One of my lasting memories of the HMP Wandsworth dialogues was that among the scores of prisoners we worked with over the year from 2005-6, we were never treated badly or threatened, even though no prison staff were present.
The prisoners were men we randomly invited to the dialogues when we met them on the ordinary prison wings and landings of the largest prison in the country. There were no security checks, no weeding out of undesirable people. We worked with drug addicts, robbers, thieves and murderers and they treated me, my co-facilitator and the volunteers who came into the prison with us with respect.
I always felt safe, despite being really quite defenceless among criminals who were seen by many as ‘scum’, and often treated in a way that made them feel like ‘scum’. Treat someone well, they usually respond well.
Yet when I recently spoke to a high ranking officer working on the infamous D-wing at HMP Pentonville, he said he certainly wouldn’t feel safe as a prisoner on this, the largest wing in the prison. I wondered how safe it felt for staff. I wondered if dialogue might help.
I was visiting on behalf of the Howard League Commission on English Prisons Today. We were allowed to see every part of the prison – except D-wing. A bit like officials telling us about the good work that goes on in prisons – but not telling us about the huge mass of prisoners that the work does not reach.
Criminologists have warned of an ‘epidemic of violence’ fuelled by our spiralling prison numbers. Violent crime is on the increase, as are suicides in prison, generally accepted as due to dire conditions caused by over-crowding and by a severely under-resourced service.
Now the number of people in prison in England and Wales has topped 82,000 for the first time in history. While the numbers increase, the humanity of the system inevitably decreases, as does the ability of establishments to manage humanising interventions such as dialogue.
How many more prison wings will go the way of Pentonville’s D-wing as a result?
Tags: crime, D-wing, Howard League, Howard League on English Prisons Today, Pentonville, prisoners, Prisons, safety, security, violence
