Surely this would relate to low category prisoners and those who have a record of good behaviour and although it shows what can be achieved, I can't see the likes of Charles Bronson ever doing his porridge there.
Coming on the same week as the news media reports prisons are too cushy, this is thought provoking. The extremists who want prison to be hell (and therefore a deterrent as they see it) need to pay a visit.
The question is, what is the percentage of the prison population housed in this kind of environment?
"Why does that not surprise me?"
Because it conforms with your "liberal" stereotype of Conservatives.
Hardly: more like it conforms with Archer's image as a complete and utter arse.
I'm with John B on this one. I read Michael Crick's biog. of Archer years ago, and that was enough for me.
@ Bystander,
"the underlying aims are laudable".
One could hardly disagree. More to the point, is the regime effective and - if so is there any independent study which supports that finding?
Does anyone else worry about a government employee as senior as a prison governor saying this? It’s indiscreet, a breach of confidence, almost certainly illegal under the many privacy statutes and just plain offensive.
No doubt similar civil servants are in charge of your health and genetic data.
As Chuck says, we should be able to take the 'laudable aims' for granted.
It's the usefulness/effectiveness/value-for-money of the whole business which should be up for discussion.
Even the 'laudable aims' might seem more acceptable if they appeared to be on the side of non-criminals a little more often.
@ BlacquesJacquesShellacques
'a breach of confidence'
How come ? The information is already in the public domain.
"Even the 'laudable aims' might seem more acceptable if they appeared to be on the side of non-criminals a little more often."
As a non-criminal, sticking prisoners in an environment where they have to do some work that might be useful once they released, and are rewarded if they do - rather than locking them in a room for 23 hours a day with nothing to do other than take heroin and then letting them go back into society with no prospect of doing anything useful - strikes me as something which is thoroughly on my side.
Careful Bystander someone might be closer to working out who you are at this rate! How many JP's would have had that conversation with that prison boss? Not as may as you may hope I bet!!!
Quote - "Does anyone else worry about a government employee as senior as a prison governor saying this? It’s indiscreet, a breach of confidence, almost certainly illegal under the many privacy statutes and just plain offensive." BlacquesJacquesShellacques
It is a most unwise thing for a prison governor to say, could be libellous and should not be repeated.
As for the prison regime described, it is a sensible regime for some prisoners nearing the end of their sentence. Rehabilitation back into society ought to be an aim of the prison service.
Once upon a time I remember hearing someone say they thought JA did what he did (and got away with it) because he had a lot of cheek. I think that applies to a lot of the great and good doesn't it ?
We all make it up as we go along. Even George Bush !
JVIP
My home turf. We always used to call it Hollesley Bay Borstal - it used to be for young offenders. Yep, getting delinquent Suffolk lads interested in heavy horses, horticulture and agriculture was always reckoned 'good value' locally.
If they came to the point where a custodial sentence was unavoidable, at least Hollesley offered real rehab and by all accounts if the Borstal's horses won a rosette at the Suffolk Show the lads' sense of achievement and worth was palpable. Twas all good stuff.
On the narrow lanes down to the 'Ramsholt Arms' and moorings you always could tell the Holleseley land easily - it was in the best condition, with textbook hedges and field wildlife margins, easily as good as those of Cirencester's Royal Agricultural College.
If the wretched bean counters are going to turn the place into just some isolated lock-up, with the land sold to an insurance company or institutional investor with a contract farmer, then great shame.
"I'm with John B on this one. I read Michael Crick's biog. of Archer years ago, and that was enough for me.
Bystander "
Nice to see magistrates judging people by decade old third party accounts with no supporting evidence, which at bystanders age they probably have only the vaguest recollection of.
Its a crying shame that, the work placements at the docks had to come to an end. I for one would have enjoyed the oppurtunity of a little close quaters work with HM Customs.
One can only assume the ex drug dealer was about to blow the bubble on the the above mentioned organisation so his services were summarily dispensed with.
