Prison employment and its conflict with therapeutic and counselling programmes: The experiences of Czech prison personnel

Abstract

The study investigates a specific issue in the Czech prison system: the conflict between prison employment and therapeutic/counselling programmes offered. Drawing on 55 semi-structured interviews with specialized prison personnel from 10 Czech prisons, I argue that prison employment is disproportionately prioritized over the programmes, which undermines and, in some cases, makes it impossible for the personnel to work with inmates on rehabilitation. Since the Czech Prison Service itself declares that most inmates have serious problems involving psychological traumas, drug abuse, and housing insecurity, it would be beneficial to prioritize rehabilitation programmes and then try to employ inmates. The conflict also contributes to an unsuccessful re-entry/resettlement process, which is regarded as a major problem in the Czech prison system and society.

What Seems to be the Problem? Ex-Prisoners’ Reentry/Resettlement in the Czech Republic

“…The subsistence problems, often caused by marginalization before imprisonment, were worsened by exceedingly small renumerations for prison employment (in average, €211 after taxation in 2020), resulting in even smaller savings for the release (PSCR, 2021; on prison employment renumeration, see Mertl, 2021). In many cases, dysfunctional social assistance system that is not able to deliver quick adequate assistance to ex-prisoners was a significant part of the problem, as social worker Radan (male) asserted:From my perspective, the big problem is the system of social assistance that was moved into the competency of labour offices.…”

“…Even though there is no aggregated data, some findings of NGOs providing debt counseling are available; however, findings from the data fluctuate a lot due to different inmate/ex-prisoner samples in counseling programs. The average inmate/ex-prisoner owes between €24,074 and €26,926 (Mertl, 2021), but the indebtedness can be as high as €38,500 and more, whereas, in these cases, debt counselors regard the situation as unsolvable due to the Czech debt relief system settings (Kváča & Gottwaldová, 2018). Usually, an inmate/ex-prisoner has between 7 and 13 enforcement proceedings (Béjo, 2018; Béjo et al, 2019; Schneedörfler, 2019).…”

“…Typically, a Czech ex-prisoner is marginalized before getting to prison, struggles with material insecurity, experiences unstable housing, has debts of several 1000 Euros, copes with drug abuse, struggles with prisonisation effect, and have problematic relationships with family and other close persons. Due to a limited availability of therapeutic/ counseling programs in prison and prioritization of prison employment, these problems are often neglected, and it is not unusual that ex-prisoners are released more dangerous, have more problems than before incarceration, and are harmed by prisonisation effect (Mertl, 2021). In such situation, stable housing, secured subsistence, and an employment is a viable start, but not the end because other unaddressed issues can disrupt even relatively stable material situation.…”