The Introductions

I have now began working outside of the nick four days a week and as previously promised I won't be telling you precisely where or for whom. Let's just say that for four days a week I am working in the charity retail sector somewhere in England.

The initial introductions were mercifully brief- "this is John..." - ah, dammit, I failed to firmly squash that in favour of Ben, so now the number of people who know me as John has tripled at a stroke. It will take some getting used to, having only three people previously calling me John in decades.

I have nothing against "John", there is nothing inherent in the name that offends me. And yet it feels like a name that belongs to someone else, a label from a previous existence that I left behind many, many years ago. "Ben" arose out of the ashes of my teenage years where I sported a fearsome beard and attitude. It is quite probable that this was a staff invention, "Treasure Island" not being a popular perennial on the landings.

And it seemed to fit, and seemed to stick. My attitude to it had no impact. The only advantage I saw at the time was that it stalled any staff who wished to imply that we were on a first name basis; my pseudonym allowed for the impression of a pseudo relationship. I seemed to grow into it, and Ben is who I forever became.

Now, as The End is Nigh, I really should give some consideration to my future identity. The part of the world who gives a hoot knows me as Ben Gunn. My official paperwork knows me as John Gunn. Actually, I have to add the caveat that I discovered Legal Aid for changing names by Deed Poll as a teen and had a brief existence as, would you believe, Mokurai Yoritomo... mostly because it used to piss off the Censor as he tried to work out who the hell that was.

Outside of the prison system, though, I am the Man With No Name. Not only do I not possess my National Insurance Number but one doesn't exist to give me. I am a tabula rasa for the whole raft of Government agencies who, soon, I will have to persuade of my existence.

And at this point I could formally change my name. I could quietly cease writing and drift out into the world in a completely new and unknown guise. I've always fancied trying Arbuthnot Aloysius Fotherington-Smythe.

My Life

Is it all about challenging power for me? Is that the infinite drive which powers my activity? Or could it be that my drive is actually to try and change whatever small corner of the world in which I live; which, being prison, inevitably then involves challenging power?

What does this mean for me after release?

A Revelation

Working in the charity shop means that I am handling clothes like never before. I joke that I've never had my hands up so many skirts. And the vast differences between men's and women's clothing have led to the following theory.

That is, clothing reflects the nature of genitalia. Women's clothing is ornate, even the simplest of garments made more complicated by folds, frills and pleats. Men's clothing is straightforward and rather simple.

Just a thought. And I don't know where transsexuals fit into this theory yet...

Blending In

Aeons ago, just after my Zen Tukai Jokudo ordination, I was having a fierce argument in a corridor with a

governor about whether I could wear my token kesa. This is a token robe, essentially a two inch strip of

black cloth worn hanging from the neck. The Gov wasn't having any of it, even if I wore it beneath my

clothes.

"It will make you stand out!", and he wasn't having such flamboyance perturb his uniformity. As he spoke, a Sikh walked past, sporting the most fluorescent yellow turban in the land. The governor and I stared at each other in the unspoken common knowledge that we had both seen this apparition and it made utter nonsense of the Gov's declaration.

I'll give him his due. He didn't bat an eyelid. Or retreat a single inch. It is this level of shamelessness in the face of reality that is the hallmark of the modern prison manager.

Shadows and Echoes

How long after release will seemingly normal activities be overshadowed by the meanings given to them by my prison life?

On home leave I could have gone to the cinema but the instant the Editor raised the suggestion I felt a great resistance. It swiftly dawned on me why. It is because communal screen-watching in prison, exemplified by the old TV rooms, were not only places for shared activity. Oh no; the darkness gave rise to sudden attacks by blade or boiling water as well as a chance to watch EastEnders.

It was this distant memory of darkened rooms being a source of potential danger that rose from my guts at the thought of going to the cinema.

And that makes me ponder the insidious effects of imprisonment, and wonder what other unexpected shadows may rise from within in the future?

Another Basic Point

What change in the individual, what socially acceptable outcome, do we want prison to provide? It is simple enough to cry that prison should be for punishment, but that is to jump ahead of the thought process - what is the purpose of that punishment? Just what process do we want to occur behind the high walls that lurk, unnoticed, in so many cities?

To punish is obviously a legitimate purpose, at least if the aim of that punishment was socially positive. Or do we want to hurt our fellow Man in a blind spasm of revenge for the offence he committed against us? Do we want to inflict punishment solely as an end in itself? Or do we endow that punishment with a purpose, be it reformatory, rehabilitative, or transformative?

