A Disreputable Discourse

There comes a time in every prison debate where the assertion is made, "If you can't do the time..." This, and its linguistic analogues, is often made in response to some prisoner's complaint. And it is a disgusting, cowardly response whose sole intent is to absolve all those involved in criminal justice - from the lowest screw to the highest policy maker - for any decision that they make.

Brutality in prison? Don't commit crime, then. Crap food? Then don't commit crime. Shocking resettlement services? Tough - don't commit crime. The trouble with this broad argument is that it attempts to blame every criminal for every malign, incompetent or plain malicious act or decision made by, for example, prison staff. Somehow, their limited vision and poorly delivered service is the fault of their charges. "If you can't do the time..."

This is truly contemptible. Most prisoners accept responsibility for their crime. Lifers, for instance, have a remarkably high rate of Guilty pleas. We accept the personal destruction and social damage that we caused. Those who parrot the "well don't go to prison, then" in response to any criticism of the penal system are adopting a completely converse stance.

Unlike prisoners, they refuse to accept any responsibility for their decisions or their actions. If they batter a con in Frankland block; if they serve a feeble diet; if they enforce policies which break up families; even if they follow practices which they know will increase the rats of reoffending - they blame the prisoners.

This is truly the argument of last resort for the dishonourable and dishonest, for those who take the taxpayer's shilling and then run a shoddy enterprise which they know full well produces future criminals. Whilst they bleat about caring about victims, they daily insist on running a prison system which is almost guaranteed to produce future social harm.

To blame the criminals and the prisoners for the decisions and practices springing from prison staff is repugnant. It is made worse by it being a mantra for those who then willfully refuse to examine their consciences or flex whatever neurons they posses.

Anybody who says, "don't commit the crime, then..." as an excuse for their own professional shortcomings is morally bankrupt and intellectually feeble. And they certainly should have no authority over other human beings.

The Parole Process

Bear with me as I try to unravel for your delight and amazement the process that should lead to my release in a couple of months. If I just trail off into incoherence, just accept that I've wandered off to pull rabbits out of hats...


The process began a few months and in a different prison. The parole timetable begins 6 months before the hearing, meaning that the first staff reports for the parole board to mull over were written back in October, in a different nick. They are benign enough but lack any firm recommendation save for "see how he does at Sudbury".

My parole hearing is set for May, although regular readers will appreciate that a date with the parole board is a slightly nebulous target. Before this, though, I have to be squeezed through Intensive Case Management, a sifting process used by the Board to weed out the hopeless cases.

In his recent comment, Jailhouselawyer was quite right in his view that the Board usually requires a significant period to be spent in Open prior to ordering release. Two years in Open prison was a regular period, and the one I arrived at Leyhill with several years ago. Doubtless JHL was in a similar position when he passed through these halls.

The influx of indeterminate sentences, though, has seen the lifer population more than double and lead to the whole system verging on collapse for lifers. One response has been to re-jig the timetable to be followed in Open.

In previous years, for example, if I had landed at Open prison with only 6 months to go to a parole hearing then the prison would have shrugged its shoulders and obstinately scheduled my pre-release activities to last at least one year. Today, though, Open prisons are more attuned to the parole board's schedule and the necessity to slim down the lifer population and so have introduced "streaming".

There are four streams, each dependent on the length of time till the next parole hearing. The longest is two years, the shortest being 6 months or under. The latter is the stream to which I am allocated. In essence, each stream incorporates the same activities - work, home leaves, etc - but compressed into a shorter timeframe.

As a result, in the six months leading up to my parole hearing then I will have completed as much outside activity as a man on the 12 month stream or longer. This is an eminently sensible response to circumstance. The focus has shifted from the length of time spent in Open to the amount of activity completed.

This rush does have its drawbacks, most of them being bureaucratic. No matter how frequently staff supply the parole process with reports on my progress, they are always instantly out of date as I complete a further town visit, period of work, etc.

The present focus is to persuade the parole board that, even though I haven't done much out in the community at this point, by the time May arrives I will have been spending 6 out of every 7 days outside of the prison, had a dozen town visits and three or more home leaves. In addition, all relevant staff - including my probation officer - seem content to recommend release at that point.

In other words, this is the stage where I must persuade the Board that I am not a hopeless case and that I should go forward to the hearing in May. Need I bother to say that if they refuse me that opportunity to argue for release, then various forms of hell will be raised...?!

What I Won't Tell You

I am about to begin working outside the prison. This is unpaid work, often taking place in the charity sector. And this raises a dilemma for me.

While I would dearly love to continue to share the broad strokes of my strange life with you, when I am working outside I will have a responsibility to those I work with and for. Is that fair? And so I won't be revealing exactly when I am out and about, nor where I am working.

This is to realise that there is always a constituency which will be willing to put the boot in. I don't want to give a bored hack an easy chance at a cheap shot at either myself or my employers and so a discrete veil will obscure some details of my activities at times. Though I think it's safe to assume that my employment won't involve working with "vulnerable groups", explosives, or as an astronaut.

