1

2
THESIS:

Whilst incarceration in correctional institutions

generally has negative effects upon both the
psychological and social functioning of prisoners, the
Christian Gospel, bringing both hope and a new
community to the prisoner, offers the prison system
realistic opportunities for substantive rehabilitation.

Eckhart Theological Seminary

PhD. 2006

3
MEANING:

"Meaning is not something you stumble across, like

the answer to a riddle or a prize in a treasure hunt.
Meaning is something you build into your life. You
build it out of your own past, out of your affections and
loyalties … out of your own talent and understanding,
out of the things you believe in …. The ingredients are
there. You are the only one who can put them
together into the unique pattern that will be your life."

Stanford professor John Gardner

4
EVERY DAY IN BRITAIN 2007:

Every day in Britain 506 crimes of violence are reported,

12,000 offences are recorded by the police, at least 75 are
added to child protection registers, 2,750 properties are
burgled, 55 million is spent on alcohol, 27 schoolgirls
become pregnant, 170 babies are born to teenage mothers,
and 123 people are convicted of crimes involving drugs.
Every day in Britain 450 children will start to smoke and
330 will die of smoking. Every day, in Britain, at least 480
couples are divorced. A new crime is committed every 6
seconds in Britain - and a violent attack every 2 minutes.
There are 500 abortions of unwanted and innocent unborn
children each day, 182,500 each year. Every day in Britain
two young men kill themselves, and hundreds more fail in
their attempts. It is estimated that every day in Britain 100
children lose contact with their fathers.
167 women are known to be raped every day in Britain and
one in twenty has been a victim of this monstrous act. More
than 50,000 students skip school every day in Britain. 40
per cent of street crime, 25 per cent of burglaries, 20 per
cent of criminal damage and a third of car thefts were
carried out by 10 to 16-year-olds who skipped classes.
Every day in Britain 50 teenagers contract syphilis or
gonorrhoea. Every day 50,000 women under the age of 30

5
drink twice as much as their bodies can cope with - half are
single and under the age of 25. Every day in Britain an
estimated £40m is staked at online poker parlours. There
are 25 firearm offences every day in Britain. The
Samaritans get a call every 8 seconds - that's 4.2 million
people a year. Almost 11,000 a day
Each year 150, 000 children are affected by their parents
divorce. 100,000 run away from home or from care. 10,000
schoolgirls became pregnant. 180,000 babies are aborted.
10.3 million people have fallen below the official poverty
line - that's the number claiming income support. Today
there are 13,300 families living in bed and breakfast
accommodation.

6
PERSONAL TESTIMONY:1

Email received from David Evans on Monday, 27th March

2006, giving permission to use his testimonyi in my PhD
Thesis.

Greetings in Christ my dear friend,

You have my full permission to add my testimony to your
dissertation, without you there would be no testimony, I am
more grateful for that 60 minute talk you gave in Stafford
than anyone could ever imagine, you might like to add this:
I spent over 12 months in a cell with an inmate, yet I can
only remember his first name (it was Tony), I only saw and
heard you for 60 minutes, but will remember your name for
eternity, why is that? You must have made a deep
impression.
Should you need them my details are as follows:

Mr David Evans,
1 The Leys,
Lowdham,
Nottingham.
NG14 7BT
Tel: 0115 9665685

1
p 523 below.

7
 Review by Revd Canon Timothy Biles
This book is a surprising mix of academic research and
human relationships.
Readers should not be put off by the long title or by the 380
footnotes, the fifteen pages of bibliography or the weight of its 550
pages. All of these suggest the work belongs to dry academia.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Readers will scarcely note the thoroughness of the research as
they turn the pages because the work is of intense human interest, a
series of stories straight from ‘Eastenders’ though a good deal
better. There is a strong autobiographical theme because the author,
now an Anglican priest, has resolved to use his painful experience
behind bars as a tool for empathy and for outreach.
The insights to prison life are scary. The negatives of
punishment, humiliation and rejection outweigh the positives of
rehabilitation and reformation to an alarming degree. Serious
questions are posed about the purpose and value of the custodial
system.
The author’s own conversion experience, in prison, is deeply
moving because he finds an acceptance he had never known when
free. His return to ‘freedom’ holds shocks for him, and lessons for
all of us who are content in our churches, enjoying the fine liturgy
and the company of like-minded people while passing the troubled
and the needy on the other side.
This well researched book sits like a time-bomb under the
complacent and the self-righteous. The numbers of young (and
older) people crying for the help of acceptance can not be counted.
Where should they look?

8
9
 Christian Coping

&

Psychosocial Functioningii

in

British Correctional Institutions

(Christian Coping in Prison)

A Study From the Inside

Roy Catchpole

RCB
10
11
CONTENTS

1 Retrospective: looking back - the convert’s story.

2 Trials and Charges - the offences.
3 Auto Theft - a special achievement.
4 Anger Management - psychologies of emotional pain.
5 Unhappy People - class, alienation, and culture
6 Sex and Power - Special relationships
7 The Mark of the Beast – Labelling & stereotyping -
the Fall.
8 Other Worlds - a Christological perspective.
9 Freedom Through a Window - Concepts of Freedom
and Captivity.
10 Assault of Freedom - The implications of eschatology
and the Kingdom.
11 The Wrong Key - Positive aspects of Humanism.
12 Solitary Confinement - Inner life.
13 Reading Goal - Violence, repression, and retribution
as reformative tools.
14 Rochester Borstal - An historical survey of the prison
system’s goals.
15 The Key At Last - Christian conversion.
16 Home Leave - reintroduction to social belonging.
17 The Dream and the Reality - The world as it really is.
18 A Testimony from David - an example of effect.

12
13
14
 ONE: LOOKING BACK
The convert’s story

As I research through the lens of forty years I can see an

angst-ridden, skinny teenager looking out over the little city
of Rochester, England. Having spent three years enclosed
in institutions, though he was in his early twenties he was, I
can see, little but a vulnerable child.
It was a cold, miserable early spring morning. Ignoring
church spires, leaky gargoyles, the splash of rain on cobbles
and the impatient clatter of hunched people with umbrellas
in the anonymous city, he fearfully imagined what it would
be like to walk among them, pretending that he, like them,
were normal. Not really knowing what he had got himself
into by becoming a Christian, he imagined no one would
notice him. Life would be better. It was a shot in the dark,
because for the past three years he had been penned-up in
prison, isolated from the rest of the community.

How much had things really changed? Would he be like an

alien among normal people?
Having been brought to the young offenders’ institution in
the back of a prison van many months before, he had only

15
ever once seen anything of the city of Rochester. This had
been for his Christian Confirmation at age twenty.
Resulting from arguments and studies with a
Cambridge University Chaplain and two Franciscan Friars,
he had become a Christian in April 1966, and was
confirmed by the bishop in the cathedral two weeks ago.
Much else had also changed in his world that he was
unaware of however. In the past three years, while he had
been hidden behind prison walls, the Labour Party had
come back into power under the idiosyncratic leadership of
Harold Wilson. From 1966, homosexual acts between
consenting adults were now no longer illegal, abortion was
more readily accessible, and the Divorce Reform Act of
19692 had made it easier to end marriages. This Act
represented the agreed conclusions of the Law Commission
of the House of Lords and the ‘Putting Asunder’ Group of
the Church of England. Breakdown of a marriage became
the sole ground for divorce and the matrimonial offences
(adultery, cruelty, and desertion) were accepted as
providing prima facie evidence of such a breakdown.
Since there had been no abortions, homosexuals or divorces
in his family, and David had no way of knowing how any
of these things would impact on his life, but despite Mary
Whitehouse’s protestations and Lord Longford’s efforts to
2
Mortimer, R.C. ‘‘ ‘Putting Asunder’ and the Divorce Reform Act.2
Theology 74, no. 609 (1971): 123 – 124.

16
establish a power-base for a moral minority in British
political and religious life this side of the Pond,3 a new
liberal age had nevertheless begun during his time in
custody, he would have to come to terms with it and
understand it all.
In terms of his newly acquired Anglican faith this was to
lead in thirty years time to the current pastoral crisis in the
Communion between Conservative and Liberal
Christianity, a new post world war shaking of the
foundations that had been unimaginable in 1966. Simply as
an ordinary committed Christian, but particularly as a
conservative evangelical, he would have to have a
supportable moral response.
The 1998 Lambeth Conference was to bring into relief two
major issues dividing the church: homosexuality and the
ordination of women. Debates over these questions tended
to split the church into its conservative southern dioceses

3
Saberi, Erin. From Moral Majority to Organized Minority: Tactics
of the Religious Right. Christian Century, 11 no. 23 (1993): 781-
784.
This study concludes that, The Religious Right has shifted its focus
from national politics to local. The movement’s resurrection at the
GOP convention caught the political and media establishments by
surprise. Although they surfaced in the national spotlight, they have
returned to stealth tactics based on an old political truism: only a
small percentage of voters is needed to win any election. These
ground war tactics are supported by mass media communications
aimed at a wider Christian audience. The surprises of the 1992
campaigns are only a harbinger of what the Religious Right may
bring to the USA religious and political scene throughout the 1990s.

17
and more liberal northern dioceses. With bishops from
Africa and Southeast Asia now in the infant years of the
twenty-first century outnumbering their British and
American counterparts, however, this rift was to have a
surprising and ironical consequence at Lambeth: church
leaders of the northern hemisphere were to find themselves
having to accept the postcolonial South’s interpretation of
the very Scripture, ecclesiastical traditions, and sexual
norms the North had imposed on the South in the first
place. David’s radical experience of prison, social services,
and the humanistic, deterministic nature of the state system,
which tended to broaden his outlook and render it more
liberal, would come into painful confrontation with the
evangelicalism of his early years. Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s4
study explores the Anglican Church’s current internal
struggle over women’s5 ordination and homosexuality as a
site of internalized and redeployed colonial tactics as a
complex racial issue. The outcome remains in the balance,
4
Rubenstein, Mary Jane. An Anglican Crisis of Comparison:
Intersections of Race, Gender, and Religious Authority, with
Particular Reference to the Church of Nigeria. Journal of the
American Academy of Religion 72, no. 2 (2004): 341-365.
5
Mary Grey. The Shaking of the Foundations - Again! Culture
and the Liberation of Theology. Louvain Studies 20, no.4 (1995):
347-361. Traces a new direction for theology in feminist and
ecological liberation theology, using a praxis of transformation and
epiphanies of connection to relate to the traditions ethically,
epistemologically, doctrinally and mystically. There is still a soul-
scape for trans-national Anglican theology.

18
as the actual practice of theology continues to develop in
unpredictable ways.
For example, the feminist earthquake was incipient, and
soon to burst upon the religious world with devastating
effect upon the way theology would henceforward be done.
When David had gone in to prison, the Original Sin
mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Garden of Eden
was woman’s. (Genesis.3:6; c/f Romans 5:12-19; 1
Timothy 2:14; James 1:14; James 1:15; 1 John 2:16). She it
was who tasted the forbidden fruit, tempted Adam and she
it was who had been paying for it ever since. In the
Genesis account the Lord had said,
(Unto the woman he said), “I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee”.
On his release from prison, David was facing a world in
which the above quotation was regarded no longer as a holy
and sacred place where no critic dared to set foot, because
the Bible was ‘Holy’ and ‘given’, but as a mythological
justification, written by men, who were the rulers and those
in power over women, for explaining and sustaining the
exploitation of women as servile persons in society.
Certainly many women would be seeing the summary it
contains of their relationship with their spouses as an

19
accurate description of their status through the ages. This
role could be accurately summarised as: to produce
children, be mothers and wives, do the cooking, mending,
sewing and washing, take care of men, be subordinate to
male authority, and accept exclusion from high status
occupations and from positions of power. Women were on
the move, thanks to people such as Ruth Bleier and others.6
However, not all religionists were happy about this, and
indeed, even certainly in 1985, remained unhappy about it.
An example of a learned article reacting to what was by
some considered to be by definition ‘secularist’ or ‘secular
humanists’ feminist thinking is the learned article by James
Alexander7 arguing that women are not required to be silent
in the church, (as some may say), but neither are all
ministries equally open to them. Men and women are
equal, (sic) and women do have ministries. Women’s
ministries however need to be exercised under male
authority. The office of pastor, for example, is not open to

6
‘Feminism’ is a diverse, and often opposing collection of social
theories, political movements and moral philosophies, largely
concerning the experiences of women, especially in terms of their
social, political, and economic inequalities. They cover whether
equality can be achieved through legislation that is inclusive of
experiences specific to women, what they are, or if they exist. There
is no single, universal form of feminism that represents all feminists
or feminist perceptions.
7
James, Alexander. Against Feminism and Beyond Silence: The
Biblical View of Female Ministry. The Journal of Brethren Life and
Thought. 30, no. 4 (1985):231-236

20
women. The concept of women’s ministry in the (Brethren)
church and exercising it under male authority, and the
concept of women’s equality with men is presented as a
‘biblical paradox’ that is not meant to be resolved. People,
both men and women, were taking up positions on all of
these issues, and setting the context for religious life in the
21st Century.
As Paul Tillich sought in the boundaries of existence for a
beyond in our midst when the foundations of Europe and
Asia were shaken at the end of World War II, so the
Anglican communion was beginning to seek a new
response to a second shaking of the foundations in its
international existence today.
Later on, when looking for work after serving his prison
term, with the strained relations between government and
the unions, David was fortunate to get a more-or-less secure
job, without the help of NACRO, the voluntary resettlement
service, in which the cuts in public spending, that had
affected his parents who were dependent on welfare
benefits, had little impact on his own albeit poor standard
of living.
It was morning, and a transparent, cold mist hung in the
air along the hollows of the meadow. The air was sweet
with the smell of crushed Kentish hops and fresh mown
grass - deep green, wet and trodden-on. The little city of

21
Rochester in the distance twinkled with the moisture on
its roofs and pavements as the budding day, with his new
life, began to open-up. David was, technically at least,
free,
The wall, with its spiked double gates topped with curled
razor wire was above and behind the skinny adolescent. It
looked less forbidding from this freedom side of the wall -
not so threatening as it had been for the boy who had, a few
moments ago, been a prisoner in its thrall. One lad had
pensioned off a prison officer with a brick smashed down
on his head in a failed escape a few months earlier. The
story went round the prison that the lad had been pinioned
on the razor wire like a wild animal in a trap, and was left
there for a long time before being brought down. They had
said they lacked the manpower... It was before the days of
the Children Act and before the mercy of political
correctness had taken hold. The child wondered if in the
future, Australian citizens would visit this place out of
inquisitiveness to see where, at one time, people had been
executed or imprisoned prior to being deported to their new
country. An urban myth was that it had been throughout
that time that people were hanged at Rochester. It was said
that some prisoners had been taken on grisly tours, by the
guards, to the room where the gallows used to be. Those
who had allegedly been on this tour reported that the actual

22
apparatus of death had not been there of course, but David
knew that all that it needed was a right-wing majority and
an Act of Parliament for the barbaric practice to be
reinstated. In fact, Rochester Prison had never been a place
of execution. Most ordinary British people wanted the
death penalty, and were it reinstated, there would be no
shortage of applicants to pull the lever.
Many years later Rochester prison was to undergo an
inspection by Sir David Ramsbotham, Her Majesty’s Chief
Inspector of Prisons, in which he was saddened to have to
report, after a brilliant female prison governor had departed
the prison, that,
‘Looking after young prisoners is a specialist occupation,
in which good staff/prisoner relationships are crucial. The
key factor in these is mutual trust, built up by the same staff
dealing with the same young prisoners, day after day,
fairly, firmly and consistently. Yet staff members were
continually being taken away for other tasks. This led to a
lack of continuity and severe reduction of essential
services. The necessary interim arrangements to provide
child protection for those under 18 years old had been
ignored.’
It was true then, as now that, as the English Collective of
Prostitutes reported in 2004:

23
 Poverty in Britain, whilst less obvious than in Third World
countries, is nonetheless extreme but often hidden. The gap
between the haves and have-nots, the North and the South,
has continued to widen, and many women and children live
on or below the so-called poverty line. With the excuse of
helping the poor out of poverty and into work and of
preventing benefit fraud, benefits are cut, single mothers
are labelled ‘workless’ and forced into the lowest paid jobs,
asylum seekers (including pregnant women and women
with young children) are made destitute and their children
denied school education, the poorest regions continue to
lose jobs, and young people running away from violence
face homelessness, zero benefits, and only the lowest
minimum wage, while most abusers go unpunished. No
wonder many turn to drugs and prostitution to survive.8

The jailbird now released into this world, whose first brush
with the courts had been when he was ten years old, was
now a squeaky-clean Christian. His contact with the courts
had been almost exclusively as a child under the age of
eighteen. He, who had so recently left boyhood, unaware
of the predictive power of this kind of institutional poverty
upon minorities, of which, as an ex-convict he was now a
8
Paying The Price of Criminalisation. A summary of a response to
the government consultation paper on prostitution by the English
Collective of Prostitutes. (accessed 27 March 2006)
http://www.Allwomencount.Net

24
member, all unaware breathed a sigh and got on the
minibus that was to take him to the station and home to his
parents’ council house. He travelled hopefully. Because
there had been no child protection legislation in 1966, he
had been left to sink or swim according to how quick-
witted he was able to be in a crisis. He had made allies of
the more violent prisoners and officers, and avoided the
ephebophiles and child abusers. He had thus been lucky to
avoid the abusers of his physical body. However, he had
not been so fortunate with those who abused his emotional
life.
But now, born again in his spirit,9 he was determined that in
the future, in his Christian ministry, he would fight for the
protection and defence of children, and work with all his
energies for the conversion of people to the Christ in whom
he had placed his faith and his very life itself. He would

9
The Hermeneutic of Faith. Searching Together 22 no. 1-4 (1994):
29-38.
This is the praxis of what Cliff Bjork describes as ‘...faith as a
hermeneutical principle.’ When a sinner is born again, the gospel
message that was once foolishness to those perishing becomes the
very fragrance of life. The mind that was once darkened by unbelief
is enabled by the Holy Spirit to respond to the Gospel with an act of
saving faith. To believe, therefore, is the very essence of salvation.
Faith is inseparably linked to the new birth. It is also linked to the
hermeneutic of Jesus Christ. The faith that saves is not a believe-
anything-you-will faith, but a specific faith that trusts solely in the
person and work of Jesus Christ.

25
work among the poor and bring relief to prisoners and their
families.
This was what lay deep in the heart of the skinny little man
who stood at the gates of Rochester Prison shivering with
the cold in his newly apportioned prison suit that day.
What the future would hold, no one knew.
He was resolved, however, that it would be different from
the past.
It was a short journey to the station. Not a
particularly interesting or engaging journey under normal
circumstances. However, for him it was a long journey -
the longest trip he had taken for nine months; it was the
most interesting journey he’d ever made. Even the housing
estate and the rubbish-tip looked full of interest and
possibility; little fires dotted about on the dump, with gangs
of displaced wanderers and wayfarers and outcasts casually
poking through them for any goodies that might be found.
The activity on the estuary of the river murmured in the
distance, where there was a caravan site. Ignoring the fact
that these were all indicators of deprivation and poverty, he
afforded himself the luxury of experiencing it as a romantic
scene. Otherwise the world was too hard a place...
He ruminated over the letter he had written home a
couple of days earlier,

26
… They tell me you have agreed to have me at home. I
don’t deserve a home. I’m only glad you have remained
loyal to me all this time. I don’t know how I shall ever
repay you...
Then apprehension welled up inside him; his stomach
muscles tensed, and he found it hard to breathe. He pressed
his face against the rear window of the mini-bus.
Take me back, he whispered, I want to go back. Desperate
to go home, yet his fists were white at the knuckles,
clenched and sweating, his soul cried out, Oh, God. I don’t
want to go home.
He couldn’t face the probation officer, disillusioned and
suffering from chronic arthritis after years of impotent
powerlessness to really help any of the children in his care,
or the family, still resentful of his past behaviour and too
poor to feed and clothe him if he didn’t get a job, the
neighbours whom his disillusioned father feared and
despised, and who now had something against him, to taunt
him with, the Job Centre whose harried staff had fewer and
fewer jobs available, with the mounting troubles between
the unions and the Labour government, and the creaking
welfare system that was even now suffering sharp cutbacks
in public spending as a result of the sudden devaluation of
the pound under Harold Wilson.

27
Against all reason he heard himself crying out to his new
Friend, Jesus, Take me back to my cell. I want my cell.
He couldn’t face the probation officer, the family, and worst
of all, the accusations of his father about what the
neighbours thought. His father was a strict disciplinarian
who appeared never to have done anything wrong, and
whose judgement against most people, criminal or not, this
young man had always experienced as being harsh, arid,
vicious, merciless and crushing.
Despite the way his life had gone thus far, he did not
like changes. Alterations, and new faces worried him. He
probably feared he’d never fit in anywhere. No one would
accept him. Whatever the reason, the fear filled him; what
could he do? What would he say? He couldn’t go back
now. He told himself contrary to the experience of the past
three years, it had been all right in the ‘nick’. Everyone
there had been in the same situation. Prisoners live away
from the outside world.
They are comfortably oblivious of the fact that beyond the
walls, ordinary people walked free, and that unnoticed by
them in their hermetically sealed world, times changed.
Most people in the world were not criminals. People who
were confined within four walls in the prison system might
laugh about the people on the ‘outside’, deride them, make
jokes about them, and call them ‘mugs’. Well, it was safe

28
in ‘the nick’, and there were no responsibilities. Inside, all
necessities for life were provided. Prisoners had to find
ways of ameliorating the distress of their situation; of
maintaining a ‘front’ of bravado; of pretending that they
were masters of their own destiny. After all, they were in
reality owned and controlled, body and soul, by the state
through the prison staff who worked a shift system and
went home to their working-class families every night.
Outside it was so big. There were so many people. There
were so many places to go, yet really, no-where to go when
you had no money. He remembered suddenly that he
actually knew nobody. All his recent contacts, whom he
knew so well, were behind him within those four grey walls
that he had so recently abandoned. All the people he had
known before, in his home town, would be three years
older, married, with children or moved from the area, or
even dead. Anyway, they had only been school friends, not
real friends. They would all be grown-up now.
Who would be there for him? There would be social
workers, probation officers, supported housing officers and
hostel-keepers, professional care workers of all kinds;
people at the Job Centre and the careers office; do-gooders.
Did these people really help? They were like the prison
guards - they worked their shifts and then went home to
their families. Why not? A voice from deep inside shocked

29
and frightened him with what it said, ‘you’re all alone.
Now, neither the guards, nor even the criminals are your
friends. You have left the frying pan, and are now in the
fire! You stand with what little money you have in your
pocket and the clothes that are on your back. That’s all.
Nothing else.’
The little station at the bottom of the hill on which the
prison stood came in to view. He stopped thinking and
became interested in what he was seeing. Women with
short mini-skirts and young men with long hair. This
sounds strange today, when people wear what they like, so
long as it conforms to peer pressure, but forty years ago,
this was another manifestation of the beginning of the
throes of a social and sexual revolution that was to expand
for decades to come. Two years earlier, still in a post-war
mentality, these young men would have been thought
hooligans and deviants, simply because of their tribal hair.
Now, they seemed to be standard model, conforming young
people. To him, it was odd to see them out in the open.
Even odder, since for the past three years in prison he had
not seen any people with long hair, and there were no
female prison guards in men’s prisons. It would be some
years before a female governor ruled in Rochester Prison,
for example. Meanwhile, these longhaired young men had
become typical, and it was he, with the short-cropped,

30
prickly scalp, who looked out of place. He had a deep
moment of awareness of the absurdity of it all - which
Jeffrey Sobosan astutely observed in his research paper10 -
that there are two levels of absurdity in the theatre of the
absurd. The absurdity of the unreasoned semi-conscious,
superficial level on which most of these peoples’ lives were
conducted, without any real passion or meaning beyond
getting and obtaining things, and the different level of
absurdity of the likely frustration of this ex-convict
Christian’s aspirations in a world that would probably give
him no support and in which his own grasp on reality was
the tenuous link of an infant and untutored, untested,
Christian faith. He longed briefly for his little cell again. It
was all far too big for him.
Shuffling quietly to the platform, he settled down in an
unobtrusive corner of the shelter to wait for the train.
In his pocket was the little money the prison authority had
taken from him when he had been arrested three years ago.
There was maybe enough for a packet of cigarettes and
some candy. He couldn’t remember where the money had
come from originally and whether it had been earned or

10
Sobosan, Jeffrey G. Tragic Absurdity: Hopelessness and Stories
of Life. Journal of Religion and Health 15, no. 3 (1976): 181 - 187.
Traces these themes through Greek, Shakespearian and modern
tragedies, and discusses in detail the meaning of Beckett’s ‘Waiting
for Godot’, concludes with the observation that the philosophy of
absurdity is a humane and human act.

31
stolen. He felt a pang of Christian guilt. He took the
money out and looked down at it. A single note and some
coins. Having not handled any actual money for so long, it
seemed unreal, like Monopoly money. For a second he
suffered an existential and unreasonable anxiety that it
might no longer be legal tender. Would the storekeeper
refuse to take it?
In keeping with the emphasis in contemporary theology
upon a description of the alienation and estrangement of
man from himself, the ground of being, his fellow man, as
in this instance, a fortunate aspect had been the emergence
of self-awareness and self-consciousness that was
exemplified here in this man’s feeling of alienation. He
was aware of himself as a self-directed agent.
Whereas older theology saw as fortunate the heavenly
provision of God in Christ, the new saw the emergence of
selfhood.
This man, David, wanted God in Christ, and thought that
that was what he had obtained. On the one hand,
identification of the Fall11 with Creation questions the
goodness of God’s creative activity. On the other hand,

11
Ficek, Jerome L. The Paradox of the Fortunate Fall in
Contemporary Theology. Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological
Society. 2, no. 3 (1959): 1-7. Indicates ways several modem
theologians have understood the estrangement and alienation of man
as in some sense being fortunate and notes the sources of these
views - existentialism and depth psychology.

32
acknowledgement of the experience of alienation and
separation, beginning to emerge here, accompanied by a
denial of the disobedience of a historical figure poses
problems in understanding biblical references to the first
and second Adam (Rom 5:12-21).
What does one choose? This ex-convict did not
choose, but rather felt a sense and urge that everyone who
passed him on the platform looked at him strangely, as
though he were an alien. Not knowing that it was the
spiritual revolution that had occurred within his heart and
mind, whose internal contradictions would not emerge into
his reflective consciousness for two decades and more to
come, he thought that it must be his hair, or perhaps his
shabby prison-release suit. ‘But’, he thought, ‘I could be a
soldier on leave or demob. The government also clothes
soldiers, although it would be the military, not the prison
service.’ The feelings of anxiety would not leave him, and
he felt that he must somehow look as though he were
institutionalised. The pallor of his skin, the smell of his
clothes - there is a very special smell of urine and stale
faeces that pervaded everything in prison, including the
clothes store. Perhaps it was the shoes, with the heavy
studs and thick soles. He wanted to smile at the people as
they passed - especially at the girls. Was this not the day of
his rejoicing – of celebration? Balloons, a hurdy-gurdy,

33
tickertape and streamers... However, he was afraid that if
he smiled, they would laugh. He did not smile, all of the
time he stood at the station. In fact, the mundane reality
was that people’s lives were too full, too preoccupied, too
individual, too dully soporific, for them to even notice his
presence. That was the truth of it. As he waited for the
train, he slipped into the frame of mind that he was an alien
- as he had always felt himself to be since childhood. It
was his default emotional position. In that sense, he had
made the choice.
It was a 1960’s suburban open-plan railway carriage, before
the advent of graffiti. There was a single available seat
near the door, which increased his uncomfortable self-
awareness. Being with strangers in a confined space
without the overarching rules that had governed him as a
prisoner, whose every move had to be tabulated, recorded,
permitted and agreed, unsettled him and made him feel
vulnerable. Other passengers, he thought, would be local
people, well aware that he was a member of the latest
release consignment from the prison on the hill. At certain
times of the year, he ruminated, the gates would be opened,
and odds-and-ends of people would shuffle into the sun in
their thin suits, big boots and cropped hair, make their way
through the town and wait at the station. These would be
anonymous people, sticking out like sore thumbs, trying not

34
to be seen, choosing the corners to sit in, rolling thin
cigarettes and avoiding glances. Surely, they all knew.
He wanted to cry out, ‘God loves me! He knows me
inside-out, and still loves me!’ However, he did not dare.
It would have been too much of an admission of
vulnerability - like showing your poetry to someone who
lacks understanding. No. Somehow, from his prison
culture, perhaps, that had taught him something about the
alienation of modern man, he sensed that it couldn’t be
done. It would not be understood. He did not know it then,
but the leaders and governors of his newly-acquired
religious tradition had lived too long with the illusion that it
was enough to read the Bible, and had failed to appreciate
the distorting influence of the cultural lenses with which
that reading had taken place. He would need to learn to
question the position from which he read the Bible himself.
Two aspects of his contemporary culture were important in
relation to this pursuit: (1) he was living at a time of
transition and change when most of the assumptions long
taken for granted were being widely challenged and
rejected; (2) the enormous depth of alienation and
loneliness to which people were now bearing witness. As
David Smith was later to observe in 1999,12 the
fundamental issue was whether, in dependence on the Holy
12
David Smith. ‘Understanding Contemporary Culture.’
Foundations Journal (British). 1999, volume 42: pp. II-I5.

35
Spirit, he was going to be able to provide channels of
communication through which the waters of life could flow,
first in his own soul, and then in his wider community, to
revive a parched cultural wasteland facing death.
Moreover, at this time, what was more immediately
significant and felt for him was, he was not that certain God
really loved him anyway.
The loneliness of that journey, both literally and
figuratively was almost intolerable. He felt dreadfully
alone. His throat was beginning to tickle, and he was
terrified of coughing and drawing attention to himself. The
last thing he wanted was for people to look up from their
papers and magazines. He knew it was irrational, and they
couldn’t do him any harm. But what if they were to look,
and his absurd little figure became the centre of attention.
The cough began to force itself out. He couldn’t stop it. He
thought that perhaps when he coughed he would re-
position himself and gaze out of the window, then it
wouldn’t matter if anyone looked. He coughed gently.
Another followed, and another. He dared not move.
Normally, with a grin on his face, he would make a joke of
it and pass it off with a witticism. He’d have banged his
chest with a fist and pretended to be a gorilla to general
merriment. He gazed emptily out of the window with the
hair on the nape of his neck tingling, and the hair caught in

36
his throat tickling, longing for the journey to end. A man
called to be a Christian preacher was here terrified of his
own shadow. What an irony! Perhaps part of the reason
was this:
In his pocket was a flimsy form. It was headed,

Prison Act 1952

Notice to a Person Released from a Borstal...13

It had his name on it, and told him how the Secretary of
State had authorised his release from borstal. The form told
him about certain commitments he had to keep if he wanted
to stay out of borstal. There were six Rules:
You must visit your probation officer when you get home.

He wondered if they had planted someone on the train to

make sure he didn’t get into any trouble on the way home.
It might have been anyone in the carriage. Maybe it was
the chap over there...

You must keep in touch with your probation officer and

always tell him the truth.
13
In 2006, ‘Borstal’ remains the slang for punishment centres for
18-21 year olds although the institutions previously named HMB
(Her Majesty’s Borstal) similarly to HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison)
have been subsequently renamed YoC (Young offenders Centres)
and and YoI (Young offenders Institutions).

37
That was the second rule he had to keep. He knew what it
meant at a deeper level than the surface. Apart from
forcing an oath upon him, it meant he would have to visit
his probation officer once a week, and that if he didn’t, he
would be packed off to prison again. He had visited this
man before. A good guy, who had become increasingly
embittered over the years as he watched the probation
system transform caring officers who had believed in the
possibility of redemption and change, into cynical agents of
social control, inspired by the political need for punishment
rather than the hope and enthusiasm for rehabilitation. The
skinny teenager wondered how he could try to be a good,
law-abiding citizen when every Wednesday or Friday he
would be forced to go to the downtown end of the city,
through the huge gate on the main road which everybody
knew were the probation offices and courts and holding
cells. For five days of the week he would have been able to
forget about his past, but twice a week he’d be reminded of
it, and dragged back to it. Bureaucrats, he reflected, could
hand out problems as well as solve them. This second rule
had a built-in recidivism-rate, and is now demonstrated as
being a bad system by for example Charles Colson’s
missionary activity.
This man, twenty-six years after leaving prison, has become
one of America’s most significant social reformers.

38
Colson’s conversion, in the wake of the Watergate scandal,
elicited derision and rebuke from Republicans, Democrats,
and even Christians who at the time thought it was a joke.
Since then he has bridged seemingly unbridgeable gaps
between evangelicals and social activism, between activist
Christians and those who dismiss them as fools. Wendy
Murray Zoba’s study 14 10 traces his life, his conversion, his
founding of Prison Fellowship and, more recently, Inner-
Change Freedom Initiative, which prepares prisoners for
release from a Christian perspective of the changed life and
has seen a recidivism rate of only five %. These
programmes have come about because, while in prison,
Colson caught a vision, like this skinny British prisoner, for
restorative justice. It is restorative, not retributive, justice
that brings healing and new possibilities.

You must avoid bad company.

Yet, once a week, if he kept Rule Two, he would be
meeting all of his former friends at the Probation Office!
This would break Rule Three. They would all be there; all
of his old cronies. Sitting in the waiting room, rolling
cigarettes, repeating age-old jokes and chatting about their
latest crimes and what expectations they had for fines or
imprisonment. Conversation would center on the two
14
Zoba Wendy M.. The Legacy of Prisoner 23226. Christianity
Today 45, no. 9 (2001): 28-35.

39
topics, sex and crime, about which they knew only the
worst, and very little else.
The remaining three rules were about work, changing
address, and a command to contact the Probation Office if
help were needed. He smiled wryly at the last one. If he
had wanted help, it would have been financial; if it had
been financial they’d have wanted to know why. The
reason would have been that he had lost his job, and if he
had lost his job, it’s a sure-fire certainty that the police
would be knocking at his door, since unemployed ex-
convicts were prime targets of police interest.
So much for the form in his pocket. It represented the
final bureaucratic expression of the just demands of the law.
It was the typed and gobbitted ending of what had no doubt
been a long process of discussion and debate that had
engaged many elected legislators and Home Office
employees for many days. He was afraid of the demands of
the law, and of the subsequent interpretations of the
bureaucrats. Not because he feared getting caught, but
because the law makes people live by rules, and that, he
thought, was inhuman. Why couldn’t the law learn a lesson
from the Bible? Replace the law with love? On the one
hand there were the moral imprecations of the ultra
pietistic.15 These people observed that at one time, the chief
15
James Philip. Moral Implications of the Gospel. Christianity
Today. 2, no. 12 (1958): 3-5.

40
concern of spiritual work was the creation and building-up
of Christian character. Whilst once Evangelical piety laid
inflexible demands for the highest standards of Christian
behaviour, now, they said, we were suffering in our
churches from Christians who refused to grow up into
maturity and consequently were unable to engage serious
Christian witness. Among the causes of this state of affairs,
they held, were the new (sic) antinomianism and the ‘cult
of frivolity’. Modern preoccupations, they felt, had
inclined us to make happiness and contentment the chief
end of life. We needed, they believed, a new understanding
of the purpose of the gospel, a new realization of the moral
imperative it lays upon man to live to the glory of God, as
distinct from the ‘psychological considerations’ that had
obscured it. Recovery, they proposed, could take place
only through a return to expository preaching.
On the other hand there were those who had reduced ethics
to becoming an orphan of philosophy by means of the
criticisms of logical positivism, utilitarianism and Marxism.
For example, young people committed to anti-racism, anti-
sexism and anti-homophobism have reduced ethics to
sloganism. Educators offer a smorgasbord of frameworks
for answering, how ought I live my life? Brenda Almond 16
suggests that there are seven modern myths: relativism,
16
Almond Brenda. New Occasions Teach New Duties? Seven
Moral Myths. Expository Times, 105, no. 6 (1994): 164-167.

41
toleration, neutrality, equation of theory and commitment,
and the majority, equation of law and morality, and
liberalism. It is time, she proposes, to show a positive
commitment to the humanistic tradition - rejecting the view
that it is a bourgeois blemish on capitalism, and embracing
it as being as old as recorded history.
He scratched around in the pocket of his prison suit and
rescued a crumpled piece of card. It would be many
decades, and only after training as a social worker in a
British higher educational establishment, before he would
be able to describe himself somewhat self-consciously in
protest against judgemental moralistic pietism as a
‘Christian Humanist’. On the card was printed the words,
‘A new command I give to you. Love one another. As I
have loved you, so love one another.’

The words of Jesus.

For him, on that day, in that place, they were enough. The
card was in the same pocket as the form. There were fewer
words to read, but they were saying much more. They
seemed to offer simplicity and hope. They felt
unconditionally faithful and hopeful. They were direct and
honest. He felt that they demanded something of him
that he was able, willing, and enthusiastic to give.

42
The journey having ended, there was no difficulty in getting
across the city. He took his time, enjoying the novelty of
the presence of pretty women along the route. He had been
starved of that nearness for three years. It was springtime
in the year and in his veins! Sap, as it will, rose.
He shot a glance backwards to see if he could spot the
man from the ministry following him. He knew he was
being paranoid, but it had become a habit. Like habitually
calling every mature male, ‘sir’. It was a conditioned
Pavlovian response. He wondered if for the rest of his life
he would be looking behind him and habitually submitting
himself in this way to every older male. He had not been
culturally conditioned to become a Christian, however. He
had been introduced to it suddenly. It had been an entirely
new thing for him.

He had not inherited it from his parents, since they had not
professed themselves to be Christians. But he had been a
convict for three years. Did this mean that he had
undergone a cultural brainwashing17 that would effect and
17
Donald Walhout. ‘The Culturally Conditioned Christian.’ The
Journal of Religion in Life, 1961,volume: 30 pp 279-284.
Walhout feels that the most meaningful approach in challenging a
humanist interpretation is through a theology of history, which
absorbs the indicated facts and gives a more far-reaching
interpretation of culture. God chose Christianity to be the only
religion on earth containing truth and chose Western culture as its
vehicle. This is a view seeing meaning and purpose in other
religions and does justice to personal decision-making.

43
condition all of his responses for the rest of his life? Whilst
he hoped not, and that his newly discovered faith would
sustain and empower him, he didn’t know, and feared that it
might. He suspected that the cultural conditioning of a
person into Christianity, as the main religion in their
background, might destroy any objective rational validity
which they might in future claim for their acceptance of it.
Christians had answered this question in two ways. One
had been to dispute the alleged facts of conditioning, and
the other had been to admit the facts but deny the
interpretation placed upon them. The fact that Christians
had become non-deists, for example, and vice versa is an
effective counter argument. However despite the alleged
factor of choice and rational decision most people still
accepted the religion of their own culture.
If he had become institutionalised, then to what extent had
this happened to him, and how would it show? He did not
expect ever to feel that he was completely in the clear, or to
be totally free, entirely without blame or to have no guilt
clinging to him. Here he was however, completely free,
without handcuffs, at liberty to take whatever direction on
the platform he desired, and whichever train he wanted.
His previous transport had been a prison van, delivering
him to his cellblock. This time it was a British Rail train.

44
It was beautiful. He thought, travelling hopefully, that if it
were a dream he wanted it never to end.
He thought back to the first time he had arrived at a prison.
He had never seen one before. As a young offender he had
been expecting some kind of run-down mansion in the
country. A place some lord or other had abandoned because
of rats or dry rot. What he had actually seen made him
wince. A huge, redbrick prison where real criminals were
spending years and years of their time in tiny stinking cells,
locked away from the world.
The holes in the walls (were they really windows?)
criss-crossed with metal bars, each hid a person. A
lumbering oaken metal-studded gate loomed up before the
tiny prison vehicle, like the jaw of a great animal, ready to
eat him...
He had wanted to believe that day was a dream, and
that there was nothing to it. He had lapsed in and out of the
fantasy for many days. But it was not a phantom: it was
true. He had not woken up, but had been awake the whole
time. He had gone through the whole of his detention thus
far in that frame of mind. All that had happened to him had
seemed like a dream whose expanse was open-ended. It
was a mad world of echoing buckets and silences and the
gut-wrenching stench of stale human faeces pervading
everything. It had been a world in which you kept asking

45
yourself the same question: ‘Is this really happening to
me?’
The train, from Kings Cross Station for Ipswich, Suffolk, to
deliver him to his hometown, left at 11.30 in the morning.
He hurried along and just made it. There was an empty
compartment.

46
47
 TWO: TRIALS AND CHARGES
The offences

The wall clock in the courtroom registered the digits

‘10.00.’ He had always wanted to own a clock like that. It
was a clock that showed the date as well as the time. The
room was made to appear panelled in expensive hardwood,
and the veneer was highly polished so that it reflected
ghostlike figures of the people in the room, like a huge all-
embracing mirror.
The cleaners had come, done their work, and gone. Now
the place was filled with the paraphernalia of justice: dusted
wigs, polished buttons on the uniforms of the police, and
that special smell of cut flowers, such as you find in a
crematorium, not managing to cloak, but wafting up from,
the corruption of the remand cells below.
He gazed at the floor in a show of humility. He had seen it
on the television. If the head of the court sees that the
accused is repentant and humble, she is more likely to have
a heart and let him off. It was important for the magistrates
to be made to feel powerful. After all, he reflected, was
that not why they were in the game? Sad volunteers who
had so little in their lives that they got a thrill from having
power over uneducated, vulnerable children. That was

48
what he thought, anyway. It had been his interpretation of
his experience. He had never come across a real criminal.
He was young and uneducated. He had not read the Bible,
let alone the Book of Romans - certainly not verses 1-7 of
Chapter 13, - nor had he discovered what scholars might be
saying regarding the modifying contextual significance of
the Chapters 12 to 13 in which the verses 1 to 7 are set,
namely that this initially simple and direct exhortation to
obedience towards the civil authorities was functional in a
specific historical-sociological situation of a missionary
minority church and was not a universal legitimation of all
magistracy generally.18 Had he read that, he would not
have understood either the language or its personal
significance to his situation. He did not yet know that in
any sense it was possible that God might be on his side.
Yes, he gazed at the floor. It was important for them
to see that what they had before them was a repentant
person, recognising that he had no defence for his crime.
Arrogance and having a quick reply would not get him off.
It would not be wise to be clever. His only hope was that
humility and the appearance of penitence would touch the
heart of the bench.

18
Roman Heiligenthal, Strategien Konformer Bthik Im Neuen
Testament Am Beispiel Von Rom 13.1- 7. Journal of New
Testament Studies, 29, no. 1 (1983): 55 - 61 (German).

49
Although he had signed a confession for his interrogator, it
had been under pressure. There had been no appropriate
adult to mediate for him in his attendance at the police
questioning session.
However, he could easily say what the nature of that
pressure was. Partly, he had thought that if he refused to
sign they would have put him in a cell for the night. That
would have had a number of bad consequences. The worst
of these would have been that his vengeful and violent
father would discover what his son, who had already
broken the holy law by not getting home by 10:00 pm and
was due for the punishment for that offence alone, had been
doing. He was a proud, self-pitying, and poor working
class man. All he had in life was his own tiny domain of
power and dignity within the family. Threaten or even
slightly disturb that, and you would incur the merciless
wrath of the dictator.19 Had he been discovered in a police
cell, his life would have been an even worse hell than
normal. His father wanted the neighbourhood to believe
that he was a respectable and upright man. That was all the
respect he had. How could he keep that pretence and

19
Sunday Times. November 19, 2006. Working-class white boys,
not black boys are school under-achievers.The three white, poor,
working class, non-achieving boys slept in the same bed and
urinated on one another for fear of waking this malevolent and
vengeful man in the neighbouring bedroom by getting out of bed
and risking the creaking stairs to get to the lavatory.

50
maintain the respect of the neighbourhood if one of his sons
had been in a police cell?

It had been from a particularly repressive family context

that he had come. Nor had it been the fear of physical
punishment, nor guilt, nor of heated and possibly violent
argument that had made David sign the confession. It was
the dread of the emotional punishment rupture and tearing;
the all-engulfing, suffocating and cataclysmic Armageddon
that would ensue within the family if his father found out. It
was not unlike the family situation in the Clutter
household20 where the competing voices of Biblical
Literalism v. Medical Diagnosis vie with the Competing
Voices in the minds of the schizophrenic Perry and the
behaviourally disordered Richard. For the first 200 pages it
reads like a crime thriller. By this time the reader is well
acquainted with, and probably empathetic towards the
Clutter Family. They are a safe, secure and responsible
family group, living-out a version of the American Dream.
Mrs. Clutter does suffer from some depressive illness, but
this is largely unacknowledged and entirely un-addressed
by the family. This storm cloud is not allowed to dim the
brightness for this successful Bible belt family. Mr. Clutter,

20
Truman Capote, ‘In Cold Blood’. Penguin Twentieth Century
Classics. The work is about The whisper of wind voices in the
wind-bent wheat. (p.343).

