Answers 2

Gaina-
If you could make one major change to the criminal justice system
for (a) Adult and (b) Juvenile offenders, what would they be?

I would throw out criminal justice and institute restorative justice. Responding to social harm by inflicting more harm is the dumbest artefact of Western civilisation. It is the equivalent of two men punching each other in the face, to see who gives in first. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

JackP-
To what extent does prison life become 'normal' over time- as in, do people just in find it very difficult to cope, and is there a risk that people at the other end of the scale (such as yourself) become institutionalised and may find problems dealing with outside life again?

We must differentiate between two concepts. There is 'prisonisation', where one picks up and learns the local culture and mores. Then there is 'institutionalisation’, which is a fairly vague concept which usually implies a loss of skills, intellect or ability.

Prisonisation is the process new arrivals undergo. This is like landing in a foreign country; initially slightly confusing, but the local knowledge allowing one to function is picked up rapidly. Some people do find it hard to cope because the change is unremitting and unavoidable.

You can get used to prison, as you can get used to any set of difficult circumstances. Human beings are incredibly adaptable. But it is always deeply abnormal. It is also not unusual for it to become less easy to cope with as time passes. I recall having terrible difficulty at the start of my second decade, leading me to try and kill myself through an extended hunger strike (43 days). These periods tend to afflict me every ten years or so. I seem to survive; some lifers don't.

Institutionalisation is largely a myth based on flawed experiments made on rats, exploring the concept of ‘learned helplessness'. I have little time for it. That isn't to say that the transition from prison to freedom is devoid of difficulty.
This isn't because we lose our abilities during the sentence but rather is a function of self-belief. Imprisonment is a perpetual exercise in being patronized, dis-empowered and de-skilled. If you persistently tell people that they are inadequate, some will begin to believe it. Those are the ones who worry about freedom, begin to believe that they cannot cope, and it a false concern.

I do find discussions around institutionalisation as interesting as they are frustrating. Everybody seems to mean something different by it, and if I try to pin them down on quite what, exactly, is meant to be difficult about daily life then the answers become evasive. Six billion people bumble through daily life okay, how hard can it be? What do you think I may have problems with?

People forget (or don't realise) that prisons are a little society and encompasses all the features of the wider world, if somewhat warped. There is a social structure, neighbour disputes, work, a complex economy… all we seem to lack is decent access to technology!

2. Also, what is the mood like? Do people try their best to get on with it, or is there a certain amount of gloom and resentment hanging around all of the time?

It's a truism that if you put more than two lifers in a room, there will be an outbreak of moaning. I think that's quite optimistic…

We do try to get on with it, trying to create and sustain an existence of sorts within which we can find some meaning. We also complain like hell about every aspect of our lives. It is more bitterness than gloom, and it lurks just beneath the surface.

As is common in all difficult situations, humour is a great defence against being overwhelmed. Prison humour is appalling, way beyond the pale of normal people and though I wish I could, I dare not share any of it with you! We make Frankie Boyle look like Norman Wisdom.

3. Are there any groups of people (such as chronic re-offenders) who the system is unable to deal with? If so, how would you protect the public from these people?

Depends what you mean by "deal with'. The system can physically contain and control any individual within its grasp. Whether it can 'deal' with making a positive difference is another issue.

The prison system can only do what society funds and mandates. There are those who are particularly difficult, in that present systems seem unable to change them for the better. This doesn't mean that other methods and systems wouldn't work, only that they are presently neglected due to political and social constraints.
There are those I have met, even some I live with now, who I would hesitate to release. But I refuse to accept that there are many of them who cannot change.
Prison is stuffed full of chronic re-offenders. But are they really socially dangerous, or are they more of a nuisance? They are often drug users, which highlights an old complaint that the prison system is asked to deal with sociomedical problems because no one else wants to deal with them. Free heroin would slash the crime rate.

Perhaps you refer to the likes of serial killers? This is a moot point, as none have ever been released yet. Can they be changed? No one knows, no one has tried. Only those who have never been caught, yet have stopped killing know the answer and they are keeping their mouths shut.

