What my readers will be wearing this season.

Wow! Get Out of Jail Free "lounge pants" are available online here. They stole my catchphrase. Oh, no, oops, twas the other way round. In Scotland we would call such a garment "long johns" and old men would wear cream coloured ones under their trousers in winter. On the other hand, when I reach 95 years old and am finally released from childcare responsibilities and pay off whatever debt four children at college may one day run up for us, I do plan to learn to "go" a motorbike, so I reckon these would be ideal for under my leathers. I'll be warmer than jail toast.

Jail Birds (Bird=female in Scottish slang)

This picture is Elizabeth Fry visiting a woman prisoner.

Now here's an interesting quote: "The system is gendered - far too few women are held accountable and the proportion of female to male prisoners is too low. From general social attitudes, to police, to COPFS, to judges, women are infantalised and pathologised but not held criminally accountable. Think of the children who really should be protected!" So says the first comment here.

This really has made me think. I have always bought into the widespread belief that too many of the women sent to jail are poor souls who shouldn't be there, victims themselves really, and so on. This is the first time I've thought about the possibility that perhaps as this commenter says, "women are infantalised and pathologised but not held criminally accountable". Mmmmm. I'm going to think more about this. I have visited a women's prison in the past but today I was visiting a men's jail which has about 1,500 prisoners in it (more than it is designed for). The chaplain there led me through the area where the families who were in for the visiting time were congregating. He was saying that quite often the women cause fights and arguments and are difficult for the staff to deal with. I've often heard officers say that working at the female prison is harder in many ways than working with male prisoners.
I guess ladettes who want, for example, to drink like lads at weekends and get into brawls in the street need to be treated fairly. And fairly works two ways...

But aren't chaplains supposed to be nice? Not seeking to get more folk locked up! Well chaplains are supposed to speak up for what seems to them morally right as best they can. Our governors usually tell us they want us to be knocking on their door if we see unjust or unethical practices in their jails. If I do, on reflection, conclude that what this commenter said is true, then maybe I'll end up with the view that more rather than fewer women should be locked up, but that'll be ethical and moral if it's because I'm standing against infantalising and pathologising women.

Twisted thinking

Prisoners' thinking can be very twisted.

Recently I was talking to a prisoner who was arguing that if he had his way all "junkies" would be given an injection in the neck and put down. This man is an alcoholic. In my usual diplomatic way (!) I pointed out that alcoholism was an addiction too. He wasn't pleased and said that no, alcholism is a disease. I was unable to persuade him that there were any similarities between the addictions.

But jail's like that. There is a pecking order of crime. In a jail containing only sex offenders, the rapists (i.e. rapes of adult victims) see themselves better than the paedophiles. In other jails, prisoners classify themselves as better than some other class of offence. Prisoners often lie to one another about the nature of their offence to make it more "acceptable". Incidentally, murder, which we might (hopefully DO) see as very bad, isn't looked down on so much in jail whereas other offences, like mugging an old lady, are seen as beyond the pale.

I have found this very interesting, and yet I have also found myself wondering if perhaps ALL human beings do exactly this. According to our own various personal measuring schemes we rate others as above or below us. A dear and very ancient relative of mine openly judges people on how good their speech is (she once studied elocution herself).

I heard a prison officer recently refer to all the prisoners collectively and dismissively as "scrotes" - I think he validates himself, in a way, by finding a group of people he feels superior to.

Do I do it? I hope not, but I fear I do.

Hello Dad I'm In Jail

Hello Dad I'm In Jail by Was Not Was is just great. Watch it if you've never seen it. Weird, was not was it?!

I'm struck by the line, "I like it here". It was probably meant sarcastically but the truth is some of our guys do like jail better than life outside. If you've been in jail for years, being outside is seriously scary and even crossing the road or catching a bus is pretty daunting. Above all, in jail, everyone else is in the same boat as you and there's a sort of "fellowship" there. Yesterday I was talking to an officer about a certain prisoner and we were agreeing it's kind of a shame that when his sentence is over he couldn't just be given a job and allowed to stay! He gets on fine in jail but makes a pig's ear of life outside.

