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NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998 nevertheless, be utilized positively as far as possible - and if there are certain categories of offences who can benefit from treatment, we should of course offer them this opportunity”. If imprisonment is the only possible sentence in a given situation the time spent in prison should at least be utilized positively. Only then we can find a seed of constructiviness also in imprisonment. Part II: Insecurity and Life Control Among the Finnish Male Prisoners - Things we need to know in order to be able to act constructively Tarja Kauppila Department of Social Sciences University of Kuopio, Finland 162 “In the final analysis, human security is a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, a job that was not cut, an ethnic tension that did not explode in violence, a dissident who was not silenced. Human security is not a concern with weapons - it is a concern with human life and dignity.” (Human Development Report 1994, 22.) The thoughts presented here are mostly based on a study of insecurity and life control among the Finnish male prisoners, and are intended as an introductional view of some preliminary results from this. The study is one part of a broad population research project on security, insecurity and coping by the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Kuopio. The basic idea was to look for further information about the prisoners' welfare problems and sollutions to them. It is obvious that this information is needed in order to be able to act constructively: to help people out of their problems and to develop our systems according to both their needs/aims and the aims of the society. The main questions here were: how security, as a value, takes its place in the prisoners' systems of value; whether or not there is insecurity among the Finnish male inmates, which parts of human life are potentially the ones most affected by insecurity, and what would be the the most common ways of life control among inmates. These questions were considered among the 259 prisoners who were interviewed using a structured question form at the end of 1993. Some of their answers are compared here with answers from civilian Finnish men who participated in the population research of insecurity and coping. It is expected that the study will be completed by the end of 1998. Tracing problems of welfare One theoretic starting point of the study was security related to the concept of welfare: citizens' welfare, social security and life control are important but also demanding aims of social policy (cf. Riihinen 1979, Niemelä 1991, Raitasalo 1995; Niemelä 1997, 18). From the point of view of social policy and social work, it is important to know if people are suffering from problems related to welfare, and how common or accumulated these possible problems are among them. The findings of prisoners' values will point out what they prefer in their lives. If they seem to have some problems with the issues which are linked with these particular values, these problems might also be the ones - if any - that these people mostly prefer to get help for. In addition, if they seem to have problems with something they do not consider as so important for them, it might be very useful to try to find out why this is so, and
NSfK´s 40. forskerseminar, Espoo, Finland 1998 what this means from the point of view of social policy and social work - also from the point of criminal policy and correctional treatment of prisoners. Traditionally security can be defined as a central need, value and right within human life (Niemelä 1991, 8-11) - infact as an important part of well-being regardless of whether you are in prison or not. According to Riihinen (1979, 820) security cannot be placed in the hierarchies of needs, but instead it is more like a dimension or a variable which goes through all categories of needs. With this in mind, security was here defined as (sufficient) well-being and (sufficient) certainty of its continuation in the central areas of human life - e.g. health, human relationships, work, etc. - which are closely linked with basic human needs. Insecurity is defined "negatively" here: as a lack of security (to some degree) and/or as the uncertainty of the continuation of well-being (to some degree). Insecurity can be experienced in a situation where one's own means of dealing with what happens in life are not enough. Life can never be perfectly secure, but how we are able to deal with insecurity is important, and whether we have or have not enough motivation, abilities, force, rescourses and so on, for life control. (cf. Kaufmann 1970, 24-27; Suhonen & Suhonen, 1973, 2-7, 10-14; Riihinen 1979, 819-820; Niemelä 1991, 8-15; Niemelä et al. 1994, 15-17; Lahikainen & Kraav & Kirmanen & Maijala 1995, 52; Väisänen 1995, 34-37; Järvikoski 1996, 44-45, Niemelä & co. 1997, 13- 25.) Prisoners often seem to be influenced by physical, psychic and social forces of different kinds. According to the earlier reports in Finland, prisoners have many kinds of problems with health, both mental and physical, despite the fact that their age structure is relatively young (Joukamaa 1991). They are a group of people, mostly men, who have serious problems with alcohol and drugs, and their death rates have grown in the 1980's (Kääriäinen 1996, 171- 172). They have economical problems (Mellais 1991, Kuivajärvi 1992), and their educational level is low compared with the average educational level of the rest of the population (Karvonen & Mohell 1990, 35-38). Their lives seem to more to resemble eventful paths from adventures to stages of marginalization (Kääriäinen 1994) rather than fast ways to great success. Some of the prisoners have the problems described above, but actually we do not know how common or accumulated these problems are among prisoners and whether the problems cause them insecurity or not. Furthermore, we do not know if these problems bother them and if they want to get away from them or not. Infact we do know that there are many strategies used by some of the prisoners to find ways out of the stage of marginalization (e.g. Kuure 1996), but it is unclear just how commonly used they are. It has been said that if prisoners try to live without crime they should be able to change their ways of thinking and behaving, which often may be dominated by the social meaning structures of prison which do not work outside of it (Ulvinen 1996). What do the Finnish male prisoners think about their ways of life control? Participants and methods The 259 prisoners who participated in the study (81% of the original sample of 320 prisoners), were interviewed using a comprehensive questionnaire. The questionnaire was based on the one used in the population reseach project mentioned above (Niemelä ed. 1991). Prisoners' answers about security as a value are compared with the answers of the 239 civilian Finnish men who participated in the population study of insecurity and coping in the years 1991-1992. The questions about values were the same in both studies, prisoners' and civilians' and they were developed from the basis of the study of values made by Rokeach (1973). 163
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Organised Crime & Crime Prevention
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Rådsmedlemmer: Flemming Balvig, Da
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ISBN 87-987103-0-3
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