Or maybe you mean serial rapists or paedophiles? The prison service claims some success with its Sex Offender Treatment Programme. I think their research is shoddy and dishonest. That said, the re-offending rates for sex offenders is one of the lowest (murderers being lowest of all).

In a real sense I echo the view of John McVicar. Prison doesn't reform. It is up to the individual to decide to change. I suppose the best prison can ever do is create an environment conducive to that change and which supports it. Such a pity it never has.

4. What time is it?

As I write, it's 8:55 pm and we have just been locked up for the night. I'm settling down trying to listen to Jack Johnson and read a paper but the damn bell ringers in the church opposite are really going for it.

Questions, Questions 2

Benn -
Top or bottom bunk?

In better days, when there was recognition that life sentences bring their own particular stresses, this was rarely an issue. We automatically had single cells. Even now, it is rare that I have to share.

When moving into an already occupied cell, it's a case of taking whichever bunk is free. Each has its positives and negatives. The top bunk is nearer to the light, whereas the bottom is in perpetual shadow. As a rabid reader, this is important. But the bottom bunk is convenient for moving about the cell. Clambering up and down from the top to use the loo at 2 in the morning is annoying.

The bottom line is, neither. Give me a single cell anytime.

Rahill952-
How do you cope with loneliness? Do you feel lonely, in fact?

I'm not lonely. I am quite a self contained, even antisocial, person and I enjoy my own company.

That said, I have learned over the years that I need one person I can meaningfully talk to. Being wholly isolated for long periods is deeply unnatural.

Even so, I occasionally institute a 'yellow card’ system for those visiting my cell. They receive a card each time they say something stupid, 3 cards and I throw them out. Quite how I get away with being so irascible baffles me.

Questions, questions...

Half The Story-

1.     How true to real life are Archer's prison diaries (I found them to be a decent read)?

Shame on you...I reviewed one of his volumes for Inside Time and I was angry enough to ask if I could possibly have his liver for my supper! Archer wrote with a complete absence of depth, with no appreciation of the meaning of anything in his situation. I was honestly shocked at his lack of even the most basic insight. It is some of the worst literature to come out of prison since Mein Kampf.

Worse, when he wrote about anyone he always listed their offence. This is what 'outsiders' do, they see us as the sum of our criminality. Whereas prisoners see each other as people first, offence is way down the list. Even those just briefly passing through get this quickly, yet Archer never did.

His prison diaries are true in the sense they explain his path through prison, though he spent most of it in Open prison. Few of us have his particular experiences and they are more significant for what they miss out.

The best contemporary prison experience can be found in the columns, and later books, from Erwin James (www.erwinjames.co.uk) when he was writing a column in the Guardian for the last few years of his sentence. If I was cheeky I could suggest my own writing...and I recommend you peruse the vast amount of prisoner-generated material over at insidetime.org.

2.     Which prison did you like best?

Whilst all prisons share a similar structure, each is different in its culture. This fluctuates, changing with the Governor and the mix of prisoners. For me (not for everybody) a good prison is one which leaves me alone but is able to support me if I attempt positive changes.

The prison which afforded me the most opportunities to expand myself as an individual, and live the life of Reilley, was Blundeston in the late 1980's.

These were my 'student years', in my early 20's and starting my first degree. There was a group of us, all lifers, all beginning the same social science course and we used to spark off each other as we explored the finer points of monetarism and Marxism.

In the evenings we would listen to Dire Straits, get stoned, and argue political theory. This was my introduction to cannabis. On the weekends this was mixed with martial arts training and stagecraft; we were allowed to write and perform plays, during which I learned stage lighting and video editing.

It was a time rich with positive and productive activity, largely because the prison left us well alone to get on with things. I doubt whether that culture exists anywhere in the system nowadays.

3.     Which prison did you like least?

Two are bottom of my list, Dartmoor and Leyhill.

Dartmoor. Stuck in the middle of nowhere and used as a punishment prison for those whom the system took exception to. The screws ranged from indifferent to violent. If anything positive seemed to be about to happen, it was shot on sight.

