Crime and Criminal Justice in Israel: Assessing the Knowledge Base toward the Twenty-First Century

12 THE ISRAELI PRISON SYSTEM

CHAPTER TwELVE THE ISRAELI PRISON SYSTEM Gavriel Shavitt Historical Aspects When the state of Israel was established in 1948, the task of state-building was relatively easy. In what had been until then Palestine, ruled by the British as a quasicolony under the League of Nations mandate, the Jewish community had gradually established autonomous representative bodies like the national committee and the Jewish agency. These had departments that dealt with practically all the affairs of the community , parallel to the mandatory government headed by a high commissioner, and mostly in cooperation with it. These even included areas such as foreign affairs, national defense, and policing. Here, then, was an emerging state apparatus. Upon the state's establishment, in 1948, these departments became the ministries of the new government of Israel. One exception to this state of affairs was the subject of prisons. The Jewish community had no experience in these, and there were only two or three Jewish officers in the prisons run by the mandatory government. All had to be started from scratch. Upon the establishment of the state there were three small jails in Jaffa, Jerusalem, and near Haifa, which held 87 prisoners left by the British. Shortly after, a general amnesty was declared, and only 29 prisoners were left, all of whom were originally sentenced to death by the British authorities, and their sentence commuted to life imprisonment. These jails were highly unsuitable, and it was decided 275 276 CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE to establish one larger central pris(ln, to hold all the prisoners of the state. Such was the idealism, or naivety, of the state's founders that the new prison was planned for 120 inmates. The possibility of crime . and criminals in their new state d.id not enter their minds The British had built fortress-s1;yle police stations, named Tegart fortresses, after the architect ofthe British colonial office, Sir Charles 1em. Their location was always ‫נ‬ Augustus Tegart, who designed t chosen for strategic importance. One such building, on a hilltop near , Tel-Mond overlooking the main hig}lway between Tel Aviv and Haifa al prison. Its interior was rebuilt ~ was chosen to be the country's cent] to have cells, workshops, classroonls, and rooms for free-tinle activ ity . It was to house up to 120 pri:soners. By the time it was com pleted, it was already too small fc,r the numbeI· of prisoners to be accommodated, and some ofthe workshops were also transformed to ll other such Tegart police build ~ serve as cells. In due course sever . ings were rebuilt to serve as prisons, in several parts of the country In the early 1950s a minimum security prison was erected, iI1 single , story military barracks-style, to h(luse short-term prisoners (Eaton 1965). Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s were two new prisons added, one to house women prisoIlers and one in the south of the . curity grading ~ country. Both were of maximum s. In 1952 the prisons were sepaI·ated from the police and a sepa longing administratively to the ~ rate prison service was set up, b( ministry of police, headed by a con1missioner of prisons. UIlder the influence of the then attorney general (later a justice of the su preme court) Haim Cohn, of very liberal and progressive views, a . person having treatment experience was sought for the new post Dr. Zvi Hermon, chosen to be the first commissioner of pris()ns, was a social worker by profession and a probation officer by ])revious experience. He immediately start,ed to bring about changes. The informal use of the cane by wardens, a practice left over from British times, was forbidden. A cl:issification center was set up to receive all new prisoners, staffed l,y psychologists and social work ers. A board of classification, whi(:h saw weekly each new inmate and decided not only on placement but also on diagnosis, treatment . objectives and methods, was headed by the commissioner himself A so-called special department was establi.shed, headed by a psychiatrist , which was to find ways of treating psychopathic in mates. It later became the psychiatric department and is now known 277 IONS ‫ז‬ CORREC as the mental health center. Social workers were introduced to every prison at a time when this was hardly known in European, nor in most American, prisons. Professionals were engaged to run vocational training and education...