Speech given to the Birmingham Medico - Legal Society

  

               I know not whether Laws be right

Or whether Laws be wrong.

All that we know who lie in gaol

Is that the wall is strong;

And that each day is like a year,

A year whose days are long.

But this I know that every Law

That man hath made for Man,

Since first Man took his brother’s life,

And the sad world began,

But straws the wheat and saves the chaff

With a most evil fan.

This too I know – and wise it were

If each could know the same-

That every prison that men build

Is built with bricks of shame,

And bound with bars lest Christ should see

How men their brothers maim.

For those of you who are not familiar with those stanzas, they come from Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Jail. I shall, no doubt, refer to Wilde throughout this talk as he is my literary hero. A man, whose De Profundis Letter, turned my life around.

In any event.

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen,

My name is Michael Campbell and I work in the area of the prevention of self-harm and suicide in custodial settings across the UK.

Thank you for inviting me here to talk to you about the state of prisons in the United Kingdom. I am known to interject humour in my talks but with this subject, don’t be holding your breath.

I am not going to speak for long, so hopefully there won’t be much time for you to fall asleep but if you do can I ask that you try to keep your snoring to a minimum as it interrupts me and wakes the others up! Seriously though, I am going to keep this as brief as I can , as I  am sure you will find my answering your questions far more interesting than just listening to my dulcet tones.

I could make this the quickest of speeches by standing up and saying, “The state of our prisons is that they are nothing less than disgraceful, inhumane, cruel and degrading for all that work and reside in them.” And then sit down and allow you to get on with your night. Whilst that statement is true but  if you would permit me, I would like to delve a bit further into it.

Look I could go off topic slightly here and ask what is the purpose of prison? Why do we put people into such dangerous, inhumane, and degrading places? Is it to keep society safe? Well, if so, can someone then tell me, for the love of God, what was so dangerous about the two women that I met in a female prison who had been remanded to custody for not paying the fine that came with the non-payment of a television licence? How about telling me what was so dangerous about the 68 yr. old lady with Alzheimer’s that had been remanded for stealing more than £100 of food from a local supermarket? Or the countless amount of people that I have met who were remanded to prison as a place of safety by their local magistrate.  We must imprison those who we are scared of not those who we are angry with.

For those of you that have not read the Penrose hypothesis that concludes that there is a direct correlation between the closure of mental health wards and the increase in our prison population I urge you to do so.

Look I could go on about the state of mental health of prisoners in prisons, but the statistics may upset you. However, please do bear in mind that as I discuss the state of prisons in our nation that over 60% of male prisoners have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder and this has a direct effect with regards to the state of our prisons. I have often visited prisons that have felt less of a place of rehabilitation but more than that of a large mental health hospital warehousing our fellow citizens until it can turf them back onto the street.

I work in prisons both north and south of the border. I work in both the private and public sectors. I have no allegiance to either. I work FOR the men and women who are “behind the door”, it is to them that I answer. My job is to ensure that they are treated with decency and kept safe.

So, it is on safety and mental health that I can speak with authority due to my work today. The other subject on which I can speak with great authority is what goes on in prison. I can do that because I have been a prisoner. Now just to get that out there, yes I have “lived experience” – although if you use that phrase again, I promise to hunt you down – it’s a terrible label to give someone. I am an ex-prisoner and proud to be such.

To quote the wonderful Oscar Wilde (see I warned you I would refer to him again) – “Of course I side with the prisoners; I was one and I belong to their class now. I am not a scrap ashamed of having been in prison. I am horribly ashamed of the materialism that brought me there.”

Added to that he says

“The fact of my having been a prisoner, I must frankly accept, and curious as it may seem to you, one of the things I shall have to teach myself is not to be ashamed of it. I must accept it as a punishment and if one is ashamed of being punished one might as well never have been punished at all.”  He goes onto to say “I am advised by others to try on my release to forget that I have ever been in a prison. I know that would be fatal. To reject one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life”

I could not have put it better.

With that in mind, I hope you will agree with me when I say that I have every right to talk you this evening on the state of prisons. I talk to you from both sides of the door.

We incarcerate more people per capita than any other country in modern Europe (by that I exclude for former eastern block). We fair slightly better compared to Serbia, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, and Slovakia. However, we fair worse against the EU average and the Ukraine, Romania, and Croatia.

Our prison population in England and Wales as of last week was 87,216 souls. The operational limit is 88,987. Which means our prisons are 98% full.

10 prisons in England are operating at over 140% of their certified operating capacity numbers (with the worst being HMP Durham running at 167%).

When it comes to self-harm and suicide, the statistics do not get any better

To year ending December 2023 there were 93 people that took their own lives whilst resident in our prisons in England & Wales. In the year to September 2023 there were nearly 68,000 incidents of self-harm and that is an increase from the previous year. In the female estate the woman who self-harms does so an average of 11 times and 2023 figures show that per 1000 prisoners those incidents have almost doubled. That’s an increase of 11% increase in the male estate and a depressing 38% increase in the female estate

Now put all of this into old decrepit Victorian buildings, some with no in-cell sanitation, and you do not need my standing here to tell you about the state of our prisons. Don a deer stalker, get a pipe and do your best sherlock Holmes impression and you will discover for the dire state for yourselves.