Leyhill. An Open prison whose stated purpose is to prepare us for release. The reality was a litany of indifference, incompetence and plain stupidity. As I made these views clear when I was there, no wonder they threw me out.

4.     Any Governors you have encountered you think could do more?

Would you really be surprised if I thought that ALL governors could do more?

All modern Governors are managers. They oversee processes, procedures, and worry about targets. They have forgotten that their 'products' are actually people, not widgets.

Because of this, they rest content when they meet their performance targets. Whether they provide the conditions or culture that allows prisoners to grow and change (hopefully for the better) is irrelevant to them.

5.     If you could make one change to prison life, what would that be?

To increase the power of prisoners in controlling their own lives. Whilst this may sound counter-intuitive, it does work in other jurisdictions.

If we assume that many prisoners have grown used to being powerless and irresponsible, then giving them the structures which forces them to accept control has two positive effects.

On the individual level, it empowers them as people. For those who have spent all their lives at the bottom of the heap, this change helps create more rounded individuals. Give people responsibility and you will be surprised at what they can do.

On the structural level, it would create a prison system which actually focuses upon the needs of prisoners rather than managers. If a central justification for imprisonment is to 'repair¹ prisoners and their lives, to increase their ability to build decent lives on release, then prisoners must be listened to.

6.     Do you think you will ever be freed from prison?

Yes. I'm a very patient man and they will get bored of me before I get bored of them.

7.     Which Home Secretary's have been considered good?

The prison system now comes under the Ministry of Justice rather than Home Office, but this is a very recent development and I take your point.

Our political masters have had a varied interest in prisons. Some paid us little attention, some meddled endlessly. Jack Straw loves to meddle, usually in a kneejerk response to a tabloid story.

This level of political interference is quite new and probably reflects a broader political change, with this government being hypersensitive to the media. In many ways, the best political master is the one who accepts his limitations and largely ignores prisons. Criminal justice should rest on social consensus and be above party politics.

Previously, it was only lifers who noticed the political winds. As our progress and release was in the hands of Ministers (until the 1990's) then a miserable Minister saw us screwed over. Under the Tories, Angela Rumbold and David Mellor were notoriously mean spirited.

As Home Secretary, Michael Howard had the deepest and most malign effect. His declaration that 'prison works' encouraged the judiciary to stuff more people into fewer places. He also set in place policies which profoundly effected our daily lives and we still march to these tunes. Howard squeezed flexibility and pockets of positivity almost out of existence and we continue to struggle to regain this lost ground.

The best, and I imply no endorsement here, was arguably Douglas Kurd. The riots of 1990 led to the Woolf Report and Kurd was the one tasked to respond. In the following White Paper, he declared that 'prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.' If we had built on the atmosphere Woolf created and Kurd seemed to endorse, the prison system would be vastly smaller and positive practices might still be valued.

8. How would you restructure sentencing?

Sentencing baffles the hell out of people. The judge hands down a number, then you lob a bit off for parole, more for remission, more due to emergency overcrowding release... No wonder people have little faith in the system.

Answering this question depends on what you see as the point of prison. Is it a straight forward punishment, X amount of time for X crimes? This would broadly be a 'just desserts' philosophy and one that is simplest to understand. Add clarity to the sentence, i.e. make it clear in court what the minimum time in prison is to be regardless of parole, and the wider public may at least comprehend what has occurred.

One of the most confusing and unjust sentencing efforts is currently underway. There is a growing number of people being sentenced to indeterminate terms in prison. That is, they are not serving X years in response to X crime, but rather remaining in prison for many, many years longer on the grounds that they may pose a future risk of reoffending. There are people sentenced to indeterminate terms whose 'tariff', the punishment for their actual crime, may be fixed in days or weeks. Several years later, they are still here.

Not only is this confusing for the public but it is wickedly unjust for the criminal. I would abolish these open-ended sentences. People should be detained for what they have done, not for what they may do.

9.     How many prisoners are on heroin?

Depends on the nick. This backwater has a miniscule drug culture. Try as I might, years pass by without my being able to find a spliff. But many prisons have a significant heroin drug culture, which is to be regretted on every level.

