For one night only....

Some have complained that I rarely mention my daily doings here but instead splash about on Twitter. Fair cop. So.... Tonight I am talking at Kaplan Law School in London, having a chat with a journalist from The Economist, and attending my weekly probation appointment.

Involving a trip to London, today will invariably include a foray onto Twitter to launch my usual bitter diatribe against GWR as I travel back, and quite possibly some harsh words to those who peddle simplistic ideas about criminal justice.

Tomorrow I take possession of my new place.

There, now you know. Happy now?

All The Best Bands Have A Conductor of Genius

Recent weeks have been a time of great turmoil. My silence here, and on Twitter, may have been the only visible clue that something was amiss. I am moving out of the home created by The Editor and into my own place, hopefully for no more than a few months.

Only the other night we were talking about the origins of the blog, and realised we couldn't recall who first thought of the idea. I think it was her. Whichever of us had that spark of inspiration doesn't really matter, because it grew into being Ours. It is her efforts and struggles that have afforded me the life that I now live and struggle to adapt to, with all its positive potential.

It shadowed our relationship, its birth, how we developed and the mess I have made of it. But the blog continues and I hope it will prosper in every way and lead me back to the obvious conclusion. That the blog, and I, need The Editor.

Watch this space.

One Man Band

Long term readers will know that this blog has always had someone in the background   Whilst in prison, Ben could not post the blogs himself.  He sent them to me - usually typed on a word processor but sometimes handwritten - and I would scan, edit if need be, and post to the blog. Since release, Ben has not really needed an Editor. I just hunt for the odd rogue apostrophe or typo before hitting the publish button.

Sadly, Ben and I are going separate ways.  He needs to find his path and I need to pick up the threads of my life as it was before he came into it.  So please forgive him the occasional typo, for the foreseeable future at least...

Alex (the "Ed")

Plain Nasty

There is a rather vicious strain of old Tory nastiness beginning to peep through the urbane curtain that cloaks the Minister of Justice, Chris Grayling. Those of us who were quietly hoping that he would broadly follow the course of Ken Clarke, even whilst talking tough to please the Tory Right, are having to cope with pointed reminders that the Conservative Party does contain a streak of straightforward oppressive nastiness. This was last seen in relation to criminal justice, to any great extent, with Michael Howard and Ann Widdecombe.

Jack Straw attempted to pick up their baton and did a fair facsimile, but the reality of him was that not only couldn’t he couldn’t resist the authoritarianism inherent in the Leftist ideology but he coupled it with a populism that was so barefaced and naked that he was in perpetual risk of being visited by the Porn Squad. The policy outcomes may look similar in intent, but in motivation Leftist authoritarianism and Rightist nastiness are worlds apart.

This is no consolation for those on the receiving end of Grayling’s venomous proposals. Three, in particular, strike me as being not only repellent but utterly futile – they will cause untold harm but add nothing to the social good. This is a hallmark of Conservative law and order spasms.

The bill for legal aid is high. Not staggeringly so, and given the importance of Justice to a society it would be hard to fairly say what is too much. Even so, removing legal aid from those at risk of genuine personal harm and persecution should be the last consideration of a Government in straightened financial times. Asylum seekers appealing deportation no longer have the ability to claim legal aid. A thousand miles from home, afraid to return for fear of the consequences, all of a sudden these people have to grapple not only with their personal situation but with an alien language and a legal procedure that baffles even the natives of this country. Quite how much will be saved from the bill for this, and how many will be returned to countries who will abuse them, is a calculation only the most immoral will be willing to contemplate. Grayling has chosen that mantle.

The nature of prison regimes is a perpetual bugbear, a target for the ill informed, the plain stupid and tabloid journalists. These categories are not mutually exclusive… Having trundled along for nearly 20 years with a system of earned privileges and regimes as set out by Michael Howard, Grayling has thrown this stability into the shadow of potential chaos. I wrote a blogpost on his idea – Grayling's Riot Recipe – which sums up my view of the potential consequences. And, as with legal aid changes, there is no earthly possible good that can come from this. It is simply an attempt to make people miserable, at risk of huge instabilities and suicides, with no known or foreseen reductions in crime.