20 years ago I worked as a visiting officer for the Dept of Social Security at the time when under "Care in The Community" institutionalised adults with learning difficulties were being put out of their institutions into flats in the big (and in places wild) council housing estate. Good news for those on the look out for vulnerable people to relieve of their benefit. Some of them perhaps should never have been in an institution but, given that they had been, the transition was tough. Many had the mental age of children and just because they had been taught to shop and cook and clean didn't mean they were going to be happy living by themselves.

Before that I worked in a night shelter/ day centre for single homeless men. One fellow, D, had done really well and was drug free. Aged 34 he was allocated a flat and I was sent off to The Barras in Glasgow to help him spend his DSS grant of £500 (this was before loans came in) on everything he needed for his flat. I said, "Right you definitely need a cooker". "Oh no", says he, "I'll just light a fire". "D, you can't do that, you're on the twelfth floor of a multi-storey block. You must have a cooker". "Okay, but can I light the fire on top of the cooker?" He had lived in children's home followed by List D school (as it was then called) followed by Young Offenders Institution followed by jail followed by the Night Shelter. He was definitely institutionalised. And yet D actually did really well and got on fine, even with his cooker!

Lots of guys (and women) do get on fine, even if they've been institutionalised for a long time but an awful lot don't. I know prisons are overcrowded as it is, but sometimes I just think, you know, can't we just keep this guy and give him a job and a home? I'm not really being serious. Obviously we can't. But, expensive as it is to keep folk in jail, how much more costly in every way not just financial, to have them out wreaking havoc on themselves and others?

Prison Overcrowding

Open Prisons

The Sun and various other newspapers seem to hate the Scottish Prison Service's open estate, referring for example to one of them, HMP Castle Huntly, as a "bouncy castle" and a "country club" amongst other things.

What is the "open estate"? It is the name given to two Scottish prisons which are open in the simple and obvious sense that they have no big fence and no walls.

They are controversial, there is no doubt, and particularly in the last week or so when we have heard the shocking news that a prisoner from the Open Estate who was allowed out failed to return, went on the run, and committed a very serious violent crime. My thoughts and prayers have mostly been with the unfortunate victim.

There have been a number of "absconds" from the Open Estate in my time but this is the most serious and alarming case by far. It has sparked off (yet) another round of calls for the end of open prisons.

However, I really hope that doesn't happen. And I feel sad for the many prisoners currently at the Open Estate who are working extremely hard, holding down work placements (sometimes the first time in their adult lives they have worked at all), or undertaking education, or winning a long-standing battle with addiction, or making plans for the future and committing themselves afresh to their partners and children. Certainly not all of them will succeed in living up to their good intentions, but plenty will, and they really deserve our respect for the distance they have travelled, often guys who have had an awful start in life.

Since starting work in the prison service I've developed a sudden interest in a genre of tv I would never have looked at before: "America's most violent jail"-type programs have me glued to the seat! Are there a lot more of these programs at the moment or did I really never notice them before? Even "Ross Kemp on Gangs" has me totally intrigued. This week there was another similar documentary on gangs in Glasgow and London that had me nearly in tears.

The Louis Theroux program recently on an American jail showed inmates who had sentences of over 500 years. Our tabloids would love most criminals to be locked up and the key thrown away. But we don't do that. Our prisoners are going to get out eventually. So, given that that's the case do we want them prepared for release or not? Do we want to release totally institutionalised people who haven't seen anything of the outside world for years, or do we want to re-integrate them in a staged way? I vote for the latter.

Now, some prisoners behave so badly in closed jails that they are not allowed to progress to open conditions, and of course eventually they are released anyway, but I don't think that negates the good that can be done for those who are able to make the progression and benefit from it. Also, the carrot of getting to the Open Estate with its Home Leave Scheme is an incentive to tow the line in closed jail.

I think of a man at the Open Estate whose drug history in the past was totally chaotic, who is into his forties and has spent most of his adult life in jail. Now? He's clean. He's established good relationships with his family (I think for the first time) and he's had a couple of home leaves. The first time he had one, he couldn't cope, totally panicked and took a non-prescribed drug (valium) to calm himself down. He came back to jail, failed a drug test, owned up, got counselling, and has since accomplished a couple of home leaves drug free and feels a whole new self-confidence. His story is not untypical. I am as confident as I could be that he will do well on release.