Punishment for its own sake, a socially agreed and rather more sophisticated version of a childlike "he hit me so I hit him back" is, I contend, unworthy of us as adult human beings and as a society.

If we must inflict suffering on fellow Men, let that suffering have some legitimate social purpose in its agenda. Hurting in retaliation merely gives us temporary satisfaction and that obscures the fact that such hurt may actually cause more social harm, harm that far outweighs the original transgression.

If you are persuaded by this line of reasoning, then we find ourselves in deeply difficult territory. What is it that we want punishment to do? If we want imprisonment to do more than be painful or destructive (to both the prisoner and society) then we need to find some positive purpose within it.

At the basest level, it is oft claimed that throwing a crim into the slammer puts a brake upon his ability to commit crime. Senior politicians of all parties will cheerfully make this wild claim and I cannot stress strongly enough that it is a lie. Not a malicious lie, granted, more based in ignorance than malice, but it is a lie even so.

The crime rates within prison are astonishingly high. In fairness, this reality takes some effort to uncover as figures are not collected for "crimes committed in prison". The truth of the matter is dispersed across several sources of information beginning with disciplinary proceedings. Some of these are analogous to crimes, some are purely prison offences. Other sources include medical data (for head injuries in particular) and survey data from researchers and the Inspectorate. The sum total of knowledge, then, about crime rates in prison is quite weighty. Amongst other matters, it reveals that young prisoners - under 18 - have a 1 in 10 chance of being assaulted each and every month.

Putting criminals in prison does not cut crime, it displaces it. So what, you may cry? These are just crims after all, it is their just deserts to become victims themselves. As a populist, late night in the pub reaction I will give that space. As a serious point, though, I have only on response. And that is to beg you to be cautious of a principle which reduces the right of people with criminal records to live free from fear of crime. With several millions of people convicted of motoring offences - yes, crimes one and all - then the chances are you could be inviting the local burglar into your home. After all, you criminal, its only what you deserve isn't it...?

If reducing crime is not one of prison's strongest claims to positivity, then what else can be offered? To what end do we subject people to incarceration? Do we want to reform people, to turn them away from crime? Or do we not care about the results, all that we really desire is the satisfaction from comes from hurting those who hurt us?

Are we really that stupid?

A Basic Point

Any discussion about imprisonment, if it is to avoid the descent into blather, has to be rooted in some firm conceptual soil. Need I say, it just isn't?

Perhaps we should return to address the core issue - what is the purpose of imprisonment? Just what is it that society - including criminals and victims - wants to happen through the use of imprisonment?

Oh, I know there are the textbook responses to this question. Prison is meant to punish, to rehabilitate and act as a deterrent.  We resolutely avoid the difficult issues, though, leaving prison as a dumping ground for the wasters as well as the wicked, a non-optional refuge for the dispossessed, the desperate and the mentally ill. If we designed the system from scratch, according to firmly rooted principles, I'm sure that we would not happily accept the result if it mirrored the present situation.

This is absurd, and an indictment on all of those who pipe up about prison in public but who wilfully shy away from grappling with harsh truths. The first, for me, is to accept that imprisonment often causes more social damage than the crime the prisoner committed.

Prison eagerly grasps the miscreant and locks him away from societies disinterested gaze. That is not contested or denied. What is deliberately avoided are the secondary consequences of this. The prisoner will lose his job. He may lose his home, his wife and his children. At the end of his sentence, having being stripped of all that brought meaning to his existence, he is then vomited back into a hostile society with a few quid and a plastic sack of belongings helpfully emblazoned "HM Prison Service".

Is this what we want or expect from the use of prison? If a judge stood in the dock and actually read out the full breadth of the consequences of a prison sentence, would we at last begin to wonder if that cost was disproportionate to the crime committed. And wonder if there was not some more sensible response to crime.

The Magazine

Through sweat and tears I have produced four different editions of the prison magazine. Each version attempts to match the censoring demands of management. Despite my unusually compliant attitude to this, not a single one has yet been allowed to move into print.

I have never, ever, faced such a level of touchiness or censorship during all my years of involvement with prison magazines.

My bet is that, should I be released in a couple of months, I will have been the editor of a prison magazine which never actually gets printed!

War Games

For most of my sentence I have taken it as being a failure of sorts on my part if the Governor doesn't know my name within days of arriving. I like being a big blob on management Radar.

A new approach has had to be developed here, where the overwhelming aim is to gain release in a very short space of time. This is also to recognise the exceptionally twitchy outlook of many staff and managers, who believe that the best way to deal with anything is to issue an IEP Warning. God forbid they deign to sort out a problem by that evolutionary miracle, the power of speech.