Four million quid. That’s less than the Ministerial biscuit-budget. But in order to shave this off a 2 Billion legal aid bill Grayling is preventing prisoners gaining legal aid to sue the prison service for a whole range of issues. One of these is transfers. With about 130 prisons to choose from, prisoners are shuffled around the nation on an hourly basis, all to suit the particular needs of governors. It is, essentially, “bed management”. Like many internal prison issues this may seem trivial to outsiders, but consider – being transferred a hundred miles away from home, too far and too expensive for your family to visit. Children lose their father, wives lose their husbands, and society will later pick up the many costs of that. Such are the issues Grayling insists can be dealt with by the internal complaints system- that is, the prison service holding itself to account. The main cause of the riots in 1990 was the perception by prisoners that they were not being treated justly….Anyone else see the flaw in this idea?

It is being plain nasty for the sake of it. Which brings me to the latest uttering from Grayling – to make those convicted of a crime pay the costs of their own prosecution. So we take the largely disposessed and poor, sling them in prison, then release them back into a society that doesn’t want to employ them with a bill for their own punishment.

Morally, I would suggest this is ambivalent at best. Courts already have the power to make compensation and cost orders. To make this a mandatory scheme will be a structural invitation to criminals trying to go straight to just throw their hands in the air and reach for the jemmy and the shotgun.

There are ways to cut crime, to deal with illegal immigration and cut the legal aid bill. But to use the ineptitude of Government and the financial system to persecute and further exclude those on the margins and already bearing the weight of government power is repulsive. And yet, it is politically popular or Grayling wouldn’t do it. Whether it is popular with the electorate is a matter yet to be seen; but it is certainly popular with a section of the Tory party which has a nasty, vicious streak running through its psyche.

Hard Blogging

Writing a blogpost on how difficult I am finding it to write blogposts is an invitation to collapse into gibberish and insanity, but bear with me….

In prison I had my writing routine. It involved my comfy chair, bit of wood as a table, my wordprocessor and my telly. At certain times of the day – or night – I could lift myself above my situation and the words would pour through my fingers. Off into the mail to The Editor, to be scanned and uploaded. It took only an evening here and there to hack out a week's worth of blogposts.

Since I have been home, the words just have not come. I have yet to find my writing routine, and without a time and place then the creativity, the fluidity of thought, continues to elude me. Perhaps this is a matter of having too much choice. I could write in the office upstairs. Or settle in the conservatory, mocking the elements whilst surrounded  by cats. In better weather, there is the spot under the pergola, next to the pond. Or, as now, secreted away in my shed…which has remarkably similar dimensions to some of the more meagre cells. With TV, heater and laptop I could settle here for hours. Days. Weeks…

I do try. And yet there are all of the distractions and obligations that comprise “life”, that endless struggle and exploration. Each day still contains something new for me. I am working, as well as attempting to develop a new business, alongside occasional talks and, as ever, being a source of advice for many in sore need of my experience.

Writing, then, has of necessity fallen from being perhaps the most important of my daily activities. It is no longer needed as a source of continuity, a way to bring meaning to the essential meaningless existence that is prison. Living, rather than maintaining an existence, has become the focus of my days.

Adding to the new shape of my life have been the new avenues that have opened up to continue what has always been the essence of the blog – to foster debate around imprisonment. This includes talking at universities and the like, the odd media spot, and that dreadfully addictive tool, Twitter. Blogging has always been my thoughtful space, where I could ponder with greater care some of the issues.

And it will continue to be so. As my technical expertise grows,  I would hope to entwine the various ways I communicate into one place, or share content across platforms (sorry for lapsing into that gobbledygook!). In the meanwhile, I will continue to spread myself too thinly for my own comfort and struggle to find the space and time to seriously maintain all that we share.

For I always remember that blogging is a relationship. Even when my voice was constrained and held at a distance by the bars,  I knew this was fundamental. People don’t turn up regularly on the off-chance there is something to be heard. Regularity of thought, new content, is vital. And some of you have come along with me from the very beginnings of this journey – and I owe you a debt far greater than you could ever imagine.

Bear with me, then, a little longer as I find my place in this new life. I have hopes that the future may be as interesting as the past.

Writer's Block

Ben has writer's block!

It happens sometimes, but there should be a blog post appearing over Easter.  Ed.

PM

Tune into BBC Radio 4 to hear Ben on the radio!

Victims and Debate

In the debate at Nottingham University over the proposition that Life should mean Life there was one regrettable absentee – the victims’ representative. Moya Griffiths was bamboozled by time and traffic and I’m not sure if the debate wasn’t the better for it.

This may sound harsh, but I believe that we advance public policy more through the exchange of ideas than we do through the visceral exposition of high emotion. In the interests of fairness, though, here is Moya’s interview with the university Impact magazine. My commentary follows….