The majority of prisons in the estate are not fit for purpose. They are run on shoestring budgets and therefore have buildings that are decrepit and never repaired. I still remember waiting 9 months for a new light bulb.

There is no money set aside for training prisoners in new vocations, no money for educating those who wish to be educated. Hell, when the budget to feed a prisoner is just north of £3.00 per day what chance have we got for anything else?

Therefore, we must assume that prisons are purely warehouses. Warehousing those whom society would rather forget. Those who have transgressed our society’s laws so severely that they must be removed from it for a duration of our pleasure. I refer you to the three ladies I mentioned earlier. Desperately, dangerous women were they not? There are dangerous people in prison, let us not fool ourselves. People who have been convicted of atrocious crimes against society. However, unless they have been given a whole life order (that’s about 70 out of the 87,216 figure that I mentioned a minute ago) they will be released back into society at some point. In other words, out of the 87,216 people in prison today 87,146 of them will be released. Warehouse them, cage them and treat them like animals and what do you expect we will get upon release? How’s your neighbour looking right now, people? Just wait a bit as one of that number could be moving next door to you.

 Prisons must be places of decency. Places where people can feel safe. Places where if the prisoner wants to change his life around, he is given the tools with which to help him. Prisons must not be places where cockroaches run free, where staff abuse prisoners, where blood seeps through the cracks in the wall or where body bags fill the hearses waiting at the gate.

Many of the prisons that I know of should have Dante’s signage of “Abandon hope all ye who enter” above its front gate and a revolving door at the entrance. Prisons should indeed be places of hope not places of despair. The sentence is the punishment, one is not to be punished whilst there. I remember talking to a woman who had just arrived at one of the prisons in which I work. She said to me that she thought her life had ended the day she arrived at prison. I replied that I thought the opposite was true; That her life had begun when she had to come to prison as all the stuff that had caused her anguish was now dealt with and she could use the time to decide what to do with her life after prison and once she had made that decision, we would help her. You see it’s the same thing – just different ways of seeing it. Luckily enough the prison in which she found herself had the capability to do just that. Many do not.

Not only are prisons overcrowded but they are chronically understaffed. Prison officers are indeed some of the hidden heroes of society. They are disciplinarians, parental figures, psychiatrists all rolled into one and we just don’t have enough of them. We pay them a pittance, work them to the bone & don’t allow them to raise grievances through striking, but we don’t declare them to be essential workers (unless there is a pandemic, of course). We don’t train them properly. We employ 21 / 22 yr. olds, stick them on a course for 9 weeks (half of which is spent on how to restrain a prisoner) and expect them to be able to handle the stresses of violent, dangerous and above all sad environments. Compare that to colleagues in Norway who undergo a 2 year training program to become a prison officer and then compare that to their incarceration rate which is less than half of ours. I wonder which works better.

Who’s fault is the state of our prisons? One could argue it is the government’s. But that would be an easy way out. Successive governments from both sides of the house have refused to increase budgets on prisons. Let us not forget that it was Labour who brought in that horrible sentence of Indefinite for Public Protection (IPPP).

Let me give you a couple of examples of the places that we put those whom society would rather forget:

Back to my old friend Wilde who wrote in 1898 to the editor of the daily chronicle that

“there are 3 punishments allowed under law in our prisons:

1.     1. Insomnia

2.     2. Disease

3.     3. Starvation

Today some 126 years later:

1.     Try sleeping on a mattress no thicker than 2 inches – Insomnia

2.     Prisoners are forced to eat 2 feet away from an open toilet – Disease

3.     The budget today is just over £3 per day to feed a prisoner – Starvation 

I ask you, what has changed ?

Another example is that Wandsworth was built in 1855. It was built to be a house of reform. A place of decency, a place where prisoners could learn a trade, live in decent and safe surroundings. It was built with in-cell sanitation. It was built for single cell occupancy. Sounds decent, right?

Well, the residents of SW18,  were so appalled that prisoners were living in decent surroundings that HMP Wandsworth was forced to tear out the toilets and give the men buckets in which to defecate. Today the prison operates at 164% of its certified operating capacity.

And there are currently over 600 cells in the country that have no in-cell sanitation:

I could go on and on about the state of prisons in the UK. But some of you need to get to work tomorrow and the rest of you need to wake up.

So, I am going to end with the statement that “the state of our prisons will not get better until society wants them to”.

I am sorry that you may have found this talk to be rather disconcerting but it’s a serious situation that will only get worse unless we shout about it and I beg you to do so.

 If anyone wants to ask me anything whether that be about my work or this subject. please feel free to do so.

Thank you for your time.

