American prison porn shows. (Want to see what education and books can do? Watch The University of Sing Sing and College Behind Bars: The Bard Prison Initiative, the documentary by Lynn Novick and Ken Burns.)

To be fair, drugs do sometimes come in through package rooms: a care package from home could have devil dogs, restuffed with dope; thin orange films could be slickly pasted on the insides of food packaging (saboxone is a synthetic drug that offers a heroin-like high); drugs could be sewn into seams of clothing, resealed in sneaker soles. Package rooms are equipped with x-ray machines, but they don't catch everything.

Yet veteran drug smugglers seldom take the risky package room route. Instead, they use sleight of hand maneuvers on visits. Heck, when I started on Riker's Island in 2002, I didn't even use my hands when I smuggled drugs: my lady friend would kiss me, use her tongue to push the balloon in my mouth, then I'd skillfully hold it in my throat to beat the mouth inspection. So should we end contact visits? Some states have done that in the south.

Here's the thing. Restrictive policies didn't deter me from smuggling drugs and doing drugs. Opportunity did. In 2010, at Attica, I joined a creative writing workshop and then a privately funded college program. Today, I'm in Sing Sing, working on my bachelor's. Although my mother has been unable to send me books, she has been able to order periodicals, which are delivered with regular mail after they are searched for contraband. (Perfume folds that could hide saboxone films are cut out.) Reading so much solid writing has helped build my own skills. I began publishing articles. I became a journalist.

Even though few send drugs, I understand the concerns with packages coming from home. Still, why should our families, many of whom struggle financially, have to shop from obscure companies with overpriced products? What about Whole Foods and Amazon? It belies the principles of our market system. I just heard corrections will soon issue all New York state prisoners tablets - smart move because we will now receive letters and periodicals digitally. Still, our families should be allowed to order us books - old ones, new ones, hardcovers, softcovers, so long as the content doesn't promote violence or radical ideologies.

After reading the photocopy of Just Mercy, my young friend and I were inspired. Today, I am writing social justice features from prison, and he attends college and volunteers as a tutor in a Philadelphia jail. I'm moved by his compassion. Maybe that's why Stevenson says "the power of mercy is that it belongs to the undeserving".

John J Lennon is serving a sentence of 28 years to life, most recently at Attica correctional facility and currently at Sing Sing. He is a contributing writer for The Marshall Project

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For prisoners like me, books are a lifeline. Don't cut it

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Our families should be allowed to order us books as long as they don't promote violence or radical ideologies. Current restrictions are self-defeating couple of years ago, I published an op-ed from Attica prison in the New York Times. A young man wrote me afterward, and we became pen pals.

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David Garland discussing overpopulation of British Prisons

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Prisons don't resolve problems - leading criminologist David Wilson on penal politics and reform

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Watch the full episode here: http://bit.ly/1nAnXsE Leading criminology expert, professor and author David Wilson tells Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi why superjails and mandatory sentences are NOT the answer, and why the prison system and profit do not work together.

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Nate Dogg - "One More Day" -  Official Death Row Upload (HQ)

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Nate Dogg solos in this rare music video from Death Row Records

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ur role is not to punish. The punishment is the prison sentence: they have been deprived of their freedom. The punishment is that they are with us," says Nils Öberg, director-general of Sweden's prison and probation service.

Öberg, 54, is giving the annual Longford lecture on penal reform in London tomorrow, where he will explain how, in stark contrast to the UK, Sweden is closing prisons and reducing the prison population.

Since 2004, Swedish prisoner numbers have fallen from 5,722 to 4,500 out of a population of 9.5 million, and last year four of the country's 56 prisons were closed and parts of other jails mothballed. In contrast, the prison population in England and Wales is 85,000 out of a population of 57 million.

With reoffending rates at about 40% - less than half of those in the UK and most other European countries - does he attribute this success to the country's effective policies on prisoner rehabilitation? "We obviously believe that it is part of the explanation; we hope we are doing something right. But it's going to be very difficult to prove that scientifically. We are increasing our efforts all the time," he says.