Habitual tugging of management's tail, then, has been relegated to being almost non-existent (blogging excepted...). The game isn't worth the penalties, and release is way more important than my choices of entertainment.

The name of the game here, at this point in time, is to stay as far off the Radar as is possible, to slide through the resettlement process without a murmur or wave of perturbation, leaving not so much as a damp footprint in the wet sand that comprises management’s consciousness.

Obviously there is my reputation to consider. The idea that I could pass through this nick without anyone noticing is a futile one; especially as the prison’s magazine editor. Being a vocal little bugger doesn't quite square with anonymity.

The best that I could hope for in these circumstances was to appear on the Radar for the right reasons. "Right" in this context meaning positive and cooperative. Or, at the very least, not being a pain in the arse. It seems to be working.

Challenging Perceptions

A boy goes to prison at the age of 14. He serves 32 years.


Let's be honest, there is a large constituency, both professional and lay, that would look at that background and have very serious doubts as to the now middle age man's ability to function in society. I chuckle - now - at the reports in my file where Governors baldly state that my ambitions to go to university and get married were "highly unrealistic". At the time I tried to explain how incredibly stupid such a view was.

Yet here we are, faced with the reality that I can bumble about in the world, sans supervision, both in the local town and at home without any discernable problem whatsoever.

Any explanation for this blatant challenge to the myth of "institutionalisation" gratefully received.

Paranoia

A curse that disproportionately afflicts Lifers, where we can all too easily connect diverse events and see a malign pattern of decisions or events amongst our keepers - aimed at us. This is mostly the result of an absence of information, an outgrowth of powerlessness.

But the day after I arrived I went to pick up a letter. Before I'd even reached for my ID card, the screw in charge said, "Here you are, Mr Gunn."

In a nick with a population of over 500 and mere hours after arrival, the mail screw knew my name and my face. Worrying.

Consumer Rights

There are many avenues that are available to Governors who are struggling to deal with an awkward prisoner. One is to transfer them, to make them someone else's problem. That sounds a little cowardly, but there you go.

There was a period of some 15 years where I didn't pack my own kit for a transfer. Rather than being regular transfers, each move in this period was an official kidnapping where staff hoiked me away and then packed and sent on my property. Sometimes they didn't even trash it first.

Few men moved in such circumstances arrive at their destination with a sunny disposition. No problem has been resolved, merely transposed to a different prison. And in order to arrange such moves, it wasn't unknown for the Governor desperate to get shot of a pain in the arse to lie to those prisons he was attempting to sell the prisoner to. "He's not that bad...".

The introduction of a new computer system, P-NOMIS, has put a dent in this transfer market. Rather than staff writing comments on a prisoners file - an actual paper file - this information is now entered into P-NOMIS. And data on P-NOMIS can be accessed by other prisons. This severely limits the extent to which a Governor can lie about any prisoner in order to dump them onto his colleagues.

Even when the lies succeed, there is the fallback position of a con being sent "sale or return". The prisoner is accepted by another prison on the understanding that if he is too large a problem then he can be returned to the original nick.

The first time this happened to me, I was mildly outraged. After all, even my worst enemies would grant me the status of "human being" and being treated like a pair of Marks and Spencer underpants added to my sour disposition.

Still, if I was unhappy then you can imagine how the Governor felt. Having got rid of me once, I returned a short while later, twice as annoyed. Happy days.

The Smoking Ban

Having stopped us from smoking outside, I took a few moments to read the full Smoking Policy. Such waffle is truly the domain only of prison nerds like myself.

It was interesting to see the differential between ourselves and staff in this document. If staff are caught smoking, his is to be dealt with "informally" in the first instance. If we are caught smoking, we are hit with an IEP warning.

Equally, under the heading of "Consultation", the policy explains just how staff and their unions were involved in discussions over this policy. The word "prisoner" is completely absent.

But then, we only make up 95% of the population of the prison, so why should any manager give a crap what we have to say?

Butlins

The issue of the privileges that we are afforded in prison is one of the favourite bugbears of the wittering classes, who latch onto the existence of TV's and pool tables as if these items held the secret to a successful prison policy.

What is completely overlooked is that privileges don't exist to smooth off the rough edges of incarceration. Privileges, since 1995, exist solely in a framework whose explicit purpose is to enhance control over our daily lives.

There is no part of a prisoner's life, no matter how small, which escapes the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme. Privileges ceased being a positive and instantly became a burden, a thread of control that is viciously insidious and unjust.