51
unaware of the welter of confusion suppressed under his
wife’s bizarre behaviour, deals with it privately by
rearranging the emotional and physical furniture of the
household. Mrs. Clutter depends emotionally on everyone
around her, including children and strangers. Sleeping
separately from her husband, she elicits kindly treatment
from everyone, like a pet dog. She is ill.
David’s mother, on the other hand, would not have minded
if David’s father found out about his arrest, because her
view about everything relating to her husband was that if
she could find ways of frustrating his desire whilst
remaining outwardly compliant, she would do so. She
would have found a way of organising her emotional
furniture to cope with the onslaught. She clearly both
feared and hated the patriarch who ruled her house and
filled all of her horizons, and she shared these feelings of
hatred, terror, and embittered resentment often in gentle and
intimate moments of hair-stroking and sotto voce
serenading with this, her favourite son as they would sit by
the open hearth in the winter evenings when he, the ‘Troll’,
was on his allotment garden. She was too ignorant,
unsophisticated, and uneducated to realise that this kind of
behaviour among parents and towards children engendered
insecurity and anxiety in the child. He did not know that,
either. From his viewpoint, he hated and feared his father

52
and loved his mother. He was therefore bad and she was
good. His God, when ‘He’ was to eventually reveal
Himself, were it truly stated, was feminine. His father was
angry whereas she was, like the God he was to find at the
close of his prison sentence, kind, gentle, forgiving, healing
and redeeming.
From a psychological/emotional point of view, it may well
have been that the dictum of the academic, Ryan LaMothe21
was relevant in David’s case. Namely, that cultures give
rise to, and support different kinds of self-constructions and
types of faith. Here was a young man with a violently
abusive and fearful father electing (therefore) to find the
femininity of God, and to identify himself with that. God is
good and God is feminine. It fitted well with the dictum of
the ecclesia that the ‘Church’ is ‘Mother’, also. In her
article Ryan argued that particular Western beliefs and
values might give rise to modern maladies of self and faith
- ‘borrowed selves’. ‘Borrowed selves’, like David’s
deepest veins of character, it appears, reveal a fundamental
insecurity or anxiety that comes from a felt lack of
possessing or owning the attributions of one’s identity.
This in turn shapes the very relationships and faith upon
which identity is linked. This kind of faith construction is

21
LaMothe, Ryan. Modern Maladies of the Self: Borrowed Selves
and Collective Faith. Pastoral Psychology 51, no 4. (2003): 309-
325.

53
fuelled by an unconscious anxiety and a belief in what she
chooses to term, ‘relativistic individualism’.
The Quarter Sessions Court proceeded:
Yes, Sir...
Oh, brother, how that ‘Sir’ stuck in his throat. His name
was what had been asked. He reckoned it was safe enough
to admit that much. ‘Yes, Sir.’ What else could a bloke say
in a room panelled with polished mahogany and filled with
brilliant people in wigs? He did do the crime, and he had
not been prepared to explain it because it would have
uncovered the crimes of some of his friends. He was not a
grass. He was part of a culture, a social group, a tribe. He
wished the walls would fall down. As the talking went on
without termination, and it all seemed to be proceeding
without any call for a contribution from himself, and
knowing that it was a predetermined outcome in any case,
his mind became engaged in other ways. He fantasised that
he could go to another country and start all over again. Get
born into a rich family and choose what to do with his life
rather than have it chosen for him. He might even find
himself on the other side of the dock - handing out
sentences rather than being given them. He’d be a good
judge, he thought, because he could understand the
underclass criminal mind from first hand.
… to a term of borstal…

54
The word brought him back to the dock, the courtroom, the
veneered walls and the town of Ipswich in Suffolk. They
were actually going to do it! His mind spun into delirious
action with images of short haircuts and unavailable friends
(whom suddenly now he valued more than ever in his life)
mingling with thoughts of injustice, punishment and a
deepening spiral of acute self-pity.
His official criminal record had begun at twelve years
old, although his criminal activity had been going on long
before then. Just two years earlier, in 1963, a study had
been published in the Hibbert Journal,22 in which it was
observed that physically, youth were well cared for, and
that many agencies provided for their physical health, but
that they were also mentally sick as, it was claimed, was
attested by tabulations of the crime and delinquency rate.
Two things, the author noted, were essential to effective
prophylaxis: first, the recognition of the circumstances
under which the disease flourishes, and second, the
correction of the pathological state while it was still
incipient. In their massive work on child delinquency,
Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck23 concluded that one
assistance in the detection of the potential delinquent was
22
David W Wills, Treating Juvenile Delinquency in Advance.
Hibbert Journal. 61, (1963): 70 –74.
23
Glueck Sheldon, Eleanor Glueck, review author: Miriam van
Waters. Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency. Elementary School
Journal 51, (Spring 1951): 408-409.

55
the use of the Rorschach test, and the other was the
prediction of the trained social worker. The latter of these
seemed to them to be the more practical and desirable and
the one that would be of greatest help in both detection and
treatment. Although among the academics at that time
there was a recognition that there was disease by the
medical and social experts, this had not filtered through to
the retributive agencies that actually had an effect on the
lives of criminal children. Nor, in 2006, with the advent of
Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBO’s)24, has it yet, I would
say, with over 25,000 people detained in hospital under the
Mental Health Act and over 75,000 people locked up in our
state prisons the highest ratio of prisoners to population in
the whole of Western Europe!
Home office research found that 66% of women prisoners
were mothers, and each year it estimated that more than
17,700 children were separated from their mother by
imprisonment.25 According to a report by the Prison
Reform Trust26 on March 24 2006 there were 11,200 people
under 21 years old in prisons in England and Wales27, and

24
Home Office. The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 HMSO Ltd.
ISBN 0 10 543803 0. (2003).
25
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004 London: Home Office
26
Prison Trust Bromley Briefings. Prison factfile (April 2006).
27
Hansard, House of Commons written answer 16th May 2003.

56
of these, more than 2,603 were children under 18.28 The
number of children in prison had nearly doubled in the
preceding ten years.
David could not remember a time when he had not been a
thief and a liar. But by twelve years old he had been
sentenced at the Juvenile Court consecutively to three
twelvemonth probation orders for larceny. Then, at
seventeen he was given a fine and a disqualification from
driving. Four months later, he was sentenced to three terms
of probation for three years for auto crimes and for driving
whilst disqualified. Today was eighteen months later.
What would be the decision of the Quarter Sessions Court?
NACRO – the National Association for the Care and
Resettlement of Offenders, was an organisation fully
convinced of the inability of this courts and prison system
to rehabilitate offenders, especially children.29 Custody
carried with it considerable costs, which included that it had
no effect on the level of youth crime, and was, accordingly,
largely unnecessary; it was wasteful of resources that could
be better used elsewhere; and it does further damage to
already damaged children. Would the court note this?
On the charge of housebreaking and stealing, you are to be
given borstal training for three years. On the charge of
28
Prison population and accommodation briefing for 24 March,
2006, HM Prison Service, Estate Planning and Management Group.
29
NACRO Publications, Youth Crime. Counting the Cost: Reducing
Child imprisonment. 2005 ISBN 085069 204 0.

57
driving whilst disqualified you are to be given a period of
three years borstal training.

This was indicative of a trend of what was to be much

harsher sentencing to be used in the English courts for
decades to come. The number of people being given
custodial sentences by the Magistrate’s courts, was to
increase as the years went by. In 1993, for example, there
were 25,016. This was to rise by 36,368 to 61,384 in 2005,
and those given custodial sentences by the Crown Court, as
in David’s case, was to rise in the same period by 11,216
from 33,722 to 44,938.30 He is, when understood in this
sense, simply a cipher, a statistic, a number without
personhood. Yet there were those who saw in him, and all
of his compatriots who shared in this end of the sentencing
system, as ‘customers’, a ‘self’, or ‘soul’, which lifted both
him and them above the anonymity of statistics to a higher
plane of personhood and individual worth. Although he did
not know it, this was the agenda of the Gospel, and it was,
at that time, his only hope.

On the charge of taking and driving away a motor vehicle

you are to be given a period of three years borstal training.

30
Home Office (2005). Sentencing Statistics 2003 London: Home
Office

58
The litany of sentencing moved forward, as all litanies do,
without pause, with deep gravity and circumstance, and
without passion.
On the charge of driving without insurance you are to be
given a period of three years borstal training, and on the
charge of driving whilst disqualified for the second time,
you are to be given a period of three years borstal
training…

His mind reeled. Fifteen years prison? Surely not. Not

fifteen years. He’d be an old man by the time he got out of
prison...
At the time of David’s sentence in the Crown Court
(Quarter Sessions), the maximum length of time that a
Borstal disposal could last was two years. It had previously
been three years. However, this reduction in the length of
time of this particular disposal was not a reflection of a
general trend. Figures produced by SSG and SSAP31 show
that the average length of a custodial sentence from a crown
court actually rose by seven months from 20 months in
1993 to 27 months in 2004. Custody rates at the Crown
Court during the same period were to rise by 12% from
49% in 1993 to 61% in 2004.

31
Sentencing Guidelines Council and Sentencing Advisory Panel
‘The sentence: sentencing trends at national and local level’,
January 2006.

59
 This, however, I am afraid, is not all. You are due to
appear at Kings Lynn Magistrates Court on 27th May 1965
to face charges of larceny, aiding and abetting taking and
driving away a motor vehicle on two occasions and of
aiding and abetting driving with no licence and no
insurance.
You will no doubt be given other sentences if you are
found guilty of these offences. This will mean that you will
have to attend the courts from whatever Borstal Institution,
Young Offender Institution, Secure Unit, or Prison you are
placed in at the time. Have you anything to say?’
To say? Say what could an uneducated, emotionally and
physically abused legal adult in a child’s body say to the
President of the Litany in a polished leather room?
He experienced sudden difficulty controlling his tongue.
He wet his pants. The muscles in the tongue and throat are
the same ones used in swallowing and in making sounds. It
was as though he had suddenly developed a mental block –
an illness – that had affected the nerves or muscles in his
mouth and throat. He could not work the speaking muscles,
let alone put some words together into a coherent sentence
and deliver them in an audible manner. He experienced a
feeling of levitation, as though he were floating above the

60
courtroom and gazing down on the drama that was
unfolding beneath him.
Take him down!
The police officer grabbed the eight-and-a-half stone newly
convicted criminal by the arm. He was unable to speak and
suddenly needed a lavatory again. The burly policeman’s
hand went round the lad’s skinny wrist and escorted him
down the cold stone steps - worn in the middle - where
generations of captive feet had climbed for many years to
have their fortunes told, and retreated with their heavy
loads. Each step had a flat ‘slap’ echo of its own. He had
passed by statues and busts of local worthies in these kinds
of places before. One of the worthies had found
immortality by developing a way of deciphering
hieroglyphics, another had been a freemason who had
discovered a way to get from the middle of Africa to the
Mediterranean, and then had accidentally shot himself to
death through the head. An abstract of his sad story was
emblazoned in gold lettering on his marble plinth. Another
had been the town’s mayor, and had pioneered the laying of
a sewerage system throughout the town. Such grey stone
busts sat atop marble columns frowning down upon him as
he made his way to the cells. Mahogany veneer banister
rails, smelling of beeswax shone in the dim lamplight.
These were what he was not.

61
He wondered if the magistrates and the judge had already
begun to question themselves about the wisdom and
compassion of the job they had just done. Surely the echo
of the stone steps must make them reconsider.
They led him down to the cells. An odd smell seeped
across the corridor. It was a smell he was to become
accustomed to in the years ahead. It was the combination
of stone walls, gloss paint, the shed cells of the unwashed
human body, and faeces left sweating in tin chamber pots in
the open air.
Though he had thought of himself often as a ‘loner’, not
having many friends and preferring his own company, and
certainly having had no success with girls, this young
prisoner was headed for a depth of loneliness and
anonymity that he had not experienced in his life before. He
had much to learn about alienation in community, and not
all of it would be gained in prison.
The prisoner wears the same clothes as all the others who
preceded him in that place. Not the same kinds of clothes,
but the same actual clothes, including underwear and shoes.
He becomes anonymous; a geek; a ‘thing’, a not-human.
The prison cell is the locus of his every activity. He eats all
his meals and sleeps all his slumbers in it. He scrubs the
wooden floor from wall to wall with a special scrubbing
brush made by the female prisoners in a neighbouring penal

62
establishment, so that the scrubbing brush becomes a
symbol of unity, kinship, and connection. Actual
communication was, however, compartmentalised around
life-issues, such as who had the top bunk in the cell
accommodating three; what the chamber pot could be used
for; who had the first choice of the shirt with fewer scuff-
marks, and which hard man was going to be your protector
from the other hard men in the prison. There were too many
people in the cell. No prison cell was built to accommodate
three men, and yet there he is, with two others – strangers
whom he does not know, let alone trust or share anything
with, and about whom he knows nothing – they may be
violent psychopaths, rapists, killers, anything. It is with
these that he has to establish a relationship in which his
primary goal is to survive. Nor would he be alone in this
quandary. The startling growth in prison numbers over the
past few years had not resulted from finding and catching
more criminals. The numbers being dealt with by the courts
had remained comparatively static. It was not caused by
more people being found guilty of serious crimes. If that
were the case, why would so much of the prison population
increase have been among non-violent women, shoplifters,
petty fraudsters and those awaiting trial? It was caused by
creeping inflation of sentences and a lack of confidence in
effective community measures.

63
Where should public money be best invested to fight
crime? What scope was there for early intervention, better
parental supervision and support, and more preventative
work with the young? How could the community best deal
with drug addiction, alcohol dependency and mental illness
coupled with poverty in society? How could prison staff be
freed and scarce prison resources be released for them to do
their professional jobs: detaining and rehabilitating serious
and violent criminals? Then, and to this day, the state is
paying a high price for failing to reserve prison for serious
and violent offenders.
Reconviction rates have soared in line with rising numbers.
In 1992 just over half (51 %) of all those released from
custody were reconvicted within two years. By 2004, two
in three people (67 %) leaving our overcrowded prison
system had been reconvicted. Everyone wanted prison to
prevent re-offending, and thereby save the next victim of
crime, but until, and unless, government succeeds in
rebalancing the criminal justice system, it has little chance
of doing so.
The prison system has been overcrowdediii in every year for
decades. Overcrowding has become a fact of prison life.
Prisons should be places that hold securely, and make every
effort to rehabilitate serious and dangerous offenders. The
skills and focus of those who run them should be wholly

64
directed towards that aim, in the interests of public safety.
But no. Rapidly rising numbers have reduced many prisons
to locked warehouses in which prison officers are called
upon to act merely as turnkeys, processing people in transit
from overcrowded jail to overcrowded jail.
In October 2005, the prison population in England and
Wales reached its highest recorded total of 77,774 men,
women and children. The entire prison system was just a
few hundred cell spaces away from its total usable capacity.
Newspapers at the time reported a kind of grim farce, with
prisoners being held in police cells overnight and being
moved up and down the country, but not staying long
enough to warrant official activation of Operation
Safeguard.32

As for ‘the person’ – he and she, and to an unknown extent,

the prison warders suffered from this also, had become a
mechanistic and deterministic unit in which none of the
higher human needs,33 were provided for. Life and society
was subsumed under the baseline function of mere survival.

32
Prison Trust, Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile, April 2006
33
Maslow, A. A Manhattan Project attack upon the big problems.
Religious Humanism, 3, no.3 (1969): 100 – 101. Two problems
which challenge biologists and need a Manhattan-Project type of an
attack are, the evolution of the good person (the self-evolving
person, the responsible-for-himself-and-his-own evolution-person),
and the evolution of the Good Society (ultimately one world, one
species).

65
The skinny prisoner was later to discover the hierarchy of
needs theory in psychology that Abraham Maslow proposed
in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he
subsequently extended. The theory contended that as
humans meet ‘basic needs’, they seek to satisfy
successively ‘higher needs’ that occupy a set hierarchy.
Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein,
Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass
rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that ‘ the
study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy
specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a
cripple philosophy’. His theory was about individuals
becoming ‘actualised’, or who managed to achieve ‘Self-
actualization’. He thought that people had an instinctual
need to make the most of their unique abilities. Abraham
Maslow said that self actualization is the intrinsic growth of
what the organism is. A musician must make music, the
artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately
at peace with himself. What a person can be, a person must
be. This need was what he called ‘self-actualization’. What
kind of people were these ‘self-actualising people’? They
embrace the facts and realities of the world (including
themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them. They
are spontaneous in their ideas and actions, creative,
interested in solving problems, including the problems of

66
others. In fact, solving these problems can be a key focus in
their lives. They feel close to other people, and genarally
appreciate life. They also have a system of morality that is
fully internalised and independent of external authority and
make judgements of others entirely without prejudice in a
way that can be termed, ‘objective’.
This described perfectly how David wanted to be that day.
There, in that prison-hole all that he was offered was food
and water, sanitary lavatory facilities once a day (or else
unsanitary conditions more often in the chamber-pot),
warmth, and shelter. Contrary to what Abraham Maslow
was saying, the prison system uniquely and alone was
proclaiming, ‘What else than basic needs is there in life?’
On the other hand, unknown to David at that time, it was
not like this only in the prison system. The same problem
was endemic in the churches, which purported to be loving
and caring, fulfilling communities, or the ‘ekklesia’.
Rudiger Reitz’s article in ‘Encounter’ recorded a
sociological analysis of church life in Germany: J-M
Lohse’s ‘Church Without Contacts,’ which filed the case
history of the ailing church life in Germany since World
War II, providing a meticulous breakdown of the
Volkskirche.34 The major thesis was anonymity in church

34
Reitz Rudiger. Mr and Mrs Anonymous: A Sociologist Dis-
enchants Church Life in Germany. Encounter 31, no. 4 (1970): 372-
386

67
life, especially among those attending. The
compartmentalization observed outside the congregation
was continued if not intensified in the church. The study
considered: who is going to church; poor participation in
group-work, and the isolation of the minister. While in the
past is it true that the parishioner was integrated into the life
of the congregation on a social basis, the contemporary
member was interested in contacts on a thematic (issue-
based) level only. Like the family and society, the church
had suffered a drastic loss of function. This church was
challenged by apathy, and seemed, in this case in Germany
at least, to be offering no more that the prison system in
England from the point of view of community. So what
cause does a prisoner have to complain if in the outside
world even the ekklesia is a void?
The difference between a prison cell and a police cell may
be characterised as the smell of the smoke in the wood and
brick. In a police cell, the smell is thick and sickly. This is
because the prisoners smoked expensive factory-made
cigarettes that had more tar in them. These were cigarettes
left over from pre-conviction life. But in a prison, no one
can afford factory cigarettes. They make their own, and the
smell is of sharp, harsh, inexpensive and strong ‘Black
Shag’. This pipe tobacco, hand-rolled by prisoners because
of its low price, was one of the most flat, one-dimensional

68
mixtures ever loaded into a pipe, let alone smoked as a
cigarette. Highly incendiary, it blistered the tongue to
smoke it.
It was hard for him to believe that all those people had got
their heads together and stuck him away in a little room
with glossy-painted impenetrable brick walls all on his
own. Was this what it all came down to in the end? One
locked room for one small man was the result of all that
vast and complex structure and machinery of the law. It
was hard to believe that this was the end result of such
effort. It was a powerful experience and the first example
he had noticed of an ideal in action. He intuited the
tremendous disparity between the dream and its reality.
The door of the cell was thick and looked very heavy. It
was reinforced steel and concrete and furnished with heavy
bars and bolts. In the centre, about a third of the way down
was a small, round thickened glass window. This was
where the eye of the warder would appear at regular
intervals throughout the day and night. The glass distorted
the image on the other side.
It reminded him of when he was a small boy. The
psychological mechanism of his behaviour and feelings was
that he suffered the tendency of some children to attempt to

69
purge parental badness by taking it upon themselves, as
noted by object relations theorists.35
He accepted, against his own personal judgement, but in
keeping with what he knew his father’s judgement to be,
that he had done something wrong, stayed off school or
come home late or something. His father had been very
angry with him and beaten him around the head and ears.
He had tried to say he was sorry and wouldn’t do it again.
He had tried to plead that it wasn’t fair and that his offence
had not been intentional. He had become, in a sense, the
incarnation of Imago Dei, the bearer of the stamp of God,
and the object of punishment for the sins of [an]other[s].36
Fairbairn was later to discover the psychological condition
of dysfunctional interpersonal attachment of abused
children to their abusing parents, (what was actually
happening here) which is now explained by ‘Stockholm
Syndrome’ as a genetically programed neurobiological
psychological response to a situation where the victim
perceives her or his life (acutely or chronically) depends on
their captor’s good will. The syndrome is named after the

35
White, S. A. lmago Dei and Object Relations Theory:
Implications for a Model of Human Development. Journal of
Psychology and Theology 12, no. 4 (1984): 286–293. Cf also
Fairbairn, W. R. D. An Object-Relations Theory of the Personality.
New York: Basic Books, 1952.
36
William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn (1889–1964) was a noted
Scottish psychoanalyst. He is generally regarded as the father of
British object relations theory.

70
robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg Stockholm, in
which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from
August 23 to August 28, 1973. In this case, the victims
became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even
defended their captors after they were freed from their six-
day ordeal. The term was coined by the criminologist and
psychologist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during
the robbery, and who then referred to the syndrome in a
news broadcast.
‘Capture Bonding’ is an offshoot of the ‘Stockholm
syndrome’. This aptly-used term, describes a bond that in
some instances develops between captor and captive, captor
abuser and captivated-abused, or between terrorist and
hostage. The term is modelled on a Swedish woman who
became so attached to one of the bank robbers who held her
hostage that she broke her engagement to her former lover
and remained bonded, or in bondage, to her former captor
while he served time in prison.
Captivated David, knowing that he was innocent and yet
feeling the opposite, had wanted to say to his abusing father
that he had offended unintentionally. He wanted them
(mother and father) to pick him up and cuddle him and
make it better, to give him comfort, love and reassurance.
But they never had. He was like the dead figure in the
pieta. Moreover, he could think of no good reason why

71
they should forgive or love. After all, he was bad. He had
deeply felt the helplessness of the innocent victim with no
voice.
Thrown on their mercy, he had been cast away. Though he
had needed them, they had not needed him. Therefore, he
submitted himself to their heartless punishment. When it
was over he felt that he had suffered in order to satisfy the
just demands of the ones he loved. They had sent him off
to the bedroom and locked him away on his own. He had
wanted to go and play with the other kids in the street. He
could hear them playing outside, but there he was, an alien
starting to experience his life’s destiny. One day he would
be dead, and they would regret it...
Over the years, the love he had for his home and His
parents - his violent and disillusioned father in particular -
began to turn to resentment and loathing. At first, all he
had wanted to do was show them that he loved them, and
then to impress them with some great feat or other. It had
now come to the point, at seventeen, where all he wanted to
do was escape from them, to get away from their world,
and to start a life of his own. If it meant going to prison,
then so it must be. At least, that was his reasoning, and it
was, after all, his life.
Feeling the same loathing and hatred, locked away in a
small smelly room, like his bedroom prison, yet again, and

72
again afraid to cry out for fear of the consequences - he had
heard about what they do to troublemakers - he aimed his
concentrated hatred toward the door. He wanted the
lavatory, and so, putting his ear to the tiny glass window
could hear female voices echoing down the corridors.
The magistrates were going home. He hung on. He would
have to wait until things got less busy outside before
making a fuss. His eyes wandered around the cell. On the
walls were all kinds of lewd scrawling and graffiti. He
wondered if anyone had been caught doing graffiti on the
cell wall and been punished for it. Then, the sound of keys
and echoing boot-falls. He wondered what it was that
inspired prison guards and policemen. It must take some
strange kind of mentality, he thought, to enjoy keeping
human beings locked up like rabbits.

Right, lad, lets have your braces, belt, shoelaces and tie.
Come on. Get a move on I aint got all day. Don’t worry
about that, you can pull your trousers up when I’ve got your
things. Come on, come on. Shoelaces? Well, break the
knots then. Right. Got a watch on? No? Right.
Bang!
The ‘tinkle, tinkle, tinkle’, diminished as he walked away
from the door down the echoing, glossy, brick-built lane.
He could not have helped seeing the prisoner’s shabby

73
underwear with the holes in. He had said it all without
moving his mouth. It was a ritual; as though it was
something he did every day. This was not personal; it was
like the charnel house or the chicken farm. People not
cows, human beings not fowl. People walked overhead.
He could hear their muffled voices and the lilt of music in
the distance.
He had been given no indication of how long he was
to be held in the cells under the courtrooms. In the end, it
did not make much difference, he reasoned. He had been
given three years to serve, and what did it matter where he
served it. His series of three-year sentences had,
mercifully, to run concurrently, not consecutively as he had
at that time feared. It might as well have been, though.
Three hours of his three-year sentence had now ticked
laboriously away.
Contrary to his hope and expectation that being a prisoner
might be exciting and romantic, actually it was frightening,
boring, humiliating, exploitative, and stultifying. Nothing
was happening. He dampened the end of a stub of pencil
and scratched a remembered verse on the cell wall,

The quality of mercy is not strain’d,

it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
upon the place beneath:

74
it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘tis mightiest in the mightiest:
it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown;
his sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
the attribute to awe and majesty,
wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
but mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
it is an attribute to God himself;
and earthly power doth then show likest God’s
when mercy seasons justice…
William Shakespeare.
The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

Yes, this uneducated prisoner knew Shakespeare, and some

of it he knew by heart – especially the soliloquies. He had
spent much of his time accidentally learning how to
become a human being through study of these mighty
works. Others might think this was pathetic. Certainly his
companions would. It may seem strange, an underclass
class delinquent scribbling Shakespeare on the wall of his
cell. But he had meant it. Perhaps, he fantasised, the
magistrate may come in here one day, read what was
written, and have a moment of reflection might think this

75
was pathetic; an underclass juvenile delinquent scribbling
Shakespeare on the wall of his cell. He had meant it.
Perhaps, he fantasised, the magistrate may come in here
one day, read what was written, and have a moment of
reflection about the work he does each day. It may lead to a
change of heart. Of course no one would believe the skinny
prisoner who enjoyed driving cars without insurance or a
licence had written it there, or, even if he had written it, that
he had actually understood it.
This, and much more occurred to him while he waited in
the holding-cell. This was the first cell of his prison and
borstal career. Some of the things he had thought that day
he knew were not true; he was aware that he was being
angrily vindictive. But how else was he to face the fact that
in payment for the series of crimes he’d committed he was
now, according to the due process of the law, beginning to
have his punishment.
Yet, it was hard for him to come to grips with the reality
that all of this was actually happening to him. It was hard
for him to realise that it was himself who was going
through this process, and not some fictional character in a
book. Up until now, everything that happened, happened to
someone else, and he had always been an onlooker. He felt
a deep, almost Buddhist kind of detachment from these
strange, adult events. But to his mind, people said that

76
Buddhists were atheists, whereas Christians believe in the
salvation and divinity of Jesus Christ. The Sri-Lankan
Methodist, Lynn DeSilva, believed that there was a
Buddhist-Christian complementarity however. On the
existential level, complementarity is based on the
complementarity of detachment and involvement. On a
more doctrinal level, the theory of Buddhist-Christian
antagonism rests on the assumption that Buddhism is a
form of atheism. The decisive question, according to
Schmidt-Leukel is our understanding of religious
language.37
Clonk clonk clonk. Tinkle tinkle, squeak
‘Right. Get up. Get these on.’
Click. Handcuffs! He was flattered. The glamour faded a
bit when the police officer said,
‘Sorry lad. Got to put these on. Regulations, see.’
The skinny prisoner thought, as they led him along the
corridor, that the thought of escape could not have been
further from his mind. Along with six other prisoners,
sentenced that day, he was led single-file across the narrow
strip of freedom that lay between the building and the
prison van. The men were then taken to the police station

37
Schmidt-Leukel, P. Buddhism and Christianity: Antagonistic or
Complementary? Studies in World Christianity. 2, ( 2003): 265-
279.

77
downtown, and then to a police car and off to the first of the
many prisons and borstals that were to follow.
He had understood that he was being taken to a remand
home.38 He tried to imagine what this would be like as they
sped towards Norwich, fifty miles north of Ipswich, which
was their destination. At age eleven he had been taken in to
care of the social services after the attempted suicide of his
mother. It had been a large redbrick building in the center
of town. During the many months that he was there, he had
made some friends, and a special girlfriend with whom he
had fallen in love. He thought that maybe the remand home
would be something like that. Anyway, he was not overly
anxious about it. He had been through the worst.
On reaching the city of Norwich, the car turned a corner
and a tall red brick wall barred the way. Along the top of
the wall ran a slippery, grey ceramic capping, topped with
curled razor wire. He looked blankly at the wall, and the
huge, studded double gates. Surely they had taken a wrong

38
A typical remand home in the 1960’s was a place of detention
under the powers of the Home Office. Its purpose was to provide
short-term custodial care and training for children and juveniles. Its
objectives were through short-term custodial care and training, to
help residents to develop a regular life pattern and self-discipline.
Home staff, residents’ parents and probation officers would be
expected to help the residents work out a realistic welfare plan. In
addition, the Home would assess the residents’ performance during
the remand period and submit a Remand Report to the court. The
target Group was children and young persons aged 10 to under 16
on admission, committed thereto by order of the court.

78
turning and gone down a cul de sac. But the grey wall that
rose behind the red brick wall had regular small square
windows in it. These were cross-crossed with bars and
metal slats. This was Norwich Prison. It was not a remand
home. The skinny prisoner was to spend some eventful
months in Norwich Prison. It would be his baptism into the
criminal justice punishment system.
After driving across the yard he was led through a barred
door into a small office. A long coconut-matting runner led
from the office to the reception annexe. He was ordered to
undress and have a bath. The bathroom had no door. The
smell of carbolic hit his senses. That, and urine. A
scrubbed hard slatted board ran along the bathroom floor,
and a well-worn rough towel hung on a peg in the wall.
The procedure was to ensure that new prisoners had no
communicable diseases or parasites, and that there were no
hidden drugs being brought in.
A thorough search was necessary before any new person
was allowed to enter that hallowed place of rationed
tobacco and cartel controlled drugs. He was slightly
embarrassed, and it was necessary to cast off some
individuality in order to handle the situation. He became
suspicious of the officer who insisted on chatting to him
while he had his bath. Was he gay? He couldn’t say. What
were the ethics in this place? He had heard of other

79
prisoners being raped and abused by other prisoners. Might
it happen between guards and prisoners as well? He didn’t
know, and so he hastened his bath, while maintaining as
much of his modesty as he was able. He clambered into his
oversized prison clothes as hastily as possible. They stank,
and were rough and hard. They were too big. Others were
too small. Some had holes. They could have had large
arrows and ‘W.D.’ printed on them and it would not have
seemed out of place. As it was, he was glad to get anything
on, and out from under the gaze of the bathroom guard.
They took him to a cell and locked him in. He sat on the
floor among the misshapen clothes and cried.39
The day was over.

39
Research by the Prison reform Trust was later to demonstrate that
that inmates were being kept in overcrowded conditions in Norwich
Prison with nearly half of the single cells holding two prisoners. The
report, ‘A Lost Generation’, catalogues the experiences of young
people like Dave who were in prison, who would spend on average
16 hours a day locked up. Purposeful activity amounted to 18 hours
a week for some inmates putting undue pressure on them. This did
not bode well for potential suicides. In January 2007, the Home
Secretary John Reid was to order prisoners back into a Victorian
wing at the prison that had been condemned by inspectors two years
previously as unfit for human habitation. They would have to
defacate in ‘soil stacks’ and buckets, which could not be properly
cleaned, and would leak…

80
81
 THREE: AUTO THEFT40
A special achievement

There had been generations of gloss paint on the brick walls

of the cells. Paint was peeling off the paint that had been
painted over the paint. It mocked him as he entered the
cell, reminding him of the cool nights after hot scorching
days in the summer sun, when he could relax after work or
school, stripping tiny bits of burned skin off his arms. The
cell was hot and dank. In the far corner a pot stank; the last
person to scrub the wooden floor had scrubbed around it,
and it sat on the wooden boards in its own dark circle of
unsanitary stain. Two large parallel tubes ran three inches
40
Jon Dougherty World Net Daily Exclusive.
Worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID-21902 (accessed
29 March 2006). The International Crime Victims Survey,
conducted by Leiden University in Holland, found that England and
Wales ranked second overall in violent crime among industrialized
nations. Jack Straw, the British home secretary, said that levels of
victimization are higher than in most comparable countries for most
categories of crime. Highlights of the study indicated that England
and Wales led in automobile thefts. More than 2.5 % of the British
population had been victimized by car theft, followed by 2.1 % in
Australia and 1.9 % in France. The U.S. was not listed among the
top 10 nations.

82
from the wall near the floor. It was part of the heating
system. In the wall at the far end of the cage, two thirds of
the way up and a metre out of reach when standing on the
chair, at about four metres up was a square window,
appearing to have been cut out of the solid concrete.
Three slanted cast iron slats ran across the window-space
outside and inside there were sixteen small, thickened glass
window-squares. It occurred to him that the object of a
window was twofold: one, to let in the light, and two, to
afford the occupant of the room some ventilation to release
the terrible smells that living here would present. This
contraption made a poor job of both. The object was
certainly not to provide the occupant with a view through
the wall to what lies beyond. Each small square of glass
had a cast-iron frame, so it had the feel more of a metal
object than of glass.
The floor consisted of badly fitting wooden planks. The
dusty, naked bulb, five metres up bathed them in an eerie
green light. There was a wooden Ercol schoolroom chair.
He remembered having a chair like that when he was at his
first school; it was only half the size. From another corner
of the cell a block of scuffed and scrubbed wood stuck out.
It was the table. There was no bed, so that he wondered if
he was expected to sleep on the floor. He did not know,

83
really, whether people in prison slept at all. He supposed
that they must!
He had finished crying and had got round to swearing about
all the rotten things the world had prepared for him, and he
kicked the pot. It rang round the room, skidding across the
floor, the lid falling off in the process and resting its rim
jauntily against the wall. He left it there. If they expected
him to use that, they were mistaken. He wanted a cigarette.
They had taken away all of his personal belongings at
reception. He’d had to sign for them. They then wrapped
them all in a brown manila envelope and stuck it down with
tape.
This had been the initial act in the long-term process of the
removal of his personality, which was to prove a huge
difficulty for him later in his sentence, when struggling to
understand the presentation of the love of God in Christ. In
his discussions with the Franciscan fathers who were to
lead him to the Chaplain’s Bible Studies, where analogies
such as ‘sacrifice’, ‘ransom’, ‘sanctification’, the ‘clearing
of a debt’, the ‘pronouncing of a verdict’, were necessary in
speaking about forgiveness, these analogies depersonalised
the idea of forgiveness. He intuited that the controlling
factor must be free, responsible personality. For this to
happen, the use of the idea of reconciliation would have
been better. Reconciliation is the costliest matter; it is

84
rooted in the preciousness of persons, (of ‘person-ality’),
though the analogies do all express the thought that
forgiveness is costliest to God himself. It followed of
course from this that in forgiveness, the person forgiven
must make a total response in self-giving. A depersonalised
unit (the prisoner, or the individual without a ‘self’) could
not so respond. Since a man’s sacrifice is to put his own
love and energy at God’s disposal in the work of healing sin
and alienation among others, one needs first to have some
love and energy one can personally own.41
Prison guards, he ruminated must be lacking something
emotionally or socially. What sort of people were they?
Maybe, he thought, they were bossed around by their wives
and violent towards their children. They came to work to
take it out on the prisoners. They had been after him since
he was ten years old. He brooded on the thought of all
those grown-up policemen keeping files on a child of ten so
they could nab him when he got ripe at seventeen. That, at
least, was how it seemed to him.
He sat on the top bar of central heating and mused…
‘…many unbelievers have an ethical prejudice when they
choose a life philosophy. A metaphysical ultimate takes
away guilt and neutralizes sin. The sinner consciously or
unconsciously passes the buck to something outside himself
41
Moule, C. F. D. The Christian Understanding of Forgiveness.
Theology 71, no. 580 (1968): 435-443.

85
- nature, matter, or society. Humanism neutralizes sin by
asserting that moral error is usually a result of mere
ignorance. Biological determinism dodges the issue by
attributing misconduct to some malfunction of the
physiological organism, and psychological determinism
focuses on the hereditary drives in the Id or the
unconscious. Social determinism blames all human
problems on the structure of society. General features of all
non-Christian secular explanations of sin stand out: All
alternatives destroy the essential paradox of human nature,
the balance between dignity and wretchedness; make sin a
natural fact rather than a moral one; lend themselves to
human self-therapy; dehumanise man. With the Christian
world-view, perhaps, could a person be forced to face the
truth that he is to blame for his own sin? Only then could
Jesus Christ remove both sin and guilt without
dehumanising him…’42
…he became painfully aware that central heating bar was
burning him, and he leapt off. He cursed. He climbed up
on to the chair and opened the two tiny moveable squares
of glass. The chair wobbled and he crashed to the floor in a
fuming heap. He wanted a cigarette. He wanted to use the
lavatory, and he wanted to be let out of that lonely little

42
Hoover, Arlie J. On Strangling Kings. Christianity Today 18, no.
3 (1973): 148 - 150

86
cell. Frightened what might result, he nevertheless pressed
the alarm bell in the wall by the door.
A warder poked his eye into the little round hole in the
door.
‘Shut up, you little ****!’
‘Please. Sir, I want a pee’.
‘Look, you’ll get out of here when I’m good and ready, see.
Now shut up. Any more trouble from you and I’ll keep you
locked up all the longer. I’m a busy man. There’s two
hundred more of you out here. I’m not a wet nurse. Do
you realise if I let everyone out who wanted a piss, I would
be at it all night. I’m a man on my own, and I don’t get
paid for all the crap I get…’
‘Click’. For five seconds the metal cover swung freely
back and forth over the spy hole. The sound of keys and
studded boot steps clanking on the metal gantry floor faded
gradually in to the distance. This was what was to pass for
a social life for the skinny prisoner for the next few months
in holding-prison prior to a transfer to an allocation prison
prior to being given a borstal where, in theory the ‘training’
would begin. He felt like a little human machine. Is this
what he was now going to become – an experiment for
some psychologists and social workers and social engineers
to play with?

87
Philosophers and cognitive scientists had begun to sketch
the implications of the ‘naturalistic consensus’ (NC) for
higher-level phenomena displayed in sentient creatures,
including social interaction, concept formation, and moral
life. This is the idea that temperament, traditionally defined
as the individual’s behavioural ‘style’ - the way in which
behavior is expressed, appears early in life, has a biological
base, and is at least moderately stable across time and
situations. Activity level is now viewed as one of the
dimensions in most current theories of temperament. The
important article by Morgan43 investigates recent examples
of what happens when NC collides with an intractable
philosophical problem, such as the one the prisoner is
confronting here in his cell, free will, personhood, and
determinism. It uses the free will / determinism issue as a
framework within which to identify and challenge
metaphysical assumptions at the core of NC. This serves as
an antidote to the tendency among cognitive scientists to
treat NC as an established fact rather than a hypothesis that
is open to continuing challenge and revision. Human free
will and agency are one of the features of human
experience that cannot be reduced. Being able to recognise
this, the prisoner is in the process of discovering, is a
necessary early step to his being enabled to fashion his
43
Morgan, Vance G. The Metaphysics of Naturalism. American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 75, no. 3 (Fall 2001): 409-431.

88
creative, personal, and life-enhancing alternative. However,
it was going to be a strange relationship between an
anonymous warder who spoke in his disembodied state
through a hole in the door when on duty and in the mood to
talk, and a skinny, terrified teenager starving desperately for
any kind of human contact. It mattered not whether it
happened to be his jailer or his saviour.
Was there more than a pay cheque at the end of the month
for him? Was he a carer, or just a prison guard? Did he
have a heart? Was there a soul in his body? Did he have a
family? Were they pleased to see him when he came home
at night? Did his little kids run to him and jump up for a
cuddle, or did they hear his footsteps in the drive and run
and hide, as the prisoner had done with his own father, not
knowing what mood he would be in tonight?
What sort of social life did prison guards have? Did they
have a life at all? Maybe they went down the club at night
and got drunk. What sort of psychological effect does their
job have on them. A deep one, probably. It must be so,
thought the skinny boy, for how could a man treat his
fellow human beings like caged animals every day and then
go home and be normal?
And he had called him, ‘Sir’.
It was a sad thing, he mused, when a bloke was prepared to
sell his human dignity for a chance to go to the lavatory, it

89
would have been better to use the pot. On the other hand,
what dignity would he have had if he had used the pot?
Added to which, he would have had to spend the rest of the
day and night in its company! He was angry because he
had to ask. Despite the warder, despite himself, he got the
pot and used it. It was to be the first of thousands of times.
The pot rang like a bell out of Hades, and he was afraid the
warder would return and poke his eye in the hole again.
The pot and the water jug both had little green bumps of
lime encrustations on them, like salt-encircled barnacles.
The health implications of this prison cell did not bear
thinking about.
He stood there thinking of all the people without faces who
had contributed towards his being put there. They – he was
sure – were the people with all the money. They were the
ones who were successful in hiding their dirt under the
carpet. It seemed to him that he was also their dirt. He was
the scum of the earth. He was the offscouring of
everything. The truth, it seemed to him, was that he had
got all the problems and for all their so-called cleverness,
they did not have the solutions. So what did they do? They
shut the problems away in little cages, doled out a bit of
grub from time to time to ease their consciences and paid
sadists to keep the problems hidden away.

90
Thirty years ago, when this event was taking place,
psychological model-building was a blunt instrument and
sociology was undergoing its infant struggles to establish
its scientific credentials. Psychological models that were
subsequently produced in Christian psychology became
increasingly outdated and unsophisticated in light of
postmodern challenges to the limitations of received
modern scientific perspectives and social practices. The
study44 drawing from Rychlak’s (1993) complementarity
model, Sperry’s (1993) bi-directional determinism concept,
and Engel’s (1977) bio psychosocial formulation seeks to
develop a multiperspectival, holistic framework drawing on
the strengths of both modern and postmodern approaches.
Ingram’s proposed model includes inferences from both top
down and bottom up formulations, as well as potential for
interactions between or among any of the various
groundings for psychological theories. It is a model that
appears to be more faithful to the Biblical and the scientific
perspectives. This way, the hope is that it will provide a
more accurate and comprehensive view of persons in their
social environments. If so, and if it is properly applied in
prisons, courts, and academies, it could facilitate more
effective academic research and humane treatment of both

44
Ingram, John A. Contemporary Issues and Christian Models of
Integration: Into the Modern/Post Modern Age. Journal of
Psychology and Theology 23, no. 1 (1995): 3-14.

91
captives, their captivators, and indeed of those who dispose
of them in the courts. In the article referred to, a clinical
example is provided with DSM-IV descriptive and criterion
referents.
Meanwhile, thinking about his captors and judges, David
wondered whether the whole thing was a living picture of
what went on in their own minds with their own problems.
Did they deal with them also by pretending that they didn’t
exist, repressing them, and locking them away out of sight?
He wondered how many powerful people were really sick
little weaklings, hiding away in their darkling towers
besieged by their own fears and fantasies about themselves.
He sank to the floor in the corner for comfort and closed his
eyes. He had never thought these things before. Did this
bode what the future would hold. Before today he had
thought only what he wanted to put in his mouth, or what
thrill he could next experience. Now, after just one day, he
had started to think about life… The best thing was to go
to sleep whatever dreams may come. Not too much,
though. He didn’t know if sleeping was allowed this early
in the evening. An old battered Bible lay on the table. It
had the word, ‘Gideons’ printed on it. He drifted off to
sleep, wondering what Gideon45 had done to get put inside,
45
http://www.gideons.org/ (accessed 18 March 2006). The Gideons
International. The Gideons International serves as an extended
missionary arm of the church: Our sole purpose is to win men,
women, boys and girls to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus

92
whether he’d been released yet, and whether he’d been
caught again, and what would happen tomorrow.
Over the months that were to follow he was to discover that
sleeping would be his major pastime. He was to discover
that he could hone the art of dropping off to sleep at a
moments notice and in any situation; whether on the
lavatory or at the dining table.
It is generally recognised that the lack of value-neutral
description complicates ethical discussion, and so it is
instructive to note, for example, that the hunger striking
persons at Maze prison in Northern Ireland were described
by the British Government as ‘suicides’, while the Northern
Ireland Office referred to them as ‘murderers’ or ‘martyrs’.
It was the prison medical officer’s job to determine the
competence of a hunger striker to decide to go on strike.
Where this event connects and glances off the situation of
David in his prison cell is that ethical dilemmas surfaced in
those hunger strikes when four prisoners went into coma
and their relatives requested medical intervention. The
question was asked, ‘How can such intervention be justified
when it conflicts with a patient’s decision not to be
treated?’46 Though in this particular study dealing with

Christ through association for service, personal testimony, and

distributing the Bible in the human traffic lanes and streams of
everyday life.
46
Dooley-Clarke, Dolores. Medical Ethics and Political Protest.

93
medical ethics, surrounding the ethical implications of the
use of hunger strike as a tool for political protest, bearing in
mind the comatose state of the protesters, there is surely a
companionship of justice and humane treatment connecting
the conscious, and determined political awareness of those
strikers resulting in coma, and the implicit, unaware protest
of the choice of sleep (which is a kind of ‘coma’) as a self-
administered palliative by the child captive, and I recognise
that this is not a value-neutral description, though I believe
it to be a timely corrective against stereotypical language,
regularly used by people such as ‘juvenile delinquent’ and
‘scum of the earth’. This palliative of self-induced
comatose sleeping was used by him as often as was
possible during the entire term of his imprisonment, over
two years. No warders ever criticised him for it, or
counselled against it. Perhaps because a quiet prison is an
easy prison.
Others took the easier way of suicide. I am indebted
here as the source for much of the following statistics to the
Bromley Briefings Factfile 2006.47
Men in prison are extremely vulnerable to self-murder. The
suicide rate for men in prison is five times that for men who
are not in prison. For male children – that is, boys aged 15

Hastings Center Report 11, no. 6 (1981): 5 - 8

47
ibid

94
to 17 are eighteen times more likely to kill themselves in
prison than they are when living in the community.48
The statistics show that in 2005, there were 78 self-inflicted
custodial deaths in England and Wales This was a
significant fall from 95 deaths in 2004.49 The highest
number of self-inflicted deaths in custody in any calendar
month on record (16 in total) occurred during June 2005.50
Of the 78 deaths in 2005, three were women over 21. This
was down from 12 in 2004. Ten women aged 18-21 and
two juveniles, aged 15-17 took their own lives.
The first few days of a custodial sentence are the most
stressful for every prisoner. This is especially the case,
though not exclusively – all first weeks of all custodies are
difficult – for those being incarcerated for the first time. It
should come as no surprise therefore to note that almost one
third of suicides occur within the first week of someone
arriving in custody and one in seven occur within two days
of admission.51 It is the case that nearly two-thirds of those
who commit suicide in prison have a history of drug misuse
and nearly a third have a history of alcohol misuse.52

48
The Lancet, Vol 366, 2005, Suicides in male prisoners in England
and Wales, 1978-2003, Seena Fazel et al
49
Information supplied by Safer Custody Group in NOMS
50
NOMS, Performance Report on Offender Management Targets,
April – June 2005
51
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Deaths in Custody,Third
Report of Session 2004-2005.
52
Ibid.

