So Bloody Inconvenient

Even the simplest things can become a royal pain in the arse when your life is under the control of other people.

Yesterday I heard the dreaded POP that signals the demise of my vacuum flask. No biggie, you think.

First, I have to find the money to pay for it (thank you, Donors, truly). This would usually take about 6 weeks income. And then there's buying it. Local shop? Not a hope.

Ha! The only place we are allowed to buy a flask is Argos, about £8 for a small one. Oh yes, and Argos slaps on a £6 delivery fee for each item, even though they deliver to the prison by the wagon load. Nice earner for someone.

Such a simple little thing, it’s only a bloody flask, but it can play a central role in prisoners' lives, tea drinking being one of the Top Three activities. The other two are smoking and masturbation.

You Never Know

I have never met a fellow prisoner who has a chair that has its back to the door, or who sleeps in any other position than with his head furthest from the door.

I'm not saying we don't trust each other. But every advantage helps.

Slash and Burn

The rumour is that the Governor has to find savings of £300,000 from his budget of some £5 Million. Fast. And without firing anybody, which is the obvious solution to many of prison’s problems.

I wish that people like yourselves, who pay for this shambles, started asking hard questions about what you are getting for your £45,000 a year, per head bill.

Are you happy to spend that sort of money just for us to be kept locked in our cells? Or engaging in pointless activities?

Or do you expect something more? Do you not expect us to come back into society better equipped to settle down, get a job, be in a position to contribute?
If I was being billed on my taxes for the present service then I would be demanding answers. And a refund.

Mad, Bad Probation

The Chief Inspector of Probation has tried to open a debate around risk. Such is the complicated philosophical and statistical nature of this can of worms that the media got the wrong end of the stick. Again.

The Inspector’s point is a fair one. Is it viable - economically, let alone morally - to keep hordes of people in prison on the basis that a small minority of them will go on to re-offend? He estimates that if these all these thousands of prisoners were released, there would be some 40 new serious offences committed.

The media promptly leapt on the old 'early release scheme’, where very short term offenders were released 17 days early in order to reduce overcrowding. As this scheme ended months ago, this media response is a decidedly dodo-ish one.

What the Inspector was referring to were the thousands serving Indeterminate sentences for Public Protection as we call them, IPP's. There are thousands of them, sentenced for a motley collection of crimes, many not usually meriting more than a couple of years in prison prior to the invention of the IPP sentence.
They flooded into, and chocked, the prison system. Less than 100 have ever been released. Most are now past their tariff, i.e. served the punishment phase of their sentence. And their presence has had a profound impact upon the prospects of all other 'regular' lifers.

In order to progress towards release, we must undertake psychological courses intended to end our wicked ways. But no-one funded the provision of these courses to take into account the IPP's. The result is a huge logjam, with lifers and IPP's being unable to progress solely due to the inability to access these courses.
So bizarre is this situation that a legal challenge a couple of years ago found that, through no fault of their own, these people were now being held in prison irrationally and so illegally. This was swiftly reversed on appeal! But to get such a High Court judgement at all signifies how difficult the situation has become.

These IPP's a-re now deep into the territory that caused the Inspector to wince - being detained only because they cannot demonstrate that they do not pose a risk of future offending. As the Inspector says, 40 of them do pose a risk and will reoffend in a damaging way. But which 40?

Unable to filter the sheep from the wolves, all remain in prison. The Inspector estimates that the cost of this, versus the 40 potential crimes if they were released, is equivalent to £2,000,000 per offence, per year. And he asked the question, is this a sensible use of money we don't have? Would it not be better to accept that some crime is inevitable, let them all go and trouser the savings?

The 'usual suspects' amongst victims’ campaigners, notably Mothers Against Murder, were livid. It seems that criminal justice should never have anything to do with money or budgets. Hmmm, that's an interesting idea but not one society has ever proposed previously. There aren't an infinite number of police, prisons or probation. The idea that money has nothing to do with criminal justice is just silly and to claim so is yet another reason why some victim's groups are beyond my pale.

I have a particular dislike for Mothers Against Murder and Aggression. Set up by Lynn Costello after the Bulger murder, they insist on Life meaning Life, always. Just their name gives me the willies, implying they are in opposition to all the mothers who are in favour of murder and aggression. Humph.

The Inspector raises important questions, ones that we are not used to having thrown in our faces. That we have avoided them for so long makes them no less important.