An Audio version of the speech can be found here

(The statistics I mention about self-harm can be found here )

The Fourth Estate - Should it print the truth ?

 

Hello! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

Some of you who follow me on twitter will know that I had a small tumble recently and that has laid me up for the last few months. I would love to tell you that I was scaling a burning building to save a poor distressed animal from an incendiary sticky ending. Regrettably, I cannot. Shall we just leave it that the centre of the earth decided to pull me towards it at great speed? In essence, I fell into a pothole and ended up breaking my ankle, fractured a few bones in my foot and bashed my nose. My modelling career is over before it started!

Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here but, there are a couple of things that I want to get off my chest. As is my wont!

Firstly, is the recent flurry of press releases surrounding the opening of HMP Five Wells. The attendance of the Secretary of State last week has created a huge amount of column inches in both local and national press, not forgetting the MOJ’s own press release which can be found by clicking here.

What amazes me is not only the massive factual inaccuracies in every one of the articles, but my astonishment at the “journalists” that report such salacious articles, whose only reason to report is to inflame the readers.  I think the Daily Mail’s headline of “Inside HMP Woke” is not only pathetic and damaging to public perception but it is just bad journalism.

So let me just put a few things straight.

• The prison is not run by Her Majesty’s Prison & Probation service as a member of the Ministry of Justice was quoted to say when she said “a really proud moment for HMPPS”; rather it is run under a contract by a private operator; G4S. This was awarded to them after a long, drawn-out bidding process that will have included bids from all other private operators in the UK. Now before some of you start decrying that the running of our prisons should be run by the state; part of me agrees with you. I do not believe that all prisons should be private, nor do I believe that all should be public. However, as someone who has been resident in both private and publicly run prisons, hold your horses there! Private prisons have a decent track record in the UK. Yes, we can recall the issues surrounding HMP Birmingham but that was one prison out of 16. Private prisons do not appear anywhere in the bottom 50% of prisons when it comes to safety statistics. Added to this is that HMP Five Well has a controller’s team (these are people employed by HMPPS to ensure that they adhere to the contract). I have had the pleasure of knowing the controller, now situated, at Five Wells for a few years and I know that she will be keeping her eye on the prison.
• The media will tell you that there are no bars on the windows. This is worded in such a way to make you think the prisoners can just open their windows and make their merry way to freedom. WRONG! The windows don’t open. There is a small air vent to the right of the window, covered by a grill, that will allow fresh air in.
• The media again reports that the staff will use “room” instead of cell. Whoop de bloody do!! It’s a cell to a prisoner and you will find that the people arriving at the prison will refer to it as such. If there isn’t a handle on the inside, it’s a cell.
• The media says that a new way of calling prisoners “residents” will be introduced. This is not new, most of the private sector prisons have been calling their resident residents for years. Added to that there was once a governor at HMP Berwyn (a public) prison that started doing this back in 2017. Those of you who sound off on this as “too cushy” need to move on. There are bigger fish to fry. Oh, and here’s the thing, I will let you into a wee secret here; we, as prisoners couldn’t give a rat’s a^^e what you call us whilst we are inside. Although the name “con” does kind of stick in our throats (I feel the irony given my pseudonym).
• Oh, and WOW! It will have pool tables, table tennis tables and a gym. STOP the press! This is so very innovative…. Oh, wait there have been pool tables, table tennis tables and gyms in prisons for possibly the last 30 years. This isn’t new!
• The Daily Telegraph goes so far to say that The Governor has been renamed the director. Bollocks! (Sorry for the sweary word but I really am getting quite annoyed here!) Private Sector prisons have always named their people in charge as Directors (That shoddy article can be found here. It’s behind a paywall; save your money for something that really matters).
• They call Five Wells a “super” prison. Och move on, the fourth estate!

What shocked me to the core was the statement by Mr Raab that “prisons must punish.” Absolute tripe! The loss of liberty is the punishment. We do not carry out corporal punishment anymore. He would do well to remember that.

Look ! It’s simple, most if not all of the new residents (see what I did there?) at Five Wells will be released one day. Indeed, they could be your next-door neighbour. Do you want them locked up like caged animals for 23 hours a day and then have them released them back into society? What do you think will happen?

If we can give them a trade AND somewhere to live (more on that later), then we will help them on the road to being productive members of society. It really is that simple.

Think of this, if it was a member of your family that was in custody then how would you want them to be treated? Before you say, “well that just wouldn’t happen as none of my family would ever break a law”, know this, most of the people that I have had the honour of meeting in prison are there for a rash 5-minute decision, whether that be through a moment of bad temper or to feed an addiction. If we can help them realise this and realise that the world can be a decent place, then surely, we have a moral obligation to do so.

One last thing on HMP Five Wells, the director is one of the most decent, empathetic individuals I have ever met. John McLaughlin runs his jails well and wants to give everyone under his custody a second chance in life. Yes, there will be some people resident in his jail who will try to break the rules (as there is in any community) and I have no doubt that they will find that he suffers no fools.

