In Prison Again

I spent Monday afternoon in one of Her Majesty's Prisons, and Monday evening at Eton College, travelling between these two institutions in the front seat of a Bentley (provided by the BBC as an emergency back-up after the Ford minicab they'd booked failed to turn up. I feel for the Corporation executive who got the minicab instead when he was expecting the Bentley). Thus I experienced yet again the wonderful truth that a journalist's life is the most interesting and varied that anyone can possibly hope for. Normally, by the way, I don't use BBC cars, but High Down Prison to Eton is not possible by public transport unless you have most of the day to do it.

It was the BBC who put me in prison - specifically the Newsnight programme, which wanted to hold a discussion on crime and punishment inside a gaol. This event was transmitted on Tuesday evening and can be found on the BBC i-player here.

I played, in the end, a rather minor role in the discussion, which was dominated by the self-serving reflections of convicted prisoners (who have never done anyone any harm, in their view) and a jolly interview (by Jeremy Paxman) with the Justice Secretary, Ken Clarke, in which he made it plain that he hasn't a clue what to do about our justice system, and is resorting as usual to gimmicks and to ways of keeping more and more serious and violent convicted criminals out of prison. Mr Clarke also revealed that he has swallowed whole the 'French Connection' myth about the supposed physical dangers of ceasing to take heroin.

As is so often the case, I had to push my way into the discussion, and my contribution therefore has a completely different character from that of the conventional contributors who were politely invited in. I began by assuming that I would be invited to take part myself, since the BBC had gone to some lengths to persuade me to be there at all (I voiced doubts about whether it would be worth my while). But it seemed increasingly clear that this was unlikely to happen unless I seized my chance, as I did. No doubt some contributors here will chide me for my 'aggressive' approach. I have, however, discussed this problem in previous posts and mention this episode as more evidence of the problem that unconventional and non-mainstream opinions have with the BBC.

By the way, the think tank Policy Exchange has recently published a devastating report on the supposed 'alternative' to prison, community sentences (reachable here), which anyone interested in this subject should read. Did you know that many convicted criminals end up paying their debt to society by working in charity shops?

That'll show them.

In fact it will show them what many have already begun to suspect much earlier in their career of crime - that the state does not disapprove of what they have done and is not prepared to take any resolute action against them.

Let us take two statements made by persons in the 'Newsnight' discussion, both of which are particularly striking.

'I stole from a shop, which I find is the only crime I can achieve money that I need without affecting anybody in the community.' The same prisoner (now being given methadone at your expense during his short stay in prison) complained that after a previous sentence he had been unable to get his methadone supply outside on release because of bureaucratic delay, and he had been advised (by whom was not clear) to go out and buy some heroin while he waited.

Is this person being punished or in any way deterred from the drug-taking that makes him more likely to be a criminal, or from the criminal behaviour which he thinks is justified whenever he needs money?

Well, it would seem not by the prison governor, Peter Dawson (with whom I later had a slight off-air disagreement). Mr Dawson took this opportunity to make the following extraordinary statement: 'The thing I want to say first about sending someone to prison is that it always does harm to the person in prison. My job is to mitigate the harm done to the person who is sent to prison and those that care for them on the outside.'

One other thing in the debate that the uninitiated might be confused by is the statement by the female governor of next door Down View prison that all her prisoners work. What is not clear from this intervention (though it is the case) is that Down View is a prison solely for women, who are generally in prison because their lives are hopelessly broken (often by drugs) rather than because they are violent and dangerous to others. It is of course much easier to find work in outside establishments for women prisoners.

But - to avoid going into too deep a discussion of a subject already discussed here when I republished my article on Wormwood Scrubs, one point which emerges from all this is that professionals in the prison system develop a sort of reverse Stockholm syndrome, identifying with their captives, and allowing their misdeeds to recede into a fog of amnesia. I think this is one of the causes of the system's grave failure.

It is startling that the prison system is the one state institution whose senior employees seem free to make strong public criticisms of that system, and a permanent flow of condemnatory reports from Her Majesty's Inspectors, none of which ever addresses the possibility that prisons are full and nasty because they are not punitive or under the full control of the authorities.

Oh, as for Eton, I talked to a small but interested and thoughtful group of people about the Churchill myth and its effects on British foreign policy from the 'Finest Hour' to the 'Dodgy Dossier'.

Going to prisons always lowers my spirits, because of the triumphant evil that emanates from them, and the horrid thought that any innocent and harmless person may be alone and friendless in such a pit. The warders, by contrast with the bureaucrats and the politicians, are generally men and women of sound common sense, but severely limited in what they can do.

Visiting the great public schools always fills me with frustration, because of the way in which we have ensured that a really good education is now a privilege of the rich. Try as these places may, they cannot through bursaries or scholarships replace the lost grammar schools or the destroyed direct grant system.

But nobody would gain, and the country would lose, if these great schools were abolished or brought low, as many on the left would like to happen.

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