Rehabilitation vs. Retribution/Repression: An Introduction to Systemic Contradictions in the Czech Penitentiary System
Abstrakt
The chapter analyses penitentiary system in Czech Republic that still suffers from cultural contradictions. These contradictions are based on systemic settings consisting of splitting the system to uniformed and civil personnel where only the uniformed personnel are eligible to take decision-making positions, for example CEO of the Prison Service, director of prison etc.
The civil personnel are then directed by the uniformed one, which makes paramilitary like organisational culture in the penitentiary system. At the same time, many civil personnel employees have uniformed employment history so they bring repressive culture to the civil positions where the rehabilitative one should play a main role.
Drawing on the 89 semi-structured interviews with civil personnel from prisons all over the Czech Republic conducted within the TERAPEUT-VTOS project, I argue that there is a contradiction between rehabilitative and retributive/repressive culture in the Czech penitentiary system, which limits rehabilitative work with imprisoned persons, making them more dangerous after imprisonment, more prone to prisonisation, and more marginalised.