I was asked to write a blog about a recent course I attended, where 10 prisoners and 10 criminology students came together onto an Outreach programme that would examine various aspects of the criminal justice system. This blog was requested by Pansy, Anna, Bryony and TOM! I hope you enjoy it! 🙂
Unlocking Criminology.
Over the years I have walked into a number of rooms. I walked into school classrooms as a kid and bar rooms as a grown up. I’ve visited waiting rooms for doctors and dentists. I certainly remember walking into a courtroom. On each occasion I remember the same reaction – door opens, people look up. In the general run of things the people who had not been expecting me or didn’t know me would simply resume what they were doing and I would carry on with whatever I needed to do (the courtroom was a very different animal – and I will write about that on another occasion).
Since I started serving my sentence in a British jail I have walked into a fair number of rooms, but most of them were locked behind me. Even after years of prison I still get anxious when I go to places like healthcare. You just don’t know who else will be waiting there. What pain are they in? Have their meds been messed up? Do they have complex mental health needs? These are not nice environments to be locked in – it’s like being locked in a truck filled with dynamite that is trundling down a bumpy road – all it takes is one serious pothole.
Now if a 6 foot tall life sentenced prisoner can still feel intimidated walking into a room in prison I can only imagine how a young criminology student might feel. Yet in April 2019 I found out as I walked into a room at HMP Erlestoke and saw ten students anxiously waiting for ten prisoners who would be working with them for the next 7 weeks.
I had enrolled (with my peers) onto an Outreach programme with Bath Spa University for a series of tutorials that would examine various aspects of the criminal justice system. I suppose the main aim of the programme was to create a broad church of backgrounds and experiences. We would examine the judicial process from the perspectives of those who studied it and also from those of us that have been through it first-hand.
I was one of the early arrivals from the prisoner side and the students were already split into groups across three tables. I made my way to the middle table and as the other lads arrived they started to disperse themselves among the groups.
I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through the students’ minds as each of us began appearing. I expect that they played the same game that we did on the first-night units – size a guy up and try to guess their offence. While I think it is a basic human instinct to make snap judgements, my experience has taught me that those snap judgements are generally wrong. You don’t have to be an old man in an overcoat to be a paedophile. Murderers don’t (always) have horns, claws or forked tongues. Not everybody in prison has been a lifelong criminal.
After the initial introductions and tentative handshakes among our group, Dr Cath Morgan delivered the first lecture which related to Sentencing Philosophy and Practice. Where the bulk of the room were pretty reticent I had actually completed the required reading before the tutorial and was happy to volunteer my opinion to get the ball rolling (God, if only I had been that good a student during my teenage years!). All in all it didn’t take long before there were ideas being shared from students and prisoners alike.
One thing became apparent to me early on – many prisoners have spent hardly any time in any formal education environment. It backed up the findings of a 2015 study by the Prison Reform Trust which stated that 47% of adult men in UK prisons reported having no qualifications whatsoever (compared to 15% of the total adult male population). In fact the same report stated that 42% of men in prison had been expelled or permanently excluded from school[i]. Some of my peers were nervous – they just didn’t understand the etiquette or rules of a classroom environment.
But that soon changed as we divided into our groups with our first discussion topic – listing the factors that could influence sentencing. We had been tasked with identifying 10 factors, in no time we had passed 20. All of a sudden the programme came together as the students listed factors from an academic and theoretical perspective while we prisoners identified factors from our personal experience.
As each group shared their findings in the subsequent discussion there was a change in atmosphere as the previously shy prisoners now started to participate. I think the key lesson that many took from that first day was that there were no ‘wrong’ answers, i.e. If we had experienced something then that ‘something’ was valid and worth talking about.
Over the following weeks we were regularly shuffled around into different groups. Not only did I meet more of the students, but I started to get to know some of the men I have been serving time with. Before then we just hadn’t been in the same groups, the same activities or on similar wing units.
Furthermore, something also began to change in the inter-group dynamics – the barriers went. We weren’t students and prisoners – we were all just learners, sharing our experiences. Like any classroom I noticed people falling into roles within their groups. There were the designated scribes / note-takers. There were the jokers, and there were those more willing to speak and share the groups ideas in front of the entire classroom.
Over 6 tutorials and a final group presentation we examined various areas of the Criminal Justice System (CJS). We looked at sentencing, the purpose of prison, zemiology, abolitionists, restorative justice and the process of rehabilitation.
During every tutorial we identified ways that the CJS could be improved. There were practical and practicable solutions tabled – solutions that would actually yield savings to the exchequer in the long term. Given the current increases in crime rates and the fact that the re-offending rates are so high it is clear that the current model is not working. Something needs to be done. I will publish a selection of the concepts and ideas that were discussed over the next few weeks.
And that might have been the sour note at the end of the programme. We had been as diverse a group as you could hope for, and had put our minds together to identify real world solutions to make our society and CJS a little bit better and a little bit fairer.
Yet as we went our separate ways one of my peers made the comment, “Well that was great, but it was a waste of time. Fuck all will change.” Now while I believe that he is perfectly entitled to that view, I disagree with him. The first step to changing is to identify the need to change – and from my perspective, that was the principal achievement of the entire outreach programme.
My perspective of students merely lying about, watching daytime TV and eating beans has been utterly abrogated. Having spoken to the students I know that their preconceived notions of prisoners had also been overturned. In the next few months those students will become graduates and embark on what I hope are long and illustrious careers – some of them will work within the CJS and it is here that they will effect change.
So for now I’ll sign off and say thank you to Bath Spa University, Dr Cath Morgan and the students – we had a laugh. As they head off into the workplace I would like to offer them with two pieces of advice from history.
First from Malcolm X, “Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.”
Second, Abraham Lincoln – “Whatever you are, be a good one.”
[i] These statistics are from The Bromley Summer Briefings 2015. I would provide a full citation, however, my copies of the 2015 and 2017 documents are currently on loan to a certain Doctor of Criminology and my internet connection will be out of action for a few more years yet!