Ok, that’s that then. What else has irked me recently?

We come back to the Daily Telegraph again with this wonderful headline:

Belmarsh inmates invited to advise governor on improving prison’s ‘sense of community’

The sub header is:

Community of equals approach’ at high-security jail for Britain’s most notorious criminals will ‘baffle the public’, say opponents

I haven’t been able to see anywhere in the article where these “opponents” are quoted. They do mention a man with whom I often disagree, but respect enormously, Ian Acheson. However, knowing Ian as I do, I can with a modicum of certainty say that Ian’s quotes have been taken out of context. Ian well knows that a prison would not be “ceding more and more power to prisoners” under any circumstances by consulting with them.

What this article refers to is something called prisoner councils. These have been around in our prisons for 30 + years and again are nothing new. So why use the salacious headline?

 Remember this, the staff to prisoner ratio in most jails, when fully staffed is 1:30. This means that the staff are drastically outnumbered. Does the name General Custer ring a bell?  Our prison staff are not armed with anything more than a baton (well, some have an incapacitant spray – not going into that here). There is an often-misquoted phrase that when used in error states, “prisons run with the consent of prisoners.” That quote is wrong as prisoners don’t consent to be there. What it should say is that “Prisons run with the ASSENT of prisoners.” That is to say, the prisoners’ assent to be there and if you treat them decently and keep them safe, they will allow the rules to be enforced.

Move on Daily Telegraph, move on.

I think the media grossly underestimate the intelligence and empathy of the public. Look, as I have said before, I am not abolitionist. I believe in the need for prisons. There are some people that are so very dangerous that they need to be removed from society. But I do not believe for one minute that is the case for all 80,000 people who are locked behind doors of which they cannot get out; as I type this.

I also believe that prisons can help people to get on the road to being a better member of society. I am one of them. I left my prison cell a better person than entered it. Did the prison rehabilitate me? No, it did not, but the people within it; both staff and prisoner alike, gave me the faith to realise that I could be a better human being.

What annoys me is the media. The media who will taint every man, woman, and child behind bars as scurrilous individuals and “sine die” them for eternity.

Look, to quote my literary here (O. Wilde) from his wonderful De Profundis;

“Society takes it upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishments on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done.”

Regrettably the media do nothing other than to attempt to inflame the public’s opinion on those who are less fortunate than they.  My dear readers you would do well to read any article written or broadcast about prisons with a pinch of salt. I give you this invitation; if there is anything you want to know about our prisons, reach out to someone who knows. Whether that be me or someone more knowledgeable than I, please do so. We may not always agree but at least you will be in possession of the facts, not the fiction that I have read over the last few weeks.

Ok, I am about to shut up, I promise, but let me have just a few minutes more of your time.

The last thing that had me reaching for my brandy (well, I don’t drink but you get the intention) was an article written by Danny Shaw, he previously of the BBC, in his blog titled “Street talk”. (A link can be found here).

Danny writes that he has had sight of a document issued by the Ministry of Justice that runs to 44 pages entitled “Prepare for your future: Empower yourself for release.” Although I have not had sight of this, I have known Danny for a few years and have no reason not to accept what he says is contained in that booklet.

It, allegedly, contains a section headed “Accommodation “and “practical tips” for those who are to be released homeless. It talks about picking a building or outside spot. It gives “handy” tips on finding some cardboard, newspaper etc to keep warm (perhaps they could use those newspapers that I have quoted from in this article as that is all they are good for!) and recommends that “if you look clean, you might find it easier to use toilets in restaurants or department stores”. You should also “smell like you are not homeless.”

To use an acronym that the young ‘uns use a lot these days “WTF?”

If this is not an admittance of failure, then I know not what is. Listen, people, it’s quite clear, we should not be releasing anyone from prison, homeless. Plain and simple. Not only will it reduce the rate of reoffending that every government pledges in their manifestos to do, but it is the decent and right thing to do.

When society decided to remove a person from it and lock them up, it at some point says that the person is free to re-join it. Yet it does nothing to help that person back into its fold.

To follow on from that quote from dear old Oscar:

“When the man’s punishment is over, it leaves him to himself: that is to say it abandons him at the very moment when its highest duty towards him begins. It is really ashamed of its own actions and shuns those whom it has punished, as people shun a creditor whose debt they can not pay or one on whom they have inflicted an irreparable, an irredeemable wrong.”

I applaud all the wonderful organisations out there who work with former prisoners on gaining meaningful employment upon release. I really do. But there is one thing that, in my opinion, is far more important. That is; give them a roof over their heads. The problem is that local housing associations don’t want to talk with the probation service or the prison service. Society doesn’t want to talk about those who have transgressed its rules and it’s like there is almost a blanket ban on understanding that to reduce crime and reduce recidivism there are two things that are vital: Housing and employment. You can’t have one without the other.

