Tories take the hardest road

Someone recently asked me what I thought about Ken Clarke and the general Tory line on prisons and related environs. It made me think.

There has never been a 'traditional' Tory line on prisons. Each Home Secretary (now Justice Secretary) followed a broad ideological view, true, but the influence that had on the prison landings was small. Thus we had Douglas Hurd stating that "prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse", and Michael Howard baldly proclaiming that "Prison works!". The Tory party has been a pretty broad church historically when it comes to matters penological.

This situation held true until Michael Howard. Howard retreated into a simple set of ideological assertions which happened to be both popular and populist. Electorally clever, but intellectually shoddy. He treated crime and punishment as simplistic problems which were amenable to simple solutions. And in doing so, shattered the broad post-War consensus and made prisons a highly politically charged subject.

Jack Straw continued this trend. Listening to his speeches in opposition, I was very worried by his simplistic, authoritarian tone. And, sadly, I was right to be. Labour made a spectacular mess out of prisons policy and thousands of my peers are paying that price.

The Coalition government, though, has avoided trapping itself into an ever harsher spiral of simplistic and populist policies. This may be Ken Clarke's natural inclination (he was a "mostly harmless" Home Secretary for prisoners) but the opportunities of Coalition politics offer him and his allies more room to operate. The LibDems were never going to support mindless and reactionary prison policies. With that backdrop Clarke has an opportunity of movement which, should it end in disaster, can be blamed on the necessities of coalition rather than be a black mark against the Tories. And it makes it harder for the media to pin down a target to attack; should they aim for Clarke, or the LibDems, or the whole Coalition?

This situation allows Ministers to actually think about prison. Penology is a complicated issue that requires complicated solutions. And that is a lot harder than slapping us in a reflexive act of vengeance. So far, Clarke gives the impression that he is at least willing to try to engage with the issues in a meaningful way - rather than throwing chunks of prisoners to the baying mob.

Blogging by 'Insiders'.

Our lives are governed by the machinations of institutions, both public and private. They are inescapable. Wouldn't our lot be happier if we had a window onto the internal workings of these monoliths of power? Wouldn't our society be freer and the body politic healthier if we knew more about how and why certain decisions were taken?

This preamble is by way of wishing and hoping that the denizens of the superstructure of our society dash to the loo with their Smartphones and begin to blog away. Help us, you civil servants; enlighten us, you actuaries; inform us, you paper-merchants and insurance salesmen; teach us, you educators.

The more these people blog then the deeper our understanding into the internal workings of the systems that guide our existence. Spill the beans, people, and feel the surge of blood that comes from 'living in truth^’.

Obviously my bent is towards the penological, and as the only blogging British convict I would hope that along the way I could offer a window onto the prison landings. It is long overdue that society had a (fairly) contemporaneous, if partial, view of what is being done in their name and with vast chunks of their money.

But where are the prison staff blogs? Where are the Governors? And where are all the other cons? Insiders within any institution owe us ah insight to their small corner of the world.