The resources available to deal with crime are limited. That's just a fact we have to live with. The honest question, then, is what are we prepared to spend compared with how much crime are we willing to accept? This has been a secretly weighed balance in the past, an area no-one wants to elucidate explicitly because it is extremely difficult to answer.

We could probably cut crime if every person was escorted by a copper, 24 hours a day. Can we afford this? Do we want this? No, and no. So we accept some crime in the name of money and freedom. Having accepted that principle, the only issue left to be resolved is where to draw the line, how much money we should spend to cut crime?

The Inspector also raises what I think is the most important ethical question currently affecting imprisonment. Having captured the criminal, should we then just confine him until he is 'safe'? Or should he be sent to prison solely to serve the time punishment meted out for the crime he has committed? Detaining people for what they may possibly do in future is a very dangerous idea.

The Inspector suggests that, if the IPP's were all released tomorrow, society would bear the cost of 40 extra crimes. In an effort to prevent these (or defer them; all IPP's will be released at some point), we spend £80 million a year. That's £2 million per crime prevented (or deferred).

Ethics aside, it is not unreasonable to raise the question if that level of expense is socially unacceptable.

The Sun Rose in the West

The world as I knew it has suddenly turned a bit weird. A Justice Secretary with a downer on prisons, a Probation Inspector who thinks the odd murder is acceptable and now - at last - a policy making community which wants to get shot of the Life sentence for murder.

This is not the type of stuff we are used to hearing. It has been so surprising that I haven't known where to begin in writing about it all. The usual frames of reference have vanished.

This also seems to have been the effect on the media. Not even the Daily Mail has gone ballistic in the face of these pronouncements, as though so strangulated by outrage that they are, literally, bereft of words.

The atmosphere has a touch of the Woolf about it. After the 1990 riots and the seminal Woolf Report, all sorts of change in prison seemed to be possible. And the general tone is the same today. The fact that national bankruptcy is the motivator doesn’t bother me a jot, sorry!

But apologies, then, for my delayed response. Being faced with a coherent body of sensible policy debates emanating from our masters is a shock that I'm just recovering from.

Deliver the Goods

There must be a few Tories right now who are thinking they were right: you just can't trust a man who wears brown hush-puppies.

If I recall, when I previously mentioned Ken Clarke I characterised him as being 'mostly harmless' as a Home Secretary. This was confirmed when Michael Howard took over and promptly kicked us in the face.

The new political landscape held a little promise for prisoners but I'm cynical enough not to expect much. My threshold of hope was set quite low - all I hoped for was that whichever loony was installed as Justice Secretary would have their baser instincts tempered by their coalition partners. I expected prisoners to get a kicking, but maybe the Tories would swap their hobnail boots for slippers before they laid into us.

So Ken Clarke's newly revealed position on prisons took me, and my peers, by surprise. A Tory who doesn't bow before the gates of Wormwood Scrubs is something we haven't seen for a very long time. Only old hands such as myself can dimly recall some chap called Kurd, who declared that “prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse”. Nearly two decades of abuse at the hands of politicians obscures that halcyon day.

Fair do's on Ken, though. He's said his piece and survived - that was the first, most important, hurdle. Now he's got to deliver and that is going to take more than resisting the urge to bang people up.

To place this “rehabilitation revolution” in perspective, though, it should be noted that it isn't that the discourse has altered. It's just that Clarke signals that declared policy is going to be actually delivered, not merely parroted. Prison should be restricted to serious criminals, those who do pose a genuine threat of harm. Who would ever, or has ever, baldly declared that prison is the sensible disposal for shoplifters and fine defaulters? Yet such people - often women - are banged up in droves. Merely delivering, then, on the policy that prison is for the violent will be a promising beginning.

Insisting that prisons, and prison staff, deliver rehabilitation would be another step forward. The official purpose of prison has been nailed to each Gatehouse for a generation and yet there is rarely more than a sparse and sporadic effort to meet the aspiration. Political interest in prisons ends at the Gate; the only time anyone pays attention to inside the wall is when we are on the roof throwing slates. The broad idea of restricting imprisonment to those who need to be segregated from society and, whilst in prison, delivering genuine rehabilitation would indeed be a 'rehabilitation revolution’.

Clarke has demonstrated that he is able to face down vested interests out there - the Tory Right and the tabloids - and I can only hope that he can bring the same strength of will to a more dangerous enemy - the vested interests within. The lazy prison staff who suck from the taxpayers teat and do little more than bleat how dangerous their job is (it isn't), whilst refusing to address the 60% re-offending rate. Just what are they being paid for, exactly?