As ever, though, I will talk about these things and what they mean, and with luck you won't even notice what I leave out. It's not as if any of you noticed that it was I, not the Editor, who posted a few comments last weekend...

Prospects

The most depressing interview ever has just ended. It was intended to steer me to greener pastures on release, to find some path through the tangled thicket of working life to find me some sort of berth in the employment market.

I came away with a recommendation that it may be best if, on release, I align my expectations with undertaking unpaid charity work.

Something to look forward to, then...

Financial Responsibility

Perhaps oddly, the prison service frowns upon us hitch-hiking to get to distant places. Home leaves, etc, must rest upon proper travelling plans. As I am 3 hours away from home by car, making that trip is going to be my South Pole, my Everest. At least six changes in transport, juggling between buses and trains, and hoping not to miss a single connection. While the destination looms large in my hopes, the journey there is a pit to wade through on the way.

To add some verve to the process, I have to fill in a form for financial assistance for the journey. This form is helpfully headed, in bold, with an exhortation that we should try to manage our finances so that we can pay these transport costs ourselves. This is mendacious in the extreme. On a prison wage of a tenner a week, no matter how financially astute I may be I really can't fund a journey to points south of Bristol once a month - oh, and back! Even Robert Maxwell would struggle to make those figures add up. This is where paying prisoners pocket money for their labours comes back to bite the prison on the bum. Being lectured on financial probity in these circumstances is just insulting.

In a fit of largess I have offered to contribute a tenner but, that apart, I expect the prison to pay for my travelling costs. I know the country is broke, and the prison has yet another budget cut, but these activities out into the community are a pre-requisite for release. Am I wrong to expect the prison to facilitate them?

Threat Assessments

I have always said that the things which will cause me problems as I slide from incarceration into the light are not ones that anybody can predict. Shopping, cars, all the usual canards that fly in debates around resettlement are irrelevant.

Sitting in a Morrison’s restaurant - apologies to all restaurants for using the term - I was struck by a realisation. Whilst I was digesting chips and talking, a small part of my brain was beavering away on automatic pilot conducting a threat assessment of the whole room.

Prison, people may have suggested to you, can be a violent and volatile place. One of the skills quickly acquired, then, is that of gauging the mood, the temperature, of a room or a group of people. Unexplained or discordant noises raise mental alarms, raised voices, tense faces or aggressive stances...these are all being noted by that part of the brain which functions without thought.

Except for rare riots, then the number of social situations and the size of groups of people are quite limited in prison. After thirty years of practice, I can walk into a room and smell Trouble in an instant. Out on the street, I am finding this to be impossible.

I found a part of me was remaining alert, even tense, when out and about and finally realised that it was my poor overworked brain trying and failing to get a real sense of a street full of people. Try it. A shopping avenue with hundreds of people. Quickly look around, attune your ears. Who is acting abnormally? Who is raising their voice, or in a conversation which may take a bad turn? Where on that street are the potential sources of Trouble?

Oh, you will doubtless note the obvious, the people you cross the road to avoid. That's easy. Prison, though, is more subtle, the interactions more fine-grained and it is in reading and foreseeing the small precursors to Trouble that help safely navigate the landings.

It is impossible to grasp these details on a crowded shopping street, leaving me to do the same as everyone else. Swerve the charity collectors, the drunks and the dog shit and limit my attentions to my direct concerns.

Or maybe not. Because having been honed over three decades I find that my brain won't switch off. Quietly in the background, energy is being expended to try to analyse all of the social information, the stances, tones of voice, that flood in from the environment. And it just can't be done, it is impossible.

Doubtless this will pass as I adjust. It is no big deal. I note it because, let’s be honest, who would ever have predicted or foresaw this hiccup to my tranquillity?

The Koestler, Again

Art submitted to the Koestler competition is offered for public sale, and some remarkable pieces can be bought. Due to this, prisoner art scattered across the land, and even public authorities are known to buy these works for their public areas. This is all a good thing.

However. Of the sale price, the prisoner-artist only receives 50 percent. Of the rest, 25 percent is retained by Koestler to fund its activities, and the last 25 percent is "donated" to victims charities.

This is a relatively new development and it follows neatly in the footsteps of every other opportunity being taken to deprive prisoners of what little money we have and throwing it at victims groups.

It may be acceptable for the Courts to levy such deductions, and it may be practical politics for our wages to be hit with a 40 percent Victims Tax. But why should a charity intended to foster prisoner creativity and change - Koestler - be playing this game? Why are they taking a quarter of each prisoners sales and giving it away?

Attitude

A fellow Lifer told me recently that he thought that it was "cruel" to put me through my current pace of resettlement, given the length of time I have been inside, etc. This is usually a type of speech I get from more dim-witted staff rather than my peers , but we can all harbour odd thoughts.