95
One study found that 72% of those who commit suicide in
prison had a history of mental disorder.53 57% had
symptoms suggestive of mental disorder at reception into
prison. More than half of suicide is in male local prisons
and one in five suicides are in prison healthcare or
segregation units.54 75% of suicides in prisons between
2000 and 2004 took place in prisons that were overcrowded
in that month.55
When he slept, he dreamed. The first sleep of his prison
career was a nightmare. He began to hear the sound of
motorbikes and laughter, and it all flooded back. A picture
of the Plough Inn, in Ipswich, his hometown came to his
mind. It was July and hot, about two months before his
arrest and sentence to prison. He was chatting with some of
his friends outside the Plough.
A powdered, lipsticked, scented, and coiffured group of
teenaged girls stood around, ready to offer hero-worship. If
the owner of the vehicle, as he had been boasting, could do
seventy on the scooter, so could the skinny teenager. The
only problem was he didn’t have a scooter to prove it. Nor
did he have any experience of riding a motorcycle. It was
53
Shaw J,Appleby L and Baker D (2003) Safer Prisons,A National
Study of Prison Suicides 1999-2000 by the National Confidential
Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness.
London: Stationery Office
54
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Deaths in Custody,Third
Report of Session 2004-2005.
55
House of Commons, Hansard 7 November 2005

96
amazing what sex appeal a motorbike had. The girls
seemed to flock around the owner, even though in this case
he was merely a Suffolk hillbilly.
Gangs, by definition, each have their own character. It is a
structure of individuals, a sort of tribe, sharing the same
ideas, attachments and in complete solidarity. The interests,
activities, membership, and status differ according to the
tastes and preferences of each individual comprising the
group. Status is being constantly fought for. The gang
usually have a particular hangout or meeting place where
they mark their territory with their presence, or sometimes
with graffiti or noise (scooter noise). Conflict usually
occurs when there are clashes with other gangs, not usually
within the gang itself, although conflict can also occur
within their own group. The gang is an interstitial group,
always popping up, inconvenient, filling a tribal or social
gap. In this sense as far as the wider community is
concerned the gang is a temporary and passing annoyance,
like an unsolicited advertisement on the Internet that briefly
precedes a selected page. The group is originally formed
spontaneously and is integrated through conflict. It is
characterized by meeting face to face, milling around,
movement together through space as a unit, conflict and
planning (Thrasher, 1927).

97
In his 1884 classic Huckleberry Finn,56 Mark Twain
described the elaborate oath that Tom Sawyer creates for
members of his potential gang:
“ Now we’ll start this band of robbers and call it
Tom Sawyer’s Gang. Everybody that wants to join
has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood.
Everybody was willing. So Tom gave out a sheet of
paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It
swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell
any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to
any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to
kill that person and his family must do it, and he
mustn’t sleep till he had killed them and hacked a
cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the
band. And nobody that didn’t belong to the band
could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued,
and if he done it again he must be killed. And if
anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets,
he must have his throat cut, and then have his
carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around,
and his name blotted off the list with blood and
never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse
put on it and be forgot, forever. Everybody said it
was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it
56
M. Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Chapter 2.
Charles L. Webster and Company. New York. 1885

98
 out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest
was out of pirate-books, and robber-books, and
every gang that was high-toned had it.”

Mods and Rockers, the two groups that were at that

time in conflict with one another – Mods – of which David
was one - rode scooters whilst Rockers were true ‘bikers’
with large and powerful motorcycles, found their original
home on Scotland Road in Liverpool, but soon spread even
to sleepy Suffolk.
Developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Mods
and The Rockers were two groups that were closely related
to the work of author S.E. Hinton57 who wrote the novel,
The Outsiders. Each group represented opposite tastes with
regard to a number of social conventions such as clothing,
grooming, music, and so on, Mods being in these respects
rather like ‘Chavs’ of 2004 and following in the UK. None
of the members of this ‘gang’ would subscribe to actually
being such a group. They were more mature than that, and
beyond the childish activities described by Mark Twain,
57
By the time she was 17 years old, Susan Eloise Hinton was a
published author. She put in words what she saw and felt growing
up and called it ‘The Outsiders’, a now classic story of two sets of
high school rivals, the Greasers and the Socs (for society kids).
Because her hero was a Greaser and outsider, and her tale was one
of gritty realism, Hinton launched a revolution in young adult
literature. S. E. Hinton. http://mrcoward.com/slcusd/sehi.html
(accessed 29.03.2006).

99
and less tightly organised than for example the adult
American Ku Klux Klan or Irish voting gangs that appeared
in New York City and were used by politicians to intimidate
opponents and control vice industries.
Even so, while yet a committed member of the gang, he
was perfectly aware of the irony that this unspoken and
unwritten moré or rule of the group was a strange way to
get the measure of a man’s worth – whether he had a
scooter! ‘Has he got a motorbike?’ ‘Can he get it to do
seventy miles per hour?’ But since this was their way of
telling, within the compelling power of the social group, he
realised that he had no choice but to go along with it.
The ritualistic negotiation began,
Jack. Let me have your bike.
You must be joking. You’re not insured and you haven’t
got a licence. How do I know you can even ride it anyway?
Why? Afraid I’ll discover it’s a rubbish machine, are you?
Jack decided the only way to defend his position in the eyes
of those present was either to find the authority to say no,
or to let the intruder have a go.
Aw, come on Jack. Just a little ride up the road. I won’t be
a minute. Just up the road and back.
By this time everyone had joined in; some on Jack’s side –
the more law-abiding ones, and the majority on his.
Go on, Jack. Let him see how fast he can go.

100
Yeah. Go on, Jack. You’re not chicken are you?
Knowing the importance of that last challenge, Jack
wavered. In a final desperate attempt to avoid having his
new scooter wrecked – because that was what most of the
group expected to happen – he brought out his trump card.
And what if he comes off it, then, eh? How am I going to
explain to the police and the insurance company? If I say I
let him ride it, they won’t pay me anything, and I’ll be in
trouble for aiding and abetting a crime.
This cut no ice, since it was not a rebellion, but an
expression of submission to the authorities that the gang
were resolved to hate. The skinny teenager had a better
card. This was one that would make him a hero as well as
the winner of this particular tribal struggle.
I’ll tell you what, Jack. If I come off, which is unlikely,
because I reckon I’m pretty good on bikes, I’ll give the
police the wrong name and address and let them think I’ve
stolen it. That way, you’ll be in the clear, your insurance
company will pay out, and they won’t have anything to go
on. All you have to say is someone pinched your bike. I’ll
shoot off and get clear, and everything’ll be rosy. Anyway,
I won’t come off, will I now Jack?
In a last desperate attempt poor Jack decided to ask for
some money to cover the cost of the fuel. The skinny

101
teenager handed him a note and mounted the bike. He had
won.
After a few false starts, he had powered off down the street
on full throttle. It had never seriously occurred to him that
he would have an accident. He was young and inviolable,
and life was eternal. Despite the fact that he had lost a
number of friends and acquaintances through motorcycling
fatalities, it was other people who died. Prestige. Respect.
That was important. All the girls and all of his mates had
watched him negotiate for the bike-ride, and every one of
them would in future be aware that he was a true hero for
offering to take any blame.
Respect was all. With respect, you can take liberties with
people. They get to thinking you are doing them a favour
when really you’re exploiting them. What a laugh. In
future he would have sufficient respect to borrow Jack’s
bike any time there were mates or girls around. Great stuff.
Another David victory!
Hold on. Whassat? The damn thing began to wobble and
buck all over the road. He couldn’t control it. The wheels
wouldn’t hold. For some reason he gave the throttle a twist
in the hope that increased speed would help. The bike
began to pick up speed. He got scared and jammed the
brakes on. Fear made him grip the throttle, and instead of
releasing it, he gripped it ever harder, creating acceleration.

102
The speedometer flashed in to view and it read 70 – only
70? Trees and lamp standards flashed past and the side of
the road snaked into the line of his front wheel. The
pavement reared up towards him; he attempted to swerve.
Drain covers flashed by, under the wheel as he screamed
across the road directly in line of a fuel tanker lumbering up
the road. He noticed that the road was wet with recent rain.
His mind whizzed into action. A choice had to be made.
Whether to hit the tanker or to wrap himself around a tree
trunk or just lay the speeding bike gently on its side and
hope for some protection from the faring. He chose the last
option. The bike, which by this time was doing fifty,
veered onto its side, and using the scooter as a shield, he
kept his head down, hands off the grips, leaning over,
gently – right, here it comes – for a moment he wondered
what death was…
‘Bang!’ seems such a tame word to describe what happened
next. It wasn’t really a bang or a crash. It was more the
sound of a deep concentration, like the mainspring of a
tightly-wound clock forcing itself to unwind slowly but
inevitably inside your head, and the only thing you can
utter is a kind of profound, Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh between
your clenched jaws as an accompaniment. Then it stops.
Silence for a few seconds.
Then consciousness returns.

103
You look down at your trousers and discover a neat little
red hole in each leg. Then the pain in your arms begins and
when you look you see two neat red holes in the cuffs of
your new coat. It’s all over in no time at all, and you begin
to wonder what all the fuss was about. It was only an
accident.
It was some minutes before he remembered why he had
been so anxious. The police! He must get away before
they arrived. Otherwise there would be all hell to pay. He
couldn’t hang around. They would want to see his licence
and insurance. He had already promised Jack and the girls
he would take the blame for stealing the vehicle and he
couldn’t go back on that and remain within the tribe. His
leg and arm hurt. He thought he must have grazed it on the
road surface. He began to get up, but found that he
couldn’t walk. No wonder, he reflected, he was shaking
like a leaf. He cursed himself for getting so scared he
couldn’t stand. Then there was this fussy woman
interfering with him.
(Get off, you stupid woman. Get your hands off me.)
“‘Thank you, ma’am. You’re very kind. Yes, I’m perfectly
OK thank you. No, not at all. Thank you very much for
trying to help. I’m very grateful, ma’am.’”

104
(Why don’t you get off, woman? Leave me alone. Oh, hell,
if she keeps hanging on to me like this, the police will be
here in a minute and then I’ll be deep in it.)
He pulled himself away from the woman’s caring, motherly
clutches and tried to make it up the street. His legs
wouldn’t carry him.
“‘Come inside and have a cup of tea.’”
He gave up and resigned himself to the kind woman’s
ministrations. Her kindly face told him a tale he didn’t
want to hear but could do nothing about. The police were
on their way. He couldn’t escape. He was well and truly
caught.
“‘Come on, I’ll clean you up a bit.”’
He nodded. There was nothing else he could do. Oh, well,
what will be will be and all that. The woman had
telephoned the police service, trying to be helpful. She had
a go at removing his trousers while he tried desperately to
keep them on without wanting her to realise that he was
embarrassed.
“‘Look, ma’am if you really want to help, don’t you think
it would be better to wait for the police, or the ambulance,
they’re trained for this sort of thing.
It’s OK. I’m a nurse.”’
He was caught, and resigned himself to her first aid care.

105
It wasn’t long before the friendly neighbourhood police
arrived.
“‘ Ello sir. Got a bump then ‘ave we?
It’s nothing, officer. I just fell of my bike. A bit wet, you
know. You know how dodgy it can be in the wet. Wish I’d
never bought the damn thing now!
Bought it then, did you, sir? In both senses of the word,
then, eh?”’
He chucked at his own joke. Chuckles all round, then. He
was one hell of an entertainer back at the nick, thought the
netted David.
“‘Hurt, then, are we?
Nope. Just a scratch. This nice lady is a nurse and she’s
sorting me out. Lucky no-one else was involved, eh?
Yes. Got a licence have you?
Yes, thank you, officer. It’s at home though. I’ll get off
home as soon as it’s sorted out and get the bike fixed. It’s
just got a bit of a dent, I think.
So I couldn’t actually see your licence, then, could I sir?
Well, yes. As I say, I keep it at home. It’s a bit silly
carrying it around with me, I always think. I don’t think I
have it on me, though. Perhaps I do.”’
He fumbled around a bit, making it look as though he was
expecting to find it any minute.

106
“‘Nope. Afraid I’ve left it at home. (Look a bit groggy, as
though you can’t think quite straight yet. The result of the
accident.) This leg hurts a bit. I had better get home and
rest it as soon as possible, I think.
Insurance at home as well, then, I expect, is it, sir?”’
He nodded.
“‘Where do you live?”’
He gave a false address and name. The officer turned to his
partner and asked him to get on the phone and check it out.
He was done for.
“‘Right. Now we’ll have you proper name and your proper
address and whether or not this bike is yours or if you’ve
nicked it, shall we? Name?
David ……...
Address…”’
103 Spenser Road. Someone with a deep sense of irony, or
a failed social reformer must have named the roads on his
corporation estate. They were named for famous writers,
philosophers, and poets. Maybe they thought some of it
would rub off on the inhabitants.
“‘Right. Come with me.
What about my leg?
I should bring that as well if I were you…”’
The police station was small and echoing. Uniformed
officers busily engaged over typewriters and huge mugs of

107
tea peopled the stuffy atmosphere. A black-stockinged
woman hurried by, arms filled with files. There was a whiff
of canteen coffee, and odds and ends of people sat in
various attitudes propped against the wall on a long bench
in the foyer. He was whisked past the desk and escorted to
the rear of the building. Cells.
Here. You’re not putting me in a cell!
A very heavy-witted policeman said,
Tell yer what, lad. We’ll give you a key and have a telly
brought in from the electrical shop if you like. How would
that suit you? You can come and go, as you like then. How
would you like that?
As it turned out, in the absence of a representative or legal
advisor, he told them everything they wanted to know.
Only he did say that he had stolen the scooter, and it made
him feel good to have shown that bit of loyalty to his group.
At about ten that night, they let him go home. He was not
to know that for him, that night had marked the end of his
youth.
The next time he would feel and be free in any sense of the
word, he would be an adult and a Christian, with a life-plan,
clear purpose, and ambition before him. As it was, he
wandered homeward, torn trousers flapping in the cold
evening air and his best jacket torn beyond repair. It was a
dark night and he walked through the town. Past the Quick

108
Snax, the cafes, the prostitutes and the cheap neon town-
fronts that waited for the daytime town to go to sleep before
it opened up its eyes for the nightly fun. Past the big
mouths and the alcoholics and the deserted bus stops.
Couples kissing in shadowed doorways and empty roads.
He was as sad as any lost and bereft person. It would be
difficult getting in to the house without his father finding
out. He would have to go through the lavatory window as
usual. He couldn’t face him that night.
A (legal) car drew alongside him, and he got in. It was
Gerald, a carpenter who lived on his street. He would have
cause to remember that night when a carpenter picked him
up when he was feeling low. Gerald lived just up the road
from his house.
Here David mate. What’s up?
Nothing. Fell over.

109
110
 FOUR: ANGER MANAGEMENT
Mental Health and psychologies of emotional pain.

Prisoners’ families, including their children, often

experience increased financial, housing, emotional and
health problems during a sentence. Nearly a third (30%) of
prisoners’ children suffer significant mental health
problems, compared with 10% of children in the general
population.58
Mental health problems associated with drug and alcohol
abuse are common amongst young people in prison. They
are more likely than adults to suffer from mental health
problems and are more likely to commit or attempt suicide
than both younger and older prisoners (see below for
statistics relating to 16-18 year olds).59

58
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit and Action for Prisoners’
Families (2001)
No-one’s Ever Asked Me, London: Action for Prisoners’ Families
and Young Voice (2001) Parenting Under Pressure, London: Young
Voices.
59
Singleton et al (2000) Psychiatric Morbidity among young
offenders in England and Wales, London: Office for National
Statistics.

111
Up to 30% of young women in custody report having been
sexually abused in childhood.60
As for the psychological and emotional difficulties facing
older prisoners, a Department of Health study conducted in
1999 - 2000 of 203 sentenced male prisoners aged 60 and
over in 15 establishments in England and Wales (about one-
fifth of that total population) reported that 85% had one or
more major illnesses noted in their medical records and
83% reported at least one chronic illness or disability when
interviewed. The most common illnesses were psychiatric,
cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and respiratory.61

At four o’clock in the afternoon, it was into this context in

which they unlocked the cell door of the skinny adolescent
prisoner. The door swung open quietly and easily on its
heavy greased hinges. He got to his feet to face the day and
whatever it might bring. An overweight warder called out
to follow him. He wondered if they were taking him off for
another bath – he could have done with one after that cell.
Still, he could not help thinking it would have been more
effective to clean the cell, since this was the source of most
of the filth.
60
Solomon, E (2004) A Lost Generation: the experiences of young
people in prison, London: Prison Reform Trust
61
Prison Reform Trust (2003) Growing Old in Prison, London:
Prison Reform Trust.

112
At home he would bathe often, and was diligent in
maintaining a high standard of personal hygiene. Here,
such was not possible. There appeared to be no concern for
cleanliness among the guards or other prisoners, and the
‘slopping-out’ routine confirmed this lack of care or
awareness. Men whose lives had been largely sexually
chaotic, who had been imprisoned for rape, child sex abuse,
and intravenous drug use, many of whom suffered with
uncontrolled alcoholism, were all thrown in together. There
were also known predatory prisoners, who terrorised some
of the more vulnerable inmates. There was no way of
knowing what diseases they might be spreading around the
institution. Even thirty years later, when AIDS/HIV was to
hit the prison system, in a survey conducted among prison
healthcare managers across the UK, it was found that there
was still no HIV policy, that one in five prisons surveyed
had no hepatitis C policy and that well over half had no
sexual health policy whatsoever. This was in 2005, three
decades after David’s incarceration, and clearly
demonstrates that there has been little or no improvement
for prisoners of today, who appear to be in a similarly
vulnerable position to the one David had been in thirty
years before. In fact, the situation is worse today, since the
most recent survey of prevalence in prison found for

113
example that HIV was fifteen times higher than in the
community at large.62
They were not, in fact, making for the bathhouse. He was
following along a lengthy corridor. The enamelled
brickwork shone and reflected the two dull bodies marching
purposefully along. One was short and skinny, and the
other dumpy and fat. Laurel and Hardy, he thought.
The red tiled floor was highly polished. Polishing this floor
was clearly something the prisoners were given to do every
day. At the end of the corridor was a huge barred door: five
slim metal bars from the ceiling to the floor and a single flat
bar across the middle. The right side carried a huge metal
lock.
The fat guard slid one of his keys in to the lock. The sound
of keys jangling was to be a constant refrain accompanying
almost every activity he was to be involved in for the next
three years. The odd pair went through the gate. It rattled
shut. He was in a prison within a prison. What he saw
before him made him catch his breath. There, right in front
of him, was a prison. Until now, the experience had been a
kind of dream world. This was why he was surprised to see
that what lay before him was the actual inside of a real
prison. This was not something on the TV or in a book or

62
HIV and hepatitis in UK prisons: addressing prisoners’ healthcare
needs, Prison Reform Trust and National AIDS Trust, 2005

114
slide show. It was a real, live, prison, with real live
prisoners walking around…
Above the ground floor there were three tiers of cast iron
webbed walkways running straight from this end of the
huge empty space to the other end, about seven hundred
yards away. The walkways gave access to dozens of steel
doors, about ten feet apart in the wall, each with a tiny hole
at eye level.
Above the ground floor, at ceiling height hung a wire mesh.
It was weaved across the hall-space, like the safety net
across a circus ring, along the whole length of the prison.
All along the four floors dozens of studded doors hung half-
hidden in the brick recesses. All were the same, except for
the number attached to each. In front of him, on the floor,
stretched into the distance, a vast area of red ceramic tiling,
mirror-polished. At the far end of the interior of the prison
– which was one vast echoing room the size of two or three
aircraft hangers – was another brick wall with no door. The
building – a huge person-container, was vast and empty
and, apart from the slippered footfalls of one or two
prisoners scuttling here-and-there on various errands,
entirely silent. Each tiny slippered shuffle echoed, and you
really could have heard a pin drop.
He was led, subdued, to a chair in the centre of the space,
where he was ordered to sit down. He was alone apart from

115
the fat guard. Another guard, with a different uniform on,
approached. He grabbed the skinny prisoner by the hair
and said,
‘Nice hair.’
Not knowing what to expect, he prepared himself for a
torture that he could not imagine. He was afraid he would
shout and betray his cowardice. The man, brandishing his
scissors, set to work on his hair. He hacked and slashed and
scraped until there was nothing left but a hairless egg. The
hair had been David’s pride. In the gang, it had been one of
the marks of his rebellion against the rest of the world, his
family and the universe of authority. Among his peer
group, it had marked him out as someone special. Few of
the others had the courage to reject their parents’ rules
about behaviour and dress, but the skinny prisoner had
ignored them all. He had been largely Ferrell for the past
few months, living in barns and hedges at the weekends.
He went where he wanted to go and did what he wanted to
do. The hair had taken him years to get right, and now it
was being torn from his skull, leaving him emotionally
naked, cold and exposed. No one could tell how it would
affect him. There was no mirror for him the check it out.
He felt that it was yet another of the system’s ways of
destroying him, breaking down his resistance. Like
stripping him off in reception, and like the guard watching

116
him bathing, and like leaving him alone in the cell without
a bed and without an explanation. Sitting in the prison
chair with the convict Trustee cutting his hair, he felt the
time had come for him to be ripped apart and have his
individuality and uniqueness stripped away. What, he
thought, was the connection between his physical body –
his biological structure, which could be broken and
damaged in one way, and his individuality, which was
vulnerable in a different way? He was different from the
lower animals, most of which did not possess individuality
to the same degree as himself, which instead of exercising
the will, follow inborn instincts. He was a person and an
individual. He did have a body, which was one thing, but
he also had something else, which was his emotional,
psychological and intellectual being. 63
David, finding himself being assaulted in this special kind
of official and legal way, by a turncoat compatriot – a
fellow prisoner – was considering himself a finite, but also
a spiritual creature and person. This was his special value
as a person; this was a way through which he might hope to
find God’s grace, having its origin in a personal act of God.
The thought stirred up in his soul an interior inclination
toward personal union with God. It was destined to
63
Bone, E. Approches Biologiques de Notions D’individu et de
Personne (Biological Approaches to the Notion of Individual and
Person). Nouvelle Revue Theologique. 81. (1959): 947-986.
(French).

117
terminate with his free personal donation of his ‘self’ to
God to be consummated in the glorious vision of God in
heaven. Grace, as a consequence, was to involve (not only
for him singularly and individually, but for all men and
women who turned to God in this way), an elevation of his
personhood, both in his spirituality and in his individuality,
in possession as well as in giving of self. In fact, this was
eminently Christological in that the glorified individual was
destined to enjoy the ultimate vision of God only in and
through Christ.64 He was to discover later that different
people had different views about individuality, God, and
what was the best religion. For the moment, he was simply
looking for something solid to cling to – feeling himself to
be a drowning man.
See Michael Stock65 For an interesting schematic analysis
of personality, offered as a framework upon which to hang
the data from competing schools of psychology. It is, in
brief: (1) Basic Givens: vegetation, sensation, affection,
motor, evaluative and volitional; (2) The Field: internal, and
external environment, society, the world, God; (3)
Principle: happiness; (4) Poles: love, and goals (meaning,
morals, community, religion); (5) Limits: needs; (6) Tools:
habits; (7) Base: self-image; (8) Resolution of Competing
64
Alfaro, Juan. Persona y Gracia. (The person and Grace).
Gregorianum. 41. (1980): 5-29.
65
Stock, Michael. Dimension of Personality. Thomist, 33, no. 4.
(1969): 611 – 666.

118
Claims: decision, freedom, compulsion, motivation, action.
There remain three impenetrable aspects: (1) complexity,
(2) individuality, and (3) Ultimate Purpose.
Swami Vivekenanda thought it a healthy state that there be
a variety of religions, for they reflect the individuality of
each person. No single religion, he believed had access to
the full truth; thus the plurality of religions complement,
not contradict, one another. Hinduism believes in a
continuing revelation where new forms develop to suit new
conditions. It is therefore able to absorb all that enters it,
elevating and identifying new gods with the ‘Central
Reality’. Hinduism finds Christianity’s exclusive view of
Christ as sole incarnation a narrow conception of God. He
is further critical of the Christian missions, which ‘tend
toward the destruction of Indian social stability’. By the
same value judgement, if David became a Christian, that
would tend toward the ‘destruction of working class
criminal culture’. This would not necessarily be, he
thought, a bad thing, for here in his upbringing and social
milieu was a perfect social and environmental medium for
the seeding and blossoming of mental instabilities and
emotional pain.
What if someone were to become seriously mentally ill, or
if someone mentally ill were sent to this hell-hole? He was
to discover that such prisoners with severe mental health

119
problems were often not passed on to more appropriate,
sometimes secure, hospitalised provision.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons estimated that based on
visits to many local prisons, 41% of prisoners that were
being held in prison ‘health care’ centres ought to have
been in secure National health Service accommodation.66
Research was to discover that there were up to five hundred
patients in prison healthcare centres who had mental health
difficulties that made them sufficiently ill to require
immediate NHS admission! 67 It would be September 2005
before the government would finally make the commitment
to a programme of standardizing court diversion schemes
across the country.68
It was recognized by the Prison Reform trust that the failure
to transfer prisoners to secure provision was particularly
acute for women prisoners. A study which looked at 44
women from Holloway prison who had been referred to
secure hospitals found that half were turned down.
Compared to those who were allowed to have beds, the
rejected women were more likely to have harmed
themselves, to have suffered childhood abuse, to have
66
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2004) Annual Report of HM Chief
Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales 2002-2003, London:
Stationery Office.
67
Reed, J. (2003) Mental Health Care in Prisons, British Journal of
Psychiatry 182, p287-288.
68
Hansard, House of Commons written answers, 12 September
2005, column 2570W.

120
committed serious offences and to be seen as violent or
dangerous. The research concluded that their rejection was
the result not simply of difficulties in treating them but also
of inadequate service provision.69
If he were to maintain sanity, and part of this would be the
establishment of a clear prison identity, he would have to
find another way of identifying himself to himself, and of
flagging it to others. He had a mad moment of fear that this
could signal the beginning of the rest of his life. A life of
crime, depravity, degradation and vice, in which there
would never be a moment of peace. He would always be
hounded by the police and penned-in with criminals.
Without the freedom to make choices about what he wanted
to do, his actions would be destined by the police and the
courts and probation officers and would always be against
his will. He would no longer be able to do what he wanted
to do.
This ritual of the removal of his hair was a sign of his
defeat and a predictive indication of the kind of future he
could expect. He would be apprenticed to the insane,
changed into a criminal, and spewed into the sewers of
society, labelled, ‘ex-convict’.
As the hair came off, so his mind raced in a flurry of
reflection and decision, casting-off what had been and
69
Hansard, House of Commons written answer 13 July 2005 121.
Hansard, House of Commons written answer 2 Nov 2005

121
reaching out for what might be in the future. Who was he,
and who was he to become?70 At the centre of his being
was a little altar on which was a candle of survival.
What did the Christian concept of personal identity mean as
compared to, say, the Buddhist concept of non-self? He
had been reading Galatians 2:20, and the ‘to be or not to be’
soliloquy of Hamlet71 in his cell the night before. Here in
Hamlet was an individual in an impossible quandary and
who was unable to make a decision about his life. Did he
want to ‘be’, or not? What was the purpose of his
existence? Whatever act he eventually decided upon would
depend upon who he was internally, morally, spiritually,
and emotionally. It was both an existential Buddhist and
Christian issue. Who he was, would ultimately be
demonstrated by the combination of this reflection and the
activity that would flow from it (praxis). What action he
took, would depend upon who he decided he would be.
Did David, likewise, want to ‘be’, or not to ‘be’? St.Paul,
in Galatians 2:20, had got his act together, it appeared:
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I,
but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in

70
Barth, Hans-Martin. ‘Ich lebe, aber nicht mehr ich...’ Christlicher
Glaube und personale Identitat (‘I live, but no longer I...’ Christian Faith
and Personal Identity). Neue Z. f Systematische Theologie u
Religionsphilosophie. 44, no.2 (2002): 174-188. (German).
71
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet 2/1.

122
the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved
me, and gave himself for me.
An exegetical analysis of this Biblical passage leads to
philosophical, psychological, and phenomenological
reflections on the relation between the empirical ‘ I / Me’
and the ‘ true self.’ Because it is analysing human nature, it
addresses both Hamlet’s and David’s quandaries. Both the
Christian and the Buddhist traditions try to offer liberation
from illusions and ruined self-awareness. In the Buddhist
view the believer is invited to discover ‘emptiness’ so that
the person is no longer person-centered and thus receives a
new power of life. The Christian faith, on the other hand,
speaks of the spiritual death of the person and the
experience of Christ living in her or him. This would allow
then for the grateful acceptance and confident
transformation of the empirical ‘I / Me’ in the form of a true
self – one constituted by Christ. Therefore, although the
true destination of the person is articulated in both
traditions, formally speaking, through dis-identification and
identification, it has to be noted that it is with these very
different results.

If one life was ended, in the sense of St.Paul, the Christian

sense, then the next step was not death of the self but the
beginning of a new creation. Like Hamlet, unable to

123
actually act, but for the reason that he was physically
locked in a cell, he had sat defiantly considering his
sentence. Nine months to three years! In one way, that was
nothing. He was sure he could do that much time without
any difficulty. After all, what was nine months? He did not
think for a second that in fact, it would be almost three
whole years before he tasted freedom once again.
Mercifully, he could not know the future.
The barber finished cutting the prisoner’s hair, which lay in
a heap on the floor. He was tempted to lift his hand to feel
how much had been left intact, but he resisted. The guard
might take offence and impose a punishment. He gathered
from the conversation between guard and trustee that the
trustee was himself a prisoner. Because of his closeness to
the guard and his contempt for the victim, the skinny
prisoner felt further alienated. Little hair had been left, the
trustee being on the side of the guard. At that moment he
realised something he had not understood before and would
never forget. Allegiance was a tool to be used and not an
emotion to be felt. He decided to remember that. Another
prisoner shuffled by.
‘Evening, Bill’
‘Evening’, replied the guard, ‘How is your back?’
‘Oh, not so bad today. Yours?’
‘Mmmm’.

124
‘You seen officer Jones?’
‘Yup. He’s about somewhere. He was in the quad when I
last saw him. I think he’d been doing Reception. Hang on,
there he is now.’
The door at the end of the hall rattled open and along came
officer Jones, the Chief Officer. The prisoner hurried off,
his buckets of tea clanking and slopping as he went.
‘Evening, sir’, said the officer, licking the Chief’s boots,
thought the newly shorn David. ‘Got a new un here for
you. Anywhere in particular you want him?’
What is he? Remand?
No he’s for allocation. Borstal.
‘Put him in twelve, floor two.’
‘Remand?’ What’s that? He thought. He had heard the
word before, and knew it was to do with a category of
prisoners, but he had never been one himself and no-one
had explained it to him.
Remand prisoners were in fact one of the saddest groups of
prisoners in the system. Many were innocent; most were in
prison without a release or court date, and it was the group
that contained the highest numbers of prison suicides. In
2004, thirty-two people held in prison awaiting trial took
their lives - a third of all prison suicides that year. Overall,
more than half of all in-prison suicides were committed by
this category of prisoners on remand. It is an ordinary

125
mundane fact of daily prison life, and it is also accepted
that many remand prisoners harm themselves whilst in
custody, so that in 2003, for example remand prisoners
accounted for around third of all known and reported self-
harm incidents in prison. Not all, of course, were reported.
According to research by the Office for National Statistics,
more than a quarter of men on remand had attempted
suicide at some stage in their life. For women remand
prisoners the figure was even higher. More than forty
percent had attempted to kill themselves before entering
prison.72 On 30 June 2004 there were 2,200 people on
remand awaiting trial for over three months. That is,
people who had not been found guilty of any crime, and
were yet imprisoned. This group constituted 29 % of the
total prison population.73
These remand prisoners also suffer from a range of mental
health problems. According to the Office for National
Statistics more than three-quarters of male remand
prisoners suffer from a personality disorder.74 The general
diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder are:

72
Singleton, N et al (1998) Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners
in England and Wales, London: Office for National Statistics.
73
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004 London: Home Office.
74
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth
Edition (DSM-IV), the American Psychiatric Association,
Washington D.C., 1994.

126
A. An enduring pattern of inner experience and behaviour
that deviates markedly from the expectations of the
individual’s culture. This pattern is manifested in two (or
more) of the following areas:
(1) Cognition: i.e., ways of perceiving and interpreting self,
other people, and events).
(2) Affectivity (i.e., the range, intensity, lability, and
appropriateness of emotional response).
(3) Interpersonal functioning.
(4) Impulse control.
B. The enduring pattern is inflexible and pervasive across a
broad range of personal and social situations.
C. The enduring pattern leads to clinically significant
distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other
important areas of functioning.
D. The pattern is stable and of long duration and its onset
can be traced back at least to adolescence or early
adulthood.
E. The enduring pattern is not better accounted for as a
manifestation or consequence of another mental disorder.
F. The enduring pattern is not due to the direct
physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a
medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., head
trauma).

127
Further, one in ten of male remand prisoners have a
functional psychosis and more than half experience
depression. Nearly two-thirds of female remand prisoners
suffer from depression. Once again, these figures were
higher than for sentenced prisoners. Research has found
that nine percent of remand prisoners required immediate
transfer to the NHS for mental health problems, and that
this is an ongoing Reception situation.75
Although almost one in five (2%) of people held on remand
before trial in 2003 were acquitted or not proceeded
against,76 the vast majority received no compensation for
their period of incarceration. It was announced on the
national news media on 19/04/2006 that the government
had plans to reduce the compensation paid to those wrongly
convicted of crimes.
Those who win their appeals at the first attempt will get no
compensation. Others who have spent years in prison will
see any payouts capped. The government expressed
concern that victims of miscarriages of justice sometimes
received more than victims of crime. If the plans went
ahead, people who appealed within the time limit set by the
court would no longer be entitled to any compensation if
they won. Instead it would be regarded as the legal process
75
Singleton, N et al (1998) Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners
in England and Wales, London: Office for National Statistics.
76
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004, London: Home Office

128
taking its course. This would rule out damages being
awarded to someone like Angela Cannings, who was
wrongly convicted of killing two of her sons. She served
20 months in prison for murder before her convictions were
overturned on her first appeal. Home Secretary Mr Clarke
was also expected to announce a planned limit on any
individual payments, with less going to those with previous
criminal convictions.
Bill Bache, Solicitor for Angela Cannings, commented,

Simply because the perpetrator of the injustice against one

group of people is the state as opposed to say a criminal in
the street... why should there be a distinction between those
77
two? It was the case that less than half of all remanded
prisoners actually went on to receive a prison sentence.
The actual statistics are that (only) 49% of men and 40% of
women on remand in 2003 received an immediate custodial
sentence.78
Despite this clear inequity and breach of human rights,
(Which the Home Secretary describes as ‘part of the normal
legal process’79 – and therefore less deserving of
compensation), not to mention evasion of natural justice,
77
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4921230.stm
Story from BBC NEWS: Published: 2006/04/19 06:51:27 GMT ©
BBC MMVI
78
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004, London: Home Office.
79
Ibid.

129
from December 2004 to December 2005, the remanded in
custody population in prison, instead of reflecting an
awareness of the way the system was not only not working
but actually oppressing people, and therefore resulting in a
reduction in the remanded population, in fact the population
increased by 10 % to 12,535. Within this total number, the
un-tried prisoner numbers increased by 8% and stood at
8,025, and the convicted but un-sentenced population (that
is, along with the un-tried, serving an indeterminate
sentence at the convenience of the courts) increased by 11%
to stand at 4,510.80
‘Well, he’s all done. I’ll bang him up now.’
The prisoner tensed. ‘Bang him up’? He wondered what
they had in mind. Were they going to give him a beating?
He had heard about prison, and now here he was all on his
own with no one to report what was happening.
In 2003/04, just over one third of boys and girls in custody
reported that they had felt unsafe at some time in their
custody, and 10% of them who were in prison said that they
had been hit, kicked or assaulted by a member of the prison
staff. 81
There was no way of escape, and it was futile anyway. This
whole system was entirely enclosed. If they chose, they
80
Home Office (2004) Population in Custody, December 2005,
London: Home Office 68. Ibid.
81
HM Inspectorate of Prisons and Youth Justice Board, Juveniles in
Custody, 2003-2004, London

130
could do anything they wanted to do, and no one would
know. If some member of the prison staff hit you, what
could you do? Report it to some member of a prison board
when he came to visit? That would not heal the wound or
take away the terror. The child came out of Dave, and he
admitted what he was,
‘Please, mister, don’t beat me up. I won’t be any trouble.
Just put me away if you’ve got to. I won’t make any
noise…’
The fat guard grinned and said,
‘Don’t worry, kid. Nothing is going to happen to you.
‘Bang him up’ means ‘put him in a cell’, that’s all. When
you put someone in a cell, you bang the door shut. That’s
all, and it’s what I’m going to do for you right now. Come
on. Grab your bed and follow me.’
He followed, climbing the cast iron stairway to the second
landing. The guard opened the door of the cell that was to
be the prisoner’s home for the next six weeks. He knew he
would have to settle down and wait six weeks until the time
came for the first of a series of transfers through the system.
In his cell, he sat on the wooden chair and felt his head.
The hair had been cropped to the skin, and for the first time
he was glad he was somewhere none of his friends could
see him. Had he been in town, he would have been
humiliated, but here in the prison, it seemed somehow right

131
– as though it was something to be expected. The problem
was that for six weeks there would be nothing for him to
do. The cell had no games or things to occupy the mind.
There was one book, a Bible.
His cigarettes had been taken away at reception, so he
couldn’t have a cigarette. By the time 17.30 arrived, he had
slept fitfully, and was now standing at the window on a
small, scrubbed three-cornered table with three legs. There
had been a large cup of cold tea on the table, which he had
drunk greedily. The nights were getting earlier as winter
approached. He banged the cup gently for company and to
fill the silence. Before long, he’d reduced his brain activity
to counting the bricks in the walls, the bars across the
window and the gaps between the floorboards. He was
hovering in a space of inactivity.
There is a physiological process (homeostasis) by which
people maintain the regular state of their internal organic
systems, such as body temperature, blood pressure, acid-
base balance, despite variations in the external conditions.
Hunger, for example, comes and then goes when it is
satisfied, then it comes again and so on. For David, these
needs were satisfied – hunger in particular, since he had
never in his life eaten so much or so regularly as during his
incarceration.

132
There is also another drive, however, which needs equally
to be satisfied. It is what White82 termed the ‘master
reinforcer’, which keeps individuals motivated over long
periods of time. It is a need to confirm a sense of personal
competence, and expresses itself in the exercise of a
capacity to deal effectively with the environment. It is
intrinsically rewarding and satisfying to feel that one is a
capable human being, to be able to understand, predict, and
control the world one is living in. Indeed, this is the basis
of all science. This kind of competence is continuous and
ongoing as a motive. It cannot be satisfied and then
ignored until it next appears, because it is not rooted in any
specific physiological need. Whereas homeostatic drives
involve an attempt to reduce something (i.e. hunger),
competence drives urge one on to seek stimulation. In this
cell there was no stimulation, as there had also been none in
the magistrate’s cells. This was a form of sensory
deprivation that David was to experience throughout his
imprisonment, and which he would learn to deal with – or
go mad.
In classic experiments on sensory deprivation carried out by
Hebb83 and his colleagues at McGill University in the

82
White, R.W. Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of
Competence. Psychological Review 66, (1959): 279-333.
83
Hebb, D.O. The Organisation of Behaviour. New York: Wiley,
1949.

133
1950’s, (Bexton, W.H., Heron, W. & Scott, T.H.),84
volunteers were almost completely cut off from normal
sensory stimulation, by wearing blindfolds, earmuffs, and
cardboard tubes on their arms and legs. They experienced
extreme psychological discomfort, and hallucinations, and
couldn’t tolerate the environment for more than three days.
Similarly, Cohen and Taylor,85 studying the psychological
effects of long-term imprisonment, found that sensory
deprivation and monotony are experiences, which prisoners
shared with explorers, space travellers, and round-the-world
sailors.
Another kind of competence urge is the need to be in
control and not at the mercy of external forces (Rubin &
McNeil),86 which is closely linked to the need to be free
from the controls and restrictions of others, in other words
to dictate one’s own actions and not be dictated to.
According to Brehm,87 when our freedom is threatened, we
tend to react by reasserting our freedom (psychological
reactance). When people initially expect to have control
over the outcomes of their actions, the first experience of
84
Bexton, W.H., Heron, W. & Scott, T.H. Effects of Decreased
Variation in the Sensory Environment. Canadian Journal of
Psychology 8, no.70 (1954).
85
Cohen, S, & L. Taylor. Psychological Survival: The Experience
of Long-term Imprisonment. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
86
Rubin, Z. & McNeil, E.B. The Psychology of Being Human (3rd
Edition). London, England: Harper & Row, 1983.
87
Brehm, S.S. & Kassin, S.M. Social Psychology (3rd edition). New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.

134
not being so is likely to produce reactance. Further bad
experiences however are likely to result in learned
helplessness.88 Rotter’s (1966) concept of ‘ locus of
control’ 89 refers to individual differences in people’s beliefs
about what controls events in their everyday lives. People
who believe (with the internal locus of control) that they
don’t have control over the events that are happening to
them are more vulnerable to the harmful effects of change
than those who believe that they do have that control.
At that moment he learned that he had no control over the
externals of his life. He retained the belief however, that he
retained control over arranging what furniture was going to
fill the rooms of his internal being.
He counted the windows many times, sometimes starting at
the top right-hand corner and working down, and other time
from the bottom left-hand corner diagonally and them
across the top and down, and every possible combination of
lines. He counted the chips out of the paint on the door, the
cracks in the arched ceiling, the grain-lines in the floor
boards and the strands of the cobweb outside the window-
slats, blowing fitfully in the breath of air that lightly kissed
the stark, rude prison wall. He picked the dirt out from
88
Seligman. M.E.P. Wednesday’s Children. Psychology Today 25,
no. 61 (1992).
89
Rotter. J. Generalised expectancies for internal versus external
control of reinforcement. Psychological monographs. 30, no. 1
(1966): 1-26.

135
between the floorboards with his fingernails. He sang some
songs gently under his breath and recited some poetry. He
drummed his fingers on the table, singing some popular
songs and tapping his feet on the floor to keep time. He got
up and stretched. He did some push-ups. He got on the
chair again and tried to reach up to see out of the window.
It was a long way from the floor. He could just see the
large open space of heath land outside the window beyond
the wall. There were dogs running around and people
walking and talking. Some patches of evening mist had
settled in the gentle undulations of the meadow and it was
beginning to get dark.
Nearer to the window was a very high wall. It was made of
red brick with broken bottle pieces on top of it. At the foot
of the wall was a little old man grubbing in the earth. A
gardener-convict.
He recalled a story he had been mockingly told by a police
officer in the Station at Ipswich: how to escape from a
prison. First, you stand in your cell and shout until you get
hoarse, then you jump on the horse and ride until your butt
gets sore, then you take the saw and cut the bars in half and
stand by the wall, put the two halves together so you get a
whole, put the hole in the wall, jump through, get on the
horse and ride to freedom. This was the level of
communication he was to expect to have to live with for the

136
next number of years. He would have to make the most of
it, and to find ways of entertaining and engaging himself
without relying on the system to provide it. He might not
have control over the gates, locks and bars, but he did have
some say in what went on behind his own eyes. He could
live a life of the mind.
However, it was one thing to make a determination. It was
quite another to have to live with it. Some time later in the
evening he heard the sound of keys jangling at the far end
of the gantry. His heart fluttered. Adrenaline flowed
through his body. The sound came closer and closer until
the guard stood outside his cell. He heard the sound of
muffled voices, but the guard and Trustee - a trusted
prisoner who had been in the prison for a long time - with
the bucket of tea moved on but without opening his door…
In his disappointment nurtured by boredom, anger and
frustration, deprived of this little bit of human contact he
threw himself across the cell, landing awkwardly on the
metal bed-frame. A sharp pain shot through his calf, and he
smashed the floor with a fist. Without being conscious of
it, he was screaming at the top of his voice to have the door
opened. Before thinking about what he was doing, at full
emotional tilt he raged against the wall, the brick and the
hundred layers of gloss paint, hitting again and again with
his clenched fist without feeling any pain. The blood might

137
have belonged to someone else. Tears of rage and impotent
frustration coursed down his face and he felt nothing but a
deep and abiding anger. It was searing and scorching into
his soul and pulsing through his veins. Of course, he had
no way of knowing what a serious problem frustrated and
impotent anger really was, or that his inability to deal with
it lay at its root, and made him vulnerable to many kinds of
illnesses and suffering.90
The question of what was the origin of this strange and
uninvited anger, and how he could find a way of dealing
with it would have to wait for another time. At this
moment he was caught in an unfeeling and desensitised
ecstasy of passionate rage….
The fact was, behavioural and mental health problems
become especially prevalent amongst children in prison.
Of prisoners aged 10 – 20, David’s age-range – around 85%
show signs of a personality disorder! That is an extremely
high number in any terms; and 10% exhibit signs of
psychotic illness, for example, schizophrenia.91

90
Powell, L. Mack. The Problem of Anger: A Message For the
Church. Journal of Pastoral Care 14, (1960): 138-149. Discusses
the message the church has for those faced with this problem, and
evaluates the insights of psycho-analysis concerning anger, being
not far removed from the church’s redemptive message and mission.
91
Singleton et al (2000) Psychiatric Morbidity among young
offenders in England and Wales, London: Office for National
Statistics.