I could tell you lots of stories of success, and quite a number of failures too. But we're in the business of risk. And I get tired of the bad press. And so do the prisoners. And their families.

Do you know what I wish made the news on the average day? "Today across the Open Estate nearly 500 prisoners stayed in jail even though there is no big wall or big fence". But that kind of news doesn't sell papers.

Incidentally, if you read this in time, watch BBC1 at 12.30 tomorrow (Sunday) lunchtime - Castle Huntly is on Politics Today!

Ax

Have you ever had one of these slinky toys that this happened to? I don't think they're fixable. I've tried! Some people's lives are in such a tangled mess that humanly speaking they are unfixable. Read on!

Almost all the services I have conducted over the past six months have been in the two prisons of I am now the chaplain. And it may or may not surprise you to learn that services in prison are not exactly like services in church. For one thing we don’t get huge numbers and for another people don’t sit beautifully quietly. But I really like services in prison and they’ve made me see bits of the Bible in a new light. For example recently we were looking at Ephesians 4, which for those of you like me who don’t know the Bible off by heart is a passage (written, incidentally, from prison) which says: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. (Ephesians 4:22-24)

That’s actually an amazing piece of God’s message – here it is in a slightly different version: “Since, then, we don’t have the excuse of ignorance, everything – and I do mean everything – connected with that old way of life has to go. It’s rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life – a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you”.

And then, since Paul likes the direct approach, he goes on to spell it all out: “No more lying then! … If you become angry, don’t let your anger lead you into sin, and don’t stay angry all day. Don’t give the Devil a chance. The man who used to rob must stop robbing and start working, in order to earn an honest living for himself and to be able to help the poor. Do not use harmful words…. Get rid of all bitterness, passion, and anger. No more shouting or insults, no more hateful feelings of any sort…. Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you” – and so on.

I’ve read these words many times, and heard them read in church, but what an amazing experience to read them in prison. If you become angry, don’t let your anger lead you into sin – lots of your audience are in a prison service are in for violent assault or murder which was because they got angry and let their anger lead them into sin. The man who used to rob must stop robbing and start working, in order to earn an honest living for himself and to be able to help the poor. That’s a challenge for many who’re in for robbery or fraud. Do not get drunk with wine, which will only ruin you – lots of them are in for offences committed while drunk. Their lives are in a mess. And so, reading a passage like that in prison really makes it come alive – not because the rest of us aren’t sinners too but because the life change that’s demanded of these guys if they are to be Christians is so big, compared to someone who’s been brought up in the church and really just needs to kind of confirm for themselves that they believe what their parents and church has taught them all these years.

At the last but one service I did, a prisoner was just amazed by this passage and felt as if it was all written about him. He’s about my age now and he’s fed up with his life as he’s lived it up until now. He’s thrilled by this idea that you can put off your old self and put on a new self, and yet I can see that a bit of him doubts that such a thing is really possible. He yearns for it but he doesn’t just fully believe that it’s really possible. He wants this to be true for him but it seems impossible that it could happen.

Perhaps some of you might adopt that prisoner and pray for him – you don’t need his name because God’s got a note of it already – but pray that he will indeed be able to put off his old life of addiction and crime and put on this new life that he can see so clearly would help not just him but his wife and young family.

Why am I mentioning all this at the start of advent, when people read the Bible reading about Mary and the angel? Well, mainly because of what he said about wondering whether the change Ephesians 4 talks about and which he yearns for is in fact actually impossible because the answer’s in this bit of the Christmas story - it is that one line in the angel’s message to Mary, “For nothing is impossible with God”.

That's the key to it all really... lots and lots and lots of things are impossible for us but NOTHING is impossible with God. Even the apparently far-fetched and ridiculous, like the virgin birth. God made the rules and laws of nature so he can change them as he wishes. He can also untangle the tangled mess of a person's life, so they no longer need be sick and tired of being sick and tired of who they are but can become a new person. Impossible? NOTHING is impossible with God.