Last year a "national client survey" of several thousand Swedish prisoners was undertaken in order to identify the issues that have affected their criminal behaviour. "The survey did not bring up any surprises, but it gave us confirmation of what we have learned from experience - that it is not one problem that our clients face, but two or more, sometimes as many as seven or eight different ones, including perhaps drugs, alcohol and psychiatric problems. And these problems did not just appear overnight. These are things that have developed over years. Most of the sentences in this country are relatively short. The window of opportunity that we have to make a change is very small, so we need to start from day one. Our strategy is to cover the whole range of problems, not just the one problem."

Sweden's high-security Kumla prison Photograph: Marc Femenia / TT/Press Association Images

Unlike England and Wales, where since 2004 anyone convicted by the courts is categorised as an offender, the implication in the Swedish model is that sentenced individuals are still primarily regarded as people with needs, to be assisted and helped. As well as having rehabilitation at the heart of its penal policy, the other huge difference between the Swedish and UK approaches is the role of politicians.

Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, has recently introduced measures that amount to "a ramped-up political emphasis on punishment rather than real rehabilitation" in prison regimes, according to Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust. These include forcing prisoners to wear uniform, banning books being sent to prisoners, and turning off cell lights at 10.30pm in young offender institutions.

Öberg says: "A politician who tried something like that in Sweden would be thrown out of office. It would be a breach of our constitution - in our system that is the forbidden area. When we exercise authority over individuals, a politician cannot interfere with the administration process. In reality, there is a dialogue - politicians will tell me and my colleagues what they expect and we will do our best to achieve those goals. We have a very clear division of labour between the government and public administration.

"An individual politician cannot interfere with the running of our business. The government sets goals in a yearly letter of intent, and then the responsibility for the work is entirely ours."

But what about public opinion in Sweden? Is there less desire for retribution than in the UK? "There is a lot of anger among the Swedish public when it comes to crime and criminals," says Öberg. "But, regardless of what public opinion may be at any one time, whatever you do in the justice sector, you have to take a long-term perspective. You cannot try something one day and then change it to something else the next day - that would be completely useless. The system in our sector is set up to implement long-term strategies and stick to them."

He adds, however, that the country's well-educated population appreciates that almost all prisoners will return to society. "So when you go into a political dialogue, there is a fair amount of understanding that the more we can do during this small window of opportunity when people are deprived of their liberty, the better it will be in the long run."

Is he hoping his Longford lecture will provide some helpful advice that may assist the UK government with its prison difficulties, ranging from overcrowding, staff shortages and a 69% increase last year in self-inflicted death?

"I'm very excited to be giving the lecture. But I will be very careful about giving anybody any advice. We can try to share our experiences and perhaps inspire each other a little bit, recognising that the preconditions for carrying out our work are very, very different.

My ambition is to try to tell a story about how we have come to the conclusions that we have, and explain why we have made the choices that we have made. It has to do with whether you decide to use prison as your first option or as a last resort, and what you want your probation system to achieve. Some people have to be incarcerated, but it has to be a goal to get them back out into society in better shape than they were when they came in."

Curriculum vitae

Age 54.

Lives Stockholm.

Family Married, three children.

Education Sollefteå Gymnasium, Sweden; Harvard University, Kennedy school of government, USA; political science degree; Uppsala University, Sweden, MSc/Phd, political science.

Career 2012-present: director-general, Swedish prison and probation service; 1999-12; various director-general roles, Swedish ministry of justice; 1995-99; civil servant, Swedish commissioner, European commission, Brussels; 1991-95; officer and analyst roles, Swedish security service; 1988-90: consultant, International Foundation; 1986-88: administrative director, Alva and Gunnar Myrdal's Foundation: 1983-85; consultant, Swedish Red Cross and other NGOs.

Interests Sailing.