138
 For himself, not being ill in any of these ways, but keenly
aware that in order to remain sane in an otherwise almost
totally mad environment, he desperately needed to pray
rather than to hurt himself. How did he know this? He
could not say. However, he was to discover in some years
time that it would be through the deep influence of prayer
that he would experience what it was to be saved, or made
whole and delivered from the world’s apparent insanity.
What would it mean to be saved?92 To be saved for some
meant to be liberated from the fetters of pride, ambition,
anger, hatred and hostility, from lust and emptiness. David
longed for this experience of forgiveness in which the event
of liberation would come to a focus. In this liberation he
hoped that he would come to be a witness to the love of
God, although at the time he had not come to the point of
using that kind of language.
…his impotent and frustrated anger tore at his heart and
soul and embedded itself in the deepest part of his psyche.
When he had finished, noticing the blood on his knuckles,
he cuddled his hand in a handkerchief and wiped the red
stain from the wall. The bones of the knuckles gleamed
white through the skin.

92
Muilenburg, James. What I Believe It Means to Be Saved.
Union Seminary Quarterly Review 17, No.4 (1962): 291-293.

139
Although the anger had subdued, and he was weeping
gently, this had been a reminder of the experience of early
life abandonment, and it had dumped him back as a broken,
abandoned and lonely, stinking hulk on the original shores
of his childhood, which had also been lonely and desolate.
‘They missed me. They missed me. It’s the same old story.
I’m always being missed. Never been noticed.’
He wondered if anyone at home had noticed that he was no
longer there. In many ways, this young prisoner, this
fledgling Christian (though he was not yet a Christian), was
undergoing his own ‘agony in the garden’ – the garden of
his life; he was drawing near to his moment of
transformation through a kind of death, and it was a painful
process. Apparently disordered and chaotic, in fact his
experience was a chronicle of the ambiguity of feelings and
reactions to his condemnation and imprisonment that must
have been similar for all who undergo the experience. Like
a loving daughter’s inevitable and unwelcomed
confrontation with the reality of her mother’s stroke and
eventual death,93 he was experiencing terror, hope, despair,
impatience, feelings of injustice, exhaustion, pity, self-pity,
anger, guilt, but all within a fundamental conviction about
faith and a growing acknowledgement of his personal truths
and closeness with the Lord when death and life, in his
93
Riley, Carole. Agony In the Garden of My Life. Studies in
Formative Spirituality 2, no. 2, (1981): 205–215.

140
eventual Christian conversion – the death of the old self and
the birth of the new – were finally to join.
He ‘belonged’, 94 but he did not believe. He had often spent
days away from home. Either he had lacked the courage to
tell anyone in the family that he was due to come to court
that morning, or he had felt that no one would be
sympathetic if he shared his deep sadness and anxiety about
the world and his place within it. While at school, he had
belonged to the church, but that had been because of his
singing voice, not because of any sense of religious faith.
Whatever might have been the deeper reasons for his
failure to inform his parents of his court appearance,
whether social or psychological, it had been important that
no one knew. It would not be until they read the newspaper
in the morning that his parents – but particularly his father -
would find out. He knew what they would say. He didn’t
think they would care much. They would probably be glad
to get rid of him. He had always caused them a lot of

94
Francis, Leslie J. Robbins, Mandy. Belonging without Believing:
A Study in the Social Significance of Anglican Identity and Implicit
Religion among 13-15 Year-old Males. IR Journal, 7, no. 1 (2004):
37-54.
Data from nearly 34,000 13-15 year-olds were analysed to examine
the social significance of self-identified religious affiliation
(belonging) unaccompanied by faith in God (believing). The data
support the social significance of belonging without believing. This
significance is discussed in light of the concept of implicit religion.
Includes a response by Grace Davie.

141
trouble and worry. His father in particular had made it
known to him in the most violent way how much he had
suffered whenever the police had come to the house. His
image of himself had been that he was a good, respectable
man living out of place in the middle of a very rough
corporation estate – a noble martyr dwelling in the midst of
trailer trash people. According to his vision of himself, he
was a poor and persecuted human being who had never
been given the opportunity to fulfil his social or academic
potential. He was a manager with nothing to manage. He
was embittered, angry and vengeful, unwilling to talk to
any of the neighbours, thinking himself as better quality
than they. He might be poor and persecuted, but he was
proud and legal. Making his way through this world had
been a struggle, and things had not changed. Having a
convicted criminal for a son was something that would
quite possibly destroy him. It was certainly the case that on
the single occasion he visited his imprisoned son some
months after his conviction – the National Association for
the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO) had
provided and paid for the transport - the dark red hair on his
head had turned to silver.95

95
The British charity NACRO’s vision is a safer society where
everyone belongs; human rights are respected and preventing crime
means tackling social exclusion and re-integrating those who
offend.

142
David thought that probably Gillian would wonder where
he was. He had a date with her that night, and she might
wonder what had happened to him. She would not contact
the family, though. She lived uptown on the other side of
the tracks in a posh house on the top estate. It was not,
anyway, a relationship that his father would have allowed.
He had never allowed visitors to the house. The only
individual who was not a family member that had visited
the house had been the Probation Officer. That was
because the law required it. He resented it, but was
powerless to change it. His house was his private fiefdom,
and his family were his peasant slaves whose function in
life was to do his will. No, Gillian would not contact the
family, but she might send a letter.
Was there such a thing as prison mailing? He didn’t know.
He knew so little about prison life. What were all those
voices out on the landing? Why did the guard open
everyone’s door but his? What would happen next? What
was expected of him – was he expected simply to sit in his
cell quietly and wait for someone to do something to
happen? For how long? Even as late as 2005, forty years
after this experience, a period of time during which one
might imagine that humane prison conditions for children
and young people might have changed somewhat, the
Prison Inspectorate, the official Home Office body for

143
evaluating and reporting upon prison conditions, was to
report with respect to Wormwood Scrubs Prison for
example96 that …although it was not possible to work out
the average time that prisoners spent unlocked. The
establishment’s published figure for time out of cell was
eight hours, which had been the reported figure for some
time. However, nobody at the establishment knew what
information this figure was based on, or how it was
calculated. A recently appointed manager in charge of the
business management unit realized that the published figure
was meaningless and was developing procedures to ensure
that the time out of cell figure was calculated correctly from
October 2005. Prisoners received a domestic period every
day when they were unlocked and had association on
various evenings throughout the week. Planned periods of
time unlocked were often cancelled however. Even though
this was bad, the worst thing David experienced about this
being ‘banged-up’ for long periods of time was not the
being locked up, the loneliness, the feeling of being
abandoned and unwanted or of being forgotten, but the very
indeterminate nature of the isolation. It might last another
96
The Rreport on an unannounced short follow-up inspection of
HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London, 3 – 4 October 2005 by HM
Chief Inspector of Prisons on the issue of time spent by prisoners
out of their cells made the repeat recommendation (2:8) that, Time
out of cell should be increased. (HP.47) Not achieved Scheduled
time out of cell remained largely unchanged.

144
ten minutes, or it might last for twenty-four hours until the
next morning’s slop-out. As a mental, social, physical, and
spiritual exercise, it is usually known as ‘longsuffering’, or
‘patience’. It connotes patience, endurance, constancy,
steadfastness, perseverance, and forbearance, and indicates
an individual’s disciplined approach of slowness in
avenging wrongs.97
The language of longsuffering in some of its components,
as the ability of waiting which is peculiar to greatness of
spirit, is implicitly close to some New Testament biblical
texts, such as certain parables from the synoptic tradition.
Compare together (Mark 4:26-29, 32; Matt. 13:36-43, 47-
50; 21:28-31, 33-34; Luke 13:6-9). Analogously in other
texts, (Mark 1:15; 9:17-29; Rom 11:25-32; Eph 1:9-10;
Rev. 6:9-11; Isaiah 6:10-11) it is called ‘the mystery of
waiting’ (How much longer?) which will be recompensed
on the mysterious accomplishment of God’s plan, for
example, see Rom 11:25,
I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery,
brothers, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has
experienced a hardening in part until the full number of
the Gentiles has come in.

97
See Tarocchi, Stefano. Fino a quando... (Mc 9,19; Ap 6,10):
dinamiche d’attesa e di compimento come riprova della
longanimita. Vivens Homo. 8, no.1. (1997): 91-109. (Italian).

145
This God, full of grace and mercy, who is also patient and
longsuffering, is also, however, a God of judgment.98 Even
though God is longsuffering and a God of love, His love
and patience cannot be predicted presumptuously. God will
end the day of grace for some unresponsive and rejecting
individuals, causing their hearts and minds to be closed to
further light, confirming them in their sin and therefore
confirming them in their lost condition. God will not
forever offer the pearls of his grace and salvation to those
spiritual swine that continually trample them in the dust.
See the article below99, which studies the fortunes of the
concept of ‘forbearance’ (µακροτηυµια), in the era
following New Testament times: in the dimension proper to
the concept itself and in the continuing dialogue with
Scripture - especially the Pauline letters. It notes the
absence of elements permitting one to speak of the novelty,
vis-a-vis the traditional understanding of the term (i.e.,
forbearance as a quality of believers in the Christian
community, or rather as a quality belonging to the divine
sphere: a quality of God or of Jesus Christ). At the same
time, one can see new uses of the term in individual authors
and in the emphases occasionally given the concept. In
98
Fish, John H. The Commission of Isaiah: An Exposition of Isaiah
6:1-13. Emmaus Journal. 4, no.1, (1995): 47-60.
99
Tarocchi, Stefano. La fortuna della longanimita oltre il nuovo
testamento (The Fortune of Longsuffering beyond the NT). Vivens
Homo. 5, no 1. (1994): 153-174.

146
commentaries on Scripture, for example, there is dialogue
with ‘tradition’, from which the perennial newness of all
Christian life springs. In this context, ‘µακροτηυµια’
renews its incisive impact on the faith community.
Christians uniformly claim that longsuffering and active
love is the only ultimate response to evil in this world, (it
informs non-violent Christian responses to war, for
example), the only truly redemptive and life-changing
response, the response that is given to us in the teachings
and example of Jesus Himself.100
David had never been in this position before. Normally, a
person decides what to do and does it. But in a cell with a
locked and bolted door, thinking about a response to
incarceration that would keep him both sane and human,
and the anger and resentment and bitterness that arises from
that powerlessness, what was there to do? Sit and wait
whilst exercising forbearance? A guard slid an eyeball
across the peephole. The prisoner looked directly at the
peephole and offered a thin smile. He could not see if the
guard was smiling back. The cover swung back and he
heard the busy jingling of keys. He quickly hid his
damaged hand behind his back and smiled as he opened the
door. Was this to be another beating?

100
Bube, Richard H. Response to Evil: a Christian Dilemma.
Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation. 35, no.4, (1983): 225
- 234

147
‘Here’s yer grub. And keep yer noise down.’
Then he was gone. The door had been open about ten
seconds. However, the ten-second gust of freedom made
all the difference to the cell. He looked at the food, and
then at the door. He would rather have had the door left
open than the food to eat. He grabbed the fragile flat tin
strip with no sharp edges that served as a knife and poked at
the mess on the plate. After he had eaten he needed to use
the stinking pot. His hand was smarting badly, and he
cuddled it in the handkerchief. This was not ‘self-harm’,
but simply a burst of anger and frustration. There were
people who harmed themselves to get relief from intense
internal pain, but for David, on this isolated occasion, the
relief he experienced had been quite a surprise, but not one
that he would ever seek to repeat by the same means. It
hurt too much.
For many long hours he then sat staring at the wall,
conjuring up imaginary scenarios and people and images in
his head and projecting them on to the brick. This was a
kind of meditative technique that was to become for him a
ready and easily available means of relief and escape from
the unacceptable realities of his prison life.101 It was to be
101
The Buddha’s appeal to a wide spectrum of intellectuals lies in
his specific method of thinking, which can serve as a cognitive
model for ecumenical dialogue. The Buddha recommends a
cultivation of the mind in which subjectivity and objectivity are held
in balance. This state is achieved by meditation and leads to the

148
such a useful tool, that even later in his life, he would be
able to use in order to put off satisfying his goals and needs
for many, many years on end. Inadvertently using a
resource that a popular American psychologist, Daniel
Goleman had given a technical name to, ‘deferred
gratification’. Ironically, deferred gratification, delayed
gratification, or ‘emotional intelligence’, being the ability
of a person to wait for things they want, is a critical trait for
life success. It was further said that those who lacked this
trait and needed ‘instant gratification’ suffered from poor
impulse control, and often (therefore) became criminals, as
they were (by implication) unwilling to work and wait for
their pay check. Well, however true these generalisations
may have been, maybe this was a significant key for David
in reorganising his future life, which was to be one of
service in an honourable profession rather than one of
lifetime criminal servitude. Who knows?
It had also been said that those with poor impulse control
suffered from ‘weak ego boundaries’ deriving from
Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality where to have such
a set of ‘weak boundaries’ opened one up to committing all

discovery of religion as a boundless experience. Christians can

employ this meditative technique to discover the relativity of their
claims. Crawford, Cromwell.
The Buddha’s Thoughts On Thinking: implications for ecumenical
dialogue. Journal of Ecumenical Studies. 21, no.2. (1984): 229 –
247.

149
kinds of moral and social errors. Daniel Goleman’s
‘marshmallow experiment’ in the 1960’s – around the time
David was discovering the same thing only in the privacy
and obscurity of his prison cell, tested a group of four-year
olds, by giving them a marshmallow and promising them
more, if they could wait twenty minutes before eating the
first one. Some children could wait and others could not.
He was later to follow the progress of each child into
adulthood, and to demonstrate that those with the ability to
wait were more successful in life than those who
couldn’t.102 It has been pointed out that this was actually
something that the Buddhists had discovered long before,
having dissected the mind and generating a catalogue of
84,000 mental afflictions that lead to inner transformation
as they are overcome! Interestingly however, the top five –
hatred, desire, confusion, pride, and jealousy – are
comparable to the top five most destructive mental states
identified in the Western world. The apparent peace of
mind enjoyed by Buddhist monks, has attracted numerous
Western scientists hoping to shed further light on the

102
Psychologist and journalist Daniel Goleman achieved widespread
recognition in 1995 with the publication of his book Emotional
Intelligence, which popularised research by psychologists showing
that success in life and work is based on much more than IQ. In his
book, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai
Lama (Bantam Books, $26.95), he chronicles a five-day meeting of
the minds among Buddhist scholars, cognitive scientists and the
Dalai Lama that took place in March 2000 in Dharamsala, India.

150
neurobiology of emotions and new pathways to mental
health.
Good for David, then, as his future was to show, since this
was to become one of the tools he would use for the
maintenance of his grip on sanity both then, in his isolated
cell, and later in his enforced isolation when he was to
undergo a long and severe period of ostracism from his
professional and ecclesiastical colleagues.
Later, the guard and his Trustee came along with a large
mug of cocoa, scooped from the bucket. Grit-filled, it was
rumoured that the cocoa was laced with bromide to
discourage erections. The skinny prisoner drank a sip and
poured the rest in the pot. It really was that horrible. Later,
after a spell at the window, he got into bed and went to
sleep.

151
152
 FIVE: UNHAPPY PEOPLE
Class, alienation, and culture

Nine o’clock in the morning was mail time. For a few

minutes there would be smiles and bright faces, clean jokes,
and genuine happiness. Dave had come across two quite
different responses at mail time. One had been that of those
prisoners whose situation the people who loved them
despite their crimes had accepted. Their friends and
families accepted them as persons for what they were.
These people would be happy – at least for the duration of
the excitement of getting a letter. Then there were those
who were being rejected by their loved ones. The
occasional one of these had long ago been driven to hate
the world and all it stood for, and had become cynical and
emotionally empty. What feelings of love or loyalty they
may have had in the past had now entirely disappeared.
There was the lad on the end of the corridor, Phil, who
David thought had become totally depersonalised and split
off from the rest of the prison and from himself. He rarely
came out of his cell. He said that he regularly experienced
a strange sensation of being entirely outside of himself.

153
Sort of, on the outside, looking in. He sometimes shared
his experience with Dave at ‘Communal Association’. He
felt himself, he said, to be an automaton, as though he were
living in someone else’s dream. He often talked about
himself in the third person, as though he, the person Phil,
did not exist. On one occasion, while David was there, he
sliced into his hand with a razor blade, and observed the
fact to David that the hand was bleeding. He appeared to
feel no pain, and lacked any concern, and certainly gave no
indication of panic, about the situation. David was
frightened by him, in the same way that he was later to be
terrified by Kraig and Sean, for Phil, like them, appeared to
lack any affective emotional response to ideas or events that
were brought to his attention, especially, particularly happy
or sad events. This gave him a kind of mysterious and
threatening quality to David. Phil often said that he
sometimes lacked the ability to control any of his actions.
Yet all of these three prisoners knew perfectly well what
they were doing – they were not ‘mad’ in the sense that
someone might think he was Jesus Christ or Napoleon
would be considered ‘mad’. David did not know – and
remains to this day unable to decide, whether Phil (or Kraig
and Sean) were schizophrenics, people who suffered from
panicking disorders, or were acutely stressed or dissociated
from reality and themselves in some other way. He did not

154
know, as far as Sean and Kraig were concerned, (though not
with Phil, who did not use drugs, whether their behaviour
towards him was a result of drugs or other substance
misuse.
Dave wondered if this might be the case, although his
recent religious reading had begun to teach him otherwise.
It was not necessarily the case, he had learned, that those
who had suffered greatly would become empty and
unresponsive vessels.103 On the contrary, they may, like
Martin Luther, be capable of an even greater tenderness as a
result of suffering. Luther’s reputation for blunt and rough
language concealed his opposite propensity for tender-
hearted words of human sympathy and humour. His letters
to and about his children demonstrate this, especially those
in reference to the death of his children, where though
grief-stricken he still praises God and considers the feelings
and concerns of others. Because of his own suffering he is
able to write powerful letters of comfort to others. Mathias
Claudius shows in his own letters that he stands directly in
this tradition of Luther’s. Both men illustrate how closely
faith and language are connected.104 There were not a few
103
See for example ‘Depersonalisation Disorder. Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - Fourth Edition (DSM-IV),
the American Psychiatric Association, Washington D.C., 1994.
104
Kurt, Ihlenfeld. Das Auge Noch Vom Weinen Nass Ein Blivk In
Luthers Briefe (Eyes Still Wet From Crying. A Look into Luther’s
Letters). Luther. 34. (1963): 122 – 131. (German).

155
of the other kind of person, however. Some prisoners who
had suffered in this way would complain quietly or shut
themselves in their cells for an hour at mail-time. Once the
happy ones had cooled off a bit, some of the unhappy ones
would engage malicious arguments and suggestions
designed to limit their joy. Their mission was to destroy
whatever they could, and they often did. They cornered a
lad against an alcove in the wall.
‘Well, well, Johnny boy. Got a letter then?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, apologetically.
‘Give us a look, then.’
‘ No. It’s all right. It’s only from a girlfriend. You don’t
want to read my rubbish.’
‘Aw, come on. Let’s have a quick look.’
‘No!’
‘Hey, Strangler. Come over here. Johnny-boy’s got a sexy
letter.’
‘Oh, now, don’t mate. It’s private.’
Strangler and a couple of mates saunter over.
‘Look it’s private. A private letter. It’s not for everyone to
read. Why don’t you get someone to write to you, then
you’ll have your own letters to read.’
The unhappy ones throw their arms around Johnny in mock
comradeship. One of them makes a grab for the letter, and

156
tears it in half. Johnny by this time has tears of anger in his
eyes. Strangler grabs the other half of the letter and begins
to read it out in a cartoon voice while his mates hold
Johnny down.
He wriggles to get free, but not too much, not wanting to
provoke Strangler to some serious reaction. A tear wells up
in his eye, and his face goes a deep pink. Half
embarrassed, half maddened, he is humiliated and angry.
All he can do is repress it inside. He’ll get it out of himself
later by pummelling the pillow or the wall.
The unhappy ones let him go. Strangler rams the two
halves in to Johnny’s top pocket. By now, Johnny begins to
resent the letter and the girlfriend who sent it. It brought
him such shame. The unhappy ones walk away and Johnny
is left smoothing the crumpled paper, all alone. Unhappy.
The unhappy ones have finished what they set out to do.
They didn’t realise this about themselves, of course. Such
awareness would imply that they had a desire and capacity
for reflection. They did not. All they knew was that
whenever their antennae detected joy, their job was to
squash it and put it out. They did it by instinct. An instinct
that had been born and cultured in families that treated
children as pieces of flesh, and not as vulnerable elements
of impressionable, trusting soul. They were victims as

157
much as their own victims were. To make everyone else
like them was their mission. Not by choice, but by destiny.
Men who had letters from girlfriends were envied
throughout the prison system. They were envied because
they had managed to maintain a spiritual connection with
home. They had something they could touch and hold in
their hands. Most had not. All most prisoners had were
fantasies and other peoples’ memories, other peoples’
letters. Dreams and perversions. Dissatisfaction.
Emptiness. Now and again people had a laugh, but it
wasn’t a real laugh; it was a mocking, cynical laugh:

The owl and the pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat.
They took some honey,
And plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note…
Wham! Splat! Moan! Crunch! Did ‘em over! Yeah!

And everyone would laugh at the thought of the Pussycat

and the Owl getting mugged for their honey and money. It
was sick. It was insane. It was grown-up children acting
out their reaction against the abuse they had suffered
themselves as children. Their nursery rhymes, instead of
being realms of fun and childish fantasy in which violence

158
was sanitised, had become arenas of actual violence and
real revenge.
Was there a particular formulation or aspect of a friendship
relationship, which was especially relevant to each type of
dissociated prisoner?105 Dave had in his cell a copy of an
enormous tome by Dr. Frank Lake, who had been a
parasitologist in India. He had since become a psychiatrist,
and had deposited this Magnum Opus on the Christian
world. This psychiatrist’s effort to answer the question
Dave was confronting at mail time in terms of the
application of different aspects of the Gospel message in
his enormous book, ‘Clinical Theology’106 looked at three
kinds of withdrawn characters, like Phil. These were what
he called the ‘religious depressive or perfectionist’; the
‘oppressively emptied’; and the ‘schizoid’. The relevant
aspect of the gospel for each problem, for Frank Lake’s
thesis had been ‘justification by faith’ for the depressive
perfectionist, the assertion of ‘Jesus Christ’s personal
involvement in human suffering’ for the oppressively
emptied, and God’s ‘bridging the gap between Him and
humanity’ for the schizoid. The problem with this was
always going to be, however, that what the particular
individual most needed to hear would probably be what he
105
Watson, Nigel M. Matching the Message to the Man. Reformed
Theological Review. 31, no.2. (1972). 37 – 48.
106
Clinical Theology. Lake, Frank. Ed. Martin Yeomans. Darton,
Longman & Todd Ltd. (1959).

159
would find most difficult to accept. This was certainly true
of Phil, whom Dave thought was probably depressed and
wanted everything in his world to be perfect. The idea of
offering him the opportunity of believing in a Gospel of
becoming justified by faith seemed to David an impossible
task. He used to wonder, after his Christian conversion,
whether, had he been a Christian at the time he first came
across Frank Lake’s book, he would have tried tripartite
approach of the Gospel on Phil. It was to be some years
before David would come under the personal tutelage of Dr
Frank Lake. When eventually it happened some years later
in 2005, it was to leave a significant mark on David’s
subsequent life.
Meanwhile, the unhappy prisoners laughed mockingly at
the man who had a letter from his girlfriend telling him
they were through. They laughed because they were deeply
wounded, and the only comfort and ease was to pass it off
as a joke. These were unhappy people who lived in an
unhappy world.
Dave, however, had a different hope and vision in
which he would not find emptiness at the core of his being,
but something full, hopeful and beautiful. It was to be an
experience of something that would solve his crisis. It
would consist not only of a religious experience, but of an
integration of postmodern psychotherapies and spirituality.

160
The conceptualisation of an affectional self would be the
solution to his crisis, understood as embedded, embodied,
and response-able. That was what he longed for. He
wanted to be able to feel and to express; to be and to be
involved, and to have both joy and sadness. He did not yet
know how to get it. At the experiential level, this
correction would solve the emptiness that he was
experiencing by offering the real hope of enduring
experiences of satisfaction and fulfilment. It would be
defined and recognised as a consistent emotional response
of love for God, others, and care for creation.107
Human nature is not always pure and perfect, however, and
the real world so often impinges upon idealism. One day
the skinny prisoner woke in the morning with an idea.
‘Why not capitalise on it?’
Before the day had passed, he had thought of a way of
gaining some respect from the other prisoners. Write some
stories for the unhappy prisoners. What they lacked in
prison was sex, so write some sexy stories. It would earn
some tobacco on the one hand and provide them with some
entertainment on the other. What could be wrong about
that? It couldn’t do any harm.

107
Peter J. Jankowski. Integrating Postmodern Therapies and
Spirituality: A Solution to the Contemporary Crisis of the Self.
Journal of Psychology & Christianity. 22, no. 3. (2003): 241-249.

161
Later that day he went to the office, where he had been
made Cleaner, and stole an exercise book. He had also
joined an ‘English Writing’ class, and so had access to
pencils, pens and ink. He did pottery, too. Not that that
had anything to do with making money from the other
prisoners, but it showed that he was interested in learning
stuff.
What he eventually began to produce was pretty sexy. It
was cool, too. What he lacked in actual experience, he read
in other books, and the rest he made up. During the
following weeks he constructed a passable work of art,
containing an actual picture of a naked female he had found
in one of the bins in the Officers’ Club. Unlike today, when
the walls of prisoners’ cells are plastered with pictures of
this kind, in those days it was unheard of to find a single
one. It must have been good, because not only the
prisoners but also some of the guards made bookings to get
their hands on it. One day, he booked it out for two
cigarettes and it didn’t come back. It had the effect the
skinny prisoner wanted it to have. It established him as an
OK guy, and his life from then on, in that prison at least,
was considerably easier than it had been to date. He was
never attacked. Not by any prisoner at least, and he was
never raped by anyone. Those two things, he was grateful

162
he escaped throughout his journey as one of the customers,
through the prisons of England.
On the other hand, there was little hope of rehabilitation in
this anonymous passing of the days, with a single hour each
day out of the cell for exercise in the prison yard. There
were too many prisoners, and no-one from the outside to
talk to you or move you on to a higher place of hope or
possibility for your life. It was a matter of survival day by
endless and empty day, and sometimes this survival meant
withdrawal from everyone and everything. At the time it
seemed the right thing to do. But it often led to total
alienation, loneliness and occasionally suicide.
He had seen many examples of this ‘anomie’ in prison. This
is a situation in which an individual withdraws from society
and loses interest in what is happening around him. It is
one of the primary causes of high suicide rates. Humans are
governed by a conscience higher than their own; they need
external controls to regulate their inner appetites. Social
anomie is apparent when individuals and groups can neither
gain access to or utilize tools that will bring them into
meaningful relationships with specific goals, and it
becomes the task of religious leaders especially to examine
both the goal and the techniques they offered to attain the
goals. Religion is one of the places in which the provision
of ideas and techniques that allow human beings to develop

163
social commitment and to internalise the rules and norms of
their civilization occurs consistently. In a religious context
God provides human beings with the principles of
universality by which they can judge their own acts. But
there is a gap between goal and participation. How
adequately the goals have been expressed and where
individuals find meaning needs to be found. Anomie
should have caused the prison service to examine attitudes
within its own institutions. Individual participation is
necessary for survival as well as movement toward
redemption.108 Much of the inactivity, probably, was
because of overcrowding109 and the feeling among staff that
there was too much to do just to keep order, let alone
improve the quality of prisoners’ internal lives. The rise in
the prison population has continued rapidly. This had led to
the majority of prisons becoming overcrowded with 17,000
prisoners in 2004 being held two to a cell designed for one.
This overcrowding results in movement of prisoners around
the country, leading to prisoners being held a long way
from their homes, adding distress to an already vulnerable
population.110 In some of the worst local prisons there is

108
Marx, Robert J., Anomie and the Community of the Faithful.
Journal of Religion and Health. 4. (1966): 291 – 295.
109
(House of Lords/House of Commons Joint Committee on Human
Rights, 2004).
110
(House of Lords/House of Commons Joint Committee on Human
Rights, 2004).

164
overcrowding with prisoners spending 23 hours a day in a
shared cell with an unscreened toilet.111
What was overcrowding in prison? Well, it was not
primarily about feelings. The Prison Service itself defined it
as a prison which contains more prisoners than the
establishment’s Certified Normal Accommodation. C.N.A,
or uncrowded capacity, was the Prison Service’s own
measure of accommodation standards. It represented the
good, decent standard of accommodation that the service’s
best aspirations desired to provide to all prisoners.112
The limit to overcrowding in prison was called the
‘Operational Capacity’. The Prison Service’s definition of
this is the total number of prisoners that an establishment
can hold without serious risk to good order, security and the
proper running of the planned regime.113 In a 2005 Home
Office survey, of the 103 Independent Monitoring Boards
(the watchdogs appointed by the Home Secretary to
monitor prison conditions) who responded, 77 expressed
concern that overcrowding was threatening prison safety,
leading to prisoners being held in inhuman, degrading and
unsafe conditions and damaging attempts to maintain
family support and reduce re-offending by prisoners.

111
(HMIP, 2004a).
112
The Prison Service, Prison Service Order 1900, Certified Prisoner
Accommodation.
113
ibid

165
Was there ever any serious commitment, Dave wondered
from his experience – whatever the good intentions of the
state or of individuals within the system who wielded any
power may have had – to offer rehabilitation to criminals?
He doubted it. The money was not where the good
intentions were. The electoral promise of decent prison
standards, after all, never did and never could win any
votes.
Hopelessness for the future, though pretty bad, was not the
worst thing that ever happened to a prisoner. The worst
was being reminded of it. The keenest biting way of doing
this was to have a letter from a loved one on the outside.
Prisoners, he sometimes thought, would do a lot better if
there were no such interference from outside. Much better
and easier, to just let prison life and its routines of violence,
stink, and low-life humour seep slowly into the individual
prisoner’s psyche over a period of time. Let him just sink
as low as it goes, without overblown hopes of a better life
or rehabilitation. Let the time merge into a grey mass of
goo, un-punctuated by letters and days and dates and
clocks. Prisoners could do without all the reminders that
the mail can bring. Some prisoners especially…
One young prisoner on the Second Gantry used to cry
himself to sleep every night for a week after getting a letter
from home. His wife would write about the things they

166
used to do – places they visited and friends they once
shared when he had been a free man. Her intentions were
good. She’d write about all this stuff in the hope of
reforming him. She had become a Christian during his time
in prison, and she thought this kind of thing would
encourage him and give him hope, and a reason to strive for
something better. All it did was to drive him to greater
despair, until one day Dave heard he had hanged himself in
his cell. He had a picture of a crucifix in his dead white
hand.
Another man, in another prison some time later had a
similar experience. His wife tried to reform him, and each
letter made him increasingly bitter. Each letter tore a bit
out of his heart. In the end all he could do was to resent her
intrusion into his suffering. He would spend the nights
regretting he ever met her. He passed her letters around the
prison in a vain attempt to let others into the private world
they had created together, and of which she was now
reminding him. It was a life he could no longer have. He
was emptied by this experience, and never recovered from
it. They came and took him away screaming one night after
association had ended. He never returned.
But who was to say he was different from any of the rest of
them? If anyone else had been through what he had been

167
through and interpreted and felt the experience just as he
had done, would they have done any differently?
At that time, the skinny prisoner believed this lad was
simply the product of his life experience. He thought that
anyone who had been through that experience would react
in the same way, whoever and whatever he or she was. At
this time he did not know that a person’s mind and whole
life could be radically transformed by Christ, whatever his
or her experience, upbringing, hormones, state of health or
genes.

168
169
 SIX: SEX AND POWER
Special relationships

Borstal boys, young prisoners, and wayfarers who came in

for short periods, smoked Black Shag tobacco. Though
very rough on the throat it was half the price of regular
tobacco. None of these were considered by the long-term
prisoners as real convicts, though. They were temporary
visitors in an established prison culture that was better
suited to the needs and proclivities of the long-term
prisoners. These were people who had been in and out of
prison for most of their lives, and expected to spend the rest
of their lives doing the same. Some of them reckoned on

170
spending two years living the good life on the proceeds of
crime, then being imprisoned for two years in payment for
their crimes, and thus it would go on for ever. They never
grumbled, but took the whole thing philosophically. They
made their cells comfortable, developed a sense of wry
humour, got on well with their neighbours, and settled in
for the duration. Much like Ronnie Barker in the British
TV series, ‘Porridge.’ Some of them hung curtains in their
rooms, and had regular infusions of marmalade, sugar and
tea.
These men smoked a more refined brand of tobacco, not
Black Shag. Since they were in for the long haul, they had
to look after themselves. They had systems organised with
the outside world. Whilst a short-term prisoner could get
away with smoking Black Shag for two or three years, to do
it for ten years would shorten their lives to an unacceptable
degree.
These people had been in the prison system one way or
another from generations back. Even a superficial skim
through the school and social services records in any
English city will quickly reveal the names of families who
have had dealings with crime and the prison system. The
same family names will occur over generations, so that one
could predict with reasonable accuracy which offspring
from which trailer park or corporation housing estate would

171
be destined for the prison life. It is dynastic. It was not to
do with morality or ethics or genetic destiny towards
criminality. It was a social and cultural reality. Prison
populations were as much, if not more, the result of the
accident of birth than of innate or genetic determination.
The grandfathers and great grandfathers of these prisoners
had been involved in the prison system, as much as the
children of these prisoners would be involved also in the
system. It was a social fact. This situation would only
change if you changed the culture. Criminals were
essential for the smooth running of civilised society. The
existence of these people was as essential for English social
life as was a large pool of unemployed people to run the
capitalist system, or sick people to run the health service or
wealthy or service people to fill the independent schools
system. Without people from the criminal subculture,
whole sections would fall off the edifice of English
civilisation. Social determinism was one thing. Morality
was another. And these convicts, who were lifetime
recidivists had a morality and order of daily life that was as
clear and austere as that of any Puritan divine.
Of an evening the prisoners would watch television in the
television room. Because of the fear of riot, these men
were locked, with two prison officers, in a large room. The
room was four ordinary cells with the dividing walls

172
demolished, and could seat about fifty men, with a
television on a high stand at the front. Chairs were
arranged in rows, with an aisle down the center, like an
evangelical preaching-church, where the congregation’s
attention was directed towards the pulpit with no
distractions.
The pale green light from the screen bathed the group in its
flickering luminescence. It was quiz show, and the men
were howling their delight at the quizmaster’s female
assistant. The metal-barred door was locked and the
wooden door beyond was closed. One of the guards
strolled down the aisle and back again, slapping his
nightstick against the crease down his pants. The potential
hazards had presumably been assessed. This was a situation
that occurred about once a month, not counting frequent
postponements and cancellations, when there were few staff
on duty. Ironically, the responsibility of keeping these men
in order and pleasant-minded had been devolved to a
television presenter who was employed by the BBC and
only virtually present in the room.
Watching the show, Dave felt an arm reaching round his
shoulder and towards his neck. He dared not look round,
and felt the hand coming closer, until eventually it was laid
gently on his shoulder. He froze. The room was dark and
each prisoner was anonymous, and engaged in the

173
programme. The hand began to caress his shoulder and to
move down towards his chest. He didn’t know what to do.
He moved slightly. There was not much room, but there
was no way of getting far from the broken teeth and
halitosis. His would-be attacker hadn’t shaved. His prison
shirt collar was frayed. He pitied and feared him…
Suddenly the arm was jerked roughly away. The teeth and
smell were wrenched away, and he had gone. There was a
silent scuffle and some whispered angry words, then
nothing. Dave heard no more that night, and no-one
troubled him.
As a social worker interviewing the leader of a religious
community many years later over such an individual’s case,
Dave was told,
‘This is a very dangerous individual, who avoids the help
that he is offered wherever he goes. He is a controlling
personality and does not acknowledge that his behaviour is
offensive, even though it is illegal.’
This dangerous individual, he discovered, had a secret
password, which he used on all his personal transactions,
on the Internet. It was the logo, ‘Melchizedek’. This had a
particular significance for someone who thought of himself
as a member of the Judeo-Christian faith. The Hebrew =
Malki – sedeq = ‘Sedeq is king’. He was the king of
Salem, and a high priest, who blessed Abraham after

174
Abraham had defeated the king of Sodom (Book of Genesis
14:18ff). Note, the name, ‘Sodom’ and what the word,
‘sodomy’ refers to. There were some significant points
regarding power, status, and control in the light of David’s
interview with the Guardian of the religious community.
Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew faith, a patriarch of
Christianity, and a very significant and powerful historical
character, unwilling to submit to anyone, nevertheless
submitted to being blessed, or ‘controlled by’ Melchizedek.
This makes Melchizedek more powerful, and of greater
status than Abraham. Further to this, it made Melchizedek
the King of Sodom. It gave him dominance of the city of
Sodom. Melchizedek blessed Abraham because Abraham
had defeated the former ruler of the city. In the Hebrew
and Christian tradition, this was the world centre of
‘sodomy’, considered by parts of both traditions to be a
mortal sin.
What did this say about the ephebophile who had attacked
the skinny prisoner in the television room all those years
ago? It is possible that someone who, in this way chooses
to hide in the Christian community may choose this logo if
he felt that it codified the essence of his character and
internal emotional processes. It would have the added
benefit that the word, Melchizedek was in some sense a
secret code. Like the Anglican Communion even to this

175
day, Dave at that time lacked the resource of being able to
engage in a critical discussion of the heteronormativity of
the Christian tradition, or to develop a systematic-
theological proposal on how to figure a more genuine
conception of heterosexuality which could include sexual
relationships between human beings of the same genital
configuration as well as between humans of different
genital configuration. This attacker however was not a
would-be ‘lover’, but an abuser. For a discussion of this
issue of the concept of sodomy as ‘homosexuality,’ being
not very fruitful in understanding sexual relationships from
a theological perspective see the article by Ola Sigurdson.
114
Theologically speaking, the horizon for any sexuality is a
love for the other that does not reduce the other to the same,
and, thus, sexual relationships between human beings of the
same sex could be seen as a way of loving the other as
much as and in the same way as sexual relationships
between human beings of different genital configurations.
What some call ‘homosexuality’ could be as ‘heterosexual’
as ‘heterosexuality’ and vice versa.
It is not remarkable that the long tradition of homophobia in
both Hebrew and Christian traditions has set-up powerful
emotional conflicts in some Christian homosexuals. Many

114
Sigurdson, Ola. Karleken till det samma? Om teologi och
sexualitet. Journal SvTK.80, no.2, (2004): 84-91. (Swedish)
.

176
evangelical Christians reject them, or more accurately, what
they imagine them to engage in, entirely. What was
remarkable in this instance, however, was that this sex
offender had chosen the name ‘Melchizedek’ as his logo – a
name that produced the essence of his internal conflict. He
saw himself as an individual who had such power that he is
qualified to bless the Patriarch, Abraham, the man who
defeated Sodom, and, ironically, condemned sodomy, the
very act that he was engaged in, being himself (as a self-
proclaimed Conservative Evangelical Christian) a
sodomite!
Taking this Old Testament name, Melchizedek, the author
of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament, equated the
Old Testament Melchizedek with Jesus Christ Himself.
Melchizedek, according to the author of Hebrews, is Jesus
Christ, the Saviour - Hebrews Ch.5. verses 6 to 11, and 6:20
to 7:28.
For these two reasons, the religious community leader felt
that this was a dangerously sick man. It seemed significant
to the skinny prisoner that this community thought that the
abuser saw himself as the ‘Saviour, not just the helper’ of
vulnerable young men’, especially in the light of the fact
that although he knew the abuser very well, before the
skinny prisoner told him about it, he had not known that he
had chosen the password, ‘Melchizedek’ to apply to

177
himself. This provided an important insight into the nature
of the internal processes of this individual. Paedophile
males who have an exclusively male child preference have
twice the recidivism-rate of paedophile males who have a
female-exclusive condition. Put another way, this
ephebophile’ s condition was twice as resistant to ‘cure’ as
that of someone who prefers female children. This did not
mean that the prisoners treated him with kid gloves. In
fact, their approach was much more head-on. They didn’t
take the trouble to ‘analyse this’, they just cut his testicles
off that night after lights out. Who let them in to his cell,
no one knew. It had been planned for many weeks
previously. It did not happen as a direct result of his attack
on the skinny prisoner earlier that evening.
Three days after this event, when he first heard what had
happened, David went to his room and was sick. The
convicts had discovered the man’s history. Maybe one of
the guards had told them, or one of the Trustees in the
admin department had rifled through the files. No one
knew how they had found out, but they had discovered he
was in prison for a sex crime, but had not been put on Rule
43 for his own protection. It was said later that he didn’t
care about himself, and that when the time had come for
him to undergo his torture from the convicts, he was quite
accepting of it. In a lawless society, there had to be some

178
ways of maintaining the pecking order, even among people
who had no respect for other laws. There was an
overwhelming hatred against all sex criminals, except, for
some strange reason, against rapists. Perhaps it was the
thought of perverted sexuality – perhaps it was, as some
people said, the thought of some individual actually doing
what a lot of men only fantasized about doing. Perhaps it
was these convicts’ way of punishing themselves in some
perverted and repressed way, for the things they knew lay
deep in their own souls, but which they were unwilling and
unable to acknowledge. Perhaps, thought David, they knew
this about themselves, only secretly, and felt secretly guilty
about it. In the end, it was a way of choosing a scapegoat
and sending it off, on its lonely journey, into the wilderness.
It was a way of atoning for their guilt. It was a way of
making the unrighteous righteous, the hopeless hopeful,
and the condemned redeemed. It was a secular way of
making a blood sacrifice for the community’s sins, and in
an ironical twist, the sinner had become the saviour. The
scapegoat had been the source of the community’s new life.
Both prisoners and guards felt cleansed by the paedophiles
suffering. The act had been done, and now they could start
afresh with a new life.
In prison, a sex crime, if it is not rape, is the worst crime
that can be committed. It is the single crime all convicts,

179
male and female, hate. They do not try to understand it,
because understanding takes too long, and while you’re
busy understanding it, it still goes on. The quickest way,
they think, is a knife or a boot. After all that was what the
system had done to them. The thing about a sex crime in
particular is that all the cons are locked away. Their wife
(and for the females, their children) is at home, and it’s a
lucky male prisoner who can totally trust his wife and be
happy about it. Incarcerated mothers and fathers never
truly know how their children are. If anything drastic did
happen to them, would anyone tell them? It’s more likely
that they would hear nothing until the situation had already
been resolved. The wife would not want to upset her
husband in prison, and she would prefer to sort it out
without his help. All convicts know that if anything bad
were to happen to their families, by the time it got to them,
the information would have been sanitized and sorted out
already. It would be fed to them in drops, so it wouldn’t
seem so bad. The last thing warders or prison governors
want is a riot, or yet another suicide. Perhaps the way for
prisoners to ease their feelings is to try and murder or at
least seriously injure every sex criminal who could be
found.115 Maybe it was a kind of gesture or symbol that
115
Home Office (2005) Population in Custody, December 2005,
London: gives the following Offence group Totals: Violence against
the person 2,998, Other 1,803, Drug offences 1,774, Burglary 1,340,
Robbery 1,226, Theft and Handling 1,162, Sexual offences 813,

180
even though they were miles away from home and locked
up away from their families, and unable to help if trouble
came, they were still in an effective, executive, caring role
as defenders of their children and partners from predatory
persons of all kinds, not only sexual offenders.
This had been an example of the kind of help a convict
would give. It was help. However much the one who is
helped in this way may not like it or feel that it is morally
or ethically wrong, how can you say to someone who has
done this that you are not grateful to have been saved from
being raped and buggered in the prison lavatory? There
was nothing, Dave thought, that you could say. There is
nothing else you could be but saved. He was grateful,
degraded, and appalled. Nor could he blame himself,
because it is an inevitable process, as ingrained in the
prison culture as loving one another is ingrained in the
Christian Gospel. All he could do was retreat to his cell
and be privately sick.
How could he thank a man for mangling another man? He
could not. He lit up a cigarette, punched the wall, counted
the bars again, climbed up on his chair and gazed
wordlessly across the silent heath. He closed his eyes and
pretended it was not happening, and that he could not hear

Not recorded 695, Fraud and Forgery 494, Motoring offences 230.