It is a stain on society that we take people from their prison cell and just push them out onto the street knowing that there is very little prospect of them never returning. We must do better.

Of course, all of this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.

If you care to hear my dulcet tones, click Here

Safer Custody - When will "they" learn?

 Good evening all! 

It's been a while. 

 

I work in the area of what is called "safer custody" in prisons. It sounds like a warm place work, doesn't it? it isn't, I work trying to decrease self-harm and suicide in custodial settings.

 

It's the bit that no-one likes to talk about. In essence I try and spot trends of self-harm in prisons. These are called "Triggers". I want to know why people hurt themselves because until I can understand the "why" I can't get to the remedy. 

 

The frustrating part of my job is that I constantly come across the "He/she is a prolific self-harmer, so what can we do?" phrases. To which I slap my forehead and sigh.

 

I do my work sometimes behind computer screens working with like-minded people and devise algorithms that will help staff recognise those who are under their care who are going into/are in crisis. Sometimes, I do it by talking to those in prison; listening to their concerns, their worries and their fears. I try to appease them and let them know that there are people listening to them.

 

It is humbling to me that these people will open up to me and I leave a bit of my heart with everyone I get to talk to. 

 

So that's my job, my passion and I am honoured to do it.. 

 

But here comes the rant part...

 

A few months ago, a former friend and I were talking about our concerns that there was going to be a "jack in the box" effect when prison started to release restrictions. We worried that those who self-harmed in prisons were feeling a bit less stressed during the lock down. 

 

Strange thought isn't it? Well, it's true because the prison had removed a lot of the things that were causing stress to these souls. Mixing with people was removed, walking around prison was removed. Staff were able to spend more time with those in crisis, funds were given to allow people to spend more time on the phone with their family.

 

What, we wondered, would be the result when this was all removed? The safety net, if you will, would be removed. 

 

Well, I wrote, I talked, I explained, hell, I ranted. I begged people to listen.

This week’s "Safety In Custody Statistics" show what has happened:

in the last quarter to June 2021:

 

13% increase in Self Inflicted Deaths in custody

8% increase in self-harm in the male estate 

47% increase in self-harm in the female estate 

 

Look, I am no genius (I leave that title to my former friend) but WHEN will people listen?

 

The data is there to show that we are on the wrong side of history when it comes to caring for those in our custody.

We must start to look at the causes and get people the help they need. It is upon us to help our fellow human beings and I for one am not going to stop trying, screaming and ranting.

 

I have someone I work with whom I call "Q". The man has the heart of a lion. He said to me last week; "Don't stop challenging us"

My dear man, I plan never to stop. Perhaps, if more were to do the same, we might change the mindset of those who are in this for the pay check.

Look, I don't want to be right on this sort of thing. I gain no pleasure from saying "I told you so". Not when people's lives are at risk. 

 

Please, those of you are in the position to fix this, prove me wrong from now on.

 

/Ends

The figures to which I refer above can be found by clicking here

When is it time to Talk about it ?

the audio of this blog, can we found here.

When is it time to talk about it?

 

A friend of mine said to me recently, “What happened to your voice?”  Look I set up my social media accounts 5 years ago this week. I set them up because I wanted to talk to you. I wanted to talk to about what prisons were like and how we as a society could be a force for good and make them change.  I wanted to talk about what was going on and why was nothing changing. Yet recently I haven’t talked about it. I am just as culpable for what I didn’t say or do because to be honest it hurts too much. I didn’t want to talk about it.

 

Well now I want to talk about it.

 

Last year they told the media that they were going to release our men, women and children because they were scared for their health. They said they could release about 3 thousand. They released about a hundred. And in the same breath they announced they were building 5 thousand more spaces.  

 

They announced last week that they want to build 500 more spaces to lock away our women all the while they admit that over 60% of them have mental health issues.

 

If the prevailing argument is “its about our mental health” then how come they think building themselves out of the problem will work. But wait they say they have thrown some pieces of silver to a few organisations take the sting out of their news. You see that way they change the conversation from people dying. It’s really evil, I’m tired of this misleading line that they’re feeding the media. 

 

The talking points are really just excuses to be greedier and politicians won’t do their jobs because the electorate are paying them so they ignore the problems that they’re there to solve.  While the left and right fight there are people dying in between. Remember that the next time you argue about prisoners getting their fair rights.

 

Just a month ago I watched the justice select committee destroy a witness in front of camera. They played to their audience and diminished a woman almost to visible tears. When the woman admitted her offence was not related to narcotics they wanted to know more, like hungry wolves waiting to strip the woman’s dignity from her because she was an ex-prisoner and had no rights. What made me sick to my stomach was that no one tried to stop the questioner. You want to know why people don’t want to sit in front of you Select Committee, Role the frikkin tape back and then hang your heads in shame. You could have set a trigger off in that wonderful, serene lady but you just didn’t care because you wanted your pound of flesh. Shame on you. I’m done with you. 