@ radams
"decade old third party accounts with no supporting evidence"
That may be so, but what would constitute 'supporting evidence'? Newspaper reports? Sworn testament?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jef.../
Jeffrey_Archer
It's not often that I've been amongst a group applauding the actions of a traffic warden. Some good few years ago I observed a ticket being given to a smart BMW with a distinguishing number plate parked on a double yellow line in a narrow street in Cambridge. Antipathy in the bystanders to the traffic warden immediately changed to enthusiatic applause when the car's owner returned to his vehicle and started haranging the official. It was, of course, the appalling JA.
Bystander,
With respect, Wikipedia is not a secure reference - individual pages have been known to be 'authored' by malcontents - so maybe the published (i.e. printed) word is better. At least that is usually attributable and authors can be held to account at law. I've yet to hear of that happening to any contributor to Wikipedia. And, to underline that point I'd suggest a brief examination of the Discussion and History of the piece.
I have a feeling, with the "pinch" on our prisons - other categories of prisoners start off in Hollesley Bay - and have one for me at the Ramsholt Arms - pass on the way to the seaside and the icecream. Ohhh have I just given myself away? shivers.
Given that the conclusion that "Jeffrey Archer is an arse" can easily and directly be drawn through reading the man's own writings about himself, I'm not sure why there's a debate on the quality of the secondary evidence.
I mean, is anyone actually defending the proposition "Jeffrey Archer is not an arse", or is this all just angels-on-a-pin nitpicking?
[and yes, the governor's comment was somewhat unprofessional, although quite why anyone would get excised by it given the enormous plethora of more worthwhile injustices to be worried about is beyond me...]
If I was an arse, I would be quite offended to be compared to Jeffrey Archer.
I see the Guardian diary is a reader, Bystander...All your readers' prejudices nicely confirmed.
I do wonder whether those journalists dismissing bloggers as third-rate fantasists who will never replace the 'proper writers' are the same journalists happy to fill a few column inches with a story cut wholesale from a blog...
It won't last.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/73.../uk/
7380037.stm
At least Archer's "Prison Diaries" (all three volumes of them - he did have a lot of time to himself!) are quite readable, which is much more than you can say for the wretched fiction he 'writes'.
In fact, one of Archer's defences to the accusations that he merely drafts his novels and gets professionals to actually write them for was his dear Prison Diaries. "Nobody else could have written them, could they?" he has often claimed (quite pompously, I imagine).
Fact is, if you read his Prison Diaries, you'll see that he regularly sent his 'proofs' (or first drafts) to his publishers, and they then returned them (presumably after the suitable necessary 'ghosting') to JA for 'approval'. So yep, even inside, he was on the fiddle!!
Oh dear, and there's this...
"Panorama has learned that over the last decade there have been almost 14,000 cases of prisoners leaving open jails without permission.
They are not all inmates serving short sentences for minor offences.
Government statistics reveal more than 130 murderers have absconded from the open estate in the last ten years."
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/n...91466-20858942/
-------- any comments?
"Rehabilitation back into society ought to be an aim of the prison service."
There are, however, people for whom I believe locking up and the key throwing away is too good for them. Josef Fritzl locked away his daughter for 24 years, and yet is only looking at 15 (on paper, it could go anywhere depending on if the murder rap sticks or he gets a cushy assylum bed becuse off an insanity judgement) in conditions highly favourable to that of his own daughter and subsequent children.
Take that one step further ... murderers, whos victims won't see their family (and vice versa) ever again. I can't help but ponder certain sections of our society and think of how the likes of corpral punishment might restrict the actions of criminals if they know that there may be a noose waiting for them? I can just see the government information adverts now ... a burgler breaks in, the resident wakes, a scuffle happens and the resident is killed. The image of a noose hanging there and the slogan, "You might only have wanted the TV, but you may get more than you bargained for."
This doesn't help either - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/73.../uk/
7380037.stm - particularly, "Panorama has learned that over the last decade there have been almost 14,000 cases of prisoners leaving open jails without permission." 1,400 prisoners absconding every year is a bit much; that's nearly four a day if those figures are to be believed.
It begs the question as to how long questions about overcrowding have been asked ... and in all this time, how much has actually been done about the issue?