This is, to some degree, a self inflicted wound by the system. The previous drug culture was based on cannabis. A stoned prisoner is a happy prisoner, and staff turned a Nelsonian eye in the common cause of an easy life.

Michael Howard took exception to this and introduced Mandatory Drug Testing (MDT). He overlooked the point that cannabis can be detected up to 30 days after use, but opiates for only 3 days. Any prisoner who wanted to use drugs and avoid getting caught was obviously going to shift to heroin. And they did so with a vengeance.

There were also shifts in society around this point. Heroin use became more prevalent outside and people brought these habits in with them.

So these two changes in drug culture, both inside and outside, led to the heroin epidemic. The prison service has never caught up in its provision of drug rehab, and with rehab places in the community grossly underfunded then the foundations were laid for a generation of increased crime.

Amazing, isn't it, what can flow from a Home Secretary getting the hump with us having the odd spliff...

10.      Are there big football rivalries in prison, or rather is football a big thing, like on ‘main street'?

Alas, people behind bars seem to care as much about football as those on the street. I detest the sport myself, and I still resent the years where the communal TV was filled with football on a majority vote!

There are two differences in here. Firstly, the gambling that goes on is based on Mars bars or % ounces of Golden Virginia rather than hard cash (although some richer prisons do bet in money). And rather than waving scarves in response to a goal, it is usual for the supporters to kick their cell doors.

Being a sensible boy, my sporting poison is Formula 1. The only Reds I support have a Prancing Horse nailed to the front.

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?

How petty can it get?

We have some activities here that make stuff such as tapestry and wickerwork. Since time immemorial, the goods made have been kept by the cons and usually sent out for family and friends.

No longer, though. Now they have been declared as the property of the prison, which intends to sell them off and trouser the loot. Just how bad are the budget cuts that it comes to this?

Apology from Blog Editor

Something weird has been going on with the line spacing this last week. No matter how many paragraph breaks I put in, I end up with a solid wall of text. I am sorry about this and I am hoping to find a solution soon.