IMPACT MAGAZINE Thursday 28th February 2013
 Moya Griffiths – Proposition and mother of a murder victim

Could you explain your argument briefly?
I represent a lot of people who have lost a loved one. We believe that if you are prepared to take a life then you can fully anticipate losing your liberty. Our campaign is ‘life for a life’. The victims do not get a fair crack of the whip as far as justice is concerned. It’s been proven over and over and over again. Now quite often a life sentence is dictated by ten years depending on the severity, but talking from my own personal experience, ten years is average. That is not a life sentence. We feel that when people are imprisoned even when they do come out after ten years, quite often they will re-offend. The statistics are there to back this up.

Do you think offenders can be too young to know what they’re are doing?
No. A child of seven will know the difference between right and wrong. I’m not saying that there can’t be extenuating circumstances; every case has to be judged on its own merits. For a normal 13 or 14 year old to kill or murder, I’m sorry no. You can quote cases, such as James Bulger; the two convicted killers knew exactly what they were doing, young as they were.

Is there room for redemption?
The proof is there, I’m not taking anything away from what Ben has achieved but the difference is years ago the sentencing was a lot harder, more penalised than what it is today. If it were to happen again, he wouldn’t necessarily go through that process, as he wouldn’t be behind bars for that period of time.

Should ‘life for a life’ extend to the death penalty?
We will never ever have capital punishment back in this country. If you ask any mother or father who have lost a child, initially the reaction would be, ‘Yes’ to capital punishment. But it’s not realistic. I, and others like me, believe in life for a life in prison.

Do you think the same sentence should apply to those who commit crimes of compassion and those who murder with malicious intent?
If it is a crime of compassion then I think it should be viewed quite differently. It’s not someone going out who thinks life is worthless or cheap. Life is cheap to a lot of people - it’s meaningless to them. Those are the people who need to be put imprison and made to stay there.

My Commentary….
“Our campaign is ‘life for a life’”… Is an excellent slogan, and one I appreciate is deeply attractive due to its simplicity. But therein lays its weakness - depriving someone else of their life, or a meaningful existence, does nothing to repair the harm originally done. What it does do is repeat that harm onto the criminal's family. The very pain victims’ decry is then the one they advocate spreading.
”The victims do not get a fair crack of the whip as far as justice is concerned. It’s been proven over and over and over again.” I am never quite sure what such assertions actuially mean. Does the criminal justice system pay enough attention to victims? Possibly not, although the situation in the legal process has changed significantly in recent years and not always to the betterment of Justice. Of course, it is a fundamental tenet of our system that it is the State that takes centre stage as being the one offended against, the victim being only the vehicle of the offence. To do otherwise would be to substitute personal and arbitrary vengeance for Justice.

“Now quite often a life sentence is dictated by ten years depending on the severity, but talking from my own personal experience, ten years is average. That is not a life sentence.” Ten years is not only not a life sentence, it’s not even related to reality. Of released Lifers, the average served is 16 years. Of those still inside….well, my own journey through the system may give an indication. The starting point for sentencing in murder cases is 16 years and then varied according to mitigating or exaccerbating circumstances. What Moya believes is just plain wrong.

 “We feel that when people are imprisoned even when they do come out after ten years, quite often they will re-offend. The statistics are there to back this up.”  Leaving aside the “ten years” error, this is again entirely wrong. Second homicides are committed at a rate of 1 or 2 %, a figure that’s been constant for decades.  Serious reoffending comes to maybe 5%. By any measure too much, but equally by no measure is this “quite often”.

“Is there room for redemption?” “The proof is there, I’m not taking anything away from what Ben has achieved but the difference is years ago the sentencing was a lot harder, more penalised than what it is  today. If it were to happen again, he wouldn’t necessarily go through that process, as he wouldn’t be behind bars for that period of time.”

Utterly and completely wrong. The tariff for murder has been leaping ever higher over the past decade or so. What may once have been an unimaginable and rare tariff – say 30 years – is now frequent. For clarifications sake, under the present schema I would still have received a tariff around 10 years: starting at 16 years, then reduced due to my age. And the implication that I was somehow redeemed due to my sentence is quite, quite wrong.

I do honestly appreciate the raw anger, the bitterness and even hatred that can flow from being a victim of crime. For those private individuals I have all due sympathy and compassion. But I will never allow that to slide into supporting this raw vengeance from being turned into public policy, and one that merely increases the level of suffering in society.