181
the attacker’s screams, and looked forward to the time of
his release.
The man was in hospital for three weeks. When he came
out, he was placed on Rule 43. That meant that he was to
be given protection. That meant that he would be locked in
close confinement with the cell door opened only for meals
to be delivered and to empty his chamber pot. He had
mailbags brought in for him to sew, which he worked on
every hour of every working day. Forbidden to mix with
the other prisoners, he was condemned to a life of solitude
and silence. He had to eat alone, sleep alone, exercise
alone and do everything alone. How many times did he
count the bricks in the cell walls? If he called from his
window, no one answered. If he banged his pot, no one
responded. Often, if he rung his alarm bell, the guard
would take his time and sometimes not respond at all. He
reflected on the irony that he, as someone who abhorred
violence, had been saved from the mental and physical
consequences of sexual abuse by violent and sadistic
avengers. This was fortunate, since the prison authorities
did not present with any clear priority for publishing (did
this indicate a lack of commitment to detecting?) the
incidence of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
On the issues of sexual health, David N Tang was to
describe a continuing paucity of published data on

182
incidence of Sexually Transmitted Infections among
prisoners in the UK, right up to 2003, despite the
recommendation of the National Strategy for Sexual Health
and HIV that targeted sexual health information to be given
to young offenders. In this quantitative study he aimed to
assess the sexual behaviour and range of STIs in one UK
Young Offenders Institution. Age and sex matched patients
attending a genitourinary clinic during the same period
served as a control group. The study showed high rates of
STI in a Young Offenders Institute (YOI) with many young
offenders having engaged in risky sexual behaviour in the
past and a significant number having used intravenous
drugs. In view of these findings the authors recommended
improved care for offenders with STIs, targeted health
information and STI prevention within Young Offender
institutions.116 Knowledge about the sexual behaviour of
prisoners has since substantially increased by the large
study carried out by Green et al117 who interviewed over
1000 adult male prison inmates from 13 prisons. The study
explored both heterosexual and same-sex sexual behaviour
116
David, N.,Tang, A. (2003) Sexually transmitted infections in a
young offenders institution in the UK. International Journal of STD
and AIDS. 14, 511-513 Department of Health (1992) Health of the
Nation: A summary of the strategy for health in England. London:
HMSO.
117
Green, J., Strang, J., Hetherton, J., Whiteley, C., Heuston, J.,
Maden, T. Same-sex sexual activity of male prisoners in England
and Wales. International Journal of STD & AIDS. 14. (2003): 253-
257.

183
in prison and in the year before current imprisonment. Data
for the prison sample was compared with data for the UK
population obtained from the British National Lifestyle
Survey (BNLS). The findings about the behaviour of
prisoners engaging in both heterosexual and same-sex
activity indicate that the sexual behaviour of prisoners puts
both themselves and their partners at high risk of STIs. It
was within this context for David that Ian Brown, (and
others) in his theological discussion of Christian ethics118
and medicine provided basic background information on
the AIDS disease; its causes, diagnosis, spread, and origins.
In his contention that preventive measures must start with a
return to God’s pattern of sexuality, of man and woman
coming together in a lifetime commitment to one another
dependent on God’s grace, he and others like him provided
David with an alternative to the morass of relativistic and
exploitative practice with which he found himself
surrounded. It seemed to him a positive thing, and at that
time not at all puritanical, stereotypical or narrow.
Communicable diseases were common amongst prisoners.
HIV infection of male prisoners was 15 times higher than in
the general population and female prisoners had Hepatitis B
40 times higher and Hepatitis C 28 times higher than in the

118
Brown, Ian L. AIDS - A Modern Black Death? Ethics and
Medicine. 3, no.1. (1987): 16-18.

184
general population.119 This was partly due to the high
number of prisoners who had injected drugs, and although
reliable data is still (2006) not available, may also be partly
due to prisoners engaging in same-sex anal activity (House
of Lords/House of Commons Joint Committee on Human
Rights, 2004). It was partly due also, thought David, to a
basic lack of belief in and practice of Christian morality.120
The prison culture perpetuated three common lies about
sex: sex is easy; sex is free; sex can be engaged in with any
willing partner. Many prisoners were seduced by these lies
about sexual activity. Evangelicals had been quick to tell
the truth about the last lie, insisting that sex ought to be
reserved for one’s spouse, but were largely silent on the
other two. Dave suspected that good sex was hard work. It
was about building a relationship that could somehow
contain intimacy, vulnerability, joy, and a feeling of
fulfillment for the participants. Sex, he thought could
sometimes be costly. Even within a legally-ratified contract
such as a Christian marriage, making love could be a high-
stakes venture that required a lifelong commitment to forgo
other sexual partners and other sexual experiences, and
perhaps even intercourse itself, should illness or disease
make sexual activity impossible.
119
The Social Exclusion Unit report: ‘Reducing Re-offending by Ex-
prisoners’. (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002)
120
Paris, Jenell Williams. The Truth about Sex. Christianity Today.
45, no.14. (2001): 63-64.

185
David however had no friend or any kind of companionship
except his tortured and anxious mind. He felt guilty and
responsible for the attack on the sex abuser. His heart went
out in empathy toward him. To be so much alone must
wrench the soul out of any man who did not have a
monkish vocation. He would end up an empty husk, a
discarded chrysalis. He would probably hum a little tune
and occasionally talk to himself. He would live for months
in his little cell and probably keep a record of every stitch
he put into the mailbags that were delivered to him during
that time. His teeth had been kicked out; he had internal
injuries; he had been genitally injured and his nose had
been broken. For weeks he looked barely human. It was
said that a knife had been used, but none of the Trustees
reported any unusual police activity in that time. It
happened, and it was forgotten. That was all.
Did female prisoners behave in the same way? He did not
know. This was something David knew nothing about.
However, they were the other half of the prison population,
and it was believed by all male prisoners that the fate of
women in the system was probably much worse than theirs,
and that in a case such as a prisoner who was sentenced for
a child protection issue, the women would deal with it even
more harshly. This was what was thought among the men.
However women prisoners may or may not deal with their

186
internal prison issues, the facts about sentencing for female
persons in prison were themselves quite harrowing. The
female prison population has greatly increased. Sentences
for women have become longer, and happen more
frequently. Most of this increase in the female prison
population could be explained by a significant increase in
the severity of sentences. In the Crown Court in 1991, only
8% of women convicted of motoring offences went to
prison. By 2001, that proportion had increased to 42%.
Similarly, a woman convicted of theft or handling at the
Crown Court is twice as likely to go to prison as she was in
1991. At magistrates’ courts, the chances of a woman
receiving a custodial sentence have risen seven-fold.121
On 24 March 2006, the women’s prison population stood at
4,392. From 1994 to 2004, the women’s population had
more than doubled. In 1995, the average women’s prison
population was 1,998. Five years later in 1999, it stood at
3,355. In 2004, 12,554 women were received into prison.122
Over a third of all adult women in prisons had no previous
convictions. This was more than double the figure for
men.123 At the end of December 2005, there were 717

121
ibid
122
Prison population and accommodation briefing for 24 March,
2006, NOMS, Estate Planning and Management Group
123
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004 London: Home Office.

187
women on remand, a fifth of the female prison
population,124 and receptions of women remanded to prison
increased from 3,714 in 1994 to 7,978 in 2004, an increase
of 115%. Almost two thirds of all women entering custody
did so on remand.125 The recidivism rate was also high.
Sixty-five percent of women released from prison in 2002
were reconvicted within two years of release.126 This
compares to fewer than four out of ten female ex-prisoners
(38 %) ten years before,127 and in 2004, 29% of women in
prison were from minority ethnic backgrounds.128 At the
end of June 2005 there were 873 female foreign national
prisoners, that is, 19% of the female prison population.129 In
2003, one in four prisoners were from a minority ethnic
group compared to one in eleven of the general
population.130 15% of the minority ethnic prisoners are
black, and although the prison population grew by 12%
between 1999 and 2002, the number of black prisoners
increased by 51%.131 Imprisonment is considerably more
124
Ibid.
125
Home Office (2005) Population in Custody, December 2005,
London: Home Office.
126
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004 London: Home Office.
127
Home Office Statistical Bulletin, Re-offending of adults: results
from the 2002 cohort, 2005
128
Home Office (2005) Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2003 London: Home Office.
129
Ibid.
130
(Prison Reform Trust, 2004a).
131
Ibid

188
likely for black men than for white men, although lower for
132
South Asian men, and there is a similar pattern of rates
of imprisonment for black women. Of the sentenced
female prison population, the vast majority was held for
non-violent offences. At the end of December 2005, the
largest group (34%), were held for drug offences. Theft
and fraud accounted for 17%.133
More women were sent to prison in 2004 for theft and
handling stolen goods than any other crime. Just under
3,000 women were received into custody for this offence,
which accounted for just more than a third (35%) of all
women sentenced to immediate custody in 2004.134
The majority of women however serve very short
sentences. In 2004, nearly two-thirds (64%) were
sentenced to custody for six months or less.135
Like it or not, the fact remains that women have the
majority care roles in the family, especially of children, yet
136
at the end of September 2004, the average distance
132
(Coid et al, 2002a),
133
Home Office (2005) Population in Custody, Quarterly Brief April
to June 2005, London: Home Office.
134
Home Office (2005) Population in Custody, December 2005,
London: Home Office.
135
Home Office (2005 Offender Management Caseload Statistics,
2004London: Home Office.
136
Hansard, House of Commons written answers, 10 January 2005 :
Column 342W;A prisoner’s home area is defined as their home
address on their reception into prison. For prisoners with no
address, the address of the relevant committal court is used as the
home address.

189
female prisoners were held away from their home was 62
miles. At the beginning of July 2004, just under half of all
women in prison were held more than 50 miles from their
home town or committal court address and nearly a quarter
were held more than 100 miles away.137 Bearing in mind the
poverty that most usually accompanies imprisonment, and a
concomitant inability to pay travel costs, this militates
against maintaining much of a semblance of caring or
contact whilst in prison.
Women in prison also suffer from numerous mental health
problems. Two-thirds of women show symptoms of at least
one neurotic disorder such as depression, anxiety and
phobias. More than half suffer from one personality
disorder or another, whilst among the general population
less than a fifth of women suffer from these disorders. Half
of the women in prison are on prescribed medication such
as anti-depressants or anti-psychotic medicine, and there is
evidence that the use of medication increases whilst in
custody. Of all the women who are sent to prison, 37% say
they have attempted suicide at some time in their life.138
The number and rate of self-harm incidents is much higher
amongst women than men. In 2003, 30% of women were
reported to have harmed themselves, compared with 6% of
137
House of Commons, written parliamentary answer, Hansard 7
September, 2004.
138
Singleton et al (1998) Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners in
England and Wales, London: Office for National Statistics

190
men. On average each woman who injured herself did so
five times compared to twice for men. While women make
up just six percent of the prison population they accounted
for nearly half (46%) of all reported self-harm incidents.139
Nearly two-thirds of women in prison have a drug
problem.140 An early study concluded that around 40%
could be diagnosed as harmful or dependent users of
drugs.141
As for the social origins and class or cultural histories of
female prisoners, a quarter of women in prison had spent
time in local authority care as a child. Nearly 40% of
women in prison left school before the age of 16 and of
these, almost one in ten were aged 13 or less.142 Over half
the women in prison said that they had been victims of
domestic violence and one in three had experienced sexual
abuse.143
The female prison population in 2003 was 4,595. Over 500
were under the age of twenty-one. 1,072 women were on

139
Prison Service (June 2004) Safer Custody News, London: Prison
Service.
140
Borrill, J et al (2001) Differential substance misuse treatment
needs of women, ethnic minorities and young offenders in prison:
prevalence of substance misuse and treatment needs. Home Office
online report 33/03.
141
Singleton et al (1998) Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners in
England and Wales, London: Office for National Statistics.
142
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.
143
Ibid

191
remand, accounting for nearly a quarter of the prison
population. (Ash, 2003). It is known that women offenders
have often come from backgrounds where they have
endured extreme and adverse social conditions and come
into prison with severe mental health problems.144 The
Prison Reform Trust, although welcoming the good work
and intentions of the Department of Health to tackle the
issues of care in women’s prisons145 outlined in ‘Women’s
Mental Health: Into the Mainstream’, believes the situation
to be still bleak. There is a strong message to involve
women prisoners by listening to them and involving them
in their care needs. This strategy is also echoed in an earlier
report, ‘The Government’s Strategy for Women Offenders’,
that acknowledges the need to enlarge the present evidence
base of ‘what works’ in reducing women’s offending. It
includes recognizing the value of gender breakdown in
future research and valuing qualitative findings that include
the views of women offenders themselves (Home Office,
2001).
As for the future and women prisoners’ resettlement
prospects, around one-third of women prisoners lose their
homes, and often their possessions, whilst in prison.146
144
Rickford, D. Troubled inside: Responding to the Mental Health
Needs of Women in Prison. (2003). London: Prison Reform Trust.
145
Department of Health. Women’s Mental Health: Into the
Mainstream. (2002b). London: Department of Health.
146
Ibid.

192
Women prisoners are often very inadequately prepared for
release and resettlement. Only 24% of women with a prior
skill had the chance to put their skills into practice through
prison work. Just 11% of women received help with
housing matters whilst in prison. Home Office research has
found that 41% of women in prison did not have
accommodation arranged on their release. Only a third of
women prisoners who wanted help and advice about
benefits and debt received it. It bears repeating that 66% of
women in prison had dependent children under 18 years
old. 34% of those had children under five, a further 40%
had children aged between 5 and 10. Each year it is
estimated that more than 17,700 children are separated
from their mothers by imprisonment.147 Home Office
research has found that 66% of women in prison have
dependent children under 18. 34% of those had children
under five, a further 40 % of children aged from five to
ten.148 At least a third of mothers are lone parents before
their imprisonment.149 Only half of the women who had
lived, or were in contact with, their children prior to
imprisonment had received a visit from them since going to

147
Ibid.
148
Home Office Research Study 208, Women prisoners: a survey of
their work and training experiences in custody and on release. 2001
149
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.

193
prison.150 One Home Office study showed that, for 85% of
mothers, prison was the first time they had been separated
from their children for any significant length of time. It
also showed that 65% of mothers in prison were serving
their first custodial sentence.151 What provision will there
be for mothers with infant children? At the time of writing
(April 2006), there are currently 84 places in mother and
baby units in prisons reserved for mothers who have
children under the age of 18 months. The available
statistics show that in 2004, 114 women gave birth while
serving a prison sentence.152 Between April and September
2005, for example, a total of 15 women were refused a
place in a Prison Service mother and baby unit.153
HM Prisons Inspectorate found that 25% of women
prisoners had their children’s father or a spouse or partner
caring for their children. 25% were cared for by their
grandmothers; 29% were cared for by other family
members or friends; and 12% were in care, with foster
parents, or had been adopted.154 Only 5% of women
prisoners’ children are able to remain in their own home
150
ibid 119. Home Office Research Study 162 (1997), Imprisoned
Women and Mothers, Home Office: London.
151
Hansard, House of Commons written answer 2 Nov 2005.
152
Hansard, House of Commons written answer 13 July 2005 121.
153
HM Prisons Inspectorate (1997) Women in Prison: A Thematic
Review by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales, :
Home Office.
154
Prison Reform Trust (2000) Justice for Women: The need for
reform, London: Prison Reform Trust.

194
once their mother has been sentenced.155 For the first time,
in 2001, the government had announced that records would
be kept of prisoners’ children. Information would be
recorded on the National Offender Management
Information System.156
Just over half (55%) of male prisoners described
themselves as living with a partner before imprisonment157
and a third of female prisoners described themselves as
living with a husband or partner before imprisonment, and
research found that 59 % of men158 in prison and two-thirds
of women in prison had dependent children under 18.159
It is estimated that 150,000 children have a parent in prison,
and 7% of children experience their father’s imprisonment
during their time at school.160
Prisoners’ families, including their children, often
experience increased financial, housing, emotional and
health problems during a sentence. Nearly a third (30%) of

155
Hansard, House of Commons written parliamentary answers, 12
September 2004, Column 2635W.
156
Home Office (2001) Criminality Survey: Drugs Follow-Up,
London: Home Office.
157
Hamlyn B and Lews D (2000) Women prisoners: a survey of
their work and training experiences in custody and on release, Home
Office Research Study 2000, London: Home Office.
158
Hansard, House of Commons, 28th April 2003.
159
Hamlyn B and Lews D (2000) Women prisoners: a survey of
their work and training experiences in custody and on release, Home
Office Research Study 2000, London: Home Office.
160
Department for Education and Skills, (2003) Every Child
Matters, London: Stationery Office.

195
prisoners’ children suffer significant mental health
problems, compared with 10% of children in the general
population.161
Don Schweitzer describes in his study a very specific set of
events in which Canadian sculptor Frank Sudol repented of
his racist attitude toward the First Nations of Canada162 (the
Cree and the Dakota).
Normally people think of racism as a criminal form of
sinful pride, the kind of pride that says my group is superior
to your group. In Sudol’s case, however, he was proud of
his ability as an artist. Being proud of his ability, he sought
to grow as an artist. One way he grew was by learning
more about the art of North American Indians. He was
surprised to find himself admiring their vision, and he
began to imitate many of their methods. Eventually, he
came to see that the racist pride he had long held by was
wrong. In the same way, there are those who have a similar
pride in their non-offending lifestyles, and would be
surprised to discover that Dave, for example, was to
become a Christian Priest, gaining the heights of academic

161
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit and Action for Prisoners’
Families (2001). No-one’s Ever Asked Me. London: Action for
Prisoners’ Families and Young Voice. (2001). Parenting Under
Pressure, London:Young Voices.
162
Schweitzer, Don. Pride Overcoming Prejudice. Religious Studies
and Theology. 23, no. 2. (2004): 99-120.

196
achievement and living contributively on his eventual
release from prison. Reinhold Niebuhr also alludes to pride
overcoming prejudice in one of his last books, ‘Man’s
Nature and His Communities.’163

163
Man’s Nature and his communities; essays on the dynamics and
enigmas of man’s personal and social existence. By Reinhold
Niebuhr. New York, Schribner 1968.

197
198
 SEVEN: THE MARK OF THE BEAST
Labelling & stereotyping - the Fall.

Sean and Kraig had been friends for years. They had been
through the Approved School system together, and had both
served a term of borstal training. Friends on the outside,
they came from the same estate, and their friends and
families on the outside coincided almost identically,
although this relationship could not be entirely relied upon
and was somewhat tenuous in statistical terms, since during
their sentence, 45% of people lose contact with their
families and many separate from their partners.164 These
lads were cousins. Plus, they were not empathetic to the
needs of others, least of all were they susceptible to the
weakening powers of family and kinship loyalty based of a
feeling of being somehow ‘wanted’. They were not
wanted. Yet the link between maintaining good family ties
and reducing re-offending was to be acknowledged in a
future Home Office national action plan.165
Despite these kinds of harsh realities and the depressing
loss of family contact figures, leading politicians including

164
Nacro (2000) The forgotten majority, London: Nacro.
165
Home Office (2004) Reducing Re-offending National Action
Plan, London: Stationary Office.

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the Home Secretary (2005) were to stress the importance of
family - As we consider the practical steps intended to
equip offenders with the means to avoid re-offending we
also need to remember the vital role of family, friends and
community. I believe that we sometimes fail to give
enough emphasis to the powerful impact of supportive
relationships to prisoners – to realize that offenders often
care deeply about letting down those closest to them, and
want to show that they can change, but somehow just never
get there. An offender is much less likely to re offend if he
feels part of a family and community, from which he
receives support as well as owes obligations.166
Kraig was the leader. Sean was the disciple. Over time, in
the dynastic relationship Kraig had made an impression on
his cousin that, with the occasional reminder in the form of
various exhibitions of cruelty, like Saddam Hussein’s
reminders of his leadership upon his immediate family
members, had never disappeared. Sean was a thief. Kraig
was more in to violence. His behaviour on the other side of
the prison wall was renowned among the police and in his
indigenous Barking, Essex, working class community.
When Kraig was looking for a victim, everyone stood out
of his way. He had a girlfriend, Kelly, who was also known
for her violent behaviour and fearlessness of any male or

166
PRT Annual Lecture 2005, Rt Hon Charles Clark MP.

200
female in her circle. No lad on the estate would stand
against her. This was partly because she was Kraig’s
woman, and they feared his bizarrely sadistic psychotic
behaviour, but also because in her own right she was a very
capable and fearless fighter. She was also an alcoholic, and
a beaten woman. She was a woman who, she said in a
letter to Kraig, loved her man too much.167
Kraig’s possessiveness made her a victim of regular fierce
beatings when he was on the outside, and when he was in
prison there were a group of people who kept an eye on her
to make sure she behaved herself, not only sexually, but in
every way that might be interpreted by Kraig’s suspicious
mind as questionable. The belt of chastity that Kelly wore
was in her mind and the key to that belt was in his. This
‘misbehaviour’ was something she was apt to engage in,
especially when drunk and unable to master her control
mechanisms. When she had been on the town, she would
be very friendly with everyone without discernment. Her
regular contraceptive depot injection effectively prevented
any pregnancies. Drunken sex was her weakness, and
Kraig knew about it. This was followed by violent
retribution from Kraig or his friends, and Kelly knew about
it. Needless to say in a pagan (or non-Christian) middle
class liberal or radical feminist culture, she would have the
167
Women Who Love Too Much. Robin Norwood. Pocket Books
(Simon & Schuster Inc.) New York, NY. 1985.

201
right to do what she wanted with her body. Neither her
mind nor her body were the property of any man. She was
not even in a Christian marriage with him, which for the
last six centuries had been understood in terms of ‘contract’
with the female subservient as a piece of property. 168 There
was no such formal arrangement, and yet she was in thrall
to him.
However, this was not middle England, nor was it the
rectory, and this was not the case for Kelly. Hers was
working-class English criminal culture, and she belonged to
the man who owned her in the same way that his
motorcycle belonged to him, and just as he could buy and
sell his motorcycle, he could do what he wanted with her.
The single dynamic that held the relationship together was
his violent behaviour and her need to be loved violently.
Whereas she had to be sexually exclusive, sleeping and
living only with Kraig, he was permitted to do as he liked.
This was the way things were meant to be. There was an
implicit agreement in the relationship that she could
complain if he were unfaithful, and could hit him freely
without fear of retribution. But in the end, he could sleep
around and she could not, although she did.
She was unable to leave him, for if she did, she would be
badly beaten and could be in the terms of her culture,
168
Palmer, P. F. Christian Marriage, Contract of Covenant? Journal
of Theological Studies. 33, no. 4. (1972): 617 – 665.

202
reasonably killed for her disloyalty. In addition, where else
would she find someone to possess and punish her, as she
had witnessed her own mother’s lifelong punishment from
her now absent father? That was the threat. Everyone
knew it, and it was real.
These two men had joined the skinny prisoner in his single
cell, and stayed for the weeks that led up to his transfer to
the Allocation Wing of Wormwood Scrubs.
Sensing their superiority not only in numerical but also in
terms of their willingness to be depraved, he acceded to
their demand to have the best of the beds. That was, the
two beds at floor level. The cell, designed for what the
Victorians considered was enough for a single prisoner, had
three beds jammed in to it. One set of metal-framed bunk
beds, one placed above the other, and a single metal bed.
This left a half-metre wide strip of floor space between the
three beds along opposite sides of the cell. With the small
table carrying the water-jug and wash bowl, this left room
for the communal chamber pot and little else. The cell was
cramped and overcrowded. It was a recipe for stress and
disaster, especially for the skinny prisoner, being in the
company of this pair of violent characters.
The skinny prisoner quietly took the top bunk-bed and said
nothing. Scared out of his wits, he said little during the
following weeks. He spent as little time out of the bed as

203
possible, leaving the floor to them. He piled his clothes on
the foot of his bed in a neat heap and tied some string
around them to keep them from falling to the floor. He
concentrated on causing as little disruption to their lives as
possible.
They never threatened him directly, though. Nor did they
hurt him in any way – or not directly. His fear was fear of
the known and dreaded. Not knowing at the start who these
people were, or what they might be capable of. He sensed
there was a bond between them, and suspected that it was
family. Over the weeks, their conversation was always
amiable together, and there were rarely any threats, though
their talk was a string of basic Anglo-Saxon. They would
sit up into the small hours talking and making jokes
together, ruminating over their lives and friends and
commitments on the outside. Sean often talked about his
girlfriend, but Kraig only rarely mentioned Kelly. Most of
their talk was about their families on the outside and what
they were going to do when they got out. They had plans
for starting a club, and there was a plan to put a string of
youngsters on the streets, and to develop their drug dealing.
Despite the amount of time these two convicts spent talking
about their lives ‘back on the outside’, none of these three
prisoners ever received a visit from their families. No

204
letters. No calls of any kind. Not even probation officer
visits.
Home Office research has found that maintaining family
contact was associated with successful resettlement. It
found that prisoners who had at least one visit from family
or partners were twice as likely to have an employment,
education or training place arranged on release and three
times more likely to have accommodation arranged as those
who did not receive any visits. The frequency of visits also
increased the likelihood of having a job or accommodation.
The research concluded that ‘opportunities for involving
families in the resettlement of prisoners should be
increased’.169
The trio were as alone and isolated in their
community contacts as they were in their inner lives. They
had one another, and this would last only so long as the
prison allocation authorities kept them in the same cell in
the same prison.
Many nights were spent by Sean and Kraig in planning the
fantasy future and projecting their fantasy ideas. If life was
about surviving in the prison system, these two young men
believed that they had got it all worked out. It was, of
course, all fantasy. If only they could have been one of that
169
134 Niven, S and Stewart, D (2005) Resettlement outcomes on
release from prison, Home Office Findings 248, London: Home
Office;

205
55% category170 of prisoners who had a loyal and loving
family. But they were not, and that was that.
In the presence of these kinds of strong relationships within
the establishment the lone prisoner with no such bond had
to sink or swim. David’s solution, now that his previous
strategies for personal survival were no longer relevant –
namely, trying to satisfy the unreasonable demands of his
father in order to survive was to make allies of his new
‘alpha males’.
The kind of narrative commentary or observation about
one’s own nature and motives that was happening inside
David’s head and would later be recorded as a written
document,171 when put into words, as in for example Psalm
23, which is saying similar things, forms the heart of the
narrative. As the real hero of the narrative process in Psalm
23 according to some scholars,172 is none other than the
deity, who gives everything while the recipient remains
passive, so it was the case in David’s narrative that his
father substituted for the deity. As the recipient in the
Psalm passes through the different phases of the initiatory
process, just as in the great classic texts of spiritual

170
Nacro (2000) The forgotten majority, London: Nacro.
171
Key To Freedom. Lutterworth Press 1974
172
Couffignal, Robert. De la bete a l’ange: le Psaume 23, miroir de
l’aventure spirituelle. (From the Beast to the Angel: Ps 23, Mirror
of the Spiritual Adventure). ZAW. 115, no.4 (2003): 557-577.
(French)

206
adventure, such as the Golden Ass by Apuleius, so does
David. Here, he is being purged. In this Freudian analysis
of the skinny prisoner’s internal emotional and
psychological mechanisms, as Psalm 23, when analyzed
structurally is a fantasy of childhood by which a person
expresses the desire to experience the love of parents, and
seeks their protection, passing from sensoriality (the return
to the womb) to the highest spirituality, to identification
with the sublime Father, so is David’s unwritten but equally
valid utterance a statement about an epic development of
personality through spiritual adventure. This was his
preferred course. There were others who developed odd and
occasionally bizarre ways of dealing with their anxiety and
journeying through their adventure. On the prison’s wings,
there had been plenty of evidence of strange and of mad
behaviour brought on by mental and psychological distress
of this kind.
One young prisoner only ever wore the same jeans and a
green cagoule. He would not wear shoes or socks. He
refused to go out on exercise, rarely spoke to anyone and
was thought by both prisoners and staff to have been taken
advantage of sexually by predatory and violent prisoners.
He was in his early twenties, with many years of
incarceration ahead of him. Another prisoner had

207
developed a habit of inserting objects into his body: a
pencil in an arm, and matchsticks in his ankles.173
It was Tuesday night, and the skinny prisoner had been
quietly reading a book all evening as usual. He was reading
a comic book in the top bunk. Sean was quietly finishing-
off a tattoo on his arm. It was a matchstick figure of ‘The
Saint’. The skinny prisoner winced every time the
poisoned needle jabbed into Sean’s naked flesh. He just sat
there, stopping now and again to admire the work as he did
it. Occasionally he wiped away the blood. The needle
jabbed deftly into the black lead metal polish cradled in his
groin, then into his arm; time and again. His face was
impassive and concentrated, like the face of a comatose
shaman on some sci-fi planet. Not a sound came from his
lips. Not even his breathing showed signs of pain. It might
not have been his own arm at all for all the concern and
involvement he had shown. He was reminded of the lad
with the dissociative disorder and recognised the lack of
affective response. Jab-jab-jab-wipe; jab-jab-jab-wipe; jab-
jab-jab-wipe. He finished, wiped the blood-and-polish
from his arm, and admired the completed job. Even before
the blood had stopped flowing he rolled his sleeve down
and began packing the metal polish and needle away in
their rags.
173
Erwin James, Foreword to ‘Troubled Inside: Responding to the
mental health needs of men in prison’, Prison Reform Trust, 2005

208
In prison tradition, the tattooing needle was made by
breaking off the end of a plastic toothbrush, sticking a
needle in the table and heating the eye-end to red-hot. The
broken stump of toothbrush was then pressed against the
hot needle eye until it had sunken in to the plastic to about
half an inch in depth. It was then left to cool and harden.
The result was a plastic handle with a needle protruding
from it. This could be used as a ‘jabber’ or tattooing needle
very effectively.
He hummed gently to himself and beat out a rhythm with
his shoulders.
‘Hey, Kraig?’ He said.
‘Hello,’ said Kraig from under his blanket.
‘What do you think about giving our old mate David a
tattoo?’
David had not been consulted about this. He did not wish
to bear the mark of the beast, Sean for the rest of his life.
He lay still in his top bunk bed. There was nowhere to run.
‘Hmmm,’ said Kraig. He wasn’t really bothered.
The skinny prisoner sighed with relief and turned over in
his bunk to demonstrate that he was asleep anyway.
‘Hey David, come down here a minute.’
The knell had sounded. He got out of his bed and climbed
to the floor where Sean was waiting to puncture him. He
did not like needles.

209
‘You’ve got to have a tattoo. Everybody’s got at least one.’
Said Kraig.
It seemed that Kraig was bothered after all. He sat
obediently on the edge of the bed and made a good display
of really wanting such a tattoo. He grinned widely and
agreed to the abusive operation. Sean seemed to have no
higher intuition or empathy that might inform him that the
other person, though expressing agreement is actually
reserving what they are truly feeling. It was, in that sense,
something David brought upon himself because of his
cowardliness in failing to say ‘no’. He knew this, and
despised himself for it.
‘What do yer want?’ Inquired Sean
He thought quickly. That ‘ Saint’ tattoo was a bit too much
and would cause too much pain, and would take nights of
prolonged agony to get right. Sean had been working on
his for over a week. Not that one, then. He thanked his
parents for giving him a short Christian name, and said,
‘Do my name. I always did want to see my name in print.’
‘Eh?’ Sean was a little surprised. He obviously thought
that at least a ‘Saint’ would be wanted.
‘Well, you see, I’ve never had a tattoo before, so I’d best be
careful first time. Have a small one first, and then maybe
something bigger later. If it takes, like. I mean, I might be
allergic to black lead, maybe. What do you think?’

210
Visiting the dentist is not to be compared with having a
manually applied prison tattoo imposed upon you by a
trailer-trash criminal lacking empathy. He was aware of an
odd internal dynamic. The pain was not something he was
willing to accept, because acceptance implied choice, and
he had no choice. It was something he endured. It had
very little to do with him, in fact. It had much more to do
with the tattooist’s pleasure than the victim’s pain. It was
more an act of violence, abuse, and intrusion, of violation,
than of beautifying the skin. It had more to do with power
than love and with ugliness than beauty. In these respects it
was like a rape, and taking place against the victim’s will
but with his oral consent, it was a complex rape that would
carry guilt and shame for evermore. This skinny prisoner
was angry and impotent, yet having to accede and smile.
As the narrative of his adventure had already declared to
him through his prison study of Freud, it was a repetition of
his relationship with his human father. It was therefore a
well-trodden track for him.
He sought another plane of consciousness in order to rise
above the emotional abuse as well as the physical pain. He
sensed a calling to suffer in silence, but to be refined
through it; to be patient; to undergo whatever it was that
was, as yet, unuttered and unformed, because it was
something about the life of his spirit. It was a mystical

211
experience of a non-denominational, and non-religiously-
specific kind. He was imprisoned within both the walls of
the institution and the abuse of these prisoners, and yet he
was also free. It was a paradox that was to some extent
described and explained in the work of J.Tillard.174
Although religious life and freedom are often dissociated
when people talk about them, the gospel actually unites
them in a common project: that of finding self-fulfilment by
choosing to act in conformity with one’s fundamental
calling. This releases the individual from the demands of
any earthly (Freudian) powers. Of course, this project often
maps out an ideal that transcends the striving individual;
but the challenge which those who are called to a religious
or ‘set apart’ life have to take up consists in showing that,
far from killing the person within them, their striving and
the profession liberates them from other demands for the
service of the Lord. It is a costly service, but it is a
freedom, which is that of the arduous path of the
Beatitudes; a strict demand made by God and which, in the
last analysis, turns to humanity’s benefit…
The infernal needle pierced the flesh over and over again,
carving out a tract of flesh and filling it with poison for
over three hours. The first piercing was not deep enough.

174
Tillard, J. M. R. Religious Life and Freedom. Lumen Vitae. 29, no
3 (1974): 327 - 372

212
To have equated it with the suffering of the Crown of
Thorns would have been a blasphemy. Yet, it was pain, and
it was enforced and it was undeserved, but it was in order to
serve the establishment of a truth about the nature of things.
In this case, that David was not exclusively a physical, but
also a spiritual being, and as such not entirely under the
dominion of earthly powers.
He was a personal being who enjoyed self-conscious
existence and who could choose to act with purpose. He
could not be defined either by attributing to himself an
undifferentiated unity or by reducing the distinctions within
his nature to one or another of them; he was both a coward
and a hero; but neither should he consider these distinctions
as divisions of his nature. Spiritual reality of the self
implies a psychical realm that transcends the physical realm
and includes such ‘alien’ concepts (in a mundanely un-
spiritual culture) as God and spirits. Because he had access
to the religious call, he was a man, and as such he was a
‘self’, an intelligent self, a valuing self, and a purposing
self.175
‘Mmmm, that’s no good. We’ll have to go deeper if it’s
going to take properly.’
So in it went, deeper this time, not like a lithe, sharp,
pricking needle, but like a dog’s dull teeth bruising and
175
Samuel J.Mikolaski. What Is Man? Christianity Today. 13, no. 7
(1969): 294 - 297

213
tearing at the living flesh. It truly was torture, for there was
no other way to describe it; no other category into which
this experience fitted. It was an unwilling experience on
every level of his consciousness, and it offended every one
of the senses, including, not least, the moral one.
He clenched his teeth. and then his fist, in the hope of
avoiding the next jabbing intrusion. All the time he was
thinking that this violation would be with him as a constant
reminder on his left arm for the rest of his life. It would be
his personal reminder like concentration camp tattoos, and
images of the black-and-white grainy-filmed people
trudging jerkily to their deaths at the hands of creatures
unworthy of the designation, ‘human’ flashed through his
mind. He immediately felt guilty that he had for a second
compared his experience with theirs, and with that of the
thorn-crowned Jesus. He thought of that Jew who offered
Himself freely to the torturers, who he had heard about at
Sunday school. Was He here today, on this night of his
branding? He dared not cry.
‘Ough!’
‘Wassup?’ As though nothing was up.
‘Nothing. Just singing to myself. How’s it going?’
‘Well, keep still then.’ He punctuated his remark with an
especially deep jab that chipped the bone. The skinny
prisoner kept his pain to himself from then on.

214
The whole abusive business had arisen out of boredom. A
prisoner had as much time to read books and do as many
tattoos as he wanted in prison. In the end all it added up to
was one long, great boredom. There were many prisoners
who had tattooed themselves; some had covered enormous
expanses of their bodies from utter boredom. Most of them
regretted it, but as one prisoner, who had tattooed a ‘cut
along dotted line’ motif across his throat and a dark blue
spider web on his face said, ‘What else is there to do,
especially if you can’t read or write?’176
Neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, white supremacists and others
in the hate movement use symbols like swastikas, SS
thunderbolts, runes and group logos to intimidate
individuals and communities. Hate symbols are more than
just signs demonstrating racist, anti-Semitic and anti-
Christian attitudes and beliefs - these symbols are meant to
instil a sense of fear and insecurity. One finds hate symbols
scrawled on the outside walls of synagogues, churches and
schools; depicted on fliers and literature distributed in
communities; tattooed on the bodies of white supremacists,
or proudly displayed as jewellery or on clothing. These
symbols give haters a sense of power and belonging, and a
176
The spider web design tattoo is often found on the arms or under
the arms of racists who have spent time in jail. In some places, one
apparently earns this tattoo by killing a minority. However, non-
extremists may sometimes sport this tattoo as well, unaware of its
other symbology, simply because they like the design.

215
quick way of identifying with others who share their
ideology. They offer a visual vocabulary that is used by a
variety of extremists including the Ku Klux Klan, the neo-
Nazi National Alliance and such Identity groups177 as
Aryan Nations and the Posse Comitatus. Dave was lucky
to have escaped with a few letters of his name engraved in
his arm, and no requirement to hate the majority of
humankind or become a racist white supremacist.
The ADL178 database contains symbols used by neo-Nazis,
the Ku Klux Klan, racist skinheads, established hate
groups, white supremacists and racist prison gangs. Not
surprisingly, there is some degree of overlap among
symbols used by these various groups. Kraig had the
legend ‘A.C.A.B.’ tattooed across his left knuckles.
‘A.C.A.B.’, is an acronym often integrated into prison
tattoos in the United Kingdom. It is most usually rendered,
as with Kraig, with one letter between the knuckle and first
joint of each finger, sometimes as symbolic small dots with
or without the accompanying letters ● ● ● ●. A.C.A.B., can
stand for ‘All Coppers Are Bastards’, or ‘Always Carry A
Bible’, depending on who is asking and whether the bearer
is wanting to make a good impression. The dangerous
177
Identity groups believe that white Europeans, not Jews, are the
real Biblical Chosen People, that Jews are the children of Satan, that
the white race is inherently superior to others and that Blacks and
other non-whites are mud people without a soul.
178
Anti-Defamation League.

216
modern hate groups had not penetrated into this level of this
trio’s prison experience.
As an adult later in life he was to reflect that he had done
some pretty meaningless things in his life, but none of them
were anywhere near as empty, defeating, and soul-
grindingly boring as being in prison. Day after day with
nothing to do and night upon night reading the same books
you’ve already read three times before, and books that you
are not even interested in. All the time you would be
thinking of the day of release. Not that the day of release
held anything except the end of imprisonment – not great
riches or an interesting job or even a family to go to.
The day the gate would open would be the day you would
be facing an empty street alone. Was it something to look
forward to? Probably not, put like that. Prison behind.
Future in front empty. He could not see, at that time, the
hope of ever starting again. Why did people always seem
to believe that there could be a new beginning? Where did
they get their optimism, since the history of the world did
not offer a lot of evidence for such a hope? He didn’t
know, although the notion of beginning anew had been a
pervasive theme, seen perhaps most clearly in the American
Dream.179

179
Erickson, Joyce Quiring. Reviving the American Dream.
Christian Century. 98, no 37. (1981): 1192 - 1195

217
Many modern Americans see a close connection between
beginning again as a nation and being born again as a
Christian, and it has been argued that the very idea of
‘regime-change’ in conquered nations has the seeds of an
implicit Christian crusade about it. Diaries and sermons of
early settlers abound with references to the New World as a
potential Eden. Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn,180 can be seen as condensed history of that dream. For
Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby the movement has
shifted from the frontier back to civilization. Still, the
fantasy which animates that movement is tinged with the
hope of starting over. Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five
is one of the many contemporary novels that explore an
American fantasy. The Christian vocation however
summons people to distinguish between mature and wise
hopes based on a recognition of the realities of the situation
and its moral implications, and facile fantasies of quick and
easy beginnings. In some sense, all three books are
responses to post-war disillusionment.
Mostly, however, he would dream and fantasize about the
things he would do on release. Every freedom-thought was
connected in some way with bodily functions - sex, food,
walking in the sunshine, swimming, breathing the free air,
having a holiday and getting a tan. The whole reason for

180
Ibid

218
being alive was to get out of confinement and into
‘freedom’.
One day the guard came to the cell door. His keys could be
heard jingling as usual. He opened the door and ordered
the skinny prisoner out. It was time for him to re-appear at
another hearing in court at a village called Kings Lynn,
deep in rural Suffolk. He was informed that he had to
attend another hearing, this time for larceny and
housebreaking.
He went with the guard to the courthouse. He went through
the hearing. He got his sentence. He returned to prison and
was locked up again. All in the course of a day. It meant
nothing to him. He deliberately did not drink in the
countryside as they sped to their destiny, nor did he notice it
on the return journey. He did not want his heart broken by
the reminders of sight and smell and hearing of what
freedom really meant. The smell of grass; the sound of the
railway engine, the sight of people walking freely through
the little village of Kings Lynn. These things mocked him.
They did not cheer or encourage him. They depressed his
spirit rather than caused it to soar. He neither noticed nor
enjoyed the sounds and sights and smells of freedom. If
anything, they served only to make him more hateful, more
resentful, more persecuted. It was not to do with him. The

219
world looks different to the homeless man than it does to
the housed.
All those people in the court had come to see him punished.
They witnessed their form of justice. No doubt some of
them had been his victims. He had broken in to their
homes and stolen their property. They deserved to see him
punished. East Anglian country people had been known to
shoot burglars in the past, and to have received the approval
of their neighbours for it. He had perhaps been lucky in
their opinion. Most of the people thronging the public
gallery had nothing to do with it. They were bored, lonely
people looking for entertainment in the thrill of the courts,
or a group of sixth formers doing ‘civic studies’ observing
the local judicial system in operation, or journalists. It was
perhaps an irony that the prisoner criminal felt morally
disgusted by the respectable people who had come to see
him condemned. In his own view he was an abused child,
but his thinking was before his time. He knew something
then that other people could not be expected to know, and
would not know for many years to come. It would take ten
years for psychologists and social theorists to catch up, and
thirty for child protection legislation to follow.
He stood in the dock. Eighty pounds in his socks. They
weighed not him but the evidence and judged him. He
pleaded guilty anyway, so there was no debate. It hurried

220
the proceedings, and there had been no point in denying it.
Had it delivered him back into prison any earlier he would
have pleaded double-guilty.
Back in the cell Sean and Kraig took up where they had left
off on his tattoo. It was going to say, ‘DAVID’ when it was
finished. He had begun to wonder who the hell ‘David’
was. The whole idea had sounded stupid in the beginning.
He knew very well who David was. It was him. It was he,
himself, the person who lived in his own body. He was
David.
But the question had persisted. It hadn’t been drummed
into him as much as it had been needled into him.
While the tattoo was being finished off during the
remaining few days, he argued with himself about who he
was. He compared himself in relation to his history, his
family, his friends, his home community, his school,
teachers, and the people who lived on his street and in his
estate. He compared himself beside his relatives at home
and his friends in the coffee bars in town. He went through
the places where he spent his time in town and the things he
thought were important. The Dimpey Café in Stowmarket,
the Gaumont cinema in Ipswich and the Safe Harbour pub
on his estate, where at age eight he used to climb onto the
roof for pigeons’ eggs and where at sixteen he used to sing
of an evening in the bar with the band, a piano and drums

221
and a microphone. He was not a drinker, but he loved
singing for its own sake. They moved a jukebox in and the
live music went out of the window.
He thought of the girlfriend he had spent almost every
evening with, and of the girl on the trailer park with whom
he had had his first sexual experience in a disused
American aircraft hangar. Peggy. She had been sent to
borstal a few months earlier than he.
He ruminated on the country walks and the horse riding, the
river and the fishing as a child with his father, and the day
he almost drowned in the weir. Catching strong, wriggling
slippery black eels and eating them at home later. Birds
chirping in the hedgerows. His father had been an old
countryman and knew the names of every tree and bird and
animal that ever there was in Suffolk.
Was that all there was, though? He had been earning a
reasonable wage for a youngster, and occasionally he would
go to the bowling alley. The work had been hard, though.
Working with hessian sacks that were used to store grain on
the farms before the advent of plastic sacks. It was heavy
work but he enjoyed it. He was young, and although he
was skinny, he was strong. It had been hard work, but he
enjoyed the activity. All the time the needle had been going
in. Jab, jab, jab. Short jabs with the pain in the point. He

222
had winced once or twice but Kraig had pretended he
hadn’t noticed.
He tried to get back to thinking about his home and his
green fields, of thinking about his house and his job. He
thought again about his three brothers and the horses, and
the hours watching television like a zombie. He thought of
the wasted hours in front of that machine, and how he could
have used the time better on something more fulfilling. He
could have been a lawyer even…
He stopped himself from thinking at that point. He chose
instead to withstand the pain of the needle, and the potential
poison of the blue ‘ink’. He decided it hurt less than the
pain of remorse and resentment. There was nothing he
could do about what had gone. It was all in the past. He
reflected that he was a criminal, and like a leopard, he
could not change his spots. In deciding then and there to
live each day as it came, he had put down a marker against
the past. There was after all no one to blame but himself.
Accept the inevitable and come to terms with what is real.
Do not look for meaning. Live for today and enjoy
everything now. Sweet relief came when Kraig stopped
jabbing on the fourth day.
‘All done.’ He announced cheerfully.
‘You didn’t half make a fuss at first,’ he said disarmingly.