There are two sides to the revolving door of prison and a Justice Minister who addresses both the internal and external forces will be a political animal to be admired. And one I've yet to see.

Save Prison for the Violent

Imprisonment can cause more social harm than the crimes it punishes. It is hideously expensive. It takes whatever social capital the criminal has - family, employment - and destroys it.

Because of this, the effects of the sentence are often life-long and inescapable. This is not only a weight carried by the criminal - reformed or not - but by society in the form of a permanently reduced contribution.

The use of imprisonment should be restricted, in first instance, to those who cause significant social harm and who need to be confined to prevent them continuing to do harm.

The dirty secret about prisons is that they are overwhelmingly stuffed with people who are a bloody nuisance. Thieves and dodgy dealers, largely. Violent and sexual criminals are - and always have been - the minority.

That such social nuisances are slung in prison is a sign of utter incompetence. Not on the part of the crooks - that’s a given - but on the part of society. Can we really think of no other response to these people than "bang 'em up!"? After a couple of million years of evolution, after centuries of intellectual and political fervour and discovery, is this the best the human race can offer? Really??

Throw them out. Save the nick for people who actually need to have behind a high wall. This would see most of the people currently in prison thrown free, leaving behind the violent remnant. The issue then becomes: what should society’s response be to these other criminals?

Less is More

One of my peers surprised me by making the following suggestion. He claims that it is the first couple of weeks in prison that provide the 'shock' factor. The noise, uncertainty, confusion... after two weeks, people begin to acclimatise, the shock wears off.

So his scheme is to put people inside for 2 weeks. Long enough to shock them but not so long that their social capital dissipates. If your wife runs off in those two weeks, let’s face it, the relationship was not going well. And with a bit of fancy footwork, you could even get away with this short absence without your employer working out you're in the nick.

At the end of those two weeks - in a crappy, overcrowded local nick - only then do you begin your Community punishment. The threat of returning to prison for non-compliance remains for the duration.

God forbid that I should ever advocate prison for anyone, but I think this man might actually be onto something.

Change is Possible

Anything that could be called a 'rehabilitation revolution’ has to make a significant impact deep into the structure of prison life. It can be done, it has been done.

Michael Howard hoves into my mind's eye. Under his stewardship, the prison experience was profoundly changed, demonstrating that given the political will it is possible. Unfortunately, the effects of what I shall call - rather unfairly - the Howard Agenda were uniformly negative in terms of rehabilitation.

Notoriously, the largest cultural shift under Howard was a rebalancing of the elements involved in running a safe, stable prison in favour of 'security'. It's effects have been pervasive and often conflict with any rehabilitative policy.

The first and largest policy shift that we noticed was the anti-drugs policy. Up to the mid-1990's, prisons were riddled with cannabis. A broad staff view was that, 'a stoned prisoner is a happy prisoner’. And happy prisoners are not causing problems. The dope in itself caused very few difficulties. Nevertheless, the idea that prisoners could be enjoying an spliff with their supper bun wasn't one that sat well with Howard. Mandatory Drug Testing (MDT) was introduced and security was massively increased on Visits arrangements.

The intended policy outcome may have been unobjectionable - to cut drug use (even unproblematic drug use). The actual consequences, however, were a disaster and ramped re-offending through the roof for a generation.

There was, historically, little call for heroin in prisons. It was regarded as being a 'dirty' drug, in the main not being not socially acceptable. The mid 1990's saw a shift, not just in prisons but in the wider society. As heroin use outside increased, then the number of heroin users that came to prison also rose. And these people were faced with drug testing.

In this schema it is an unfortunate fact that cannabis can be detected by drug tests for up to 30 days after use. Heroin is out of the system in 3 days. If you take drugs then with heroin you have a far, far better chance of not being detected via a random drug test.

The combination of these factors led to a collapse in the amount of cannabis in prisons and a surge in heroin use that continues to this day. Dope smokers tend not to rob and steal in a desperate rush for the next fix, heroin users do. And these people returned to the streets to rob you.

Alongside this, the oppressive security measures placed upon our domestic visits also influenced heroin use. A small bag of heroin is far easier to smuggle than a lump of cannabis. The unthinking will, at this point, be asking why even greater security isn't imposed, such as American style visits, through glass. The counter-intuitive answer is that this raises re-offending rates. As security increased from the mid 1990's, and the prison population has doubled, then the number of visitors has halved. Our friends and families object to being prodded and poked just to share our company.

Relationships collapse and families fragment. Such a pity that one of the most important influences on re-offending is a stable home life for the prisoner to return to.