 

And you? The union that supports prison officers, you want to keep us locked up for 23 ½ hrs a day because it will, you think, keep your members more safe? Oh, come one, take your feet of the desk, stop reading prisoners papers and understand that if you lock me up for 23 /1/2hrs per day for my entire sentence you will release a very angry man back onto the streets. Suck it up and do your damn jobs. There are many many fine people amongst your members, perhaps if you spent more time in the prisons and not raging about them from a windowless office you might, you might just get my respect back. Until then, leave the running of the jails to your good members and not your committee.

 

And I can’t forget Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons while I am at it. You! You  say you are independent but there is nothing independent about you. Riddle me this HMIP. You inspect two different jails. You censure one because you say that as there weren’t many CoVid cases  and they should have been doing more out of cell activities. WHY do you think there wasn’t a lot of positive cases, Einstein? Yet in another jail of the same type you honour them because they weren’t doing a lot of out of cell activities and this would have kept their positive cases low. Oh come on, pick a side of the fence and allow us to use the oxygen. 

 

And lastly, I read with complete horror today, an article in a Scottish newspaper that the Scottish prison Service has refused to accept the recommendation by its inspectorate of banning “unapproved restraint” techniques against prison inmates. This includes using their feet. In other words stamping down on a prisoner. There is video out there showing Allan Marshall being stamped upon by officers at HMP Edinburgh. Mr Marshall later died from his injuries. Yet, its going to be approved by the Scottish prison service. We’ve all seen what happens when you press a knee against someone’s neck for too long yet you want to be allowed to stamp on it with no retribution.  If that was an assault on the street we would lose our fucking minds. If that’s not assault, then we have lost our fucking minds. In fact, maybe assault should be redefined?  

 

When do we grow a spine and stop using “they’re prisoners” to hide behind?

 

 

I am tired people, I am tired of reading the newspapers, the press releases,  watching the TV. 

 

When the news vans have left; I am left with quiet thoughts on private grief, but I can’t leave those prison walls behind. So, I count the seconds, the minutes, the hours, the nights, the weeks dealing with a pain so deep that it’s awake inside of sleep. It’s in my bones and in my smiles and in my hair and in my speech and in the morning I remember tears streaming down my cheeks, chest heaving from the mourning for all those that have taken their lives in prison, all those that have hurt themselves. Its impossible to breathe.

 

And at that point it doesn’t matter what you once believed. We are letting our people die when they don’t need to and we are left to grieve.

 

We are on the wrong side of history here people. When you look back in 20 years and remember the coffins leaving our jails and the way we have dealt with our fellow humans, look me up and tell me; did you do all that could have done. We are letting our better angels be beaten down by our complacency. Did you sit and bitch about it to your friends, did you tweet about it, did you DO anything about it? 

 

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.

 

There I have talked about it. 

 

Its only my opinion I could be wrong. 

An Unchained Melody

 

                                                                                       A podcast of this blog can be found here

Hello!

 

It’s been a while since I have written anything. Partly because my mind moves slightly faster than the moving of my hands these days. 

 

Some of you may be aware that I spend my days working in the nation’s prisons. I try to help my fellow prisoners feel slightly more safe when they enter our country’s jails. I believe that the first few weeks, if not months, of residency in a prison are when those who are remanded or sentenced to custody are at their most vulnerable. I know I was when I entered jail all those years ago. 

 

Since my release, I have worked with both the private and public sector in devising programs to help residents adjust to a new way of living. I train current residents in how to help a new arrival settle into prison life by using their own experiences. I mean who better to help a new prisoner than an existing prisoner? I am so very lucky to be able to do this and nothing brings a greater smile to my face when I meet the new peer mentors on their first day of work. 

 

Those of us who have criminal records must go through vigorous vetting procedures, annually, to ensure that we meet the expectations of the prison service in order that we can “draw” keys. Now these keys are not handed out lightly and we can never have cell keys. They are used in order that we can go about our work without having to have a member of staff detailed to us. As I said there are rigorous checks done before we are allowed to have them and we must undergo key training  and security vetting in every prison we work in. 

 

Now with that being said; I wanted to share with you, something that hit me in the middle of the solar plexus and unsettled me slightly.

 

Let me give you some background.

 

Recently, I had the pleasure of helping devise a new early days in custody process in a local remand prison. This was an interesting and, although I didn’t realise it at the time, quite emotional experience for me. What made this prison different from all the others that I have worked in over the past 5 years is that I was a resident in this one many years ago. 

 

The work for this prison has taken a long time as the  current pandemic had made it difficult to get the entire program installed. Without the help and “buy in” from the management, staff and the residents, it just would not have been possible. 

