Time Travel

Producing the blog, at my end, has taken on hints of time travel.

For the first 18 months I resided in the 1970's, using a word-processor. For the past 6 months I revisited the scholastic Middle Ages - pen and paper.  Today, I have leapt forward to the late 19th century having finally taken possession of a manual typewriter.

I suspect that the average blogger doesn't have this experience!  And this ever shifting technology base has a real effect on my output. Writing by hand meant that the editor had to decipher and type my posts, a dedication that I could only repay by avoiding long posts.

The typewriter will be a great help but I have to wonder if the prison service will ever allow me to use contemporary technology?

Ed's note:this is a great relief as his writing is terrible!  I can now scan what he sends me into Word. A big thank you to the kind blog reader who donated the typewriter. 

Shared Beliefs

My broad view of prison managers is long established.  It was a pleasure, then, to bump into a screw who shared my views.

As he put it, "I'd be a governor but I'd have to walk around with fingers in my ears to stop my brain running out..."

What a Shambles

That most toxic of combinations - media outrage and Government populism - has seen the lifer population leap from 3600 to over 10000.

Given the short-term impulses that led to this situation, the long term consequences were carefully neglected. And this is now biting me in the ass like a starving snapper-turtle.

Given that, at last, the forces that control my life appear to be content that I attain release, a swift move to open prison and a kindly Parole Board next year should have seen me off into the sunset. Alas, the open estate is choked.

With over 10,000 Lifers - easily sentenced, less swiftly released -then the demand for places in Open were inevitably going to be excessive. Our political masters failed to plan for this. The result is that I am stuck: in a queue of over 300 Lifers all competing for a move to open conditions.

The history of the Life sentence, its justification and criminological basis, is lengthy and convoluted. But never before has it come to pass that we can be told that we must remain in prison solely because the narrow path to release is oversubscribed.

Prison Essentials

There are certain core features of what comprises a prison.  Physical security is one of those features.

So, having a man break out of his cell and spend 3 hours in the dark repeatedly attempting to scale the fence unmolested must be a tad embarrassing...?!

Back to the Future

There are times when penology seems to be a perpetual circle, forever revisiting previous ideas, practices or ideologies.

Nearly a century after the crime was viewed as a "disease" - the medical model - that idea was resurrected with a twist in the mid 1990's.  Psychologists infested prisons, tasked with attempting to cure us of our criminogenic ways of thinking. Fifteen years later and hundreds of millions of £'s spent and the utility of this effort is still debated.

There was one immediate effect, though.  The provision of trade courses - bricklaying, painting, etc collapsed.  Across the whole prison system, the rehabilitative eggs were placed solely in the psychologist's basket and other avenues to shift us away from crime were neglected.

However, a conversation with the Governor today revealed that he is reinstating trade training at this prison.  It is rare for me to be able to report a positive development, but this is one.

If a prisoner wished to attempt to create a life away from crime, no psychological course or basic skills certificate is going to help.  And in a society where employing an ex-con is bottom of everyone's list of priorities, providing prisoners with the skills to enable them to earn a living for and by themselves is a good thing.

Quite where the Gov found the investment to resurrect these training courses is a mystery to me. Prisons are as poverty stricken as the rest of the nation.  To return to old practices is a bold move in these circumstances.

One final thought though.  It would be a perfect adjunct to those trade courses if the participants were also offered a course on how to start a business.  In this way, cons are liberated from anti-prisoner attitudes in their future employment.  Their future will be in their own hands - and that is real freedom.

Endless Struggle

The official criteria for priority to move to Open Prison is whether one is over tariff, and how long one has been waiting for the move.

As I'm 21 years over tariff and have now been waiting a full year for the transfer, I'd like to think that I've been put near the top of the list.

Hmmm...

A Miracle!

How is it that all murder victims are apparently incredibly wonderful human beings?

I find it a tad odd, a statistical anomaly, that no assholes ever seem to get murdered.

Non-Punishment Block

Oddly, it is not unusual that no-one held in this Block is actually serving a term of punishment.