Why I Should Blog

I honestly didn't mean to cause such a fuss by intruding into the public sphere. My hope was, and remains, to provoke debate where there exists only slogans. So far debate has focused around my sheer existence but I hope that as time passes then what I say may overshadow my conviction. Some of the comments left on blogs have been mailed in to me and I am amazed at the variety. I must thank Iain Dale particularly for giving my existence on the web an (equivocal!) nod. From the thoughtful to the plain petty, the whole gamut of wits seems to find a place on the Web. Some comments have touched me, others have repelled me. Perhaps the following will clear up some misconceptions and help form a more informed basis for comments. I don't have direct access to the Net. My blogging is second-hand, being mailed to a friend who posts on my behalf. This may deflate those who ranted about cons having internet access, but then they should have looked at my blog before disgorging their spleen. No sound argument exists without some foundation of information. The legalities of my blogging are perfectly clear and simple, and my keepers have now accepted this fact. Such a pity they tried to stop me at all, but the petty concerns of civil servants are a mysterious realm. The legalities ultimately rest on the concept of 'rights'. This is a red rag to the True Blue, but the law is the law. One of the oddities I found in the comments is that many people argue as if the world were different. "He shouldn't have..." etc. Alas, the law says I can. The question that spears those who obviously detest me is this - many of you claim to vigorously support the law. Why, then, are you not willing to defend my right to blog? You may disagree with my having that right, but as I do, I assume that you support the law? Or is the rule of law a flexible animal, shaped to the individual’s preferences and prejudices? Many comments expressed the view that prisoners should have no rights. I'd like you to pause and consider the effects of that idea. Are prisoners to be beaten? Tortured? Starved? Denied daylight? Denied medical treatment? There is a discussion to be had about the nature, purpose and limits of punishment but that isn't furthered by trite soundbites. Let us have that discussion, from first principles. A later post will discuss the nature of 'rights' in relation to prisoners. For now, we have to work with what is, and my right to blog is a legal certainty that is unavoidable. Some comments were more interested in my biography, as if my personal qualities should determine my right to blog. This can't be proper - even the most repugnant individuals lay claim to the law; they often need it most. Even so, to help move things along, I should say more about myself. The most frequent question is, why have I served so long? The subtext I attribute to this is - am I a violent monster? Relaying the history of my sentence would bore the most assiduous blogger but I can hit the main highlights. The murder was the sole act of violence in my life. The first report stating that I would be unlikely to re-offend dates from 1982. No report has ever stated that I pose a risk to life or limb. If my having served almost 30 years gives the impression that I've been punching and kicking my way into middle age, then I have misled you. The reality is that I am an awkward man, challenging to deal with. My blog posts give you a hint of the mental grinder that my keepers have to navigate. My most potent weapon is the question "why?" Prison has the hallmarks of a totalitarian state, and no dictator easily accepts being questioned. For being a pain in the arse, attributes are thrown upon me. Specifically, if I can't comply with the prison rules, why should it be believed that I will comply with the laws outside? Not that I'm anti authority. I am anti abuse of authority, which in this closed world is rampant. That I challenge the stupidity of my keepers doesn't imply that I will run riot on release but that argument has kept me inside for 20 years past my punishment phase of 10 years. Anyone who is familiar with the management of lifers will recognise the phrase "mushroom management" kept in the dark and fed on shit. This explanation doubtless raises further questions. Some comments question whether I am reformed, remorseful. Both of these will be the subject of future posts. For the moment, I will say that I was shocked that I had killed, and repelled by what I had done. All of my life I will struggle to make meaningful amends for a crime for which there can be no forgiveness. Nonviolence is in my bones. Just because I refuse to take unending crap from those who detest me doesn't mean that I am unremorseful. It just means that I am human. My appreciation of what I have done is deepened by the fact that I too suffer the loss of a member of my family to needless violence. My sister was hit by a distracted, lazy driver. She was left lying in the road with a broken spine; it took being hit by several more cars to finally kill her. The perpetrator of this confessed but was never charged. The pain of her death lives with me and merges in some complex emotional way with the knowledge of what I did to my victim. I understand the visceral anger and hatred that grows in victims of crime, which is why I previously argued that victims should not be allowed to dictate policy. The propriety of my blogging is also affected by my sentence status. As I will explain in other posts, the punishment part of my sentence was 10 years. Low for murder, due to my age. Since then, I am legally detained on the basis that I may pose a risk in future. Given that my punishment has long ended, why should I be denied secondary access to the blogosphere? On what rational basis? My apologies for this being so lengthy. I hope that this is helpful to some people.

I Want a Life of Luxury!

How can a man be in prison but not be being punished? Welcome to the wacky world of the life sentence. My punishment ended 20 years ago. The past couple of decades of imprisonment were not meant to be punitive in any way. Life sentence are split into two parts. The first part is the 'tariff’ - the time to be served as punishment and retribution. In my case, ten years. According to the law, my debt is paid. Since then, 'post-tariff’, detention has been based on what it is believed I might possibly do in the future. It is preventative detention, not punitive. Please understand that I'm not offering an opinion, or throwing this open to debate -I'm stating the factual legal structure of life sentences, like it or not. So why shouldn't I have a TV, PlayStation, and hot-n-cold running women if I so desire? Why can I not have every amenity and luxury that I could afford, as long as it didn't undermine security? Sometimes it may be necessary to detain people after their tariff because they obviously pose a grave public danger. With proper legal safeguards, that may squeeze through the acceptability barrier. Just. But whilst we are being detained on such a basis, shouldn't the detainee be allowed all the amenities of a free man, save those that undermine security?

Murder as an Almighty Fuck-up

Many people believe that the legal definition of murder includes a deliberate intent to kill. This is wrong. All that is required is an intent to cause serious harm, with death resulting. Contrary to the portrayal of murder in the popular culture and media as being a Machiavellian act, deliberate and instrumental, the reality is far different. The overwhelming majority of murders result from emotional and psychological 'blown fuses' - outbursts of anger, jealousy, rage, hate, love, fear or panic. They are 'moments of madness1 and conscious deliberate thought doesn't enter into it. They tend to be an almighty fuck-up and not intended events. These, though, are dull murders. No TV series could be based on the reality of most murders. And so our culture highlights the tiny minority, the serial killers and the conscious plotters. But in doing so, people are led to believe that these people comprise the bulk of the murdering-classes. And this distortion of the reality in the name of entertainment may go a long way to explain why the criminal justice debate is so warped, so out of touch with reality. Sound debate and sound policy flow from an appreciation of things as they really are, rather than the reality offered by the mass media.