I have been out into the community three times since arrival, twice by myself (three or four times by the time you read this). And the only source of stress I have found was my worry over using buses. That has been evaporated by the experience. The rest of the experiences I have had have in no way worried or stressed me, and I put this down to attitude.

Starting from the basic premise that millions of idiots manage to get through daily life okay, then I assume it isn't going to flummox me. That said, things have changed in some aspects of life. Social mores, minor pieces of what I call "public technology" such as ticketing machines, and probably a whole range of other minor things which just haven't caught my attention yet. Despite this, I hold that the fundamentals really haven't appreciably altered. People are still people, shopping remains an exchange of goods for money, and cars will hurt if you step in front of them.


The things which have changed must make a real difference to some Lifers out and about, but I believe that attitude is everything. When I find myself approaching a situation which is new, or different, then I watch those around me and learn from their actions.

The pace I am going is only fast if you have plenty of time to spare, and being middle aged and cancerous makes me a touch impatient to get on with things. Within the next two weeks I should be beginning to work outside a few days a week and, with luck, I should be at home for a few days in March.

Other Open prisons would have stretched that lot out over a period as long as nine months. In that relative framework then I am moving fast, true. But not so fast that I am in danger of falling over my own feet.

Each Lifer is different.  Some find the resettlement process extremely stressful, some sail through it with a mere shrug of indifference. In fairness, no one really knew how it would be for me but the crucial thing was that management have given me the opportunities to find out. In other circumstances, there would have been the temptation to assume I'd find it difficult and so make this process last a couple of years - and that would have stressed me!

How Your Value is Judged

In your world the question, "What do you do?" is heavily loaded with socioeconomic meaning. You know that the way you earn a living can be used to judge everything from your intellect to your ethics.

This isn't the case in prison. Our employment is not viewed as a central part of our identity. We may ask each other "Where do you work?", but the response is only a small part in the jigsaw that comprises who we are and far less important in the judgement of identity than sentence or time served.

This may be a function of how prison work is allocated. The blind hand of the market plays no part - the needs of the institution and management imperatives are all important. The needs of prisoners are largely irrelevant, even though this failure to train useful skills may have very real consequences in terms of reoffending.

On a very personal level I can't help wondering about the bureaucratic mind which saw fit to allocate me to a workshop in order to sandpaper prison furniture. Having already spent several months scrubbing floors I wondered if there would ever be a point at which my keepers would consider that I may just may have abilities which could be used to make a more positive and significant contribution to prison life?

Or is this situation a reflection of management attitudes - prisoners are stupid and useless? Perhaps it is over optimistic of me to think that, in the last few months of my sentence, staff may think, "hey, he's on his way out, lets see just what he is capable of?"

A Future

Having begun the process of regaining my equilibrium after my recent mental implosion, the news that I am (again) to journey off to open prison is a well-timed boost.

In truth, I shared management's view that the mobile phone affair would see the Ministry of Justice refer me back to the parole board, at a cost to me of a year or more.  I also thought that this would have been a pretty vindictive move.  After all, whatever my use of a phone says, it is hardly an indicator that I pose a "risk to life and limb".

Attempting to divine the motives behind Ministry decisions is nearly always a futile effort.  The Ministry moves with biblical levels of mysteriousness.  Yet I can't resist the urge to ponder this development.  Has someone in the MoJ decided to give me a chance of a future life? Are they giving me a rope and hoping I hang myself? Perhaps this is the Ministry making an effort to appear fair in the light of the police investigations into possible political interference with my last parole hearing? All of these are possible, and more; but we will never know.

Let's just accept the decision and try to use it.  Once I am physically moved to open prison (regular readers will know that I have been waiting for almost a year) then I should be released within some 12 months.  Along the way I will face significant challenges.  Not the ones some of you expect - the outside world - but rather the very low levels of expectations and the extremely limited opportunities offered in open prisons.  As I always chafe when being treated like a halfwit, it will fall to me to persuade managers to allow me to explore avenues to develop my future opportunities.

Staring at the walls here in a Block within a closed prison, the idea of being "free" in a year or so can seem unreal.  After all, tomorrow has all the hallmarks of being a seamless continuation of the last 31 years.  But I am cautious to avoid this trap.  Even though open prison is still prison, time there holds unique challenges and experiences and to become lazy, to take one's eye off the goal of release, is to court disaster.  That is not a mistake I intend to make.

As a year can pass by very quickly, I must look past open prison and give careful thought to my post-prison future.  Decisions need to be made.  Do I retire from prison politics and quietly sidle off into obscurity? Do I attempt to earn a living as a media tart, or as a writer-commentator? Resume my PhD and hope for some niche research position?  There are so many potential paths into the future, so many questions.

And I'm not going to be shy about asking you guys for ideas or about opportunities.  The cynical amongst you can view it as an experiment in rehabilitation.

The next year promises to be the most interesting that I have had for, oh, about 31 years...