223
‘Yeah. S’pose so,’ he replied. ‘Don’t know why I made
such a fuss after all. Anyway, it didn’t hurt half as much as
I thought it would. Bit of a doddle, really. I’ll have another
one sometime.’
‘Yeah. You do that. You’ll get a scab on that in a few days
time. That’s how you’ll know it’s really working. When
you get a scab that’s how you know you’ve got a good
tattoo. Watch the screws, though. If they see it, you’ll get
banged up, down the block in chokey.’
‘The block’ or ‘Chokey’ is the familiar name for the
punishment block. ‘Chokey’ is the most common form of
prison punishment. It consists mainly of being locked away
in solitary confinement in the ‘block’ without ‘Association’
– that is, association with other prisoners, which consisted
of an hour in the evening on the ground floor of the wing
sitting around in conversation or playing dominoes, darts,
pool etc. There were refinements to this punishment
however, such as a bread-and-water diet, or the deprivation
of cigarettes and association, and the complete withdrawal
of human company including working with others. Any
work was brought to the chokey-cell. The maximum time
for chokey with the bread-and-water diet refinement was
three days. So although the visiting magistrate or governor
may want to give a prisoner more than three days, it had to
be suffered three days on and three days off, so that each

224
period of starvation is interspersed with an equal amount of
time on a normal diet. For example if a prisoner is given
fifteen days bread-and-water, it has to take twenty-seven
days to complete at the minimum. A sentence of fifteen
days chokey, or being sent ‘down the block’ can eat up
almost a whole month of a prisoner’s time, and often this is
not counted towards his sentence. It is a prison sentence
that is not the result of a disposal by any court.
Here follow some contemporary181 unsubstantiated accounts
of recent experiences of ‘borstal boys’ (although the term is
no longer used officially) that concur with David’s personal
experience of his borstal life thirty years ago.

Borstal Punishment Block CP (corporal punishment).

From: Alan. Subject: Re: Punishment Block. Dated: Mon,
10 Mar 2003.
CP was widely used in Borstal up until I was there in 1982.
It was unofficial and it was quite common to see other lads
with stripes on their arses. We didn’t have punishment
blocks at YoC Leicester but we had a punishment set of
cells that were away from the main area. This is also where
http://www.milism.net/cp.htm#bcp. [Accessed 17.04.2006].
181

c/f www.borstal.skinheads.co.uk & Borstal - a last resort

An historical site about borstal history, slang and punishments.
Borstal, Kent Historical site of the English village in Kent. The
Convict Prison on the hill provided for hardened criminals serving
long sentences and were sad specimens of nature. They were often
to be seen with chains on both ankles hobbling at their work.

225
the canings and strappings took place. Caning was more of
a sadistic/sexual thing with the screws although at the time
I hated it and never wanted it we had no choice in most
cases. It was either a beating or report. From: Paddy
Subject: Re: [Borstal] Punishment Block. Dated: Sun, 9
Mar 2003. We had a punishment block at Everthorpe
HMB. I spent a couple of nights in there for fighting with
the Daddies of my Wing! All the furniture, (which) was
made out of corrugated cardboard was removed from the
cell in the daytime and brought back in at suppertime. Life
in the block as they called it, was pretty boring actually
with lockup for 23 hours a day and just a Bible to read.
Subject: YOC CP Date: 05/02/05 From: Dave. In the early
1990s I met a solicitor in a bar. He told me that he had
been to Feltham YOC that day to see a client. In the
visiting room the client spontaneously dropped his trousers
to reveal stripes across his buttocks which he claimed had
been caused by a Prison Officer’s caning. Remember this
was the early 1990s; long after this sort of thing was
supposedly outlawed.
From: Tug. Subject: Re: [Borstal] Absconders CP. Date:
Thursday, 1 Oct 2003
CP for runaways absconding from Borstal was mentioned
recently in a news story. This is a summary:

226
Davey recalls one of his beatings at Besford Borstal /
Senior Approved School in Worcestershire: I ran away
with two Sunderland lads, Geordie and Tommy and a lad
from Newcastle, he says. We were caught by the railway
police and taken back to Besford. There was a duty room
next to the masters’ room and in it was a vaulting horse,
which was screwed to the floor. I was stripped, placed
over the vaulting horse, and my arms and legs were tied
together. I was then given 12 to 13 strokes on the bare
backside and I was bleeding and black and blue afterwards.
You could hardly sit down. It happened twice to me, but
other lads got the same treatment. Geordie says: I got the
strap at least three times and I was black and blue for about
six months. It hurt when you sat down.
For those who repeatedly stepped out of line, the masters
had the punishment wall; about three feet high with a
narrow top, where the bad lads would have to stand for up
to eight hours. The cruelty was inhumane, says George.
People will find it hard to believe. Dempsey, now 71, says:
It was a tough time for all of us. But it also toughened us
up. Danny, now 60, says: We learned how to look after
ourselves. The lads today couldn’t go through what we
went through; they just wouldn’t put up with it.
After Besford, some of the Besford lads - Davey, Dempsey
and Geordie - emerged as some of the toughest bare-

227
knuckle street fighters in Sunderland. The Besford lads met
up recently in Sunderland for a reunion. It was the first
time since their days at Besford that so many had met up in
one place at the same time. They all, independently,
remembered the floggings and the punishment wall, the
window-less dormitories, the snow-covered beds and the
weekly trips to Pershore. It made men of us, says Danny.
They never broke our spirit, says Jimmy E. The lads these
days couldn’t hack it, says Jimmy C. There’s a bond
between us, says George. Besford shaped us into what we
are.
Besford Court, a grade II listed building in Worcestershire,
closed in 1996 and has now been turned into luxury
apartments.
In the block, there was no point in ticking off the days
from your sentence, because strictly speaking those days
don’t exist. They are outside of time. They are extra to
your sentence. They are also a sentence that can be
imposed without due process. They are, strictly speaking,
outside the legal system also, and a means of imprisoning
an individual without the consent of a jury.
At this time, in the late sixties, a trainee assistant governor
of Wandsworth Prison, John Staples, noted in the AVP
Britain Newsletter182
182
http://www.avpbritain.org.uk/publications/summer01 [Accessed
16th April 2006].

228
I was petrified the way violence, or more often, the threat
of it, permeated the place. On exercise in the punishment
block on a yard no bigger than a small city back garden I
stood in awe as I ‘supervised’ a muscular young man
notorious for his escapes and armed robberies strutting
around the yard at every turn of the circle raising his fists to
receive a cheer from the windows of the tiers of
overlooking cells. One experienced officer confided in me
that the job of the prison officer comprised long periods of
boredom interspersed with moments of sheer fucking terror.
I accompanied some officers from the chokey block
[segregation unit where prisoners spend time after offences
against prison discipline] to pick up an escapee from a
police station where he had been apprehended. My mind
was on what I would do if the staff took it into their heads
to punish the prisoner on the way back for causing
Wandsworth the embarrassment of the escape…
The tattoo could easily attract a sentence in chokey, and he
could as easily have met with retributively violent prison
warders in the ‘block’ as with kindly ones like John Staples,
Assistant Governor of Wandsworth. He smiled wryly.
Who was going to understand that the tattoo was actually
tantamount to a rape? Many are the prisoners who have
been raped in this way by their peers and then unjustly

229
imprisoned without trial by their captors and beaten in the
chokey block as retribution for having been thus raped.

230
231
 EIGHT: OTHER WORLDS
A Christological Perspective

The day came for transfer to Wormwood Scrubs. It had not

come a day too soon. The skinny prisoner had been given a
cell of his own for the past week, and was no longer under
the constraints of his two enforced compatriots.
Wormwood Scrubs housed some of the country’s most
difficult prisoners. It was also the location of a borstal
allocation facility. This group of buildings contained lads
of all sorts and conditions, from vulnerable teenagers who
were mentally ill more than criminal, to criminal characters
who had come through the system and were destined by
both culture and choice to a life of crime.
Whilst in custody many young adults were frequently
moved around the prison estate causing great disruption and
distress. A P.R.T., Report183 showed that, in general, that
these very young prisoners experience impoverished
regimes, and that such frequent movements mean many
young people are held long distances from home. Although
the figures are not available for that year, at the beginning
of July last year more than a third (35 %) of all 18-20 year
olds were being held more than 50 miles away from their
183
Solomon, E (2004) A Lost Generation: the experiences of young
people in prison, London: Prison Reform Trust.

232
home, just under a quarter (23 %) were being held between
50 and 100 miles away and more than one in ten (12 %)
were being held over 100 miles away.184

Reconviction rates were then, and remain today particularly

high for young people. 78.4 % of young men released from
prison in 2002 were reconvicted within two years of
release.185 Nearly half (42 %) of first time offenders are
young adults.186 Young offenders have poor literacy and
numeracy skills. Just under a third have basic skills deficits
compared to under a quarter of those aged 25 and over in
custody. Nearly three-quarters were excluded from school
at some stage, and 63 % were unemployed at the time of
their arrest.187
Many young people in prison also have housing problems
and the majority were out of work prior to their conviction,
and face a low possibility of employment on their release.
Nearly two-thirds (63 %) were unemployed at the time of
arrest. Many of them are effectively also homeless. The

184
Ibid
185
Home Office Statistical Bulletin (2005), Re-offending of adults:
results from the 2002 cohort.
186
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.
187
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.

233
Chief Inspector of Prisons estimated that one in five young
prisoners had no idea where they would live on release.188
Mental health problems, and chaotic and uncontrolled drug
and alcohol use are common amongst young people in
prison. They are more likely than adults to suffer from
mental health problems and are more likely to commit or
attempt suicide than both younger and older prisoners (see
below for statistics relating to 16-18 year olds).189 Up to 30
% of young women in custody reported having been
sexually abused in childhood.190 It was estimated that a
quarter of young male offenders were fathers and four out
of ten female young offenders were mothers.191 What was
all of this about? Was it about a group of people who were
evil? Or was it more likely about a strata or cohort or
group within civilized society who were poor, mentally ill,
and uneducated? Dave’s opinion was not in doubt, and it
was his growing conviction that if ever he should survive

188
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (1997),Young Prisoners: a thematic
review, London: Home Office.
189
Singleton et al (2000) Psychiatric Morbidity among young
offenders in England and Wales, London: Office for National
Statistics
190
Solomon, E (2004) A Lost Generation: the experiences of young
people in prison, London: Prison Reform Trust.
191
A survey carried out by Young Voice in 2001 found that 51 % of
men in prison under the age of 23 and 79 % of women in the same
age group were parents, Young Voice (2001) Parenting Under
Pressure, London: Young Voice.

234
this hell, he would come out of it with a determination to
bring relief and hope to this group of people.
Wormwood Scrubs was thought by those who were in the
system to be a ‘hard’ prison, in which there was little
compassion and no room for convicts to make mistakes. It
was said that how well you survived depended entirely on
how well you got on with the warder on your landing, and
which team of warders happened to be on duty at the time.
Breaking the rules, it was understood, would be punished,
and the punishment would usually be meted out there and
then, without all the paperwork of a formal Governor’s
Report. All of this remained to be seen by David, but this
was what he was expecting. Meanwhile the prisoner in his
exclusive cell looked forward with anticipation to his move
up the system – for in fact this was what it was, even
though it might be worse at this next stage than it had ever
been thus far - towards his eventual freedom.
He looked at his new tattoo, the new status symbol that
marked him out as a criminal of a particular social class and
ethnic culture. Let everyone see it. Wear it as a badge of
pride. Be silent but strong. Frankly, he was scared witless
that he was going to Wormwood Scrubs, and he did not
know how he would cope.
Alone after all this time, he had forgotten what it was to
reflect and think clearly and to pace the room in

235
contemplation and silent debate. He had lost the knack.
But something had to be done to psyche him up for the
impending and inevitable move. He did not know, and
there was no way of finding out, what the future had in
store for him. Nor was he alone simply as a prisoner in the
prison system. Although his particular concern was with
tomorrow and the prospect of another prison institution, he
shared his deep anxiety about the future with the rest of his
generation. Never before in the history of civilization, had
so many voices been raised to declare that all purpose and
meaning has departed from the world.192 Angst - dread,
fear, anxiety - finds many expressions. Even if he did not fit
into it, for example Kierkegaard had been wedged into the
intellectual consciousness of the times as a prophet for this
generation. Faith had been Dave’s religious tutor. He had
been content to let many of the impenetrable puzzles of
existence remain mysteries. His fear was for what the next
day might bring. Speculative knowledge, however, claimed
to dissolve all mysteries. When someone who lived in the
house that Angst built gets tired of their surroundings, they
are not ready to be made content by faith, but may have to
resort to Kierkegaardian existentialism.

Hamilton, Kenneth. Life in the House that Angst Built. Hibbert

192

Journal. 57. (1958): 38-45.

236
He did not know if there were single cells at the Scrubs, or
what the guards were like, or what the daily routine might
be. Did the prisoners work, or were they locked up in the
cells most of the day? Was there a period of association in
the evenings, and were the young prisoners like him thrown
in with the older men? Would there be snooker, or darts, or
both…
With the impending move and reallocation all books had
been removed from the cell, except for the Bible. Not that
he had any idea what was in it. He thought it was a book –
like any other book, with a beginning, middle and an end:
with a theme and a progression from start to finish.193 This
is a study that demonstrates how a leading theologian had
seen the sacred books as a single unitary literary work in
his time. It addresses the chronological development of
Gerhad von Rad’s method of interpreting the Biblical texts
(hermeneutics), for it changed radically over the years. He
had already begun to focus on a holistic method of
interpretation between 1930 and 1940. In terms of literary
criticism, he read the whole Bible as a book, as David was
about to do, i.e. as a narrative work of art rather than a
complex literary history of different religious or theological
texts and traditions, just as David was doing in his prison

193
Timm, Hermann. Ein Geschichtsbuch? Zu Gerhard von Rads
Unionslekturen des Alten Testaments. Z fur Theologie und Kirche
99, no.2. (2002,): 147-161. (German).

237
cell, only twenty years later! In 1943, von Rad had
developed a system of reconstructing the Biblical history of
salvation. He then revised this system in his Theology of
the Old Testament (1957-1969). In this, the scriptures of
the prophetic tradition are excluded from the rest of the
biblical narrative. By the time David had got to reading his
Bible, in his last book, Wisdom in Israel, written in 1970,
von Rad, the theologian, dissociated himself from this
system and maintained that there was no longer a single
concept of the history of salvation as a narrative structure in
the entire Bible! This simply demonstrates how the great
mass of the body of the church often follows fifty years
after the pioneering work of the theologians – like all great
art, it is not appreciated in its time. It is in the nature of
things. This may be what is currently happening with the
theologian Rowan Williams and the African churches in
respect of homosexuality. One hopes so.
The Bible had become for David an old though rarely
consulted friend over the months. Always there, but rarely
turned to. He had never made any attempt to read it in a
consistent way. He felt that he couldn’t, for some reason.
He was just never interested in that sort of thing. They
always leave a Bible in your cell. Makes you feel guilty –
sorry for your sins. What the prisoners did was, when they
told a lie, crossed their fingers and crossed their keys and

238
swore on their mother’s life, or their brother’s life or some
life that was not their own! That way, you could do what
you liked but not be guilty. Funny thing, superstition. But
when there was a lack of education, that was what you got.
These were the kind of people the skinny prisoner had to
live with. It was just as well to understand where they were
coming from. The best thing was to get into some kind of
work, in which you could hide away and become
anonymous. It would also make the days pass more
speedily. One way of doing this was to get on a work
placement of some kind, so long as you did not mind
getting your hands dirty doing menial tasks.
Overall there were around 24,000 work places for prisoners
across the prison estate in workshops, catering, cleaning,
land-based activities and day release programmes - the
majority of which was menial work194 This meant that a
maximum of just under a third of the prison population was
engaged in work activities at any one time in 2003. An
average of 10,000 prisoners were employed in nearly 300
workshops across the prison estate in a diverse range of
industries that included; clothing and textiles, woodwork,
engineering, print and laundries.195

194
House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Rehabilitation of
Prisoners, First Report of Session 2004-2005
195
‘Service on the verge of industrial revolution’ Prison Service
News, September, 2003

239
40% of the 10,000 prisoners who worked across these
industries worked for ‘contract services’ and were
producing goods and services for an external, commercial
market. This ranged from laundry contracts for hospitals to
stitching mailbags to manufacturing camouflage jackets for
the Ministry of Defence.196 By 2003, clothing and textiles
was to become the biggest employer in prison workshops
with roughly 3,000 prisoners involved across 60 prisons.
Almost all (95 %) of textile products were for the internal
market.197 An internal Prison Service review of workshops
was to suggest that the focus should be almost totally on the
internal market as demand was so high due to the rise in
prison numbers over the previous decade.198
There were around 1,500 people in the open prison estate
who went out to work in full time paid employment during
the day on day release.199 These were, generally, long term
prisoners who were in the final stages of their period in
custody and preparing to return to the community. In 2000-
2001, 21 prison farms were to be in full operational
condition, including 12 dairy units, with a total of 295
prisoners employed. The Prison Service planned to close

196
Ibid.
197
Ibid.
198
Prison Service (2003) Report of the Industries Review Team, An
internal review of the strategic oversight and management of public
sector prison industries in England and Wales, London: Prison Service.
199
House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Rehabilitation of
Prisoners, First Report of Session 2004-2005.

240
12 farms by the end of 2006 and focus instead on
horticultural activities.200 David stitched mailbags for hour
after mindless hour. Five stitches per inch of sacking. He
was paid a few pence per week. The total amount of
money bought a quarter once of bad tobacco and a packet
of Rizla’s.
By 2004, the average rate of pay for employed prisoners
was to have risen to £8 per week. The Prison Service had
set a minimum rate of pay which was £4.00 per week but
by then each prison had developed responsibility to enable
it to set its own pay rates.201 The Prison Service
acknowledged that prison industries had got left behind by
other developments within the system, and that ‘providing
work opportunities for prisoners had not been a central and
essential part of the of the prison regime.’ 202
From 1984, 2,100 serving prisoners gave in excess of
300,000 hours of service to the community through
Community Service Volunteers,203 and one in 14 prisoners
participated in an activity to help other prisoners, such as
the Listeners scheme.204 Another interesting group, the
aptly named ‘Inside Out Trust’ continues to run charity
200
Ibid.
201
Hansard, House of Commons written parliamentary answers, 8th
June 2004.
202
House of Commons, Home Affairs Committee, Rehabilitation of
Prisoners, First Report of Session 2004-2005.
203
PRT (2002), Barred Citizens, PRT: London.
204
Ibid.

241
workshops in the prison system. Their work includes
making benches, restoring bicycles, sewing machines and
hearing aids. As at January 2005, they were to have over
1,000 men and women at work in 75 of the nation’s
prisons.205

He looked around his cell. The high window, the wooden

table, the steel-framed bed and noisy horsehair-filled
mattress. The Bible. The skinny prisoner had inherited a
respect for the Bible. It had been one of the half dozen
books his father possessed. His had been an Army Bible,
and it had gathered dust on the top shelf all of David’s life.
He had never seen his father reading it, and on the occasion
of his leafing through it one afternoon he noted that there
had been no underlining; there was a simple dedication to
him from an army chaplain. ‘Holy’ on the cover. Maybe it
meant ‘special’ or ‘religious’. He didn’t know. Nor did he
have any idea if anyone believed in it. Perhaps there were
millions. Maybe there were none. He smiled at the thought
of all those people swearing on it in court. Most of them he
knew, didn’t believe in it, and hadn’t ever read it, so how
could they? He had sworn on it himself, and had no idea
what was between its covers. No one on the bench had
challenged him, and his solicitor had not even mentioned it

205
http://www.inside-out.org.uk.

242
to him. A Bible was something people had around the
house, around prisons and hotels, and used as a magic
charm in criminal courts. It was like crossing your fingers
and your keys before you told a lie to avoid the punishment
for lying, or to make the liar safe. It was superstition, a
talisman, and a sacred cow.
He got in to bed, rattled around his horsehair-filled pillow
with his head filled with these thoughts…
…how was the Bible read by the earliest Christians and
those who followed them?
What did they think about it?
Was it ‘Holy’ to them, and if it was, what did they mean by
‘Holy’?
He felt that it was more than just a history book, although it
might have been that as well.
However, it was ‘more’ than any sort of book somehow.
The Franciscan friar who visited the prison felt that one
way to understand the Bible was to let the church help with
doing the interpretation with him. What he called,
‘exegesis in the church.’ He had said that Synthetic
observation on the history of exegesis shows that the
ancient Tradition, at the time of the Fathers and the Middle
Ages, has always affirmed that the final task of Christian
exegesis is to read Scripture in the Spirit – to look first and

243
foremost for spiritual understanding. If this balance ever
existed, it was broken at the beginning of modern times.
An academic study by de la Potterie206 propounds a
recommendation and offers the means of reconstituting this
‘synthesis’ on a more critical foundation. While taking
advantage of the resources of modern exegesis, and using
these insights, one must nevertheless recall the patristic
way of reading the Bible - noted in the Constitution Dei
Verbum. This – in a very Anglican fashion - also preserves
and acknowledges with respect the wisdom and tradition of
the Church through the ages.
Another piece of research by the theologian Friedrich
Mildenberger discusses the relationship between historical
and theological approaches to the Bible. He points out that
historical exegesis is concerned with facts about the past.
Dogmatics is concerned with normative claims for the
present. This was part of David’s confusion at this time.
No one had explained the difference of the two approaches.
What ought he to believe about the doctrine of Holy
Scripture? Mildenberger explains how exegesis and
dogmatics should reinforce one another in a healthy way.
By discussing the unity of Scripture and the canon within
the canon, this article demonstrates how differently the
206
de la Potterie, Ignace. Reading Holy Scripture ‘in the Spirit’: Is
the Patristic Way of Reading the Bible Still Possible Today?
Communio: International Catholic Review. 13, no.4. (1968): 308-
325.

244
historical and theological approaches reason about the
doctrine of Scripture. Mildenberger here expresses, as a
theologian, his view of how the two should be related in the
interpretation of the church’s canon…207
…eventually David dropped off to sleep.
He woke again at eleven o’clock feeling fearful and
oppressed. There were butterflies in his stomach and his
heart was palpitating. His thoughts only added to his fears.
What would the future hold for him?
He thought fearfully of the time, just over a week ago,
when he had been crammed into his cell with the two un-
empaths, Sean and Kraig. Kraig had claimed that he was a
Satanist. His talk was of witchcraft and demon possession,
and his expectations of life were entirely negative. He had
dark powers, which, he claimed he had inherited from his
ancestors. In retrospect, this was all very adolescent,
though at the time it was frightening.

207
Mildenberger, Friedrich. The Unity, Truth, and Validity of the
Bible: Theological Problems in the Doctrine of Holy Scriptures.
Interpretation. 29, no.4. (1975): 391 – 405.

245
That night, Kraig had asked him if he believed in Satan.208
Since Kraig obviously believed in it, the skinny prisoner
decided it was politic to agree. He did not think it would be
wise to challenge his strange beliefs, having none of his
own. Nor did he want him to get back onto the painful
subject of tattoos again. He felt he would rather humour
the Satanist than suffer torture again at his hands. He
wanted David to become a convert, and began by setting-up
the environment in the cell by drawing a blanket across the
window and directing his victim’s attention to it for a
manifestation of the supernatural that was promised. In this
way, he had begun to manage the impressions David was
receiving into his brain.
Managing information is the beginning of a process that
leads to changing people’s lives. The question that engages
the evangelist is recruitment of people to carry the message.
This had been what Kraig was doing to David. Since he
knew that the control and use of information plays a central

208
Stellway, Richard J. The Four Steps to Cultic Conversion.
Christianity Today. 23, no.18. (1979): 990 – 992.
To prevent the loss of church members to unchristian groups
requires some familiarity with the procedures cults use to win
converts: impression management, grooming, intensive
indoctrination, and action. Many of the techniques closely parallel
brainwashing. The church should respond by (1) directing attention
and forcefully condemning all cults that try to deceive mortify,
manipulate, and exploit people; (2) examining its own methods; (3)
doing all in its power to prevent its members from being taken in by
cults, equipping Christians with an appropriate armour of defence.

246
role in everyone’s life, Kraig was employing the tactic of
Impression Management to control and regulate
information that would arrange David’s emotional and
spiritual furniture. The activity was goal directed, and
Kraig knew exactly what he was doing, having learned it
from his colleagues in the underworld. Through impression
management, Kraig was trying to shape David’s
impressions of Satan or the Devil, and his idea of the
supernatural. He was, in other words, using a tried and
tested psychological tool and control mechanism.209
Many of the best selling self-help books in the psychology
and business sections of bookstores similarly deal with how
to exert social influence by making the right impression on
others (e.g., Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and
influence people; David Lewis’ The secret language of
success: Using body language to get what you want;
Michael Korda’s Success: How every man and woman can
achieve it; Roger Fisher’s Getting to Yes). Such books tell
us how to look and dress; what to say and how to say it;
how to move, sit, and gesture; when to smile or raise an
eyebrow; and all manner of information that seems vital if
we are to do well at the game of life, winning and keeping
lovers, money, power, friends, etc. Advertising is simply
209
Kristoff-Brown, A., Barrick, M. R., & Franke, M. Applicant
impression management: Dispositional influences and consequences
for recruiter perceptions of fit and similarity. Journal of
Management, 28, (2002): 27-46.

247
the art of influence through the control and management of
information. The political arena provides a stage for the
conscious and systematic application of ideas about how to
sell people and ideas. The common thread through all of
this is the notion that, to survive and prosper, the individual
must get others to form the ‘right’ impression, about
oneself, or about the things we are committed to – in
Kraig’s case, belief in and fear of Satan.
‘What I mean is, do you believe there’s a person called
Satan?’
David’s hope had been to keep him diverted from the
tattooing. He had not expected the conversation to take the
turn it was about to do.
‘Do you want to see Satan’s face? 210
The skinny prisoner was now frightened for a different
reason than the tattoo. He was not personally religious, nor
superstitious, although sometimes he would be careful not
to step in the cracks in the sidewalk, or walk under a ladder,

210
McNish, Jill L. Uses of Theories of Depth Psychology in
Ordained Ministry and the Institutional Church. Journal of
Pastoral Care and Counseling. 56, no.2 (2002,): 121-134.
Burgeoning understanding of unconscious processes should inform
the work of the church and its ministries. Understanding derived
from depth psychology can lead to deeper understandings of
relationship with God and with one another, of the vicissitudes of
spiritual life, of the meaning of ritual and sacraments, and to more
profound and relevant scriptural hermeneutics and theological
understandings. Illustrates these claims with examples.

248
but that was psychology - obsessive-compulsive behaviour,
not religion. He had heard about witches and spells and
devil-worship and also of satanic abuse. Although he
thought, no one really believed in it, it was frightening
nevertheless.
‘Get your clothes off and put a sheet around you!’ He
ordered. ‘Sit in this circle.’ He had drawn an open circle
on the floor. After making some rough drawings and
symbols around the circle, before he closed it, he ordered
David to step into it. He did as he was told. He would do
anything to stop an argument and avoid another night of
violent jabbing. Then Kraig closed the circle with his
victim inside it. He then launched into a series of chants
and mumbo-jumbo that could have been anything from
precognitive ramblings to satanic tongues. The skinny
prisoner had no way of telling. ‘Right. Say the Lord’s
Prayer backwards!’
After many mistakes and repeats, the victim finally
managed to get to the beginning of the Prayer starting at the
end more-or-less accurately, having been prompted by the
Satanist line-by-line. No reason was given for this strange
practice, and none was requested. Thinking at the start that
this was a harmless prank, a way of passing the time, and
evading another tattoo, he now found himself trapped by
fear of the mad and unempathetic Kraig, and physically

249
constrained in a two-by-three metre cell containing three
beds and three adult humans, he was unable to remove
himself from the satanic circle.
Had Satan actually appeared at the window, neither Kraig
nor Sean nor the Skinny prisoner would have been
surprised.
Then Kraig said,
‘If you want to see Satan’s face, you’ll have to give him
your soul.’
Give him my soul? He could not speak, let alone hand over
his soul. What was his ‘soul’ anyway? Why would anyone
want it, whatever it was? He did not know at that time that
the idea of a ‘soul’ separate from the body, as some sort of
entity floating around independently on his physical life
was a Greek philosophical idea, and nothing to do with
Christian faith.
The Christian idea of ‘soul’ comes from the Hebrew faith,
and that is to do with the physical body. The idea of soul-
ness was like ‘wholeness’. It indicated ‘the whole person’.
This meant that giving your soul to Satan would require
you to give every day and every preoccupation and thought
to a negative power, not some airy-fairy idea about giving
something metaphysical. He was ignorant, and that was
why he was afraid

250
The skinny prisoner stood and stared at the window grating
for a full ten minutes, waiting for something to happen.
Would he see the actual face of Satan? Satan did not
appear. He never really thought he would. He shot a
glance toward Kraig, expecting him to be laughing. But
Kraig’s face was deadly serious and pallid. His jaw was
strained and taut against the skin. Was it his imagination,
or did Kraig’s eyes seem deeper set than half an hour ago?
The prisoner stepped forward, out of the thrall of the circle.
His sheet fell to the floor. Gripping the lapels of his prison
windcheater – something he would never have dared to do
before for fear of a beating – the skinny prisoner shook him
gently, trying to get him to admit he had been fooling.
Joan Hickey211 distinguishes four categories of Satanists:
(1) dabblers or experimentalists, (2) self-styled Satanists,
(3) members of public satanic churches, and (4) orthodox or
generational Satanists (traditionalists), and offers specific
suggestions about forms of ministry appropriate for the
various degrees of satanic involvement. Dave had been an
unwilling ‘dabbler’ in this satanic ritual. Kraig was
probably a self-appointed or self-styled Satanist. In her
study she discusses the traits of each group and of its
members: potential pool, methods of recruitment, and

211
Hickey, Joan. Pastoral Responses to the Phenomenon of
Satanism in America Today. New Theology Review. 4, no. 3,
(1991): 16-27. [One of a series on Pastoral Care and Satanism].

251
outlines approaches for each category in making ministerial
response. Certainly, those providing pastoral care in this
area – such as prison chaplains and visitors with a religious
and/or psychological health interest must be mature, strong,
stable, commonsensible, relatively unflappable, relational,
patient, and grounded in a firm and earthy faith in God’s
power, presence and love. Networking of mental health
professionals dealing with this field is essential.
In his work,212 Graham Harvey asserts that 10 % of the
population of Britain are Satanists who conspire (perhaps
influenced by a real Devil) to corrupt and blaspheme
against everything godly, good or socially valued. He
discusses the views and activities of self-identified
Satanists in Britain, especially the Temple of Set, the
Church of Satan, the Order of the Nine Angels, and Dark
Lily. He also comments briefly on ad hoc, adolescent and
multi-generational Satanism, such as is happening here.
Satanism is a series of techniques for allowing individuals
to affirm, develop and express themselves, and to do what
they wish to do in the context of spirituality. It does not
require belief in the Satan of the Christian pantheon
although thriving on the sinister image and the hostility it
can evoke in Christians and the media. Satanism is an
adversarial form of self-religion.
212
Harvey, Graham. Satanism in Britain today. 10, no. 3. Journal
of Contemporary Religion. (1995): 283-296.

252
Indeed, staring at the barred window for most of that night,
wishing something would happen because of the grinding
boredom of prison life, the skinny prisoner almost wished
that a spectre or phantom would appear and brighten up his
empty and pointless life.
Some months later he was to come across a Bible verse in
Ephesians chapter six and verse twelve. It started him
thinking about all of this again. Originally written in
Greek, it carried a harrowing concept. It was about the real
spiritual world, not the world imagined in the psychotic
fancies of Kraig. It foretold the future role of the skinny
prisoner within this spiritual world:
For we are not struggling against flesh and blood, but
against the principalities, against the powers, against the
world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual
hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Some weeks before, one of the Christians at the Education
Centre had given him a book about demons by a
Pentecostal Christian, in which there was a picture,
presented as true fact, of an exorcism. It said,
‘…in the bedroom disgusting spirits anticipated the visit of
the Christian minister. They watched the doorway from
their positions on the wardrobe, the tops of doors, in every
spot, and their breathing sounded like the hauling of
shackles through rock-strewn mud… Piercing screams!

253
Rumbling! Yellow teeth revealed by the lips drawn back to
gnaw! The demons sprang from the walls, corners, every
alcove of the room and like tiny bleeding and foaming darts
went for the Christian’s heart…’
Was it fiction? Thinking that it must be fictional, he had
gone back to the blurb on the cover and to the foreword of
the book, but there it was. It was a serious work by a
Christian publisher, purporting to be recording the actual
truth of an historical event.
As an Anglican priest later in his life, David was to believe
that the reality of exorcism depended on the reality of
demons and demon-possession. He believed that if one
accepted the biblical evidence one is then committed to the
reality of demon possession; the demons of the New
Testament do not remain outside human life. This fact did
not validate all exorcistic techniques however, e.g., use of
numinous objects and magical incantations by exorcists
apart from the biblical tradition. Jesus used no exorcistic
devices but cast out demons by the power of his personal
command, and he gave his disciples nothing but his εξουσι
α, his authority - himself. The patristic church saw clearly
the radical distinction between Christian and non-Christian
exorcism. The great exorcistic rites of the historic church
purport to be and at their best are nothing more than
consistent elaborations of the New Testament teaching that

254
demons can be cast out only in ‘the name above every
name.’213
On his last night at that prison, remembering the event with
Sean and Kraig in the cell, he experienced that old fear
again. He was alone, and frightened, against all rationality,
half expecting to be assailed by the phantoms that had
failed to appear when Kraig was there. He got out of bed
and placed his hand on the Gideon Bible that lay on the
table. He opened it and stuck his finger in at random,
looking for something to give him comfort or courage or
reassurance. His finger had landed on Ephesians chapter
six and verse twelve!
He stuck the Bible under his pillow and had some fitful
sleep. He felt it was a stupid thing to do, but it gave him
comfort. His thoughts that night were of immense cosmic
spiritual battles between good and evil, right and wrong.
There were imaginings of monsters and gargoyles straight
out of Heironymus Bosch and the Book of Revelation.
There were large red crosses flapping in the wind on the
flags of crusaders, the bleeding bodies of pagans thrown
into ditches, and visions of a Saviour dying on a cross in
Palestine many years ago.

213
Montgomery, John Warwick. Exorcism: Is It For Real?
Christianity Today. 18, no.21 (1974): 1183 - 1186

255
He had never really thought deeply about religion or
mythology before spending time in prison. The evening
with Kraig had created new synapses in an area of his brain
that had not been ventured into for a long time. For that
much at least he was grateful.
What did the strange coincidence of the bible verse mean?
Was it just that? On the other hand, had it been something
that pointed beyond? He couldn’t say, but brightened up a
bit with the thought of tomorrow and being able to see the
outside world. It might not be anything special at
Wormwood Scrubs, but at least he would see plenty on the
journey there. He got out of his bed at the opening of his
cell door for the last time, took up his stinking chamber pot
and marched down the gantry to the lavatories, pouring the
offensive contents down the communal drain.
This drain was a specially constructed double sink that
served as an open sewer for all the prisoners. Above the
stonework there were two huge cold water taps. Before
opening the cells in the morning, the guards would turn
these taps full on. Other people wake to the dawn chorus
every morning. These open running cisterns were the first
sound prisoners heard every morning. The guards would
then open each cell, and the prisoners line up with their pot
in hand, slopping the stinking contents down the drain one
after the other. The activity was known as ‘slopping out’,

256
which was exactly what it consisted of. The stink was
appalling, and the activity was one that every prisoner, high
or low, had to engage in. It does not bear thinking about
what germs were flying around for the half-hour that this
process took each morning, which prisoners and warders
alike had to suffer. The smell had worked its way in to
every brick in every prison wall. The distinctive smell of
English prisons, if they do have a predominant smell, was
the stench of stale urine and human excrement.
The practice of slopping out ended on Friday 12 April 1996
when new facilities at Leeds Prison brought an end to the
daily routine in English Prisons.214 It was not until that
recently that prisoners and prison staff were freed from this
humiliating and degrading procedure. The opening of a
newly refurbished wing at Her Majesty’s Prison Leeds
completed a seven year programme of work across the
Prison Service resulting in all prisoners ‘having access to
sanitation 24 hours a day’, was hailed with a press release
and a visit from the Prisons Minister.
During her visit to Leeds Prison on 12th April, Ann
Widdecombe, the Prisons Minister, said:
“Today the Prison Service has reached a milestone in
its history. Slopping out has been an unwelcome part
of prison life for centuries. Lord Woolf described it as
214
News Release, Friday 12.04.96 16:23 GMT Distributed by PR
Newswire on behalf of HM Prison Service

257
 a degrading process, which destroyed the morale of
prisoners and staff. He said it was uncivilised and a
symptom of an archaic prison system. These are
sentiments I endorse whole heartedly and I am glad
this unpleasant daily ceremony has been brought to an
end at last.”
Richard Tilt, Director General of the Prison Service, who
was accompanying Ann Widdecombe, added:
“The elimination of slopping out has been a difficult
challenge - it has been achieved against an increasing
prison population. Since 1991 we have provided more
than 19,000 places with sanitation, while the prison
population has risen by thirty percent to almost 54,000
prisoners. We have been able to complete this task
because of the dedication of staff throughout the prison
system, many of whom have worked through less than
ideal conditions to make today possible. We aim to
provide a decent environment for both staff and
prisoners. The ending of slopping out makes a
significant contribution in this respect.”
The installation programme began in 1989 and involved
putting sanitation in existing cells, as well as building new
accommodation with sanitation already installed. Various
types of sanitation were used, including the installation of a
toilet and washbasin in individual cells, the creation of two

258
cells out of three old cells, using the middle cell as a toilet
and washing area, and electronic unlocking allowing
prisoners to leave their cells at night under computer
controlled conditions.
This stench of raw sewage was the first thing prisoners
noticed on their arrival at a prison, and it was the last thing
they noticed when they left. It was, thought the skinny
prisoner with images of demons, foul fiends and gargoyles
so recently on his mind, the stench of Hell.

259
 NINE: FREEDOM THROUGH A WINDOW
Concepts of Freedom and Captivity.

Wormwood Scrubs is a Category B British local

prison (i.e. an establishment that receives prisoners from
the courts, either on remand or after sentencing). Located
on the south of Wormwood Scrubs in the London borough
of Hammersmith and Fulham, it was built using convict
labour in the 1880’s and currently houses 1167 prisoners in
five wings. There have been numerous fights, disturbances
and protest acts in the prison’s history. In 1979 there was a
rooftop protest over visiting rights staged by IRA prisoners.
In the rioting, 60 inmates and several prison officers were
injured. In 1982, an enquiry into the rioting blamed much
of the difficulties on failings in the prison management.
The prison governor, John McCarthy, had resigned before
the rioting, describing Wormwood Scrubs as a penal
dustbin in a letter to the London Times.
In the 1990’s, a police investigation into allegations of staff
brutality at the prison resulted in the suspension of 27
prison officers and the convictions of six for assault (three
of whom later won appeals against their convictions). The
Prison Service paid over £30 million in out-of-court

260
settlements with ex-prisoners who had alleged brutality. At
the same time, David Ramsbotham, Chief Inspector of
Prisons, delivered a damning report on the conditions and
regime in which he gave the prison 12 months to improve
or face closure.
This was the place to which the abused criminal child
David was being driven. The journey had been more than a
hundred miles in the back of a diesel van. They had
handcuffed him as though he might be violent or try to
escape. He was barely an adult, weighing-in at eight stone.
He could not yet understand what might motivate people
enough to try to escape from custody. He had thought
about it, but had realised that without an income, what
would be the point? As fugitives they, like him, would not
be able to return home, and in order to feed themselves
they, like him, would have to get provisions from
somewhere. Where? Scavenge like the romanticised
‘Tramp’ in his favourite Disney cartoon? Being wanted by
the police, what shops could they enter? How could they
get a job to earn money? They may get casual work with
an unreliable or illegal employer, living like illegal
immigrants. Who would give them a refuge? Within a
week, homeless, they would be starting to starve and
desperate for any roof, be it house or hovel, barn or indeed
stable. In a month they would be wayfarers, with a certain

261
understanding about return and restitution, but nevertheless
(or perhaps ‘therefore’) glad of a prison cell.215
It might be different for career criminals, who had a pot of
money, but not for someone like him, a lonely, sad little lad
whose parents were ashamed of him, and who would have
reported his return home to the police… As an escapee,
where would he go? What place would there be for him?
So why did the guards handcuff him in the prison van? He
was poor and vulnerable, uneducated and without hope,
lacking any power of any kind. Indeed, a Home Office
study which was to follow-up prisoners between two and
twelve months after their release was to demonstrate what
everyone in the prison system had suspected in any case
that only half (50%) of released prisoners had managed to
obtain some paid work; 2 % were on a government training
schemes, and 48 % had not been successful in finding any
work. Of those who had done some paid work, nearly two-
215
However, Ruprecht, Louis A. asserts in By the Waters of Delphi:
Durrell, Kazantzakis, Achilles’ Fiancee, and the Idea of Greece.
Soundings Journal. 83, no.2. (2000): 331-360. ‘Everywhere on the
globe it is the immigrant, the refugee, the exile who has the inside
story on the century. Ruprecht, a master comparatist, moves with
ease back and forth between ancient Greek story and the political
realities of eastern Europe today, citing numerous writings, ancient
and contemporary, which bring out the reality of change, and
evidences of healing. It’s Helen, Hecuba, Daphne, and Cassandra
who are the figures who know most about change. They tell us how
much the wayfarer herself has to internalise the changes that have
come upon her before there can be talk of restitution, restoration, or
return.’

262
thirds had found it after rather than before leaving prison.
That was a reflection on the seriously low level of
resettlement the service was providing for prisoners, so that
only 9% of prisoners managed to arrange a job whilst in
custody.216
Ex-prisoners made up 2% to 3% of the average monthly
inflow to the unemployment total.217 And yet, Home Office
research had found that employment reduces the risk of re-
offending by between a third and a half. That is, 33% to
50%!218 That is a significantly high achievement. So where
was the serious level of commitment by the Home Office to
supporting and encouraging the rehabilitation of ex-
convicts in response to this figure? A further question is,
why was there this lack of government commitment?
Studies have identified that it is not merely the fact of
having a job that was associated with reduced re-offending,
however, but the stability and quality of that employment
along with the level of satisfaction expressed toward it.219

216
Stewart, D An evaluation of basic skills training for prisoners,
Home Office Findings 260, London: Home Office Feb 2005.
217
D Fletcher, D Woodhill and A Herrington (1998) Building
Bridges into Employment and Training for Ex-offenders, London:
Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
218
F Simon and C Corbett (1996) An evaluation of prison work and
training, London: Home Office.
219
Harper, G and Chitty, C (eds) (2004) The impact of corrections
on re-offending: a review of ‘what work’, Home Office Research
Study 291,

263
It is commonly known and accepted that more than half of
all prisoners are at or below the level expected of an 11
year old in reading-ability, two-thirds in numeracy, and
four fifths in writing.220 More than half of male and more
than two thirds of female adult prisoners had no
qualifications whatsoever,221 and only one prisoner in five
was able to accomplish the simple task of filling-in an
application form for a job.222 Almost half of all male
sentenced prisoners had been previously excluded from
their schools,223 and nearly a third of all prisoners had been
regular truants whilst at school.224 As for financial
educational input, in 2002-2003 an average of £1,185 per
prisoner was spent on education in prisons. This was under
half the average cost of secondary school education at
£2,590 per student per year, which, incidentally, many of
these prisoners had missed.225 Even so, government
funding for prison education had more than doubled in five
220
Home Office (2003) Prison Statistics England and Wales 2002,
London: Stationery Office.
221
Home Office (2001) Through the Prison Gate: a joint thematic
review by HM Inspectorates of Prisons and Probation, London:
Stationery Office.
222
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.
223
Singleton et al (2000) Psychiatric Morbidity among young
offenders in England and Wales, London: Office for National
Statistics.
224
Dodd,T and Hunter P, (1991) The National Prison Survey,
London: Stationery Office.
225
Braggins, J and Talbot, J (2003) Time to Learn: Prisoners’ Views
on Prison Education, London: Prison Reform Trust.

264
years from £47.5m in 1999-2000 to £122m in 2004-2005,226
reflecting the threadbare financial commitment to educating
prisoners thirty years before, when David had been in
prison. He stood no chance, even if he had wanted
education. Only self-starting prisoners with exceptional
intellectual capacities and a determination to succeed could
have hoped to achieve anything in such a situation.
Seated against the interior of the transit van, on a
wooden bench alongside other prisoners who were being
transferred with him, David simply sat and got sick, staring
at his mirrored reflection in the blackened windows. The
shadows of ghostly houses and stores, and lampposts glided
past outside. He needed the lavatory, but there was no
provision. He had gone before they left, but his bladder
was nervous. He guessed the others were the same. He felt
sick. Having inherited a tendency to travel-sickness, his
stomach was heaving itself inside out. He was to live with
this syndrome for most of his life, discovering thirty years
later that he had been suffering not from an inner ear
problem, as he had been told, but from a curable bowel
disorder that blighted his life, recurring at least once a week
227
for over forty years. He squirmed on the floor of the
226
House of Commons Education and Skills Committee, Prison
Education, Seventh Report of Session 2004-2005.
227
David was to discover 40 years later that he had been suffering
from the symptoms of helicobacter pylori, which is a specific
bacterium causing infections of the stomach. It was part of his

265
van, sweating and retching uncontrollably. Another
prisoner, emotionally wrecked, simply cried all the way to
Wormwood Scrubs. The whole of the journey, they all
stared past one another, like British people on the subway,
ignoring one another’s presence.
The van slowed to a halt at Du Cane Road. The driver
slammed the gear lever into first and lurched through the
opened prison gates, which closed behind them with a whirr
and clatter. Then, a bang. Then, no sound at all. Thick
Portland granite and flint walls kept any sounds from the
City of London at bay. Life would go on in the capital.
The vanload of prisoners had been safely delivered to their
new dispensation of lonely and alien abandonment.
When eventually the doors of the van opened after much
scuffling and fevered movement outside in the yard, the
prisoners sat rooted to the spot. In the narrow entrance-
corridor to the main quad stood eight warders for the four
young men. They all looked like hard men, and one had a
criss-crossed scarred face. It turned out later that this
officer had been thrown from the top of the prison gantry
by a group of angry convicts. He had landed on his face in
the wire net that stretched across the prison-house arcade

dyspepsia (heartburn, bloating and nausea) and gastritis

(inflammation of the stomach), and could have led to ulcers in the
stomach and duodenum in later life. This distressing 50-year
disorder was cured by a course of tablets in 2003.

