Saving Money

Expensive business, throwing someone in prison. There is the £40 odd grand a year direct cost. Then you should add on the loss of the prisoner’s economic activity, paying no tax, etc. Include the social costs to his family, which may now be on benefits because the main earner is 'away’.

Add in the intangibles that no accountant, let alone a government one, cares about. There is the lifetime loss that accrues from being condemned to crap jobs for being an ex-con. That's a lot less tax not being paid. Then there is the likelihood of the family breaking up and the kids being far more likely to either be taken into care or offending themselves.

All of this costs. Not just emotionally and socially but in cold hard cash. Sending someone to prison, then, should be a significant decision. As there are tens of thousands of men, and most women, in prison for non-violent crimes then it should be seriously asked if there is not a better way to allocate a due measure of punishment.

Imprisonment as punishment has only been popular for under 200 years. It can't be beyond the wit of Man to find another option or two. Or do we really have so much money to waste that we can't be bothered trying?

Balancing Harms

Should the punishment inflicted in response to a crime cause less harm to society than the offence itself?

Even the most 'victimless' of crimes does affect the social fabric. Crime is generally a bad thing that society would be better without. But let us take one of the most common crimes, burglary. Some smackhead slips through your kitchen window and has it away with your plasma TV and laptop.

This is going to affect you. How much, and in what ways,  varies greatly but it could have a lasting effect on your life. The comments of a burglary victim would be helpful here.

Now let us assume that yer man gets slung inside for 18 months, should he be caught. This will also have an effect, as you would expect. I'm interested here in the effects which you wouldn't expect.

That imprisonment is broadly uncomfortable is a given, an expected effect. This is the punishment that society assumes comes from being thrown inside. Loss of liberty is a far bigger deal than those who harp on about easy prisons will ever appreciate (see my previous post, Build Your Own Prison).

There are a host of other effects, though, that commonly come from imprisonment. If you had a home, you are likely to lose it. If you have a partner and kids, the relationship may just survive. If it does, your partner will have to spend a fortune she doesn't have travelling around the country visiting you, and sending you money to enable you to phone home. She may well be given abuse by her neighbours and abandoned by her friends. The kids will be bullied and teased in school for having a jailbird dad. There is a good chance that the relationship will fail, and another kid grows up without a father.

Your job, of course, vanishes as you are swallowed by the prison gates. On your release you will face having to declare your conviction to prospective employers. And let’s face it, given the choice between an ex con and not, you’re going to employ the not. Try getting insurance for your car or new home. Insurers are very wary and you will pay through the nose.

These are lifelong effects. You don't just throw a man in prison as punishment; you degrade his future life chances and those of his family.

This will doubtless be dismissed by some with the asinine comment that 'he should have thought about that before...'. Let's raise the intellectual bar a little above that, can we? Because these are not burdens carried by the criminal but also by society. So did we think about this before we inflicted the punishment...? Nope. Due to losing his social capital, yer man is far more likely to reoffend. Because of losing his family, his kids also have a higher chance of becoming criminals. Because of a lack of work, he becomes a lifelong drain on society. These are all costs that the community bears, as a result of the punishment that is paid for. And rather thoughtlessly, don't you think?

Society can't just shrug its shoulders or turn its back. It must look at the known consequences of throwing people in prison, the ones that continue long after the man is released. Only when that level of honesty is reached can we begin to ask and answer the following question.

Which has caused the greater social harm? The original burglary, or our response to it?

Solitary

Whilst sitting in the punishment block in Dartmoor, trying to write my letter, I had to give up. The cell was so damp that the ink of my biro was running on the paper.

The Governor makes his daily visit - "Any problems?" What, apart from the water running down the walls...? "Don't worry", he says, "it gets better in the summer." It was October.

Remorse

To feel 'sorry' for killing someone seems a little trite. It feels improper to use a word that slips out in response to dropping a biscuit on a clean floor in the context of such an immense act as killing another human being.

I have two recurring nightmares, both of which become prominent around the anniversary of my crime. The first is a terror that my victim will appear out of the darkness, a spectral avenger, to kill me. The second is to be faced with my victim’s family.

What could I say? What possible part of my life, my body or my soul could I offer up in explanation? All murder is essentially irrational and while I could offer an explanation it would seem utterly drained of real meaning.

Each lifer carries their burden differently. Small minorities live in denial or slippery self-justification. The majority carry it as a secret stain on their soul; murder is a very private, as well as very public, tragedy. Some sink into self-loathing and kill themselves.

The burden develops over time. For me, as I grew into adulthood my appreciation of life increased and with it the enormity of what I had done. I have felt slightly apart from the community since that moment. Simon Weisenthal asserted that only the victim can forgive, and so murder is a crime that cannot be expunged. It is a debt that can never be repaid, a harm that can never be undone.

Time doesn't heal the wound, no more than it does for victims. But we both share the superficial healing, the patina of normality and daily life that slowly intrudes into the pain for longer and longer moments. But a slight pause in life can be sufficient to return the raw pain to the surface.