Tweet Tweet

Russell Webster recently interviewed Ben on why he tweets:

Twitter is the local pub, the street corner, the groves of academe... @PrisonerBen on why he tweets: Embracing the digital Twitter. 140 meaningful characters. Daft idea….  Having fought a brutal battle to be allowed to blog from prison and watching the media develop, one of the few conscious decisions I made on release was to embrace the possibilities of digital communication with all the vigour of a randy Alsatian. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the blog, all sprang to life fairly quickly and with astonishingly little thought. But the idea of compressing anything meaningful into 140 characters seemed utterly absurd. All the more so given that my writing style can veer unexpectedly into the flowery and verbose. And yet it seemed a challenge worthy of rising to. My first tweets were probably as timorous as I’ll ever get! Although my tweeting presence has actually been two or three years - an account being fed links to my blog whilst I was inside. However, that had to end when the Ministry of Justice made it a disciplinary offence for prisoners to access social media, even second hand. Twitter fosters debate As with all of my public writing, my intrusion into tweeting is driven by my perpetual need to foster the debate around imprisonment and the sheer thoughtless stupidity in much around criminal justice. Twitter is the local pub, the street corner, the groves of academe all wrapped up in a simple format. It was an easy decision to plunge in and start splashing about. Obviously, given my history this was a risky move. My existence in any public medium can be a lightening rod for those with the strongest views around criminal justice. And I have wandered into two ferocious twitter-wars, lasting days and becoming hideously personal. I don’t say this lightly – the humanity and support of my followers and onlookers during these exchanges cannot but foster hope that decency is in the ascendant on twitter. Twitter encourages intrusion and exploration of others' conversations Which is not to say this kindness is wholly repaid by my abrasive style. It has to be said that if you say something silly about prison, I will try to lead you firmly by the nose to see that. And I am blessed that so many are willing to engage on that basis. A lump of ocasional idiocy and self mockery helps, I suspect. Significant discussions take place with those who share some of my views and – more importantly – those who do not. One of the central advantages of Twitter is that it encourages one to intrude and explore the conversations of others’, and it is a personal maxim that my effectiveness to prompt thought is directly related to the degree of opposition in viewpoint. Ideally, I would only engage with Daily Mail readers! I tweet regularly, at times obsessively. You can always tell when I am at a loose end or struggling with the machinations of rail travel because my tweet rate rockets. In the many long and lonely hours spent at Paddington Station, Twitter has kept me sane. And pointed me to a free toilet. In these times, not only does my tweet frequency rise, so does the forensic ruthlessness of my responses to those commenting on my areas of interest. Which raises the only weakness, for me, of this incredible medium of communication. 140 characters is so little, we each have to adapt our style of writing. Alas, mine comes across as fairly  terse, even belligerent. Twitter is an opportunity to challenge and change views The benefits of Twitter far outweigh any personal slurs or plain silliness that can abound in any social herd. The ability to leap across social and political boundaries, to leap professional hurdles, to reach audiences that had previously remained unperturbed…the only way to alter anyone’s view is to engage with them, on any level that works, and Twitter offers such amazing opportunities to do that. There are, let’s not understate the matter, personal and professional opportunities. In no other way can I interact with others in the criminal justice community to enrich both my personal existence and my professional opportunities. Twitter. To the novice, a baffling stream on short intertwined ideas. But with only a little time and a few stumbles, it reveals itself to be one of the most fascinating and enriching ways to communicate throughout the human community.

01225 870198

Tonight....

At 10pm tonight  will be taking part in a phone-in show on BBC Radio Birmingham sparked by the Ministry decision to ban smoking in prisons.

I believe that the broad theme will be along the lines of "is prison too soft". Of course, that's the wrong question.

We should ask, what is the intended purpose of prison? And then we can ask, does it do what we ask of it?

To ask "is prison too soft" is to assume far too much, and to overlook the fact that we really are very, very confused about what we expect from the use of prison.

New Abuse and Censorship Blog Policy

Regular readers will appreciate that I have always struggled to give space to even the maddest, most repulsive ideas. I don't like censorship.

When trolling threatened to get out of hand, I suggested corraling it into a particular thread. Such was the outrage that I reconsidered and the venom was allowed to flow. It amuses some, depresses others, but such is the nature of blogging.

However. Abusing me is one thing,but abusing and slandering those nearest and dearest to me is quite another. As of now, comments which are abusive in that way will be deleted. You are free to abuse me, as ever, although we all appreciate some wit and creativity along the way.

I may lose some readers for this change in policy. I will live with that. Protecting my loved ones is more important.