266
just above the first floor. His vengeful little pebble-eyes
stared hard at the prisoners as if to say,
‘Just do something, you toe-rags. Just do something, and
I’ll rip your guts out. Just give me one excuse.’
One of them screamed,
‘OUT!’
A long pathway stretched out before him. Halfway along
the path, it was crossed by another at right angles, forming
a cross. Superimposed on this cross there was another set
of pathways in the form of a St. Andrews cross, so that the
courtyard’s paving resembled the cross-pattern of the Union
Flag. He did not know whether this was a deliberate design
or an amazing irony.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, as recently as
2006 added further fuel to the fears that even though
Wormwood Scrubs had been ‘turned upside down’ since
allegations of violence by officers were exposed over four
years previously, the old culture of brutality could re-
emerge. In the introduction to the 213-page report she said:
The Home Secretary, two years ago, told Parliament that
Wormwood Scrubs must be restored to its proper status as
an effective and healthy prison. This report clearly shows
that this had not yet happened. On all four of our key tests
– safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement –
Wormwood Scrubs was less healthy, or at best no healthier,

267
than it had been 22 months earlier. As in 2000, our
inspectors found themselves once again being provided
with promises, plans and hopes, rather than achievements
and outcomes. David does not know to what ideal period
Anne Owers thinks the prison must be ‘restored to’. This
was the prison into whose jaws the tiny David was now to
be delivered. This was not an ideal period in his experience
of the prison. How would he fare? Would he survive?
Would he become sick and ill and die, or become mentally
sick and go mad?
What hospital facilities were provided for inmates? The
Chief Inspector’s report included criticism of the prison’s
‘health care centre’. About some of the facilities for
patients in the centre, the report said that they: were dirty
and rubbish was strewn on the floor. Mattresses were
stained and distorted by long use, the sheets and pillows
were stained and the blankets torn. Not all patients had
lockers and we were told that, if a patient broke one, it
could take up to three months for the prison to provide a
replacement. One patient had vomited on the floor and the
vomit had not been cleared up. Staff said that the patient
had refused to use a vomit bag or bowl but we saw none by
his bed for him to use if he changed his mind. Storage
cupboards in the ward servery contained several loaves of
bread past their ‘use by’ date.

268
The report continues:
The upper ward was cleaner and tidier, although again there
were problems in replacing broken furniture. We were told
that better bedding was to be provided but had been delayed
through a service-wide misunderstanding about providing
safer bedding for patients. As well as the mentally ill
patients in H3 ward, this floor contained an eight-bedded
detoxification unit, comprising two single rooms and a six-
bedded dormitory. The unit was staffed by one F grade
nurse and two E grade nurses.
It went on to criticise the health care centre’s regime by
saying that there was little for the men in the detoxification
unit to do and they spent most of the time lying on their
beds locked up. The exercise area for all in-patients was
unsatisfactory being simply an enclosed tarmac area. There
was nothing therapeutic for patients to do except walk
around and nowhere for frailer patients to sit. The
inspector said that on a visit to the health care centre of a
prison the appropriateness or otherwise of inpatient
admissions was reviewed. On this the report said:
45% of in-patients should not have been in the health care
centre. Thirty-nine percent appeared to have health care
needs best met in the National Health Service secure mental
health service. These figures are similar to those we have
found in other local prisons. The shortage of secure

269
psychiatric beds left staff at Wormwood Scrubs trying to
manage an impossible combination of patients. The same
staff had to nurse patients requiring secure psychiatric care
and those with serious physical illness, including one
patient awaiting a heart and lung transplant. Even with
separate wards, this mixture would be almost impossible to
deal with. We were assured that additional secure
psychiatric beds had been provided. From our perspective,
this had had no significant effect on the numbers of
mentally ill people inappropriately detained in prisons.228
The new batch of prisoners fell over one another in
their rush to exit from the van, and not displease their
captors. The lad who had been crying got to his feet,
wandered aimlessly from the van and wiped the snot from
his nose on his sleeve. The guard belted a mouthful of
obscenities at him. He stood with the rest of the prisoners.
Terrified out of his wits, his eyes searched the scene
nervously.
With unerring accuracy for spotting weakness, the guard
walked up to him, poked his nose into the prisoner’s face
and whispered,
‘What’s up, lad? There’s nothing to be frightened of here at
the Scrubs. We’ll tuck you up in bed every night and pat

228
http://www.prisonhealthcare.fsnet.co.uk/chiefinspector’sreport on
wormwood Scrubs.htm [Accessed 14.April 2006]

270
your little head. That’s wot we’re ‘ere for isn’t it?’ He
screamed.
‘Wot do yer think this is? A Bloody kindergarten?’
He strutted back and forth in front of the little band of
prisoners with his head thrown back. He then launched into
a secular liturgy of abuse that had clearly been perfected
and polished through many years of practice.
‘Bloody criminals. Wot’s worse, bloody amateur criminals,
that’s wot! Scum o’ the earth, that’s wot! People out
there…’ he motioned with his stick in the general direction
of the front wall, ‘…people out there, they’re dead scared
of people like you! Scared! Of you! Bloody mental, they
are…’
His ruminations on the relative levels of comparative fear
between people ‘in here’ and people ‘out there’ and on the
mental status of the general population of London Town did
not have much impact on the band of prisoners lined-up in
the corridor, although they did appear to show a level of
interest beyond what one would have thought it merited
given a different set of circumstances. This was because
they judged that it was politic to show an interest when a
prison guard was philosophising, however lacking in
insight that commentary might be. After all, you did not
want to invite persecution. His moustache twitched. The
guard continued this harangue for about five minutes. It

271
was a fine soliloquy, honed to perfection of wit, humour,
sarcasm, and with deft and extremely accurate use of
Anglo-Saxon invective. As a piece of oral tradition, it was
probably a work of art. An academic might have wanted to
record it for posterity. It had been refined and learned by
heart. In many respects, thought David, it had the
characteristics of his father’s full-flow taunts and emotional
twangs. It did not therefore affect him.
It did have an effect on the crying prisoner and on the two
hard case prisoners however. The former quailed and
sobbed even more, and the hard cases, by the pulsating of
jaw muscles, became visibly more angry and disturbed.
Either the sobber would go running to the nearest wall and
try to climb it by his fingernails, or one of the hard cases
was going to flip and attack the guard. This had been,
thought the skinny prisoner, what the little show had been
designed for. To see what was what and who was who. It
was a sort of primitive oral screening process for
identifying troublemakers.
The guard suddenly stopped ranting, and nodded to two of
the other guards, who led the group to a small outhouse of
large grey breezeblocks. The room was not unlike the
rooms at Norwich Prison, the first establishment David had
been sent to. The barred gates were similar, and the
smoothly greased locks could have been in any prison

272
anywhere in the country. There had been an odd and
worrying feeling of coming home when the front gate
slammed shut. Perhaps this was the first step in the long
process of becoming institutionalised. Prison is a very
destructive kind of environment for the individual. It is
specifically designed to destroy the person’s personality,
and debilitate him or her physically and psychologically. In
general, prisoners are faced with horrible overcrowding,
terrible unsanitary conditions, enforced idleness, and
hopelessness. This serves only to increase the stress for
prison staff, for there is a real sense in which a prisoner
without hope is a prisoner without sanity.229 As despair and
hopelessness characterized the last years of the lives of
Marx and Freud so do these same qualities characterize an
increasing number of people in our prisons today -
especially the young. Causes of despondency include: a
gap between what we think we ought to be and what we
feel we are; a feeling of worthlessness; a feeling of
hopelessness.
It is possible that the modern tendency to interest in self-
care and self-protection represents a third stage in
humanity’s experience of the self - alongside the emergence
of the individual from tribal consciousness in ancient times
and the development of the autonomous self in the
229
Nicholi, Armand Mayo. Why Can’t I Deal With Depression?
Christianity Today. 27, no.17. (1983): 38 – 41

273
Enlightenment. It was of some benefit for David to have
discovered and thought about the first stage as found in his
recent studies of the Old Testament. He found the locus of
the emergence of individual selfhood from corporate
personality especially in the lament psalms of his
namesake, King David.230 That the self emerges in
alienation and isolation in the breakdown of tribal unity, in
pain and trauma, is true. However, its goal of health and
wholeness, or shalom, is set as a return to community, now
with a balance between identification with others and
distinctness from them. This sense of both individuality
and solidarity went a long way to counter his abused
inclination to develop and sustain a kind of privatised
spirituality, cut off and schizoid, that was not only sick, but
also indistinguishable from selfishness.231
The New Testament had begun to speak to David in
each of these areas of his internal life. He had read that C.
S. Lewis embraced the Christian faith and used his gifts to
write books that had influenced people in a direction
opposite to that of Marx and Freud. He felt that had been a
230
Community Lament Psalms 12, 44, 58, 60, 74, 79, 80, 83, 85,
89, 90, 94, 123, 126, 129. Individual lament Psalms 3, 4, 5, 7, 9-
10, 13, 14, 17, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 36, 39, 40:12-17, 41, 42-43,
52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64, 70, 71, 77, 86, 89, 120, 139, 141,
142. Penitential Lament Psalms 6, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143.
Imprecatory Lament Psalms 35, 69, 83, 88, 109, 137, 140.
231
Gaiser, Frederick J. The Emergence of the Self in the OT: A
Study in Biblical Witness. Horizons in Biblical Theology. 14, no. 1.
(1992): 1-29.

274
positive thing to do. And so, ironically, the skinny prisoner
had a sudden irrational rush of euphoria that he was not
going to be so unhappy here as he had feared he would be.
No, it wasn’t going to be so bad after all. He had begun to
discover a life of the mind, or of the spirit, that was able to
engage him and bring him joy. Anyway, he thought, more
practically, it would only be for a few short weeks, and then
he’d be on his way to a nice, open borstal.
The little group were led to a long, echoing room, decorated
in the same gloss paint as the cells in his previous prison.
There were scrubbed wooden benches around the walls and
in the middle of the room three large tables painted white
gloss. The table-edges were chipped and brown and the
corners smoothed and rounded.

275
Dozens of sweating male bodies heaved together as a
writhing mass in this long room. It was an unwilling and
un-self-chosen crowd. David reflected, Why do men
-civilized men - become frenzied victims of hysteria? Why
do men surrender themselves to the passions of the mob?
Why do men seek to lose themselves in a crowd, and
suddenly all immorality becomes acceptable? Barton S.
Babbage232 explored in some detail the psychology of the
crowd, giving illustrations from the events of the
Crucifixion. His study pinpointed the difference between
crowd - mob and community, which is the fellowship of the
church. Yet in bus stations and railway waiting rooms all
over the world, people compelled by circumstance, like
these prisoners of the British penal system, to be jammed
together felt the natural urge to remain separate from one
another. They choose not to communicate, to claim and
defend ‘personal space’. It may be a primeval urge for self-
defence; a breaking away from the tribe and its shibboleths.
What other causes and situations were there in which
human identity was being submerged? Gabriel Fackre’s
study into the types of thinking that lead to the submersion

232
Babbage, Barton S, Mobs and Men. Expository Times 69. (1958):
307-308.

276
of individuality highlights two major and different
‘types’.233 First, there is the imposition of separation from
human identity - or the deprivation of it, by ‘another’ - as
here in this institution, although it can be by a group or an
individual. To the politician, for example, one is not an
individual but as potential vote. The agent here is the social
context in which the self finds itself. Secondly, the self is
its own worst enemy. Here we find man content, on his
own volition, to remain submerged in the crowd. Man
recovers his identity only by doing the truth. The author
sees dehumanisation as the fateful question of our time.
The church must become committed to the task of re-
humanization. In using the legitimate insights of the
secular critics, it must aid in the task of re-humanising
people and communities. This is what the Cross of Jesus
Christ is for - bringing failing persons and groups together
on common ground. For David, in a long process of
becoming stripped of his individuality under the threat of
dehumanisation by others, and by himself of his own
volition out of a feeling of guilt and worthlessness, the
Christian critique must consider and answer both these

233
Fackre, Gabriel. Claiming Jesus as Saviour in a Religiously
Plural World. Journal for Christian Theological Research. 8.
(2003): [electronic]. Gabriel Fackre is professor of theology at
Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre,
Massachusetts. He is author of The Christian Story.

277
‘other-caused’ and the ‘self-caused’ dehumanisation
processes. Not only that, but replace them with self worth
internally and respect externally.
The impersonality of the prison reception process
demonstrates anxiety arising out of the lack of mutually
agreed and understood power structures within the specific
situation. Neither warders nor prisoners know who is who,
or what roles are expected. This is why people prefer to
stand on an open platform in the biting wind and snow than
sit with others in a warm railway waiting room. They are
more comfortable that way. Talking to a stranger on the
London Tube, though not a crime, would open the
perpetrator to a suspicion of at least a lack of social skills if
not of absolute madness.
Thirty years after this experience, Dave was to undertake
social worker training. It perhaps needs saying here in
order to establish his credibility and right to speak on the
subject, that he always gained top marks in his essay
assignments. In this course of training and study, he was to
learn the codes of ethics of the National Association of
Social Workers, and of the BASW, and even come to adopt
their codes of ethics for a period of about ten years whilst
practising in a social worker context. BASW’s symbol or

278
logo234 is accompanied on the website by the following
legend,
This is our symbol - a symbol of protection and care for
235
those in need, assistance to those who, by fate’s will,
are in trouble and have no adequate experience or
knowledge. The members of the Association also joined
their efforts to work for the public good. We seek
opportunities to fulfil our ideas, we implement projects
both to support professional groups of social workers
and to protect socially disadvantaged groups of people.
Some of the key principles of these codes of ethics
were Rogerian, being uncompromisingly and
evangelistically humanistic. They included,
1. Respect for, and promotion of individuals’ rights to
self-determination,
2. The promotion of welfare or wellbeing,
3. Equality, and
4. Distributive justice.236

234
British Association of Social Workers. BASW’s emblem is an
image of a winged anthropomorphous figure enclosed in a circle.
Either a bird or a girl… She seems to be trying to shield by her
wings everyone who needs help.
235
An example here of inconsistency in the secular argument, since
if ‘fate’ has a ‘will’, then is it not a ‘person’ and not simply, as the
secular humanist would have it, something impersonal?
236
Banks, Sarah. Ethics and Values In Social Work. 2nd Edition.
BASW. Practical Social Work. Series Editor Jo Campling. 2001. 37.

279
 The basic and primary mission of the social work
profession was and continues to be stated237 as being
‘…the enhancement of human wellbeing and assistance
in meeting the basic human needs of all people, with
particular attention to the needs and empowerment of
people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in
poverty…’
An historic and defining feature of social work, it is here
claimed, has been the profession’s …focus upon individual
wellbeing in a social context and the wellbeing of society.238
Fundamental to social work had been attention to the
environmental forces that create, contribute to, and address
problems in living.239 Social workers’ spokespeople assert
that,240 Social workers promote social justice and social
change with and on behalf of clients. The designation,
‘Clients’ is used inclusively to refer to individuals, families,
groups, organizations, and communities. Social workers
are sensitive to cultural and ethnic diversity and strive to
end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of
social injustice. These activities may be in the form of
direct practice, community organizing, supervision,
consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political
action, policy development and implementation, education,
237
http://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp.
[Accessed 17.04.2006].
238
op cit.
239
op cit.
240
op cit.

280
and research and evaluation. Social workers seek to
enhance the capacity of people to address their own needs.
They also seek to promote the responsiveness of
organizations, communities, and other social institutions to
individuals’ needs and social problems. The mission of the
social work profession was rooted, it is claimed, in a set of
‘core values.’ These values, embraced by social workers
throughout the profession’s history, are the foundation of
social work’s unique purpose and perspective.241 They are,
 Service
 Social justice
 Dignity and worth of the person
 Importance of human relationships
 Integrity
 Competence.
The author of ‘Ethics and Values in Social Work’
believes that this constellation of core values reflects what
is unique to the social work profession. Core values and
the principles that flow from them, she states, are to be
balanced within the context and complexity of the human
experience.
David’s experience, written at the time and recorded here is
an example of the real complexity of the human
experience.

241
op cit.

281
 There was no opportunity for social niceties in this
sweaty waiting room. Fifty men and boys facing years of
incarceration and humiliation were crammed around the
benches and around the tables. None of them knew any
of the other people there. All were strangers to one
another, some wearing the distinctive navy blue and grey
of prison uniform and others in civilian clothes. The
room was gagging with a thick pall of cigarette smoke –
the thick creamy smell of Black Shag mixing with the
sickening tar of tailor-made cigarettes. Men and boys
sat, stood, or lounged against the walls and propped
themselves in corners. There were all kinds of people.
The hard cases, violent and lacking any empathy,
smouldering with frustration; then there was a sobber,
quietly crying and bemoaning his fate in a corner of the
room; a probably psychotic (schizophrenic?) prisoner,
who ought to be getting some proper health care in
hospital for his condition and not in prison getting
punishment; a spiv –who would sell his grandmother for
a cigarette…
Particular though his experience was, and therefore not
legitimately to be generalised, nevertheless it is worth
stating that no social worker helped him then. On the
contrary, his experience was that no official had any will to
save him from his situation, but only to place him within it
and keep him there.
Another, general and complementary fact is, that the
number of people found guilty by the courts has remained

282
largely constant over many years: it was 1,736,628 in 1993
and 1,816,676 in 2004. The number given custody at
magistrates’ court during that time rose from 25,016 to
61,384. The number awarded custodial sentences at the
Crown Court rose from 33,722 to 44,938.242 The number of
people sentenced for violence against the person was
38,923 in 1993 and 39,257 in 2003. The number of those
awarded custodial sentences increased from 7,516 to
12,247.243 In fact, the average length of a custodial
sentence from a crown court rose from 20 months in 1993
to 27 months in 2004. Custody rate at crown court has
risen from 49% in 1993 to 61% in 2004.244 Use of prison in
magistrates’ court rose from 6 % in 1993 to 16 % in 2004,
meanwhile the use of the fine has shrunk from 46 % to
30%. In 2004, 9% of shoplifters with no previous
convictions were sent to prison from magistrates’ courts,
against 2% in 1993.245 The government’s five-year strategy
to reduce re-offending stated: Until recently, collection
rates for fines were poor. In 2001-02, payment rates were
only 59%. This meant that judges and magistrates lost
confidence in fines, and gave more community sentences
242
Home Office (2005). Sentencing Statistics 20034 London: Home
Office
243
ibid
244
Sentencing Guidelines Council and Sentencing Advisory Panel
‘The sentence: sentencing trends at national and local level’,
January 2006.
245
ibid

283
instead. Collection rates are now far better – up to 81% –
so we expect sentencers’ use of them to rise again too.246
The number of life sentence prisoners has increased
considerably in recent years. There were 6,431 people
serving life sentences at the end of December 2005, a rise
of 12% on the year before.247 This compares with fewer
than 4,000 in 1998 and 3,000 in 1992.248 The number
sentenced to life imprisonment each year has more than
doubled over the past ten years from 252 in 1994 to 570 in
2004.249 England and Wales has the highest number of life
sentenced prisoners in Europe. It has more than Germany,
France, Italy and Turkey combined.250 People serving
mandatory life sentences accounted for 59% of all life
sentence prisoners received into prison in 2004. Men
serving determinate sentences of four years or more
account for 40% of the total increase in the prison
population between 1993 and 2003. Men serving

246
Home Office (2006),A Five Year Plan for Protecting the Public
and Reducing Re-offending, Cm 6717
247
Home Office (2005) Population in Custody, December 2005,
London: Home Office.
248
Home Office (2003) Prison Statistics England and Wales 2002,
London: Stationery Office.
249
Home Office (2005). Sentencing Statistics 2004, London: Home
Office
250
Aebi, M (2003) Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics,
Survey 2003.

284
between251 one and four years account for 27% of the
increase. Men on shorter sentences accounted for 9%.252
Those serving sentences of six months or less make up over
half of the 93,326 people received into prison under
sentence in 2004.253 Theft and handling of stolen goods
accounted for the largest number of immediate custodial
receptions at over one-fifth.254 Does this call for more
social workers, or rather for greater political will? David
knew what he thought.

Doubtless, between this many reception prisoners

there would be drug dealers. At that time convict drug
users were paying over a hundred pounds sterling for a
‘Joey’ (whatever amount that happened to be). Some
imprisoned users, many of whom were probably addicts
needed up to ten or twelve of these a day. Along with
cocaine sales, imagine the amount of money sloshing
around in English prisons, and what power these
traffickers had in their enclosed world of corruption and
violence. Is there any reason to believe that anything
except the price has changed to this day? It was not a
pretty world, and it must be stretching credibility to

251
ibid
252
ibid
253
ibid
254
ibid

285
 breaking point to imagine that it was only prisoners who
were involved in the trade.
Around the room were the intelligent men who
would plough their particular furrow through the
prison’s social life. There were predatory sexual abusers
who would harry the younger prisoners for sexual
exploitation, as well as ordinary homosexuals, who were
condemned as criminals because of their sexual
orientation, and for which some were actually in prison.
There was no doubt a smattering of child abusers, or
‘sex criminals’ whose identity no one yet knew, but when
they did, all kinds of frightening violence would be
unleashed against them by the cons, occasionally at the
instigation of the guards themselves.
Among all of these people, the vast majority were
youngsters who had volatile or disordered personalities,
and who were in this situation mainly as a result of being
homeless or outcast from the family. This is not to say
that they were not dangerous, or that some of them had
not committed the most horrific of crimes, whose
incarceration had made life bearable for many people on
the outside, not least for their families.255

The skinny prisoner found a bit of vacant bench and sat

down. The wait lengthened eventually to seven hours. It
seemed like an eternity. It was dark outside when the

255
Jesus In Prison. Ibid

286
prison guard eventually came in and started calling out
names from a list. One by one the names were called and
small groups of men huddled quietly out of the room.
Eventually, when the room was almost empty, the skinny
prisoner’s name was called. He lined up with some other
lads and followed the guard into a huge courtyard.
An old oak tree raised its uppermost twigs above the prison
wall, proclaiming freedom! In the still air, the tree stood as
a silent sentry against the grey sky. An aeroplane sputtered
overhead on its way to or from Heathrow, little red and
green lights flashing in the darkening air. The sound of the
engines disappeared, and another began to sound in the
distance. It was a busy airport, whose sounds would
provide the audio background for the whole of his time
spent at Wormwood Scrubs. The group walked two abreast
across the courtyard. A black and grey wall loomed ahead.
At regular intervals along the wall were small black
cavities. They formed four rows from one end of the
eighty-foot high wall to the other. These were cell
windows. Someone banged his chamber pot against the
bars and shouted. His voice carried across the yard and
hung in the still evening air. Another aeroplane circled
overhead, mocking his captivity.

287
As they approached the wall, the individual cell windows
could be seen clearly. There were pallid faces at some of
them. He imagined their suffering. They were right in
front of him now. It raised a tear to his eye. He thought
that this was maybe self-pity as well as empathetic
compassion. There were occasional moans and shouts from
the cell windows that could only be heard from up close.
Chamber pots banged against steel window-bars. He
sensed a deep, almost tangible helpless powerlessness
against the unhearing darkness – a kind of despair and
hopelessness. Wormwood! He had read in the
philosophers about the ‘ghost in the machine’.256 This was
a philosophical and theological reflection upon the nature
of human beings and the world, and the kind of thing that
engaged David’s mind. He had been fascinated to read
about how, for example, the Christian doctrine of the
resurrection - central to the Christian message - had been
influenced by Greek and later idealistic thought until
resurrection had been overshadowed by a concept of
‘immortality of the soul’, and how the modern empiricist
doubted any survival even of the mind. He was fascinated
to learn that disconcerting as the empirical approach may
have been to some Christians, there were Christian
256
Gundry, D. W. The Ghost in the Machine and in the Body of the
Resurrection. Scottish Journal of Theology. 18. (1965): 164 – 169.

288
theologians and philosophers who believed that it might
have served to root out the idealism, which had found its
way into Christianity and may well have been presenting an
even greater threat.
However theologians may have been thinking about ghosts
and machinery, here was a living example of flesh bodies in
cages of steel, nuts and bolts. Predating Star Trek, here was
a vision of a Borg nursery. The primary order of this
situation was neither theological nor philosophical. It was
physical. Aeroplanes overhead provided continually
taunting reminders to the prisoner in his cell of speeding
commuter trains taking men and women to their warm
homes, warm climes, warm children, and warm partners.
The pity of it all. Where was God in all of this? He was
absent. There was no god!
In his long walk across the quad of the London prison, the
sound of the guard’s keys jangling in his ear, he recalled the
words of a book, written by a devil, with advice to one of
his apprentices on how to steal a person’s soul. It read…
One must face the fact that all the talk about His love
for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as
one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an
appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe
with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself —
creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be
qualitatively like his own, not because He has absorbed

289
 them but because their wills freely conform to his. ... He
cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them
to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand;
and if only the will to walk is there He is pleased even
with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, dear
Wormwood. (!) Our cause is never more in danger than
when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to
do the Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from
which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and
asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.257

He didn’t know what he was doing, allowing these thoughts

and feelings to assault his spirits. Maybe it had been the
short spell of freedom he’d had the previous day. Maybe it
was the sudden reminder of the reality of his imprisonment,
the reminder of its endlessness, its forsakenness – he had
been given an open-ended term of imprisonment, so did not
have a date to look forward to. Why was he weeping as he
walked across the courtyard? For them? For himself? For
something else? Pity? Tragedy? Humanity? Why? Was
God preparing him for something, or was there no God?258
He had read that feeling close to God was important
for Christians, so it was important to follow one’s feelings
257
From the Eighth Letter of Screwtape. C. S. Lewis The Screwtape
Letters Fontana 1956 4th imp.
258
Gordon, Wayne. A Driven Pastor’s Pursuit of God. Leadership
Journal. 15, no.4. (1994): 65-69.

290
to foster intimacy. Happiness flows out of knowing God
and being the person He wants one to be. He had heard that
Bible reading and prayer could not bring intimacy with God
unless they were accompanied by obedience. Journaling –
which he practised whenever possible – was a help.
Christians in prison needed to realize their practice of
spiritual disciplines would be different than the practice of
their free brothers and sisters.
Was he a Christian yet? God knows he did not know. The
whole business was just sad. He was lonely, abandoned,
and vulnerable. What he did know was that whether or not
there was a God, he was determined to seek Him. There
was no alternative.
The five-barred gate swung open.
‘Fifteen.’
‘Troublemakers?’
‘Nope.’
‘Right. Get ‘em banged up.’
It was good to be back in the safety of a single cell again.
Good to be alone, to have a bit of a cry; to read something
and have a sleep. It had been a heavy day.
The friendly cell door creaked and he went in. It smelled of
the same stale faeces and urine as every other cell. There
was the same colour scheme, only a bit more faded and
dirty. Three of the small windows had been smashed and

291
the glass eye in the door had been poked through, so that
there was a keen draught entering the room. The ceiling
was thick with yellow dust and cigarette smoke and the
floor cried out for scrubbing.
He thanked the guard, who left the door open and went
away. It was cocoa time. He went to the door and peeked
out. A guard shouted from the other end of the gantry ‘Get
your effing head in!’ and he pulled his head back in to the
cell.
A train of Trustee convicts with red bands round their left
arms arrived with a bucket of cocoa. They filled his mug
and handed him a very hard waxen bun. He banged his
own door shut, and began to think about his departure for
borstal. A few weeks and he would be leaving the confines
of the Scrubs and headed for the green fields of an open
borstal, working on the land in the good fresh air.
Suddenly his attention was riveted by the voice of a woman
lifting into the still air. He was sure it was a woman, and a
young woman. He listened. His heart began to speed. He
did not reflect on why this was, but perhaps it was because
this was the last thing you would expect in a male prison
late at night. The sound recurred. It was from outside.
He climbed onto his chair and strained at the high window.
There in the street, under a burning street lamp was a
courting couple. They were on the scrubland of

292
Wormwood Common, under a street lamp, kissing in the
dusk of evening. She laughed privately and intimately, for
her friend’s joke. It was like the descant of a blackbird
shocking the stillness of the night momentarily. It was a
very strange experience. There were ordinary free people
walking down the street as though there were no prison
towering above them. Across the field, the hospital and
tennis courts. He had a strange feeling that he did not exist.
This is how it must be when you are dead…
He stayed there, propped against the window for a very
long time, pretending that he was part of what was
happening before his eyes and not shut away in a cell. He
just watched people going by. He began to form a poem
about Tutankhamen, which was rumination by the dead
royal youth, looking out on the material world from his
powerless ghostly situation. David had spent much of his
time at Norwich Prison reading voraciously, especially the
histories and tragedies of Shakespeare, and in memorising
the soliloquies of the leading characters, such as John of
Gaunt, Brutus, Richard III and Hamlet. Writing holds an
unusually prominent place in the plot and themes of
Hamlet.259 Like David, the prince composes a love letter
and poem for his loved one (Ophelia); he revises a play for
the actors; like King David, (whose Lament Psalms the
259
Huelin, Scott. Reading, Writing, and Memory in Hamlet.
Journal of Religion and Literature. 37, no.1. (2005): 25-44.

293
skinny prisoner had been reading), he composes a message
that will lead to the deaths of his enemies (Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern); and there is an enigmatic written
announcement of his surprising return to Denmark,
reminiscent of David’s scrawl about the quality of mercy on
the holding cell at the quarter sessions months before.
Somewhat more mysterious was the way Hamlet erased the
‘book and volume’ of his memory in order to make room
for the Ghost’s command of vengeance in a similar way
that David had resolved to clear his memory of all things
that might enter in and hurt him. As a consequence, when
the ghost ‘appears’ for the second time, the audience is even
less sure about the truth: is this really Hamlet’s father, or
merely a hallucination of Hamlet’s fevered imagination? If
David were ever to become a Christian, would it be real or
an illusion, truth or falsity?
His poem about the ghostly king was not an exercise
in empathy towards a deceased monarch, but more an
active participation in his own urgent religious
engagement.260 Indeed, issues current at that time in the
study of Buddhism for example provide insight into the
question of how religion ought to be studied, particularly
whether or not the study of religion should itself contain

260
Eckel, Malcolm David. The Ghost at the Table: On the Study of
Buddhism and the Study of Religion. Journal of The American
Academy of Religion. 62, no.4. (1994): 1085-1110

294
religious elements. Questions regarding the essential nature
of Buddhism have provoked active, religious participation
to fight the essentialism created in the atmosphere of 19th
century liberal Protestantism. It was time to acknowledge
that the participation of the religious scholar in the religion
studied is part of the reason for academic interest in the
study of religion in the first place and should not be
avoided. This religious activity and the ruminatory poem
were, of course, about himself. Were they not, though, also
about God, or at least about theology?
It had been both a sad and joyful experience. When he
finally got down from the window he ached all over. He
had experienced freedom through a window, and had
become for a time a ghost, and there was still the bed to
make.

295
296
 TEN: ASSAULT OF FREEDOM
Implications for eschatology and the Kingdom.

Daniel Migliore was to observe that political

theologians, notably Moltmann, were trying to show that
the gospel for the present time must incite people to
question and creatively oppose given realities.
Hermeneutics, like Biblical apocalypticism, deals with
theodicy, seeking a basis for true personal identity in a just
and liberated world. Pre-Constantinian Christianity, the
early papacy, the Reformation, the American and Marxist
revolutions represent successive syntheses of a dialectic
process, which is tending toward the coming Kingdom of
God and freedom.261 Judgment of the given reality must
begin with the church and move through remaining
institutions. At this time both pre-Christian and Pre-
Liberationist, David was beginning to confront his own
dialectic in a search for the Kingdom of God that would
261
Migliore, Daniel L. Biblical Eschatology and Political
Hermeneutics. Theology Today. 26, no.2. (1969): 116 – 132.

297
reveal an explanation and demonstration of divine justice
that would make his suffering worthwhile and credible.
Prison suffering is multi-layered. It is physical, psychic,
and spiritual.262 Note that there are differences in the
meaning and use of the terms ‘psyche, soul, and spirit.’
These differences have large implications for mental-health
professionals and their clients as well as for theologians.
For instance, problems of the soul cannot be reduced to
symptoms of psychological ill health. Along with pursuing
psychological health, one can use religious and spiritual
resources in the writings of and about saints and heroes to
do the work of spiritual growth. This pilgrimage of pain is
internal and external. It is in one sense simple: the
deprivation of liberty. He was to discover that healing of
soul and body263 would come only by crossing several
bridges - between male and female, the inhabited world and
paradise, heaven and earth, realms of the senses and the
spiritual, and between the created order and the Creator. It
is a complex journey - an injury of the soul (nephesh)264 and
psyche265 caused by being deprived of human company at
262
Berghash, Rachel. Katherine Jillson. “Thoughts on Psyche,
Soul, and Spirit.” Journal of Religion and Health. 37, no.4.
(1998): 313-322.
263
Eckley, Vasiliki. “Psyche and Body - Person and World.” Journal of
Religious Education. 85, no. 3. (1990): 356-367.
264
Snaith Norman. “Justice and Immortality.” Scottish Journal of
Theology. 17 (1964): 309 – 324.
265
See Underwood, Ralph L. “Soul and Psyche: A Critical
Assessment.” Journal of Pastoral Psychology 51, no. 2. (2002):

298
that time in adolescence when there are normally
attachment and grief difficulties in any case, for weeks and
months on end did not show itself. A tortured mind is less
obvious than a tortured body.
Out of an early cult of the dead in old Israel had grown a
belief in immortality, which developed, not on the basis of a
Platonic immortal soul, but on the basis of individual
justice. This development can be seen in Job 14:12 - 15
and 19:25, Isaiah 26:19, and Daniel 12:2. There are no
other references to life after death in the OT, but references
in the apocryphal literature and in the NT can be found. In
Paul’s writings however there is a radical change of
emphasis: on the basis of justice, no human person deserves
immortality; it is received only by God’s grace. Because of
this and in light of the meaning of nephesh and psyche,
David was to learn in due time that he should be speaking
of grace and resurrection rather than of justice and
immortality. Crying out for companionship is a sad and
lonely, futile occupation. Screaming in agony over a newly
acquired cut or burn is sad, but normal. The issue is one of
sympathy. A wounded spirit draws no empathy, and
135-149.
Rollins has three goals for this volume: to provide a history of the
discipline he calls psychological biblical criticism, to define this
academic field, and to propose an agenda for this field as applied to
biblical exegesis and hermeneutics. Rollins hopes for a
rapprochement between the historical and psychological approaches
to biblical studies

299
demands a lot of committed caring from any would-be
healer. As was appreciated by Susanne Dress, Dietrich
Bonhoeffer’s younger sister, precious things are learned
from a wounding of the spirit, although much of the time
these things are transitory and of their time. Though not a
student of theology, Susanne attempts to speak to some of
the themes of her brother’s theology. Her interpretation is
based on conversations with him concerning his thought
and writings. She asserts that Bonhoeffer’s concepts of the
church, man, God and Christ must be viewed within the
historical context of their formulation, and that this was
especially true for those themes which emerged during his
imprisonment and which have been made available to us in
the Letters and Papers From Prison.266
In his self-conscious search for immortality, David had
started to experience himself as both a body and a spirit.
His pain was both physical and spiritual, and his captivity
was both. If there were a cure, it would have to address all
parts of his being. He was not alone. Newton Malony’s
research paper267 was soon to consider the implications of
‘nonreductive physicalism’ for counselling. This provides a

266
Dress, Susanne. Remarks on the Theology of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer. Union Seminary Quarterly Review. 25, no.2. (1970):
131 – 149.
267
Malony, H. Newton. Counseling Body/Soul Persons.
International Journal for Psychology of Religion. 8, no.4. (1998):
221-242.

300
useful discussion of the secular and religious meanings of
soul in contemporary culture, and several critiques of the
assertion that human nature should be understood from a
unified, monistic, psychosomatic point of view. It proposes
definitions for spiritual capacity, religion, and faith, and
suggests a model for embodied spiritual counselling that
includes a place for soul. Nonreductive physicalism need
not polarize counsellors into those who contend, on the one
hand, that only physical remedies or medication will help
troubled people and those, on the other hand, who contend
that appeal to a spiritual substance called soul is needed. It
maintains that people are souls, not that they merely
possess a soul. Within this unity, however, are a variety of
identifiable and experientially separate aspects. The human
spirit - and the Holy Spirit in the believer - utilizes the
physical brain to express itself; the brain relies on the
human/Holy Spirit for life. The phrase ‘everlasting life’,
found in extra-biblical Greek literature, does not refer to
‘unending existence after the resurrection’, but to ‘an
endless quality of life.’ It refers to fullness of life, e.g., joy
and peace. The same phrase in the rabbinic literature refers
to an ‘endless quality of life’, which ‘the righteous’ receive
now, as well as in the hereafter. Thus, the Hebraic sense,
according to F.F. Bruce, referred to ‘the life of the age to
come or the resurrection life’ being the present possession

301
of believers. Christian theologians assert that at the
moment of conversion, new Christians268 receive
everlasting life as a present possession, understood as
referring not to an eternal duration or quantity of life but to
experiencing an endless and abundant quality of life. It was
a rabbinic tradition to speak of the wicked as ‘dead’ while
they were still existing in this world, and to speak of ‘the
righteous’ (believers) as possessing ‘life’ from God. In the
New Testament, Jesus and the apostles continued this
rabbinic tradition by describing unbelievers as ‘dead’ and
believers as receiving ‘life’ at the moment of regeneration.
‘Life’ does not refer to ‘existence’ any more than ‘death’
refers to ‘non-existence.’ In terms of having the quality of
‘eternal life’, the unredeemed are ‘dead’ while they yet
exist unredeemed in this world.
It is a useful strategy, and probably necessary for sane
survival, David thought, that to some extent the human
personality adjusts itself to soul wounding. After a few
weeks in prison, suffering these shocks to the soul, a person
usually becomes accustomed and is able to make some
saving adjustment. A resigned attitude helped him to
mitigate the pain. Others repressed the issue, and others
had other responses. However, there were those who would
268
Believers do not ‘begin to exist’ when they are regenerated. The
life that they receive at conversion is described in Christian
theology as being ‘eternal.’

302
never get used to it, and who were destined never to heal.
The figures are clear. Much of these refer to those who end
up in a spiral of despair, finding it impossible to find
strategies for survival of soul wounding following
incarceration. These are the prison suicides. Note that
although the highest numbers of suicides occur
proportionally at the start of the sentence, there remain a
significant number who kill themselves after their
incarceration.
It is worth repeating at this point in the narrative that
the suicide rate for men in prison is five times that for men
in the community. Boys aged 15-17 are 18 times more
likely to kill themselves in prison than they are in the
community.269 In 2005, there were 78 self-inflicted deaths
in England and Wales, (which was a significant fall from 95
deaths in 2004).270 On the other hand, there were 16 self-
inflicted deaths during June 2005, the highest number of
any calendar month on record.271 Of that 78 deaths in 2005,
three were women over 21. This was down from 12 in
2004. Ten women aged 18-21 and two juveniles, aged 15-
17 took their own lives.

269
Seena Fazel et al. Suicides in male prisoners in England and
Wales, 1978-2003. The Lancet, 366, (2005).
270
Information supplied by Safer Custody Group in NOMS.
271
NOMS, Performance Report on Offender Management Targets,
April – June 2005

303
Although self-killing does occur after release, it is most
significant in the present context of this text to note that
almost one third of suicides occur within the first week of
someone arriving in custody and one in seven occur within
two days of admission.272
Nearly two-thirds of those who commit suicide in prison
have a history of drug misuse and nearly a third have a
history of alcohol misuse,273 and one study found that 72%
of those who commit suicide in prison had a history of
mental disorder. 57% had symptoms suggestive of mental
disorder at their reception into the prison system.274
More than half of suicide is in male local prisons and one in
five suicides are in prison healthcare or segregation units,275
and 75% of suicides in prisons between 2000 and 2004 took
place in prisons that were overcrowded in that month.276 In
terms of understanding the effects of stress on prison staff,
in 2005 115 people were successfully resuscitated by staff
following ‘serious self harm’ incidents.277 It is not clear
272
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Deaths in Custody, Third
Report of Session 2004-2005.
273
Ibid.
274
Shaw J. Appleby L and Baker D. Safer Prisons, A National Study
of Prison Suicides 1999-2000 by the National Confidential Inquiry
into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness. London:
H.M.Stationery Office. (2003)
275
Joint Committee on Human Rights, Deaths in Custody, Third
Report of Session 2004-2005.
276
House of Commons, Hansard 7 November 2005
277
NOMS (January/ February 2005) Safer Custody News, London:
Prison Service.

304
here whether the term, ‘self harm’ is used as a medical term
by practitioners or a value-judgment by lay staff. What is
the likelihood of prisoners attempting to kill themselves?
An indication is given in that in all, 20% of men and almost
40% of women entering custody said that they had
previously attempted to commit suicide. It is also
demonstrated according to the Government’s Social
Exclusion Unit, that more than 50 prisoners commit suicide
shortly after release each year.278 A Home Office study has
found that the risk of death for men released from prison is
forty times higher in the first week of release than for the
general population. This is ascribed largely to drug-related
deaths, and one wonders to what extent this is an objective
insight or a blame judgment, and whether (as at the start of
a sentence) some is due to issues of emotional and
psychological attachment and the revolutionary element of
279
sudden change. A study by Pehr Granqvist looks at
sudden change, and observes that the ‘classic’ conversion
paradigm portrays it as occurring during distress, as sudden
and intense, and as highly self-transforming. According to
William James, these are the conversions of the ‘sick soul’.

278
Social Exclusion Unit (2002) Reducing re-offending by ex-
prisoners, London: Social Exclusion Unit.
279
Granqvist, Pehr. Attachment Theory and Religious Conversions:
A Review and a Resolution of the Classic and Contemporary
Paradigm Chasm. Review of Religious Research. 45, no.2. (2003):
172-187.

305
The contemporary paradigm describes conversions as being
more gradual, and less transforming of the self. In James’
terminology, these are the conversions of the ‘healthy
minded’. Granqvist’s interesting study bridges the chasm
between these paradigms by drawing on findings from
studies of individual differences in attachment security in
relation to religious change. The conversion characteristics
of the ‘sick soul’, described by the classic paradigm, are
true specifically for people with insecure attachment
characteristics, and those of the healthy minded, described
by the contemporary paradigm, are true of people with
more secure attachment characteristics. Issues for future
studies to consider are suggested, particularly the need for
real-time prospective longitudinal studies examining the
long-term psychological implications of religious
conversion. A result of such a study might offer ways of
addressing the ‘sudden change’ self-killings and related
deaths, and offer a corrective to what may currently be a
blame/rationalization culture.
The figures are high in any terms. In British prisons, 342
deaths were recorded among men in the year after release
from prison whereas, in a sample matched for age and
gender in the general population, only 46 deaths would be
expected.280
280
Drug-related mortality among newly released offenders 1998 to
2000, Home Office online report 40/05.

306
The number of suicides (self-inflicted deaths) in Prison
Service establishments between 1997- 2005;

Year. Number. Rates of suicide per 1000

1997 65 111
1998 76 127
1999 89 140
2000 80 124
2001 73 110
2002 95 130
2003 94 126
2004 95 127
2005 78
Total 748
Table 1 Number of suicides (self-inflicted deaths) in Prison Service
establishments between 1997 – 2005.

For the skinny prisoner, it took seven weeks before he

found that resignation was the better – or less painful – way
of dealing with his attachment issues. A prison, he felt, was
no place to start trying to change the world. He did not
know that someone called Nelson Mandela had already
started a 27-year imprisonment on Robben Island, and was
to emerge whole and healthy, having in fact changed the
worlds of many…
One mark of a mature convict was thought among
prisoners to be that he could approach his sentence with
cool resolution and complete his term without disturbing
the calm of his surface. He could do his time without too
many shocks. He could settle down and cruise through as
many years as was necessary. He came into prison, got

307
friendly with the guards, and developed mutually
supportive relationships with key convicts and trustees.
Before long, he obtained a safe and comfortable job in the
laundry, library or administration department. This way,
before he had time to reflect on the tragedy of his situation,
he found himself at the end of his sentence and due for
release within a few months time. For this prisoner, a year,
or two years, equated with ‘not long now before my
release’, whereas for a young prisoner, the same two years
was a lifetime. This was one reason why the young
prisoner suffered so much. Time was relative - it was true
that the older a person was, the faster time seemed to pass,
and that the further along a person was in the race of life,
the fewer hurdles there were to leap.
It’s easy for the mature convict, David reflected. However,
in the process of wasting his life he is not learning anything
or developing in any way. He has closed his mind and
become insensitive. He’ll never reform. On the other
hand, who would not take the easy way out if they knew of
one? Who would choose to suffer torture if he could find a
way to avoid it? Living and surviving is always costly.
Either you choose to suffer the pain and develop it into
something worthwhile, or you choose to kill yourself, or to
lie dormant and wake unchanged.