The past cannot be undone. That suffering cannot be erased and it would be futile to attempt it. What, then, is there that can be done? For me, I determined to 'fix' the psychological flaws that

led me to see killing as a solution to a fit of panic and fear. And it is no coincidence that my studies centre on conflict and attempting to reduce violence. All that remains possible is to try to live life in such a way as to leave this earth the better for your having existed.

Sorry?

Build Your own Prison

For the experimentalists who crave a taste of the prison experience, I can’t do better than suggest you get locked in your bathroom. And I mean a little council house one. Chuck a mattress in the tub, balance a TV on the loo, and settle yourself in. To get a flavour of being a Lifer, your keeper will let you free at some distant, undetermined time. Oh, and have a random passer by thrown in to share that space.

But physical confinement is only part of imprisonment. Its essence is being powerless. So have your keeper tell you that your mother or child has suddenly been taken to hospital. The next opportunity to use the phone is 16 hrs away and only then if you happen to have some money in your account. Put your self thru this and you can begin, just begin, to have an understanding of the prisoner’s experience. And that understanding can only increase the quality of the penological debate.

Meet your Neighbour

Rehabilitation is a bloody big word, seemingly too large for many people to digest. Let’s put it in its context, give a little flesh and blood to the rarefied concept.

So a bloke turns up in the house next door, your new neighbour. At some point you have a chat. Turns out he's been in prison.

Ask yourself this. While he was in prison, would you prefer he'd been treated like a scumbag, brutalised and left bitter and hateful before being released, to bump into you whilst you’re both putting out the bins?

Or would you prefer that he was confined (the punishment) but whilst there treated with some small decency, and given the opportunities to change through education and work training?

Your choice. Rehabilitation. It's simple, really.

Should prisoners be allowed to blog?

That's the wrong question, really. As long as I don't identify staff or cons, charge money, or rabbit on about guns, bombs or escape plans then the law allows me to inflict myself upon you for as long as I want. Some would find this objectionable. Whilst I appreciate that view, my response is - tough, deal with it. As a matter of law, my punishment was the loss of my physical liberty; not the loss of anything else. And you need to endure that to appreciate its weight. Having a Blog or a TV doesn't quite make up for loss of liberty. But we are not really talking law here, but more a sense of morality. Should a convicted murderer ever intrude into the public arena? I blame you that I feel the urge to. I don't write this to feed my giant ego. I write this because there is a total absence of genuine, informed debate around imprisonment. The ether is swamped with trite opinion, fuelled by a mixture of bile, anger and ignorance, and some occasional thoughtful interjection may be useful. Who better to offer that than a serving prisoner, whose life's work has been the study of prisons? On a wider point, don't forget that I remain a part of society. I may be tucked away in an obscure and dull corner, but nevertheless prisons are part of the whole. Every law, every social obligation and each cultural and politico-economic shift falls as heavily upon me as it does the free person. As a sovereign individual in a liberal democracy I assert an untrammelled right to voice my views. There are those who will instantly argue that my first post should be a profound apology to my victims. And that I should stop at that point. Patience, my enemies, I will of course discuss these things. And my lifetime’s effort to live a non-¬violent life may suggest that I do recoil from my crime and intend to try, no matter how futile it is, to repair some of the social harm that I have caused. But I refuse to be defined solely in terms of my crime and my past. In the meantime, I hope to inform, provoke and entertain by offering insights into imprisonment that our Glorious Leaders and media fail to deliver. Imprisonment should be a perpetual discussion; the human suffering that follows from crime should be carefully considered, and not relegated to atavistic headlines. Isn't it rather pathetic that it is left to a prisoner to call for this debate, rather than political leaders?

More Punishment, Please

The issue of prisoners having TV's in cells is merely a symptom of the incoherent and ignorant nature of the debate around imprisonment and punishment. No one leads a debate; rather, there are a host of bleating constituencies which press upon Government to fulfil some specific agenda. Government itself long ago abandoned any pretence at informing or educating society in the technicalities and proprieties of punishment, preferring to defer to the latest media campaign.

Whilst every other aspect of government policy is recognised as being complex and specialist, penology is treated as if it is simplicity itself: Press Button A, and the result is Outcome B. But prisons aren’t vending machines. Like other policy areas, prisons are deeply complex and few have sufficient information or insight to offer any but the most asinine of opinions. But whilst most of us would hesitate to speak about, say, fiscal policy, any village idiot feels qualified to offer suggestions on how to punish prisoners. And listening to these idiots leads us to a startling outcome.

The result is a shambles, that no one is happy with the current state of affairs. Not victims, not prisoners, not the media, not the staff unions, and not the general public. This is a testament to remarkable ineptitude on a massive scale. On the policy level, it is the equivalent of Government failing to supply clean water, keep the lights burning, or keep the nation vaguely solvent. Incredible.

First principles, then. What is the purpose of imprisonment? Only when there is a social consensus on this can we move forward and

meddle with the minutiae of how prisons are run. To punish is often top of the populist wish-list, but this must be probed further. Punishment to what end, to what purpose? Because it is possible (and likely) to inflict a regime which ultimately results in a high rate of future offending. Should we advocate a system of punishment which causes more social harm than the crime we are punishing...?