Brand Ben

I have now launched a new company - Mokurai Consulting Ltd

Take a peek, spread the word. I've three cats with expensive tastes in food.

www.mokuraiconsulting.com

The Great Debate

The trek to Nottingham was not the most pleasant, but the prospect of debating against Philip Davies MP made the strain more than worth it. I had a low opinion of the man, not for his abilities as a parliamentarian but for his habit of being an easy quote for the more rabid tabloids whenever a prison story appeared. Not that having an opinion is problematic….But knowing what the hell you're talking about should be a prerequisite for commentators on a public salary. And legislative power.

As is the way, I lurched up to the doors of the lecture theatre, peeked in, and promptly went to change underwear. Seemingly endless rows of students, a packed house to the extent that people were being turned away due to fire regulations. And I had never had to stand before such a vista. Twitter and nicotine were my crutches.

Taking my seat at the front I tried to hide my nerves as I gazed upwards through the masses. Shortly after my co-debator, David Perry QC, arrived and I had the pleasure of his urbane company for the next hour or so. Not in attendance were the opposition, the proposers of the motion that “life should mean life”. The vagaries of the railways and Nottingham town centre had temporarily defeated them. Why they didn’t have the wits to engage what I call “a taxi”…..Which somehow signposted the intellectual weight on offer from the other table.

Philip Davies finally arrived, weilding a suitably firm Tory law and order handshake. Greyer than his profile pics, I briefly wondered if he was about to unleash an insightful, complex argument. He didn’t. Speaking first, he wove together the most visceral parts of Daily Mail editorials, being unhindered by any lack of consistency or rationality.

Within moments, Davies had lost the proposition by deciding to argue that not all murderers should receive life sentences at all. This was an attempt to avoid the weakness of the "life should mean life” proposition, which is that murder encompasses a wide range of circumstances from the most horrible serial killings through to mercy-killing. We didn't allow that to pass unchallenged; altering the definition of murder was a different debate for another day.

Davies did spend a lot of time working two themes. Firstly, that sentencing was dishonest and often opaque. In this he had some merit, although the complexity of sentencing lays at the door of legislators including himself. And secondly, he indulged in a prolonged bout of shroud-waving.  Those of us – and most of the audience – who permitted killers to be freed to commit further crimes were, it turns out, condoning child-rape. Hmmmmm.

But in his arguments solidly for the proposition on the table, not much came along. Yes, some Lifers do get released and do kill again. But this is to the tune of maybe 1 or 2 percent. When challenged that keeping 99% of lifers in prison forever to prevent this may be, well, unjust, there was no response. Davies simply could not see that detaining people for what others may possibly do in future is a morally dubious proposition indeed. Added to the fact that those judged dangerous are not released – maybe never – then the debate was, I'm afraid, rather bereft of intellectual substance.

I’d happily tell you what I said in my time at the rostrum, if I could remember. I do recall raising the point that weighing the value of a human life is essentially impossible. Why did I receive a 10 year tariff, why not a 50 year one? How do we even begin to make such judgements? And, more importantly, what would be the point of a whole life sentence across the board? Does it raise the dead?

Davies arrived low in my opinion, and managed to leave lower. But not as low as some of his supporters. One sat directly in front of me, telling me sotto voce during the debate that I should have been hanged. The morality of executing children is an issue I left him to ponder. Such was his clearly visceral feeling for the topic that I insisted he be given the mike during the Q and A session. And it transpired that he knew a murder victim’s family and the pain they endure.

But as I could only reply, would executing me bring a victim back? Would dipping me in acid resurrect the dead? Would any punishment actually undo the pain that follows murder? No. It is an irretrievable act and a full life sentence wouldn't alter a thing.

He was genuine in his feelings; fair enough. But his compadre was tweeting with vicarious thrills that they would now have to run for it afterwards, having told me I should be executed. Yes, mate, because I fill my spare moments plotting to kill everyone who disagrees with me….. The idea that murderers kill at the slightest bruise is pathetic. Clearly, a lot of educating is needed for some people.

We won the vote. Obviously. Twice; both at the start and again at the end the proposition that life should mean life was trounced.

It is a proposition that appeals to the darker, desperate part of our human hearts. The idea that we should hurt those who hurt us is a deeply, unthinkingly, held one. But put to test, when it is demanded that this policy would actually offer more than illusory benefits or a sop to our horror, the idea collapses.

What is said in private should, of course, stay there. But I have to say that in the bar, David Philips talked as much gibberish as he did at the podium.

It was a great night….

Live Debate

The debate mentioned in the previous post will be streamed live on http://www.nutsonline.org/ this evening from 7 p.m.