To conclude, just as there is a risk of corpral punishment killing the wrong person, rehabilitation also has its risks of re-offending; and what (as I have implied) draws the line between a low level offence having the capability of turning in to a rather more drastic scene? It just takes a twist of fate for a low level, inept burglar to become a murderer; or worse still for the defender of ones home to kill the burglar!
The more I ponder this whole situaiton, the more I come to believe that until we've got a more accurate and possibly medical/physical way of assessing an offenders likelyhood of reoffending, we've got problems. With all our experience and data on people and reoffending, surely we should be able to further our abilities in this area?
Just a small point RE the above comments. I feel it is important to dispel the myth, that the cushy alternative to doing ones porridge in "regular prison" is to go all Jack Nicholson and get your self commited to a psychiatric hospital.
It is fair to say that in line with most other penal institutions, facilities at these hospitals have moved on. Service users can expect tv, reasonable sanitary arrangements and a myriad of support staff, care workers and such like to make their stay all the more bearable.
But what Chained to the desk would do well to understand is that the folk committed under section by the courts to these cushy places have, despite all the politically correct hyperbole about rehabillitation have absolutely no chance of ever being released.
So the fact that care provision has greatly improved misrepresents the absolute seriousness of being "detained" in one of these places
Given the option i would prefer to do "Midnight Express" jail and at least know one day i would be released than be in any kind of supposed 5 star secure unit.
My dear Smuggler; just for your notes, I understand the section routines. I have spent time in secured psychiatric units as a patient. There is still a patient in one of them that refuses to beleve that I leant him my copy of "Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy." I also have the pictures of some of the staff holding roses in their teeth and blowing up the old rubber examination gloves for fun.
I will admit that my own time was by psychiatric requirement and not judicial section, but the unit gave me considerable support and, indeed, benefit on becoming part of society again and here I am more than a decade later, with a home (mortgage) job and a few good friends.
Chained, good to hear that you came out the otherside. But do your above comments concurr with what i said ... in so far as they are certainly no easy option in regards to the deprivation of liberty aspect ??? To hear from people who have experience of a similar circumstance like yourself help give a wider understanding... i just felt that the "cushy" argument narrowed the debate and did a dis service to the whole mental health arena.
Cheers
I know that this is very simplistic but surely the main objective of a prison sentence is deterrence and the message to anyone outside is that it is very unpleasant and you will not want to go again. Making prisoners more comfortable obviously makes, in many respects, the jobs of prison staff easier and satisfies the consciences of the more compassionate of us but lets keep our eyes on the woods and ignore the trees for a while.
Smuggler,
Apologies for the delay in responding; Google apparently banned my IP address. Took a while to get it sorted.
The secure wards allow more social activity than a prison cell and in the ones I have experience of, the patients have the run of the full ward area 24/7. The smoking rooms have probably long since gone, though.
I had very nice rooms to myself due to various circumstances, but the doors weren't locked and the majority of the people were on ward beds similar to any other hospital ward.
The padded cell is a thing of the past, being replaced generally by a much larger room filled with foam shapes padded. Whenever anyone is in them, they are watched through a large window. That is about as bad as it gets, and I never saw anyone either being in those rooms, or being roughhoused or the use of the liquid cosh ... it is a very sedate, social, positive environment.
One advantage of open jails that hasn't been mentioned is that the cost per head per year to keep a prisoner in open conditions is far less than the closed prisons.
Also it really is a great sight to watch prisoners (some of whom you know have never worked a day in their lives before, who've spent years off their face on drugs, and who've probably had bad examples from their own parents), coming back to open prison at night having worked a full shift. As they walk in with their dusty overalls and working boots, their heads are held high because they have a sense of achievement. Even if you HATE what they've done in their criminality and hate prisoners generally, from the point of view of the society to which they will return this is surely worthwhile as they are beginning to be equipped for living morally and legally on the outside?
Unfortunately the tabloids up here (Scotland) hate the open jails. There are occasional absconds but it's a risk game and they are few and far between. Sadly the good news and the success stories don't interest journalists one bit.
AnneDroid
What is the success rate of open prisons?-The main complaint seems to be that the wrong people are being sent not that rehabilitation is wrong.
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