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Prisons - new material (55)

01 November 2003

Review: Prisongate. The Shocking state of Britain's prisons and the need for Visionary Change, David Ramsbotham. The Free Press 2003 (ISBN 0-7432-3884-2) £20.00. David Ramsbotham is a former Chief Inspector of Prisons. His book serves in part to document the appalling conditions and inhuman treatment of prisoners he encountered during his time in post. Ramsbotham details his first visit, to HMP Holloway, where he and his team encountered vulnerable prisoners locked in their cells for most of the day, dirt, rats, cockroaches, prisoners in chains in the Mother and Baby Unit, and a Governor who could not account for the whereabouts of four 15-year old girls held at the jail. Holloway, he states, set him on his task of letting the public know of what was done behind closed doors in the prison system in their name, and to "so disgust them that they would not tolerate such treatment of fellow citizens - male or female in their name." Prisongate examines the horrors encountered across the prison estate, from the Close Supervision Centre at Woodhill to the resettlement prisons intended to facilitate offenders' reintegration into the community. Ramsbotham identifies the enemies of change as a "triumvirate: ministers, Home Office officials, and the hierarchy of the Prison Service", and explores in detail their role in the Blantyre House scandal. This saw one of the country's best-performing prisons raided on the basis of spurious drugs allegations, and a progressive governor, Eoin Maclennan Murray removed from his post by Area Manager Tom Murtagh, a harsh, security-based regime put in place. Abolitionists and consistent penal reformers will disagree with Ramsbotham as to the extent prisons can be made to "work", but Prisongate is worth reading as the testimony of an honourable man seeking to make accountable an appalling system. The wider question it ought to provoke is as to why it is that, with a prison population at record levels, prison conditions and prisoners' rights remain the concern primarily of the "great and good" such as Ramsbotham and Sir Stephen Tumin, while being almost completely ignored by the left.