Prison treadmills are not an answer to energy problems

I have had some correspondence with the letter writer below regarding his idea to use the prison population of this country to generate electricity.....an idea I do not support - more of that later...

Letter in Western Daily Press 10th May 2008:

Perhaps Cllr Philip Booth, P W Rowsell-Dobson and I should pool a few ideas. Cllr Booth is obviously following an energy economy tack; Mr Rowsell-Dobson is concerned with the redeployment of the under-utilised pool of labour lying idle within our prison system. I am proposing that the prison population could share its talents with the energy industry in a very direct way; by generating electricity manually.

Treadmills came into English jails following a 1779 prison reform Act, which said the prisoners should be given "labour of the hardest and most servile kind".

Sir William Cubitt designed such a treadmill specifically for prisoner power generation, to power the cotton mills. It was like a very wide paddle wheel. Workers held on to a bar and climbed the paddle wheels, like walking upstairs for hours on end. They had to keep lifting their legs; gravity gave them no choice. A shift lasted eight hours of which 40 per cent of that time was spent resting. It was hard graft as it was intended also as punishment.

Today, we are approaching an energy crisis and more options are needed to obviate it. This could be the one we've already tried and forgotten about. If teams of prisoners, shift-working on treadmills 24/7 in humane conditions, could generate enough electricity to enable their own buildings to become self- sufficient, then why not extend the principle?

As recently as 2003, a device was invented to transform energy from children's seesaws, swings and roundabouts into electricity, a partial solution to affordable and sustainable energy. When the oil runs out, the wind ceases to blow and the tide is on the turn, the energy gap needs a base- load to sustain the demand. Does it really have to be a multi-billion pound nuclear reserve when we could, in the time honoured phrase, do it ourselves? Bernard Seward, Bristol

Read more about Cubitt here. The Playwright and author Oscar Wilde was one of the more famous prisoners forced to man the treadmill and Charleston slave owners for a while would rent one to punish the slaves.

It is reported in Bellevue Prison in New York treadmills prisoners produced about 100 watts each, with the energy used to grind grain to make bread for themselves. Apparently according to a Professor who studied it, "they hated it roundly." Of course Cubitt's treadmill may have originally had a productive purpose, but a pound of coal could soon do the work of five men working all day on a treadmill. Now the suggestion from the letter writer is that we should reintroduce the treadmill as a 'green' answer to energy.

Now, of course, people pay good money to do the same thing and call it recreation or fitness - and use up electricity in the process. I am sure those machines could be better designed to use the energy created but that is a different matter....Companies have also apparently produced televisions that children can power by riding stationary bicycles. It would seem that fifteen watts - about enough to power a small light bulb is all that researchers think is possible to pull out of a single human exerciser for any sustained period. Except in extreme cases of highly fit athletes, the limit for stationary bicyclists seems to be in the range of 75 watts to 150 watts.

On the Bellevue Penitentiary treadmill, prisoners climbed on treads protruding from a wheel that was slightly over five feet in diameter and turned three times each minute. If one assumes that a typical prisoner weighed 132 pounds, then the prisoner must have worked at a power of almost 140 watts. Since the normal duty cycle allowed each prisoner to rest one-third of the time, the sustained output would have been a little over 90 watts - sustained, according to the report, for up to ten hours a day. That figure of 90 watts confirms the reported unpleasantness of the task. A similar output was demanded of nineteenth-century Australian convicts, who worked up to twelve hours per day; some said they'd rather hang than work their mill.

Photo: the pedal washing machine?

We can view that 90 watts in yet another context. At best, only about one-fourth of the energy in food emerges as useful mechanical work. Thus, laboring on the treadmill - sustaining 90 watts for ten hours - itself requires more than 3,000 Calories. So Bellevue's inmates worked hard enough and long enough to require double the food intake of a normally active adult male. Even with greater efficiencies of todays technology applied to treadmills this does not make much sense? The energy produced would barely power the prison lighting.

I am told by a correspondent on this issue that the Northleach, Gloucestershire, House of Correction is open as a sort of heritage site. Apparently Sir George Onesiphorus Paul had the building designed on humanitarian lines - compared with what had existed previously. The prisoners were given tedious work to do but care was taken of their health. John Looseley, a Gloucestershire local historian has written a book based on original records regarding this institution. The 'prison doctor' has written notes in the 1820s of the treatment given to the inmates during their stay. This includes details the diet of the prisoners - it was apparently such that they would be able to undertake the expected work such as turning the treadmill without suffering loss of body mass.

Anyway for me this is really a non-starter for many reasons - a compulsary treadmill would be a barbaric dehumanising practice that rightly was ended - but of course there might be a few volunteers who want to keep fit but this is not the way to tackle our energy needs or to punish prisoners for that matter - first we need to look at reducing the energy needs - insulation and more is the way to go - indeed more energy could be saved by prisoners installing insulation if that was really what this is about? And if you are talking of 'greening' prisons then take a leaf out of Oregon's book - in a year or two, Oregon’s prisons could be powered partly by the sun. Already one of the 14 prisons, the Warner Creek Correctional Facility, uses some geothermal energy to heat its buildings.

Prisons need reforming

We need to start from thinking about what are our prisons for? Punishment clearly has a place but surely we also want crime to be cut? If this is the case then our prisons are desperately in need of reform - see news release here - the Home Office calls for more prisons as our current prisons are bursting - yet our Government's own research shows prison is not the answer.

Despite media reports, crime is in long-term decline. Instead of arguing from the facts, this government's unquenchable thirst for punishment sees them calling for ever longer sentences for more crimes. Indeed we have seen this government introduce 40 plus pieces of law and order legislation and have created over 1000 new crimes - with the longest prison sentences in Europe. There are over 5000 people in prison who with serious mental illnesses who should be in hospital. Our prison population is at an all-time high - and prison doesn't work well: reoffending rates are increasing and successful schemes in prison are not expanded - take for example Transco training gas fitters and guaranteeing them a job or inmates teaching others to read as half of all prisoners are illiterate - these are the types of schemes we need to see more.

The three main parties fight to be toughest on punishing criminals, but what matters most is actually cutting crime.

Home Office research assessing the cost-effectiveness of crime reduction speaks for itself: on average £1,000 spent on 'Hot-spot policing' cuts 1.9 crimes and the same spent on prison reoffending-reduction schemes cuts 2.3 crimes. But £1,000 spent spent on parenting programmes cut 11 crimes and the same spent on Youth Inclusion and Support Panels that offer intensive support to young people cut 15 crimes.

Isn't it time we invested taxpayers money in what really works?

'Restorative justice' in which criminals face their victims in truth and reconciliation sessions and undertake some form of 'pay back' is what we need to see. In UK trials, 90% of victims felt helped by this process, and in Australian studies, violent criminals were 50% less likely to re-offend. Where prison is the only option sentencing should be in keeping with the offence and include rehabilitation. It is pointless spending huge amounts of tax on prosecution and £40,000 a year on imprisonment if you are just going to release people into an even more hopeless world, with fewer prospects than when they were sentenced.