Arbitrary Insanity

Just for a moment, forget televisions and PlayStations. One of the greatest burdens of being a Lifer is that we are perpetually vulnerable to arbitrary decisions and judgements made by those in charge of our lives and progress to release. This happened to me at my recent parole hearing.

In the first few years of our sentence, we are prodded and poked about our crime until our keepers are happy that they can distil from the events our "risk factors". These are the elements in our lives, the motives for our crime. The idea then is that we address these factors during our sentence and reduce them to a level where we are safe to be released. For instance, if you are a persistent drinker and kill a man after an angry outburst in a pub, the risk factors would include 'alcohol' and 'anger management'.

I refused to talk about my crime for over a year after I was convicted. Since then, I've spoken about it, rehashed it, in a thousand interviews, to the extent that I then exhibit symptoms of PTSD. The Prison Service and their legions of psychologists listed my risk factors over a quarter of a century ago. This list has expanded and contracted a little over the years, according to the whims of staff, but usually comprises loss of control, anti-authoritarian attitude, low self-esteem, relationships and impulsive aggressive behaviour (i.e., the offence).
In fairness, most of these factors can be linked to my crime, even if very tenuously. Being anti-authoritarian is a stretch though; what's that to do with killing my mate? So prison staff chuck stuff into these lists of risk factors that have bugger all to do with the crime.

For the length of my sentence, then, both I and staff have worked from a common understanding of my crime. Not a single psychologist has disputed either the events or the analysis. Even the Home Office and Ministry of Justice have always been happy with this joint analysis. Every previous Parole Board has been happy with it. But now, it's all up in the air.

The psychologist who sat as part of the last Parole panel put me through the wringer over my motives. She was not happy with my analysis of why I killed my friend. You can say she is entitled to her view, true. But when it flies in the face of 25 years worth of prison reports, from psychologists and psychiatrists, it would be fair to insist that she base her view on more than a personal whim.

It sticks in my throat that the Parole answer then includes the line that "of critical importance no-one, including you, knows what the triggers were in your index offence." They could properly have written that "the psychologist on the parole board wasn't happy", that's fine. But to suggest that both I and everyone who has dealt with me for the last 30 years have been scratching our heads over this is a blatant lie. All the prison staff reports at that hearing, and the summary of my whole sentence put before them, all agree about my crime and my 'risk factors'. Not a single one wavers from that. Everyone knows what the triggers were in my crime - but this one psychologist isn't convinced.

Why should this matter to me, enough to bore you with it? Because it sets the clock back thirty years, it wipes out all I have done to reduce my risk. It is to say that they are no nearer understanding me or my crime than they were the day I entered prison. Though this panel then recommends me for Open prison, I am in a position of extreme danger.

I could walk through the gates and be welcomed by some trainee psychologist who could now say that without a sound understanding of my crime I'm too high a risk to progress. That I will need to do endless "work". And until this work is done, I am stuck, in limbo.

My defence against what I see as this rogue parole board psychologist is that the official response from the Ministry of Justice makes no mention of this fracas. They remain content that they, myself and prison staff understand my crime. All the Ministry want me to do in the way of 'psychology stuff' is to work on my 'commitment and motivation'. To what, they don't say.

That parole hearing came within a whisker of screwing me over and rendering the last thirty years moot. It could easily have sunk me for another decade or more. Not for anything I've done of late, not for any change in circumstances or attitudes, not for outrageous behaviour. But simply because one psychologist disagrees with every other psychologist who has gone before.

This is the nature of my sentence. All Lifers live in a state of flux, uncertainty, knowing that whatever we do we are always vulnerable to just one individual writing a bad report or taking a different view. And that halts us in our tracks.

It looks as if I dodged a bullet this time, and let's hope I manage to remain unscathed through my time in Open prison. My view of the Parole Board, though, has sunk even lower than it was before. And I didn't think that was possible.