The anti-drug effort unleashed under Howard did manage to influence the prison culture. In doing so, its outcomes were to nurture a generation of heroin addicts and increase the re offending rates. This highlights the dangers of piecemeal policy-making and the failure to appreciate the power of the 'law of unintended consequences'.

There were two other 'rehabilitative' efforts that were born from the last Tory government, targeted education and psychological treatments. Education provision became a victim of managerialism coupled with simplistic thinking. Rather than being eclectic and transformational - education in its best sense - it became fixated upon 'basic skills', i.e. literacy and numeracy.

The central driver in this was the claim that prisoners are so ill educated that they are unqualified for 90% of jobs. This may well be true. The solution imposed was to ensure that we were functionally literate and numerate. All funding and managerialist targeting focused upon this, to the exclusion of all else. I seemed to be one of the few who appreciated that whilst being literate and numerate is necessary for employment, it is not sufficient.

In focusing all efforts on this policy, prisons abandoned most of the Vocational Training Courses (VTC). Painting and decorating, landscaping, horticulture, industrial cleaning, TV repair... all the skills that could make a person either employable or able to start off on their own were destroyed.

And this remains the situation, despite the fact that there is no demonstrable link between educational achievement and re-offending. It may seem obviously true that there is but, as with much criminological, the obvious need not be in any way
correct.

The final illustration of the rehabilitative efforts began under Howard is Offending Behaviour Programmes. I cannot over-emphasise how much prisoners despise these. Give any con a gun and one bullet, line up a screw, a governor, a probation officer and a psychologist - and the psychologist is the one who should be worried. OBP were introduced from North America and are based on the idea that we commit crimes because we have 'cognitive deficits'. We think differently, apparently. And so we are forced to undertake endless psychological treatments aimed at curing this mental deviation. Of course, these things are all voluntary; we just don't get released unless we do them.

These courses have led to prisons being jammed, we are detained longer merely to undergo these treatments, which can last for years. The direct cost has been over £200 millions. The indirect cost - keeping people in prison longer at £43K a year to have these treatments - has never been calculated. It never will.

The idea that criminality can be 'cured' is an ancient one and deeply attractive to policy makers. This is why, 15 years after their introduction, OBP surge onwards. The evidence for their effectiveness is, at best, slim and the wider psychological community - that does not rely on prison employment - regards them with justifiable scepticism. They suck resources from genuine schemes that could lead to reduced re-offending.

These policy details are mere illustrations intended to evidence two points. Firstly, to highlight the dangers in forcing such change as Ken Clarke seems to intend. There must be a continual awareness of unintended consequences. Prisons - and prisoners -comprise a whole, and to interfere with one aspect of functioning may harm others, to the detriment of the whole. Getting prisoners off cannabis led to heroin, divorces and increased re offending. Never, never, forget to consider the wider effects of a single policy change.

Secondly, the changes wrought by Michael Howard demonstrated that change is possible. The seeming monolith that is 'prison' is actually a fractured entity, seething with competing and vested interests. Nevertheless, with the right strength of political will, change is possible.

Ken Clarke's 'rehabilitation revolution' is not as impossible as it sounds. If he has the will, he can alter the culture of prisons so that they offer their charges genuine opportunities to reshape their lives. But this must be done with great care and consideration. Any idiot can churn out new policies - and they do - but few of our political masters have managed to do so for the general good.

Rehabilitation and Prison

Can there ever be a 'rehabilitative prison'? Because prison damages, it’s what it is good at and predicated upon. It shreds your life, destroys your social capital, then spits you out with a travel warrant and a plastic sack of your possessions.

Can it ever be anything more? Is the best that we can hope for a prison which is less damaging than now? And in recognising this, limit its use to those who truly need confinement?

Turning Tides

There are moments in time which are filled with a vibrant potential, where glimpses of a different future break through the dismal fog of the present.

We are in such a moment. A combination of financial crisis coupled with new thinking (the two may be connected...) has seen powerful shifts in the policy debate. We have a Justice Minister who takes a cynically realistic view of the utility of prisons. We have a Chief Inspector of Probation suggesting that there is a balance to be struck between the impact of crime and the cost of preventing it. And now, whisper it if you dare, the Ministry is said to be turning a sunny countenance onto the idea of abolishing the mandatory life sentence.

These ideas have all been bubbling away, with varying amounts of noise, for many years. The House of Lords has been trying to get shot of the mandatory life sentence for years, and the place of imprisonment in the national psyche is a perpetual bugbear for those few of us who give it any thought.