 

The day of the launch, I went to meet with the peer mentors (called Insiders) to ensure that they were ready for “lift-off.” They were unhappy and were arguing amongst themselves. So, I sat and I listened to their grievances, their woes and their worries. To be honest with you, there was nothing earth shatteringly bad; they just need to vent their frustrations as I sat there and sighed. It was then that I admonished myself. I had forgotten that what we, who enjoy our freedom, deem to be a minor inconvenience is a major problem for those who we incarcerate. There was shouting and naughty words and at one point I thought we would have to call the whole thing off. However, I continued to sit there for another hour. At which point I said to them “Look, arguing is good. It shows you care. It shows you have passion. Keep going, I have all day, if that what’s you need.” There were heated discussions between 3 of them against 1 other. They rallied against this one person until I stepped in and said that perhaps they should think of other things that were upsetting this man (such as a rather large sentence that had been handed down to him the week before). Then they clicked and got it. Their frustration was hiding their nervousness. Before we all knew it, they were up and shaking hands. And this, this brought me happiness. I was able to just sit and listen to their issues without judgement, without them fearing reprisal and let them know that I understood. I am and always will be an ex-prisoner and they knew that I could relate to what was going through their minds.

 

The prison really did pull out all the stops for a launch of their new wing and process. A ribbon was even produced for me to cut. How wonderful! But… I made the decision that it wasn’t for me to cut, it was for one of the Insiders to take the glory. After all, it is they who make any of my projects work. The scissors (suitably blunt!)  were then passed to this young man who has been in and out of prison for most of his life. He looked at me as if I was mad ! I told him, “it’s your program, your job and therefore your right to do this.” Off he went, in the eyesight of the entire prison management and opened the newly refurbished wing. They applauded and my goodness did he smile!! 

 

What no one else saw was the tear in his eye as he looked at me. He thanked me and told that the day was the best he had had in a long time. I can’t repeat, for obvious reasons, his precise words but they were along the lines of “Can you bleeping believe it, a bunch of bleeps just bleeping applauded me?!!!”  I replied ‘Why thank me? This is your gig, I am purely your voice.“ Upon reflection I think that was rather ungracious of me as he wanted to thank me for giving him an opportunity. I will apologise to him when I next see him. But I left the prison that day knowing that if I did nothing else that week, I had brought a smile to some people’s faces and that made me content.

 

It wasn’t until a day or so later, whilst sitting wondering why I felt strange that it hit me. I had been working in a jail that once held me captive. I held open a gate for one of the governors and then locked it behind him. There it was! In my hands were the keys to the jail that once held me. 

 

I tend to brush off what I do and tend to say to people that drawing keys doesn’t really bother me that much. I joke about it and tell people that I expect Darth Vadar to pop out at any minute shouting “welcome to the dark side.” However, I guess that it does affect me. But not in the way you think.

 

If you will allow me a little indulgence here; IT FILLS ME WITH PRIDE!

 

I am an ex-prisoner who was held in a number of the country’s jails throughout his sentence and here I am with a key chain, an ID that says I am part of the prison team. The management and staff in all the prisons in which I work, welcome me. They know my past but never use it against me; rather they understand the benefit of it. 

 

We all use these lovely words these days; resettlement, rehabilitation, reform etc. and I rally against them; but you know what? If I am not an example of the system working I don’t know what is! 

 

Of course, it’s just my opinion I could be wrong!

 

PS Not only was it a prison that I used to be in, it was the same wing (I swore then that it needed changing and now it has!).

Is Building New Prisons Really The Answer?

An audio file  of this post can be found here  

The One Where the Government concede defeat!

    The Ministry of Justice issued a press release on the 28^th of June announcing the news that they were to build 4 more prisons over the next six years. (To read this wonderful piece of self-promotion click here.) This is in addition to the two new builds underway at Wellingborough, near Northampton and Glen Parva in Leicestershire. This therefore gives England 6 new prisons within the next 6 years.

 

Now I don’t want to go off on a rant here but;

 

    Let’s cast our minds back to the hazy old days when Liz Truss, who was the then Secretary of State for Justice, announced the building of 4 new prisons. In that release (a copy can be found here) she stated that the government’s intention was to build 5000 new spaces which would create 2000 new jobs. More importantly, this announcement was touted as being “new for old.” Meaning that there would be closures of the more Victorian, not fit for purpose, gaols that riddle the prison estate and lovely new ones would take their place. So, new shiny prisons were announced, sites had been identified and, off we go. At least, that’s what I thought. 

 

    Local communities were up in arms at having a prison located near them. Because, well, prisoners are awful people and they were sure to scale the 20 feet walls, leap over the barbed wire and pillage the local community, weren’t they? Town Hall meetings were held, placards were made, leaflets distributed and NIMBY’s (not in my back yard’s) sucked their teeth. Eventually, planning applications were withdrawn. Therefore, as is the case with most of the government’s new initiatives, the idea of building more jails was soon to be consigned to the trash can of history.

