Mister Very Important Prisoner
Civitas, 21 December 2010
In 1981, the then Governor of HMP Wormwood Scrubs, John McCarthy, composed a damning letter in The Times bemoaning the inadequacies of the prison system: “From my personal point of view I did not join the Prison Service…to be a member of a service where the staff that I admire are forced to run a society that debases.” How times have changed. Not only will (some) prisoners be re-enfranchised, but it seems that drugs barons and murderers can admonish the Prison Service for failing to meet the standards they themselves have set.
In a letter to the prison newspaper ‘Inside Time’, written from the Special Secure Unit at HMP Belmarsh, gangland boss, Colin Gunn detailed how the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman had upheld his complaint that prison staff were not adhering to their ‘decency agenda’. The officers had not assaulted him or verbally abused him. They had not singled him out for intimidation or isolation. The staff at his then residence, HMP Whitemoor, had failed to address him as ‘Mr Gunn’.
Although there is no national policy governing how prisoners should be addressed, there is clear guidance that, “as part of the process of treating prisoners decently, staff should be encouraged to address prisoners in an appropriate manner”.
It goes without saying that prisoners should be treated with respect: “No man is a prisoner and nothing else.” Some argue that the more prison resembles life outside, the less it is dreaded. However, there is much evidence that a policy of ‘normalisation’ within a prison can help offenders to internalise the pro-social norms that are imperative to constructive behavioural change and life within a community. Conversely, a culture of prisonisation enables the pains of imprisonment – such as reduced personal autonomy and lack of material possessions – to fester, and alienates the prisoner both from the prison staff and society at large.
However, this is in no way a suggestion that prisoners themselves should be allowed to call the shots. Quite clearly, the definition of “appropriate” has been grotesquely vandalised. Treating prisoners with decency does not require the prison staff to stoop to the level of subservience, where the offender has become the master and, whilst he may not hold the key, sets the tone and pace of the prison regime.
A Prison Service spokesperson stated that, “[i]t is implicit [in the guidelines] that prisoners also address staff appropriately”. Although few would argue that officers’ attitudes are consistently beyond reproach, with the rates of assault on staff at their highest ever level, this seems a vacuous promise. Indeed, in his letter, Gunn rallies other prisoners to “get your apps in – you do not have to be humiliated by rude, ignorant prison staff any longer”.
With brash indignation, Gunn assures other prisoners that “[t]he law is on your side”. The rules must not be bent to pander to the whims of Gunn, or any other individual prisoner; he must abide by the fair and humane rules of the prison regime. This is the man who has been linked to over fifty shootings and some six murders; who illicitly used social networking sites to threaten his enemies from within the prison walls; who, as Mr Justice Colman Treacy handed down his sentence, snarled, “Die of AIDs”. As Colin Moses, national Chair of the Prison Officers Association, has rightly said, “[y]ou have to earn respect, not demand it”.
Of course, it is easy to predict the cries of protest that a man like Gunn is beyond rehabilitation, alien to the possibility of reformation. Regardless of the validity of this argument, it is imperative that we enforce a line of respect throughout our prison service, not just to ensure rehabilitation for (at least the majority of) prisoners, but to preserve the integrity of our system. There is much truth in Churchill’s famous declaration: “the treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue in it.” It must be hoped that this warped notion of ‘decency’ is not reflective of the standards by which the nation deserves to be judged.