But having these ideas originate, or at least receive tacit support, from within the policy-making circle is a startling new development. I don't much care if this shift originates in Damascene conversions or a depressing glance at the national cheque book, that these ideas are allowed to wander into the daylight is in itself remarkable.

Change is in the wind. I can only hope that a genuine debate does ferment outside of the politicians and vested interests. If change is to stick, a broad social consensus is crucial. All prisoners can do is sit back, wait and hope.

Grandiosity

I've just been handed two reports for my parole dossier. One, from a prison appointed psychologist, suggests that I suffer from 'grandiosity' because I insist that I am brighter than most prison staff. Whereas I think that's just an objective fact.

The second report is from Security, who "have recently received intelligence that Mr Gunn has a Facebook page supporting his release...".

Um, far be it for me to impugn the stellar intellects that populate Security Group up at HQ, but hasn't the Facebook page been advertised on my blog for nearly a year...?
So, am I really grandiose or are prison staff a bit, well, disadvantaged in the neuron department?

Drugs in Prison

There is a new banner-carrier for the mouthy Right wingers in Parliament, a shrill and strident voice that reveals ignorance with every uttered syllable. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Philip Davies MP.

Obviously a Tory of the 'bang 'em up' school of mindlessness, Davies has been badgering the Justice Ministry about the quantity of drugs in prison. He seems to advocate unheard of levels of security, including closed visits, in order to reduce drugs supply.

Let us leave aside the role of crooked prison staff in this equation and follow Davies as he implements his plan...

A little known fact outside of the prison community is that the number of domestic visitors to prisoners has collapsed in the last decade. Just as the population doubles, the visitors are halved. By coincidence, this reluctance on the part of our families and friends to share our company developed precisely as new, oppressive security measures were implemented. You try holding a marriage together if the most contact you can share is a hug at the start and awkward hand-holding across a dividing table. Forget holding your young kids.

These restrictions were introduced to reduce drug smuggling. They have had an effect but not a large one. Conversely, they have done an excellent job of shattering our relationships.

And guess what? Having family support and social stability on release is one of the largest mitigators against re-offending. The very policy designed to prevent criminal activity has a direct effect on increasing it. I couldn't make this stupidity up.

You would think that, somewhere in those Government offices that cost us so much that a lone geek, stuck in the far corner of a shabby office, raised his hand and pointed this out when the policy was being debated. You'd think.

You'd be wrong. In the mountains of policy papers and regulations about preventing drugs entering prisons, the only mention our visitors get is in terms of being potential smuggler. Their role in keeping us on the straight and narrow is completely absent. Not a single word recognises this.

So, if Philip Davies gets his way, we will be forced to see our families with a thick sheet of glass between us. Just like America, and we all know how well their prison system is working out...

It would reduce drug use in prison. Which doesn't mean that the drug users will stay off drugs on release. It may cut future drug related crime. But this idea will also destroy our family structures and social support, which increases the odds of future re-offending.

This dilemma illustrates perfectly why I get extremely bored by mouthy politicians who can't resist the rent-a-quote shilling. These people tend to be ignorant, picking up half an idea but failing to think it through. It is more important to them that their quote looks just right in the Daily Mail, than actually addressing the problem.

Facile, ignorant and dangerously ambitious. These MP's, such as Philip Davies, should be mercilessly ridiculed for their simplicity until they are driven either into silencing or educating themselves.

The Battle, Lost

A significant part of the War On Crime is the War Against Drugs. Another un-winnable skirmish in an un-winnable war.

And a bloody expensive one. It is axiomatic that many prisoners have committed crimes which are 'drug related'. That is, robbed from Person A in order to buy drugs from Person B.

We could see the largest reduction in crime and imprisonment in human history if we simply - simply! - made drug use legal and affordable. The latest experience in Portugal reminds us of this unpalatable fact.

Another unwelcome bite of reality comes from the fact that prohibiting a product which is widely desired will inevitably lead to criminality. In production, supply and use, endless crimes will be committed. In response, vast resources are expended attempting to limit this activity, to no appreciable effect.

Opponents of drug legalisation demand that every possible problem that could flow from legalisation be answered. Well, it can't. The laws of unintended consequences always apply. But I assert, with some evidence, that the greatest harm that flows from drug use is the social response to it.

I have an idea. Drugs are not banned because of the social harm they cause. They are banned because - bear with me here - there is an innate urge within all Governments to assert control. They just can't stand people enjoying themselves too much!