Note from the Editor

If any readers of this blog would like to write to Jack Straw to speed up Ben's release, the address is: The Ministry of Justice 102 Petty France London SW1H GAJ. I thought of "Release Ben" t-shirts with the blog address on the back, but a letter might be more effective!

The Hospital Cat

Sometimes, I wonder how an event is written in my file by staff. What seems a perfectly reasonable course of action to us may strike them as quite odd. Landing at a new prison, someone mentioned that there was a cat in the Hospital. I always make it my practice to introduce myself to cats, so off I went. Hammering on the Hospital gate brought the Boss out, with a grumpy "What??" I was very polite; "You have a cat here?" He did. "Let me in, I want to say hello". Without a word, he unlocked the gate and pointed to his office. A large tabby sat on his desk, settled in his in-tray. I stroked her head and she purred, knitting with her claws before laying flat on the paperwork. Then I walked straight out, passed the screw holding the gate open. "Thanks, Guv".

Solzhenitsyn wrote...

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously commiting evil
deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us
and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the
heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of
his own heart? During the life of any heart this
line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by
exhuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good
to flourish...

Wear your poppy with pride

There is some wicked irony in here somewhere. The poppies we wear to
honour our fallen heroes are assembled by, amongst others, sex
offenders in prison.

Political Prisoners

Between being a terrible Home Secretary and being installed as Governor of one of our more amenable Caribbean territories, David Waddington popped along to Westminster to blag a Peerage. Pausing in the House of Lords, he made the remarkable statement that “life sentence prisoners are political prisoners. Their lives are the property of the state." Such was the arrogance and power of the Home Office in 1989 that this declaration raised not a single eyebrow. The British judiciary repeatedly turned its back on us, leaving us utterly in the hands of secret decisions, made via secret processes, by politicians. Since then, the law has risen from its slumber and wrested control of lifers away from the fickle, grubby paws of the Executive. In this sense, we are no longer political prisoners. This does not mean, though, that there are not prisoners who are highly political. I am one of them, and there aren't too many of us. Or if there are, most are keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. Who could blame them? Prison is all about power. It is the sharpest edge of political philosophy, the crucible of all that it means to be a citizen. One of the things that baffles most of my peers is that I find this fascinating. Each day is a perpetual lesson from Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesqueu, Locke, Mill and Machiavelli. I never have understood why my peers are largely indifferent to the meaning of their situation, why they do not begin to wonder about the nature of power, of government and of the individual. It is, surely, a small step to from asking oneself why some order from a screw should be obeyed to asking the far bigger question of by what right is any man given authority over another? What is the basis for their authority? This is where my education and my daily existence intertwined. My first degree being history and politics, as I gained a deeper appreciation of political philosophy then my understanding of my situation became increasingly sophisticated. I suppose that daily life outside obscures the reality of the relationship between the individual and the State. You could go years without bumping into people in uniform whose actions make you question authority. In prison, though, the State parks itself in my doorway several times a day and there is a much clearer link between daily life and the politics and mechanisms of power. How, then, could I not be a political animal? If a man knocks on my door to talk about some conflict with the institution, or to ask about various Rules, how could I possibly turn him away? When a man is facing disciplinary charges, how could I possibly refuse to help him with his defence? And how can I fail to become angry and frustrated at the perpetual stream of stupidities that flow from managers in suits who retain a quiet belief that they are omnipotent in their closed world? Even this blog is a political act. You must conceptualise prisons as totalitarian societies, those with power and those without. In such a situation, the mere feeble act of speaking out and questioning carries some political potency. This is why "they" don't like it one bit; not so much for what I write but for the very fact that I dare to write at all.