There are several routes to end up down here, and the least common is to be punished.  Overwhelmingly, people filling up the cells are either hiding on Rule 45 - own protection -  or have been isolated for reasons of Good Order and Discipline.  That is, it is believed they are up to something but the evidence isn't sufficient for a formal charge.

Despite this, the Block runs what is officially termed a "restricted regime".  Everyone lives in bare cells, denied their privileges and locked up for over 23 hours a day.

The sign outside may now read "Care and Separation Unit", but the reality is that this is not intended to be a refugee unit or interrogation centre.  It reflects a very fuzzy thinking on the part of the prison service as to how to deal with the varied needs of people and a failure to even contemplate the nature of punishment itself.

States of Denial

There is a group of prisoners who labour under the weight of a special acronym - IDOM.  This is bureaucrat jargon for those Lifers who protest their innocence.  IDOM means "In Denial of Murder", and it is a ticket to a difficult and lengthy sentence.

Denial works both ways, and the criminal justice system has a long and disreputable history in this regard.

Consider the numbers; some 85,000 people in prison.  If the criminal justice system has achieved the improbable level of being 95% perfect that would mean there are over 4,000 innocent people in prison.

Just who is in denial here?

Self Loathing

You could reasonably assume that murderers are broadly against capital punishment.  And you'd be right.

But on occasion I bump into a fellow Lifer whose views are worse than a Daily Mail editorial.  These people give a glimpse into that taboo area - the suffering that murderers endure because of the crime they committed.  Such emotional twists and turns are hardly welcomed in the public discourse which prefers to portray us as monochrome monsters.  Sadly, it is also an area that prison staff, such as psychologists, run away from in horror.

These emotional convolutions can express themselves in incredible depths of self-loathing, to the degree that some Lifers support a return to executions.

Whilst I empathise with their distress, I'd prefer they pick an avenue to pursue that doesn't involve those of us who prefer to remain alive!

Eureka

Courtesy of the canteen facilities in the visits room, I have discovered the joys of "cheesy chips".  You guessed it - fries sprinkled with grated cheese!

What else have I been missing??

Barrack-Room Lawyers

Barrack-room Lawyers (BRL) must surely be distinguished from Jailhouse Lawyers (JHL) who comprise an honoured and dedicated collective.

For me, a BRL is often just a pain, an embarrassment.  It is a prisoner who is forever bleating that something or other is "agaisnt human rights".  But, in constrast to the JHL, the BRL is a prisoner who has rarely even read the ECHR and whose only use for The Times Law Reports is as material for an emergency cigarette paper.

The BRL may have a dim but certain realisation that "rights" do exist, and he shares with the JHL the knowledge that the law does not stop at the prison gates.  But that is the extent of the common ground.  The BRL does, if anything, make the life of JHL more difficult on the prison landings.  By being unable to add legal substance to his vague assertions, the BRL diminishes the weight of the rules, the law, in the eyes of prison staff.

Prison regulations and the legal context within which they sit are complex and ever-shifting.  They are not shallow waters in which to paddle on a whim, rather they are a deep pool into which the earnest prisoner must immerse himself.

The Law can be a keen-edged weapon.  Misuse it, deploy it ineptly, and you dull its edge to the detriment of the next prisoner who wields it.

Death of the IPP

The last Government's poisonous legacy to penology, the Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection, is finally to be buried.

Alas, the thousands of people in prison because of it can't jump for joy yet.  The Government still lacks the decency to resurrect those suffering this stupid and wicked sentence back into freedom.

This is only half a job done.  The fight to truly expunge this disastrous sentence and its effects must continue.

Rumours of Rumours

One of the odd and unsettling aspects of the local culture is the seemingly infinite willingness of a lot of prisoners to spread gossip and repeat private conversations.  In such a captive, introverted community such indiscretion can be a recipe for trouble.

I find this strange.  As a political and legal activist I am used to having conversations that remain private.  Finding myself in a situation where everything that's said is repeated out on the landing is disturbing.

Even so, I shall try to maintain my practice based on Chatham House rules - whatever is said in my cell should damn well stay there.