 

    Some two justice secretaries later and bids were to be invited from the private sector for the operating of a new prison to be built on the site of the old HMP Wellingborough. Later this year bids will be invited for the operating of a new prison at the old HMP Glen Parva site. Both of these prisons are being financed with taxpayer money and indeed in 2018 the government announced a ban on prisons being built using private company’s money and that all building would be publicly funded from thereon in. The operating of these two prisons, however, will be carried out by the private sector; with the operator of the first prison being announced in the very near future. Thereafter tenders will be asked from, again, the private sector for Glen Parva. The government has yet to announce whether the next onslaught of warehouses – sorry prisons- will be privately managed or publicly run.  I am not going to go into the pros and cons of private versus public; save to say that the government have said that at least ONE out of the four will be publicly run. Kind of gives you an idea of what the government think of our state-run prison service, doesn’t it?

 

    Those of you that know me, know that I am not an abolitionist, I actually see the need for prison. If someone has been found to be such a dangerous a person that they cannot live in our society then democracy says that we must remove that person from it. However, the government’s announcement seems to me to have been issued with some glee; almost as if they’re proud of the fact that the UK incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in Europe, save for Poland. 

 

    It is as if they are saying “Look what we are doing, we are building more prisons, this will keep society safe!” I paraphrase of course, the actual release states “Four new prisons are to be built across England over the next six years – boosting efforts to cut crime and kickstart the economy.” 

 

    Let’s take a look at that statement, shall we?  “Cut crime” How does building a prison cut crime? It does not. It purely houses people that have committed a crime.  What it does allow for us to do; is to jail more people. The government has been rather sneaky here, and I know that must have come as a shock to you, but in the release given by Liz Truss she deliberately mentioned that she would be closing old prisons that are not fit for purpose. Yet Richard Heaton (he of the civil service) admitted on 29^thJune this year whilst giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee, that the government has no intention of closing any prisons, Rather, they plan to increase current estate. I believe he even said, when trying to justify building more prison in order to reduce over-crowding that “We don’t have overcrowding in our prisons, rather we have crowding.”  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you this year’s winner of the Humphrey Appleby award for civil service jargon.

 

    I am comforted, however, that the latest press release from the MOJ informs us that the new prisons will have concrete walls! I kid you not!  Here was me thinking that polystyrene blocks would have been more economical. Additionally, thank goodness for their ingenuity of “using pipework to deliver the water!” The bar-less windows are a nice touch, though! The Oxygen thief that wrote this press release needs to find another vocation in life and perhaps needs a hug.

 

    The act of building new prisons stupefies me somewhat. Let’s look at the case of HMP Berwyn; the last prison to be built by the government that opened in 2017. It was heralded to be the “prison of the future”, yet it only holds about 75% of its capacity.  It’s that bad that even the workshop provider, that bastion of bailouts, Interserve PLC allegedly tried to get out of the contract and only opened one of the two workshops proposed.  This therefore means that a large proportion of the residents have no purposeful activity at all. Rather they languish in their cells watching daytime television, becoming experts on how to buy and sell antiques and how to buy a house at auction and renovate it on a small budget. If this is the “future” it doesn’t bode well for the new prisons, does it?

 

    Building 6 more prisons isn’t an accomplishment of which to be proud. It’s admitting failure on a colossal scale. Prisoners fall into many categories and lumping them into a prison for “x” months and hoping that after “y” months of inane boredom, attendance at courses that are ill-equipped to help, stuffing balloons into plastics bags for 12 hours a week as a job and being locked in a cell for @16 hours a day just isn’t going to make society any safer. These people who are jailed are going to be released one day. Who knows they might even be the NIMBY’s next-door neighbour? Think about that, won’t you? The next time you say, “lock them up and give them bread and water” remember that the serving prisoner today could be your next-door neighbour tomorrow. 

 

    Prisons need to be decent, safe, clean places where we place those who have committed such heinous crimes that are so are abhorrent to us that we cannot face them. They must offer to help the person remanded to a term of incarceration that ability to start rebuilding themselves, if they so desire. In my opinion, the only way to cut crime is to get to the root cause of why that person commits the crime in the first place. A person must not be sent to a prison as a place of safety by a magistrate or judge.  Prisons must not be used for those souls who are disturbed, addicted to substances or victims of historic abuse; to name but a few real maladies. We must stop sending people to a prison, located in the middle of nowhere and miles from their families, as the first option. The sooner the judiciary realise this, the sooner we can stop building warehouses for society’s forgotten many. 

 

    I wish the government well in their expansion plan. I only wish that it would have stuck to its word and that we could have closed some of the Victorian hell holes that blight our countryside today.  Those edifices of despair in which we place our fellow citizens for an inordinate amount of time and then turf them back ono the street hoping that they will not reoffend; all the time getting upset with them when they do. But if they continue to try and build themselves of the problems of society as opposed to facing them; I will be there to help pick up the pieces of those whom society would rather forget. At least I can visit them in bar-less window lined cells with a good concrete wall!

 

    Thomas Paine once wrote that “when our jails are empty and our streets free of beggars, then can a country be proud of its constitution.” Well our jails are full, and our streets lined with those just trying to survive. Not much to be proud of, is there? 

 

As always, it’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.