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'Prison is not for punishment in Sweden. We get people into better shape' | Erwin James

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Erwin James: With prisoner numbers falling and jails closing, Swedish criminal justice works, says director-general Nils Öberg

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Women talk about how they cope with life on the outside when men go to prison.

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UK prison system problems

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The Transforming Rehabilitation policies introduced by the government in 2014 were supposed to "drive down the rate of reoffending and deliver better value for the taxpayer". These aims have yet to be realised and the arrangements for managing prisoners' rehabilitation are not working. In fact, serious cracks are beginning to show which are evidence of a system in serious decline.

After scrapping the Probation Trusts in England, the government put the care and support of low-risk ex-offenders into the hands of private sector companies. These organisations are called Community Rehabilitation Companies and they had to tender to the government for contracts to provide these services. They operate on the basis of striking deals, or contracts, with rehabilitation support services within the voluntary sector at the lowest possible cost.

So far, the consequences of this part-privatisation of the probation services have proved disastrous. There have been large scale redundancies of probation managers, prisoners receiving insufficient support for their resettlement, and reoffending rates remain high.

Paul Faith/PA Archive/PA Images

A profit-driven approach

One of the many failings of these new companies has been to trim to the bone the range of support services available for offenders. Consequently, a high proportion of local specialist agencies (mostly small charities) have lost work because the rehabilitation companies do not view them as value for money. Small charities simply do not have the resources to compete in this ruthless, profit-driven environment.

As a consequence, the future of many of the smaller support organisations - which provide specialist rehabilitation services for offenders - is looking bleak. The crucial work they do in supporting ex-offenders does not come cheap and because the rehabilitation companies are looking to cut costs, this vital support work is in danger of disappearing altogether.

The Criminal Justice Partnership at the University of Central Lancashire hosted a "Have Your Say" event in July 2017 for voluntary (or not-for-profit) organisations who provide rehabilitation support. The focus of the event was a presentation of the "State of the Sector" report by Angela Lucas from CLINKS (a national charity that supports voluntary sector organisations working within the criminal justice sector).

The report revealed some grim home truths. Many voluntary organisations working within the criminal justice sector are now suffering serious financial losses, which are impacting on their ability to carry out their work.

Delegates at the event were asked to share their professional experiences of the new commissioning landscape and how this has affected their work and income. On the whole, their responses echoed many of the negative issues raised in the CLINKS survey.

The verdict from delegates

1) The new structure favours the larger, national charities when it comes to awarding contracts. Smaller, local and more specialist service providers are struggling to remain in business.

2) An increasing number of research based reports are showing that effective rehabilitation services in the criminal justice system are being hampered, rather than encouraged, by the current reforms.

3) In many instances, the smaller not-for-profit organisations are considered to be "too small" to be awarded contracts and supporting offenders has become target-driven in order to qualify for the bonuses the government pays for reducing reoffending rates.

4) The traditionally held professional values of small not-for-profit organisations are being threatened by the profit-and-loss business approach of the rehabilitation companies.

5) The quality of leadership and management in these companies came in for a high degree of criticism. Inadequate leadership and management was said to be reducing the quality of support services to a "box ticking" culture of hitting targets.

Overall, these responses are a far cry from 2011, when The Probation Service was awarded the British Quality Foundation gold medal for excellence and a number of Probation Trusts were individually awarded four and five star status for excellence.

The new world of private commissioning appears to value efficiency and economy above quality, innovative services that prioritise the individual needs of offenders. It has come as no surprise that the Justice Select Committee has announced an inquiry into these rehabilitation reforms. The reason given is "the poor performance of the new private probation companies".

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Cracks are growing in the UK's prison and probation service

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The Transforming Rehabilitation policies introduced by the government in 2014 were supposed to "drive down the rate of reoffending and deliver better value for the taxpayer". These aims have yet to be realised and the arrangements for managing prisoners' rehabilitation are not working.