308
 Living in a cell thus became less difficult for the
skinny prisoner. Sometimes he would open his mind and
suffer, and other times he would close his spirit down and
let the time fly by. He was aware, however, that it was
during those times of painful openness that he learned the
most, and that his spirit grew. It was then that he
discovered the most precious things about himself and the
world around him. However, it was painful and he didn’t
do it often.
Sometimes there would be work to do. Making B.O.A.C.
travelling bags and little dolls for a local retailer passed the
time and engaged some motor skills. Now and again one of
the prisoners’ bells would ring and the guard could be heard
unlocking the cell to see what the problem was. Usually it
was someone wanting to use the lavatory, and other times it
was just a need for human company - a few words from
another person, just to touch base with humanity - just for
the sake of it. Very little ever happened. There were no
riots and few fights. Someone would sing Danny Boy or
Green Grass of Home. The stacked aircraft circled
overhead every three minutes preparing to land, and the
occasional jingle of keys could be heard along the gantry.
Unpredictably, a team of bored guards ordering the men to
undergo a medical inspection – for which they would have
to be marched to the Medical Block, would open the cell

309
door. Other times the cells would be opened singly, one-
by-one for a cell search. The former involved a perfunctory
trousers-down and cough and back to the cell, and the latter
a thorougoing disruption of the whole of the contents of the
cell. Clothing, personal effects, toiletries, bedding and
everything else that was moveable, got thrown out and
tossed around – in the case of the skinny prisoner – in a
vain attempt to find illicit drugs, money, tobacco, alcohol,
weapons or anything else that ought not to be there. David
the prisoner never had anything illegal. He was barely a
child, and spent the three years of his incarceration in a
state of constant terror, always fearing that the worst might
happen, and often finding that it did. He would not step
over anyone’s lines. He lacked the courage, and despised
himself to the degree that he counted himself worthy of no
favours or privileges.
Stephen Winter investigated the claim that the 1999 report
of the government’s Social Exclusion Unit was to announce
that it had met its remit to report to the Prime Minister on
how to: …develop integrated and sustainable approaches to
the problems of the worst housing estates, including crime,
drugs, unemployment, community breakdown, and bad
schools, etc.281 The Social Exclusion Unit was instructed to
take ‘a problem-solving approach’: the development of an
281
Winter, Stephen. Tackling Social Exclusion. Journal of
Psychology and Theology. 4. (2001): 65-73.

310
inclusive society would be understood implicitly in terms of
‘dealing with those areas that are perceived as problems’.
This seemed to Winter to suggest that social exclusion ‘just
happens’ to people who ‘suffer from’ a collection of
problems. The agent or agents of this exclusion, he
observes, are rendered invisible by the very linguistic
structure of the definition. It was vital, he observed, to
envisage the agents and victims of exclusion and to
describe it in terms of the ‘relationship of face to face’. A
critique drawing upon the insights of Emmanuel Levinas
would refuse to allow one to reduce the otherness of the
socially excluded to a project defined in the terms of those
who exercise power in social relations. A theological
critique might lead one to argue that the whole project of
problem solving when applied to persons is in and of itself
highly suspect. His study considers what shape might
develop from the bringing of insights from philosophical
and theological discourses to this perception of social
exclusion and argues for a radical passivity before the face
of the ‘Other’ (that is in this case those who live in urban
housing estates) arguing that those who engage with social
exclusion, the ‘name’ that has been given to this face, are
first summoned by the Other to a relationship of total
responsibility which rejects the reductionist project of the
controlling ‘I’.

311
 Despite what enlightened theological and
philosophical reflection might say about him, he
nevertheless felt that he was the scum of the earth. The
long-impressed message had gotten through many years
ago, and his imprisonment had merely confirmed its truth.
In this prison nothing ever happened. The days came and
went, and the only break from routine was the half-an-hour
of tannoi (tinny) radio on Saturday evening, which piped
swing music through the prison speakers whether you
wanted it or not. More often than not, it was a relief when
it ended, mainly because it was an intrusion of the outside
world into the cut-off isolation of the prison routine. It
broke hearts. Which, thought the cynical David
occasionally, had been its purpose.
There is boredom - when there is nothing to engage the
mind, and there is a point beyond boredom - when the mind
does not wish to be engaged. Post-boredom restlessness
comes first, followed by weeping and cursing and dribbling
and snotting, followed by an almost catatonic state in which
a person simply sits in his chair and does nothing. He
might be dead, or he might be a wooden statue. He may
occasionally, in this state, rap his knuckles into the table or
drum rhythmically with the tips of his fingers. He just sits,
and there would be little to distinguish him on a cursory
glance from a patient in a psychiatric hospital on some

312
calming suppressant drug. He does nothing and thinks
nothing and feels nothing. Perhaps for the Buddhists, or
those who practise mediation or Yoga this is considered to
be some ‘higher spiritual state’. David did not know or
care, and was not using this as a search for meaning.
Whatever else it was, it was a state beyond boredom, and it
was a non-being, non-feeling, pain-reliever that brought a
temporary relief to the agony of confinement. It is a
spiritual morphine, beyond self-pity. It is a mental vacuum.
It is the other side of living, beyond humanity. It is the
place where Jesus went after his crucifixion. It is hell’s
anteroom. Purgatory is the second part of Dante’s ‘Divine
Comedy’. The Poet is found, with his guide Virgil,
ascending the terraces of the Mount of Purgatory inhabited
by those doing penance to expiate their sins on Earth.
There are the proud - forced to circle their terrace for aeons
bent double in humility; the slothful - crying out examples
of zeal and sloth. The lustful are purged by fire. Dante’s
Purgatory is a lofty island-mountain. On the lower
irregular slopes are the souls whose penitence has, for some
reason, been delayed in life and whose purgation is now
delayed in death. Above that is the base of Purgatory
proper, the place of active purgation, which consists of
seven level terraces surrounding the mountain and rising
one above another, connected by stairways in the rock. On

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these terraces the seven deadly sins are purged by penance
from the souls that have been beset by them. On the
summit of the mountain is the Garden of Eden, or Earthly
Paradise, from which the purged souls ascend to Heaven.
David was in this place, at the base of the mountain with
the lethargic whose terms of detention had yet to be
determined. It was the schizoid separation before the
skinny prisoner’s storming of the mountain of
psychological re-attachment.
Such was the main part of his stay in Wormwood
Scrubs. He had not only read through the Bible,
Shakespeare and Dante and all of the bound editions of
Punch magazine, but also many Barbara Cartlands, Agatha
Christies and countless other pulp authors during that two
months in the Scrubs. He had not yet become sufficiently
desperate or bored to read through more challenging books.
That would come later in this strange ‘university’ course in
which he felt himself to have become engaged. By the time
he left Wormwood Scrubs, he had completed four months
incarceration, but his actual term of imprisonment had not
yet begun. That did not happen until the first day spent in
an actual borstal institution. The four months did not count,
or come off his sentence. It was time that did not exist. It
was outside of time. Perhaps limbus puerorum was an
opinion of theologians, or was it, as in this case of the

314
suspended prisoner something more?282 Common
acceptance among theologians would seem a presumption
in its favour, a sententia certa. In view of the tortured
history of the question sententia certa appears too strong.
It should rather be seen as a safe and commonly accepted
explanation of a difficult question, if only because it
provides some arena of theological debate in which to
address the nature of the alienation many experience when
the supporting infrastructures of the polis (whether ‘of God’
or ‘of the state’) are withdrawn or fail to operate.
Theologians of the 13th century in their concern about
children who died without receiving baptism, (and of other
categories) began to say that rather than going to heaven or
being condemned to hell, they immediately went to an
intermediate state, ‘limbo’.283 David’s experience was of
this order. He was an abandoned infant who had ‘died’ and
there was no place found for him in the structured order
where he could ‘fit’. Would anyone come to that place
where David was? He did not know, although philosophers

282
Dyer, George J. Limbo: A Theological Evaluation. Journal of
Theological Studies.
19, no.1. (1958): 32-49.
283
Bonino, Serge-Thomas. La theorie de limbes et le mystere du
surnaturel chez St. Thomas D’Aquin (The Theory of Limbos and the
Mystery of the Supernatural in St. Thomas Aquinas). Revue
Thomiste. 101, no.1-2. (2001): 131-166. (French).

315
and theologians had recognised the existence of the place
long before his present experience of it.284
He reflected wryly that it had never been known for a
borstal boy to be released less than eight months into his
time. The sentence had been for nine months to three
years, so however ‘good’ he was, it would be at least 13
months before he could even hope to be released. The
judge had said that the length of time served would be
decided by the good behaviour of the prisoner. It had not
occurred to him that some guards favoured some prisoners
and some governors were more lenient than others, and that
most of the people who worked for the service didn’t give a
damn to care enough about the detailed needs, hopes and
fears of the lads in their charge. How many would actually
notice good behaviour? David suspected that what they did
notice was personal inconvenience, and what they were
capable of was revenge. Once under the radar of the courts
system, prison officials had the power to delay a prisoner’s
release for as long as they liked, and as far as the skinny
prisoner knew, there was no mechanism for monitoring or
controlling it. The harsh fact was that you needed to be a
good manipulator so that you could get in with the guards
to ensure an early release. Doubtless there were also those
who had special talents to offer to certain guards, but the
284
Thomas’ teaching on this subject is found in Summa Theologica
Supplement, q. 69, a.4.

316
skinny prisoner had only rumour and no actual evidence of
that.
Many prisoners handed this sentence, it was rumoured, had
been released within a period of about eighteen months. It
was said that this was the expected average among them.
Some got out earlier, it was mooted, but eighteen months
was a reasonable target to set yourself, it was believed.
That was with everything going well, and no trouble,
people said. It was too long. It was too imprecise. It was a
precious year and a half of teenage life. He had difficulty
in understanding what was right in keeping him in
detention. Try as he might, he had no way of understanding
what gave them the right not only to deprive him of his
freedom, but to continue to refine the punishment in this
way. He had admitted to the crimes he had committed, and
he could see that. But what he could not accept was the
harshness of the punishment. It did not reflect the nature or
seriousness of the crime, and it completely ignored the
mental and social landscape in which the crime seeded and
grew. It had had arisen out of his psychological, familial,
and social pain rather than from any innate evil.
He saw little difference between those who had condemned
him and himself. If anything, he thought, they were more
criminal than he was. After all, what had he done?
Borrowed a few motorcars, entered a few houses, stolen a

317
few trinkets. What had society lost because of his
activities? A few trinkets, a few drops of petrol and a spot
of white paint on a few window-ledges. That was all. He
was sure that people who appeared to be decent and law-
abiding were perpetrating much bigger crimes than his
every day.
It was out of this frame of mind that his decision to
escape at the earliest opportunity had arisen. He was not
angry. For the first time, he saw himself as an individual
being targeted by a system – a ‘ghost in a machine’, a
pulsating, tender soul in a cage of iron. He wanted
freedom, which was ‘spirit’ and ‘fragility’, and had decided
to get it. The essential element of that freedom was, ‘now’,
for what else could it be? In his heart, he knew that
escaping would not work for very long in the physical
sense, even if he were successful in getting away. But he
determined that he would try. He owed it to his emerging
perceptions about the nature of human existence. It was as
simple and unreasonable, complex and sensible as that.
As those dreadful boring, mind-grinding months drew
slowly to a close, having little else to think about, he
became more and more inflamed with this lust for what he
had labelled, ‘freedom’. Then the Assistant Governor
summoned him to his office, and told him that he had
finally been allocated a borstal. It was called Gains Hall

318
and was set in the beautiful countryside of Cambridgeshire.
He would be leaving at the earliest opportunity. He did not
ask for a date, for there was no such thing as ‘immediately’
in the English prison system. He thanked the Assistant
Governor and restrained himself from kissing the cross-
marked scarred face of the Chief Officer on his way from
the office.
In his cell, he wanted to dance, like the first time he had
kissed a girl. He had skipped all the way home from the
playground and slept fitfully, waking regularly to taste that
kiss over and over again. The cell was too small for
dancing, so he got up on his chair, stared out of the window,
saw the couple kissing, as they always did, and surveyed
the chimney-tops and the twinkling lights and stars. Soon,
he would be cuddled and surrounded with freedom. He
was filled with joy, because he knew now for sure that he
would escape. Gains Hall was an open borstal. It had no
wall. He’d be out within a couple of hours of arriving. The
two weeks after his interview with the Assistant Governor
flew past, and the day of rejoicing came.
It was a day that had been worth all the tears and
indignities. He had become wiser now by far. Every
sacrifice he had made – even the damned tattoo that would
mark him for life – the judges and probation officers and
social workers who had all wanted a piece of him, to put

319
him right, to show him what to do and how to do it,
interfering in his life and demanding his soul, prying in to
his family and making his angry and vengeful father even
angrier and more vengeful than he had been before the
family became involved with them. How his father had
hidden the fire of that vengeance and anger from them all,
he could never understand. This was why David had such
contempt for them, because despite their authority, money,
structures and procedures, education and powers of
intrusion, they were unequipped in the very basic practice
competency of being able to exercise the insight to get
behind his father’s deceitfulness. On that joyful day, all of
these things came to his mind, and steeled his
determination.
Had the suffering been worthwhile? Yes, it had. Indeed it
had been worthwhile. Forced upon him, though. It had not
been through his choosing. Their justice had simply
demanded a borstal sentence. But it was their justice. It
was this ‘justice’ such that decreed his sentence had not yet
even begun. Four months of imprisonment and it had
counted for nothing! Their sentence was only now about to
begin. He was going to escape, and make up for those four
months. The escape itself, he had decided, would be the
balancing of the scales, no matter what happened
subsequently.

320
 He had read somewhere that a child who is treated
fairly will respond fairly and a child who is treated unjustly
will repay the same. He will boil with resentment if he is
powerless, and break the bonds. He felt himself to be, in
that sense, a child of the state. The parent-state, full of
good intentions without doubt, had treated him unjustly.
He thus resented the state.
If it is true that the intellectual roots of terrorism lie in
three Western philosophical ideas: popular sovereignty,
self-determination and ethical consequentialism as Phillips
asserts,285 some of the intellectual roots of David’s feelings
in relation to escape must therein be revealed. The diffusion
of political responsibility that results from popular
sovereignty, the belief that every group has a right to its
own state, and the decline in the belief in absolute human
rights had together fostered a hospitable intellectual
climate for terrorism or at least for revolutionary thinking.
In his mind, David had experienced infringement of his
sovereignty in a sense, consisting in the labelling of his
group or gang; the implicit denial of his group’s right to
exist in a place of law or at least convention-bound freedom
by the negative attitude and predisposition of the
neighbours and the police, and the intellectual climate of
moral relativism that was continually being fed by his
285
Phillips, Robert L. The Roots of Terrorism. Christian Century.
103, no.12. (1986): 355-357.

321
ongoing experience of injustice. The two chief threats of
relativism were, first, that every viewpoint from a particular
standpoint was one-sided and no more justified than some
other equally one-sided and possibly contradictory
viewpoint, (he who holds the power has his way), and
second, that the stand-points themselves were subject to the
flow of historical demise and that the truth seen from them
also passes away.286 The problem for David was not
however a nice a philosophical one, but the fact that it was
his daily life that had been caught on the painful part of this
rack.
He became quite calm, not wanting to indicate the
upheaval of euphoria that had arisen within him. He had
become a model of sweet obedience and politeness. Was it
perhaps feelings similar to these that were later to inspire
other young men and women, under the perverse tutelage of
political and gangster mentors, to rebel against the state,
strap on Semtex, and commit ghastly terrorist crimes?
It had not occurred to him, because his thinking had taken
place entirely in the theoretical world, in which the
landscape was thoughts and not realities that he would
require somewhere to escape to - some physical place of
refuge. Freedom had been for him an idea, but he had not
286
Muller-Lauter Wolfgang. “Konsequenzen Des Historismus In
Der Philosophie Der Gegenwart.” (“Results of Historicism in
Contemporary Philosophy”). Z fur Theologie und Kirche. 59.
(1962): 226 – 255.

322
considered the practical implications of being an actual
fugitive. The idea that had engaged his mind was simply
getting out - to tear himself away from the punishing and
controlling establishment. His issue had been a need to
assert his inner freedom rather than a desire to live
independently outside of a prison. He knew he couldn’t get
away with being physically free for very long. What was
important was to say that he was free, an individual, a
person out of the control of another. He was protesting
because he wanted the people who ran the system that had
incarcerated him to accept him and to understand his
situation and to respond with wisdom. It would be a
quarter of a century before Christian theologians and
practitioners switched their focus from addressing unbelief
and began to address the non-person through liberationism
by identifying and empowering those like David who were
victimised by prevailing social systems. How do you tell
him he is a child of God?287 The vision for Israel under
Moses was the religion of God’s freedom with a
concomitant politics of human justice in reaction to the
static preservers-of-order of the Egyptian administration.
Jesus, by his teaching and presence, presented the ultimate
criticism of the royal consciousness; his resurrection held

287
Storrar, William. New Occasions Teach New Duties? 16. The
Unprivileged and the Oppressed. Expository Times. 106, no.7.
(1995): 197-202.

323
out a hope for marginal people. They could share in his
victory. He did not know this at the time, and would not
understand it until much later. Even today - in days when
economic troubles are blamed on social security scroungers
- the victims – the principles of liberation theology are no
less relevant to British prisons than Brazil. On the current
political scene, all the rhetoric was about limits and what
government could not be expected to do, and there was
little hope or imagination for the rehabilitation or
restoration of convicts, and no recognition of the words of
Jesus, If you ask anything in my name, I will do it (John
14:13-14). The church (in this system, the prison
chaplaincy)288 was meant to be a house of hope, a place for
the dreaming of dreams. The Levellers who were executed
by Cromwell’s men in 1649 dared to dream of a new world.
They wanted annual parliaments, universal male suffrage,
and freedom of worship. Slowly, their dream became
reality.
The guard unlocked the door and let it swing open. The
skinny prisoner collected his bedding and clattered down
the cast iron staircases to the ground floor. On the way
down he could feel eyes tracing his progress through the
peepholes.

288
Chapman, Mark. Podium: Dreaming the Dreams. Modern
Believing. 44, no. 24. (2003): 44-47.

324
The last sound he heard at the close of that first visit to
Wormwood Scrubs was the sound of a kicked pot clanging
across a ground floor flagstone paving and crashing against
the metal door. He exited the cellblock into the cold
morning air. He was led past the office. The guard had his
ear to the radio. It was August Seventh, and he was
nineteen – the average age of the boys given leave by
Congress on that day to engage in all out slaughter of the
people of North Vietnam without a formal declaration of
war. It was a world he knew lacked justice, and that his
own situation was one that by its nature of paradox could
never be resolved. While Niebuhr for example protested
vehemently against the war in Vietnam, he was indecisive
with regard to the requirements of peace. His theory of
international politics and war flowed out of his theory of
human nature and society. World government was
impossible, first because the organic bonds of world
community are sufficiently developed to provide the
societal basis for a world government, and second, the
collective bonds of collective national egoism were too
strong for individual human beings to transcend; hence
humans could not transfer their allegiance to the world
community in meaningful numbers.289 David’s little world
was but a reflection of a wider scene.
289
See Speer, James P. Reinhold Niebuhr Plays Hamlet. Christian
Century. 84, no.11. (1967): 336 – 339 for this argument in detail.

325
The van was waiting. They had not bothered to handcuff
this group of prisoners since they were destined for an open
institution with no walls. They were a docile bunch and no
trouble was expected. The prisoners had been given
civilian clothes, and for the entire world they might have
been a group of happy psychiatric patients out on a day trip
with a charity organisation rather than convicted felons off
to their prisons.
He absentmindedly flicked his wrist to look at the time.
Instead of a watch he saw the tattoo, the symbol of his
filthiness; the visible reminder of what his true situation
was. A prisoner on his way to borstal. His final teenage
year, and it was to be spent in prison. His civilian clothes
were crumpled and creased where they had been thrown in
a heap in a suitcase. His hair was cropped. It was the days
of the Beatles and long hair was the fashion. John Lennon
had just bought himself a mansion in Weybridge, and the
Beatles had started to use marijuana under the tutelage of
Bob Dylan. It would not be long before the skinny prisoner
would feel the effects of this cultural sea change and
experience the paranoia resulting from the use of cannabis
himself. He was conscious of his naked skull and flapping
ears.
He rolled a substantial cigarette to celebrate. That night he
would escape. Any doubt he may have had was now

326
quashed. The open windows in the van had done it. He
wouldn’t be a prisoner any longer than he could help.
Derek sat next to him. They had agreed to escape together
that night. It felt good to have a comrade. The agreement
they had made gave them a wonderful bond of fellowship.
David closed his eyes as the rubber rumbled along the open
road. He could feel the palpitations of his heart through his
chest. His spirit was also bouncing. It was a good feeling.
Eventually Gains Hall came in to view. It was concealed
behind a copse of trees and shrubs. There was a long,
sweeping drive, three or four small buildings, and a larger,
longer building behind them. All of these were
prefabricated, and there was a tiny estate of brick-built
houses further up the road, nearer the centre of the facility.
This, he guessed, was where the staff lived. There were
cars in the driveways. Handy for later, he reflected.
The whole thing struck him as being a holiday camp. He
wondered where the swimming pool was. This was not
imprisonment. It was a holiday! For a second, he
wondered if he really wanted to escape. He knew he was
deluding himself, though. It would not be a holiday camp.
The plain glass windows might not have bars, but there
were bars.290 On the one hand, some would have told him
that Inner freedom does not depend on circumstances; the
290
Barnes, Barbara Z. Called to Freedom. Galatians 5:1, 13-26.
Reformed World. 45, no.4. (1996): 187-190.

327
testimony of hostages like Ben Weir291 declare that in Jesus
Christ it is possible to be freed whilst still in captivity.
While ‘flesh’ is a neutral term in the Bible, even positive in
terms of God’s good creation, there are dangers in its
misuse: dehumanising sexual immorality, heresies which
turn us from the true God, and valuing physical freedom
over inner release. They say that the believer is free to
praise God, and to serve others in love. Barnes is not
unaware of the great paradox however; that true Christian
freedom is the exchange of one kind of servanthood or
captivity for another, nor of the reality that one cannot place
one’s ultimate trust in human systems or institutions. On
the other hand, as David was to learn many years later, one
did not have to become somehow an individual with a
denominationally defined religious faith in order to
experience inner freedom. There were ways in which even
the humanistic and therapeutic motifs of Carl Rogers could
equally be religious in their tenor and orientation.292 When
the reign of the demonic spirit is expelled at the deepest

291
Weir, Ben, Carol Weir, Dennis Benson. Hostage Bound, Hostage
Free. The Lutterworth Press, 1987. This is the true account of
Presbyterian minister Ben Weir’s sixteen months spent in Lebanon
as a hostage of Islamic Jihad, and of his wife’s attempts to hasten
his release.

292
Manickanamparambil, John M. Meeting of Humanistic and
Religious Goals in the Theory of Growth Orientation of Carl
Rogers. Journal of Dharma. 14, no.2. (1989): 190-199.

328
layer of the whole of man, that is the reinstatement of the
kingdom of God. Values implicit in his philosophy of
therapy - feelings of inner freedom and autonomy, self-
honesty, empathetic understanding and respect for each
person’s unique choices and direction - can be detected and
that is enough for spiritual growth or meaningful religious
life. However, the question being dealt with here in the life
of this individual undergoing inner captivity was, ‘is it
possible to break with the past and, via some momentous
decision, become a new creation? Peter Brown had already
identified this dilemma as the basic, hidden point of
variance between Augustine and Pelagius - two tendencies
in spirituality that ask: How are people `saved’? For
Pelagius the past was like rust rubbed off at baptism; no
recognition of something radically wrong. Delight and love
became the key concepts in Augustine’s understanding of
the working of grace; grace is not opposed to freedom. One
cannot work into love and delight - it must be formed of
inner transformation wrought in us by another’s love.
Thus, in Augustine, law, teaching and example are
secondary to the one factor without which all else is
drudgery: the gift of the Holy Spirit.293 The right
understanding of grace and freedom is that they do not
stand in tension, but in mutuality.
293
Cleary, M. Augustine, Affectivity and Transforming Grace.
Theology Journal. 93, no. 753 (1990): 205-212.

329
David’s captivity was an internal one, although physical
absconding was the nearest he could achieve, since the
possibility of inner release was not at that time on his radar.
The new white paint and the picket fences of the open
borstal might convey the impression of gentility and
civilisation, but he knew differently. There was a power
structure and a punishment regime here, just as there was in
a closed institution. These things might impress the casual
visitor or the local politician, or even the people who lived
in the neighbouring villages, but they did not convince the
borstal boy with several months of un-counted
imprisonment behind him that this was anything but a
prison.
He wondered how many kind men and women had tried to
make the lot of the prisoner a little easier. A man called
Howard had an inscription on his statue in St.Paul’s
Cathedral in London; he had apparently done a lot for
prisoners. The inscription read:

‘This extraordinary man had the fortune to be honoured

whilst living, In the manner which his virtues deserved:
He received the thanks of both houses of the British and
Irish Parliaments, For his eminent services rendered to
his country and to mankind.’

330
There had doubtless been speeches in Parliament and
flowing sentences in the statute books, but unlike David
they had never been convinced of their status as the scum
of the earth…
…trees stood all around in the new borstal grounds, and
tenderly cut privet hedging marched along each plot of
garden. Across the field an ancient tractor chugged and
spluttered half-a-dozen furrows with its plough fitment
attached. This would be one of the inmates at work. An
inmate would also have done the hedge trimming. Four
lads dug cheerfully at the edge of a well-trimmed lawn.
The guard’s children looked on from the bay window.
Slaves of Her Majesty at Her Majesty’s pleasure. They
were slave members of an English outcaste, whose family
names rolled down the centuries of criminal history. What
life could they expect? Unemployment and welfare for life.
Perhaps a casual labouring job whilst their muscles lasted.
They wanted physical freedom but they would never have
it. They longed for a new world in which they did not have
to obey the dictates of their class and culture. It was a
dream, and their children would inherit their unemployment
and despair.
He did not see that it was a dream at the time. He was
young and had not yet lived, and it was the Sixties when
everything was possible. After all, hadn’t John Lennon just

331
bought himself a mansion at Tittenhurst? He really
believed that freedom in and out was possible; that it could
be found. He decided then and there that he wouldn’t wait.
He would go as soon as darkness fell. Derek would have to
make his own decision.

332
333
 ELEVEN: THE WRONG KEY
Positive aspects of Humanism

The growing conflict in David’s heart and mind had been

forcing him to ask, Who am I? What am I? What is a
man?294 Richard Pope declares that the Christian response
to the situation was, ‘surprisingly’, a new form of
humanism. This, he maintained is seen in the writings of
Pope John XXIII, Teilhard de Chardin, Bonhoeffer,
Reinhold Niebuhr and even Karl Barth. It is a true
humanism, theocentric in nature and recognizing the
spiritual dimensions of human existence. Although
Christianity and humanism are regarded as rivals for the
allegiance of individual hearts and minds, both have a
concern for civilization and its societies. Damant’s useful
article295 sees the difference between Christian humanism
and secularist humanism in the differing views about ‘man,
his nature and his status in the universe’. Christian
humanism differs from secular humanism in two ways; it

294
Pope, Richard M. Towards a New Christian Humanism: a
preliminary sketch. Lexington Theological Quarterly. 3, no. 4.
(1968): 117 - 127
295
Damant, V. A. Humanism, Christian and Secularist. Theology.
76, no. 636. (1973): 298 – 303.

334
knows that good aims are not enough, and it recognizes the
tragic and demonic element in human affairs. Some
Evangelical Christian commentators will say that Christian
humanism speaks of humans in terms of what the
individual can be and will be by God’s redemptive grace
and that it involves a recognition of God’s original design
for human beings. This involves an understanding of a
person’s fallen state and it involves an acceptance of
Christ’s redemptive work. The challenge of Christianity is
that of a call to human persons to become ‘real in Christ’,296
and to recognise that one can become human in this ‘true
sense’ only by becoming a Christian. However it is seen,
there is common ground in that secularist and Christian
humanists share a common task.
Jesus ‘knew what was in people’:

John 1:48 – How do you know me? Nathaniel asked.

Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the
fig tree before Philip called you.

This implies a Christian Humanism because it refers to the

mission of Jesus which is to save, free, and restore persons,
knowing what is in them, and knowing what constitutes
persons is an essential step in that process. François

296
Horne, Charles M. Christian Humanism. Journal of the
Evangelical Theological Society. 14, no.3. (1971): 185 – 191.

335
Mauriac’s life and works provide a good example of this,
who without serving as standard-bearer for any political
group or school of thought and without elaborating any
general philosophy or ideological system, in examining the
ugly realities of modern life in the light of eternity,
produced works that were sombre, austere psychological
dramas set in an atmosphere of unrelieved tension, placed
at the heart of every work a religious soul grappling with
the problems of sin, grace, and salvation, consistently
articulating a Christian humanism. Although his religious
novels have been a puzzle to many critics, for they abound
in evidences of the dark side of life, and their religious
content is not directly apparent, they nevertheless place
human dignity at the centre.297 Amid the intellectual
disarray of a world no longer rotating around the political,
cultural, and economic axes of Europe, and much less
France, he continued to place the value of human beings at
the forefront. In the face of unspeakable degradations by
which humans had violated every recognized standard of
moral behavior and profaned all notions of dignity and
worth, Mauriac persisted in affirming the individual person
as the locus of value, the basis of ethics, and the focus of
knowledge. Confronting the uncompromising ideological
and political rivalries taking shape not only in the Cold War
297
Bracher, Nathan. The Cold-War Christian Humanism of Francois
Mauriac. Christianity & Literature. 52, no.3. (2003): 387-408.

336
but also in bloody colonial conflicts, he affirmed a
common, universal humanity transcending ideological
allegiances, national origins, and religious creeds.
Bracher’s study explains how Maruiac’s Christianity not
only is compatible with universal humanism but also
structures his portrayal of humankind’s predicament in the
later 1940s and early 1950s.
Derek and David - neither knowing in much depth
what constituted their inner nature, nor ever having
considered values or ethics, and who had not meditated
upon the value of persons - were consigned to different
borstal huts. Thus the race for liberty, such as it was,
almost came to grief at the first hurdle. A means had to be
found for them to communicate to arrange the time and
place of their departure. Later, whilst queuing to receive a
change of clothes from the Matron’s store, David noticed
Derek was at the head of the queue. He walked past and
whispered,
‘Half an hour after lights out, back of my dormitory.’
He nodded to indicate that he understood and would be
there.
All that afternoon and evening he worried. What if Derek
wasn’t there? He wondered if he had the courage to go
alone. Where was the nearest town? He did not know St.
Neot’s was a couple of miles away, and if he had, he would

337
still not have known where it was in the country or in
relation to anywhere else. Apart from his travels in prison
vans, he had only once ever been out of his home county,
and that had been to the neighbouring county, Norfolk,
when he was eight. Which way would he go? Somehow
the idea of two people together made all these awful
questions unimportant. The thought of his being alone
made them into enormous obstacles. Perhaps if Derek did
not turn up, he would abandon the idea and settle down to
serving his time. He was tempted strongly to accept his
situation with resignation.
Was it possible that at this moment of crisis in his adventure
he had just glanced upon the outskirts of wisdom?298
Although, as he had already understood, the search for
meaning was generally directed to the understanding of the
material universe, the mastery of knowledge is even greater
than the multiplication of facts themselves. How was he to
find meaning in so complicated and uncertain a world of
outer experience in which, compared to him, everyone else,
however lowly, had more knowledge, experience, power
and influence than he? Albert Schweitzer suggested two
clues, one of which was resignation - acceptance of the fact
that the rational mind is limited in any effort to know fully.
The second clue, tied in with the first, was humility which
298
Exman, Eugene. Search For Meaning. Hibbert Journal. 60.
(1962): 275-83.

338
rises from the limitation of one’s knowledge. Resignation
was the lofty perch, he said, through which one entered
upon ethics. The way out of the dilemma of human
limitation was through the will to love, through which one
could come into rapport with much that one did not
understand. The basis and meaning of life, God, – were
concepts that David could not understand, and that had
been leading him to postulate the eternal!
There were experts working in the area of the soul - a long
list including Akhenaton, Buddha, Plotinus, Pius X, Gandhi
and Schweitzer. In a search for meaning, he could consult
those who had been able to penetrate further than most into
the burgeoning, non-objective experience into which his
prison sentence had been forcing him to retreat during
incarcerations alone in his cell for twenty-three hours every
day of the week. It was no wonder that he wanted to be
free.
At half past ten, the lights went out. At eleven o’clock, the
skinny prisoner got out of bed, crept to the door, and
slipped into the darkness. Had the door been open because
there were dogs on the loose in the grounds? Surely not.
The door had opened without a sound. The air was cold.
He should have put a coat on. The air was clear and the
moon was bright. There was not a cloud in the sky. The

339
scent of the newly cut lavender hedge wafted across the
facility on a light night breeze.
He made his way to the rear of the dormitory, half-hoping
that Derek had decided not to go. He had put on some
heavy working boots for walking across the fields and
fording any streams. He waited for five minutes and Derek
appeared from behind the hut, creeping along the wall to
join him. He had come. They grinned at each other. They
started off towards the long, curved gravel driveway. They
had seen a major road on the way in and decided to make
for it. They might get a lift to the nearest town, although it
was unlikely they would be picked up this late at night.
They could have been homeless wayfarers or criminals.
Both prisoners had stuffed their bedclothes with pillows to
give the impression they were soundly in their beds, but
they did not think it would fool anyone for long.
In fact, back at the borstal, no one was bothered about
escapees. They had had many new lads leave on the first
night, and were used to it. All it did was to inform the
choices that had already been made by the prison
authorities. Some prisoners who were likely to benefit
from an open situation, but who might need to be confined
within walls were sent to open borstals to see if they needed
confinement. These prisoners clearly did. All they were

340
doing was behaving like the rats in the social engineer’s
maze. They did not know that, of course.
In their own little world of fantasy, they ran, crouched
down beneath the windows, toward the drive. Suddenly
they froze. There was someone coming. They dived into
the privet hedge and lay flat on the damp earth, their hearts
pounding. They were enjoying the suspense, the
excitement of the chase. A guard rode by on his bicycle a
hundred yards down the road, whistling in the breeze. He
got off his bike and walked towards them. Thinking they
had already been caught, David began to stand up and
surrender himself. But the guard turned on his heel and
walked briskly off in the opposite direction. The two
escapees looked at each other and decided it would be too
risky going by the road, and that the best plan was to go
across the fields. If the guard were the first of the new
shift, there would be others along pretty soon. It was too
big a gamble to go that way. The fields’ route was agreed,
and they set off across heavy clay soil towards a clump of
trees about two miles distant. It was already a mad idea,
but there was no going back. The further they went, the
further their common sense retreated from them, until there
was no going back. The light of the moon picked them out
as a spotlight, and they hurried towards the clump of trees,
beyond which was the main road. Keeping close to the

341
shrubbery they had no problems with getting through the
borstal grounds. Nothing stirred. There were no dogs and
no guards. In front of them lay the open fields. The lack of
cloud cover meant that they would have to go the whole
way in the relative light. They hoped no one would be
looking in that direction, and set off in to the first field.
The ground was damp and sticky, deep with ploughed-up
mud. After struggling for a few yards they both realised
that this was hopeless. They would have to remove their
boots and go barefoot. The borstal was still in full view,
and they could be seen from a mile off, clearly depicted by
the moonlight against the horizon. A casual glance from a
bored guard or officer’s wife would betray them. The
single cloud in the sky drew back from the moon,
spotlighting their position in the middle of the field. They
dived to the ground, covering their faces with coats, and lay
there for a full thirty minutes waiting for the next cloud.
Time was running out and something had to be done. Soon
there would be a routine inspection of the dormitories.
Their absence could be noticed. They couldn’t afford to
wait any longer. They grabbed their boots and made a dash
for the clump of trees. It must have provided refuge for
hundreds of escapees over the years. Relaxing for a few
minutes in the shelter of the wood, they congratulated one
another for getting this far. They had made a break for it,

342
and there was no going back. Neither knew what the future
might hold, but it would include some excitement and some
freedom if little else.
Putting their boots back on, they started off across the
remaining fields. They had smoked a whole civilian
cigarette each. It was best to keep away from the road if
possible, and they ran along the verge, diving into the grass
every time a vehicle passed by. Ahead of them they could
just make out the silhouette of a bridge, which would take
them to the major road, where they might hitch a lift or
steal a car. A police car was parked in the lay-by, and they
took a large diversion to avoid it. They had probably been
told about the two borstal boys who were roaming about the
area. This involved another detour across muddy fields,
and by this time they were becoming tired. They would
have given anything for a cup of coffee. Soon dazed and
out of breath, the fleeing couple sat down and lit up another
cigarette. After another long walk and another police car,
they eventually found the road. The village of St. Neots lay
nestled in the dark folds of the night, and someone had left
his car parked in the drive. They had gone almost in a
circle. However, they had not been caught. The vehicle
was in a secluded spot and far enough away from the house
to be started without disturbing the householders. Every
footstep on the gravel drive sounded like a bag of crisps in

343
a cinema. After prizing the door open, they got in and
pushed it gently to the road, where they gunned it to life
and careered off towards the centre of the village.
Sharing yet another civilian cigarette – the last one – they
drove the little vehicle down the road and began discussing
where they would go. They had the idea of going to
Southampton. They could jump on a ship and get across to
France, out of the reach of the village cop and the borstal
guard and prison authorities. Neither of them had ever
been abroad, but there was something magical about the
idea of a foreign country.
Belying their behaviour and language, and their
desperate situation, they really were children. Their ideas
of freedom and escape, and their lack of plans for survival
were the fantasy theme for a boys’ story, not the real plans
of two actual lives. It was possible to understand their
dreams from the point of view of children, but what was
puzzling is how, later, after their capture, the adult
authorities reacted in such a way that they considered the
children’s behaviour to be culpable, blameable, criminal,
and punishable.
Since this procedure predated modern social
legislation dealing with human rights requiring the
imposition of secular humanist ethical values upon the
various agencies of social control in contemporary society

344
(with interesting concomitants in the judgement of some, it
must be noted)299, perhaps it could be understood, but the
element of sadism and revenge that David experienced
from some of his captors would need not just
understanding, but also costly forgiveness from him in
years to come.
Looking back, it seems odd that the punishment for this
crime, (which was, in the culture from which he came,
nothing but a rite of passage) by middle-class righteous
people, and the informal prison courts system, was to be as
harsh, retributive, and exclusively adult and culturally
unsympathetic as it actually was.
The car engine spluttered. Out of fuel. They would have to
find another quickly. That was not a problem, and they
dumped the first and stole the second. Neither realised that
this was to provide a clear trail for the police to follow.

299
“Adults no longer behave like adults. We have no models; they're
talking about sex and therapy and substance abuse, just like us” says
a Bennington College senior. (1) Everything is relative to
postmodern youth, truth is event, personal, passionate, transcendent;
(2) the developmental virtue of truth in the search for self (liberal
Christianity's theological disposition has left us especially
vulnerable to the adolescent exodus); (3) the theological virtue of
truth in the search for self truth happens; truth is personal; truth is
transcendent; truth suffers; (4) telling the truth to postmodern
adolescents who will not settle for generic, relative truth. The truth
is somewhere, and we claim to know where: in the Person of Jesus
Christ. See Dean, Kenda Creasy. X-files and Unknown Gods: The
Search for Truth with Postmodern Adolescents. American Baptist
Quarterly. 19, no.1. (2000): 3-21.

345
They had been gone well over two hours and the police
would certainly be on their trail by now. If ever they did
return, it would be because they had been captured. The
police, who would be alerted by now, would be after them,
and they had to take some kind of cover – find some kind
of shelter. They realised that they had been leaving a trail,
and decided to steal another car, drive them both for a few
miles and then dump the first and carry on in the second
vehicle. This would throw the police off their trail, they
thought. In the rush, Derek couldn’t remember where the
light-switch was, so the car was dumped in a ditch with the
headlamps glowing. Great thinking!
It was a magnificently clear night. A dew had begun to
settle and the headlamps of the new vehicle cleared a path
before them. This was the true taste of freedom. This was
what it had all been for. It was unbelievably peaceful, and
the rumble of the rubber on tarmac was hypnotic. The road
streamed peacefully beneath the wheels, and the two boys
fell into silent rumination.
It was not long before the peace was disturbed by the
flashing of headlamps in the rear-view mirror. It was some
fool driving with his headlamps on, wanting to overtake.
David put his foot on the accelerator, offering his new rival
a race. There was no way he was going to get past unless he
had a more powerful engine and a clear space on the road

346
ahead. Derek put his finger up at the rear window and the
driver continued flashing his lights, keeping pace easily.
Four or five miles down the road, Derek quietly said that it
might be the police. He could see a blue flashing light…
This was not what either of them wanted to hear.
A chilling tension ran through the skinny escapee’s body
along the adrenaline-lines like an extended low-level
electric shock, numbing his reactions as it travelled down
his body. He became acutely aware of the road, and just as
when he had come off the scooter and crashed into the
street lamp, everything seemed to move in slow motion.
The silhouetted shrouds of trees and buildings and road
signs flitted past in a silent movie. The white lines in the
centre of the road became machine-gun pellets, stuttering
dead centre between the front wheels of the car. Side to
side they swung as the shining black eel of the tarmac
glided from left to right beneath them.
It was the police. They had been discovered. It had all
come to this.
The car surged forward with reserves of power as the
skinny escapee’s adrenaline levels lifted. Heart palpitating,
head in a whirl, they had stolen a powerful car. The owner
would have a bit of polishing to do when they had finished
with it. Grit and water spun off the road as they sped along
the dual carriageway. A junction sailed gently into view,

347
and the needle was hovering at too great a speed. Someone
would get killed.
A small white family saloon cruised at a gentle thirty miles
an hour past the junction opening. The stolen car shot past
and twisted itself into the turning, bringing it to the rims of
the offside wheels. Ahead lay a narrow road, offering the
police no opportunity to get past. A sharp turning offered
itself on the left and the car threatened to turn over as it
took the turn. The narrow lane led on to a major road. It
began to rain and he could not find the wiper switch. The
resulting circus of oncoming cars dazzled the two escapees
into near blindness, and the incessant burning of the
headlamps of the police in the rear view mirror added to
their discomfort. Until then, it had been exciting. A dream
world like on the television. Noble, almost.
A memory flashed in to the skinny escapee’s mind. One of
the lads at the Scrubs had told him a tale. The police had
chased him along Oxford Street in London. His only way
of escape had been to turn and go in the opposite direction.
He had done this by jamming the handbrake on and jerking
the steering wheel hard to the right. The effect had been –
he said – to turn the vehicle around on a pinhead, so it was
facing the opposite direction. The lad who had told this
story was a ‘driver’ so he knew what he was talking about.
He had never seen it done, and he wondered whether he

348
should put his neck on the block. Had the driver been
lying? It seemed there was only one thing to do. He was
about to execute the manoeuvre, when more police closed
in from the sides of the vehicle, their lights blazing.
They drove forward, storming through the village and out
the other side into open country. Now was the time to give
it a try and pray that it would work. But it wasn’t possible.
The opportunity did not present itself. Two police cars lay
behind them, side by side. It would have been carnage.
Increased speed was the only option. The needle indicated
from thirty-to-ninety. The police stuck fast. There was no
way out. The skinny escapee began to see himself as the
skinny prisoner in Wormwood Scrubs again. He saw tall
grey Portland granite and flint walls and smelled the acrid
taste of emptying chamber pots at slopping-out time.
A long stretch of open road offered itself to the speeding
wheels. He took the offer, spurred on by his memory of the
Scrubs. Dimly in the distance a small dark shape lay across
the road. It became clearer as they approached the
roadblock. Taking the grass shoulder, it held, and the car
stayed upright, negotiating the barrier. They had made it.
It would take quite a while to sort that lot out. All that was
needed now was a side turning and a bit of luck. Searching
the roadside for a turning, none came.

349
Ahead in a lay-by a red-and-white police car waited
silently. Like a spider in its web, it remained completely
motionless. The fly approached with increasing speed.
Maybe it could break through the web. The police car
waited. They had no choice but to overtake. Suddenly all
the tyres burst. The stolen car slowed on its wheel rims and
dragged itself to a halt. The grass verge roused itself up
before them and a barbed fence reared up in front of the
window and caught the car as it plunged off the road. The
engine stalled in top gear. Silence came and settled around
them.
The police approached the vehicle. They had done all they
could to escape. There was nothing else they could do. A
blue light pulsed through the wet darkness.
If these two vulnerable adults had had guns, they would
have used them at that point. Trapped and frightened and
not knowing if or how badly they had been injured, they
might have done anything.
Knowing that the police had sticks and knew how to use
them, the two boys got out of the car and lay down prone
on the grass. There was no more escaping. Dragged
roughly to their feet, the two absconders were escorted,
handcuffed, to the police van. The expected crushing blow
of a truncheon never happened.
‘Ah, well, lad, back to the nick then, eh?’

350
 His voice was compassionate, gentle and kind. Was
he some kind of Christian? For an imaginative sociological
report, an anti-conservative polemic based on the Christmas
story see Jens Soering’s journal article.300 It reminds the
reader that Jesus’ mother was very young and the baby was
being born out of wedlock, as well as homeless. In today’s
world, this means that Jesus would be about three times
more likely than children from normal families to end up in
the criminal justice system. Children raised in single parent
homes are also more likely to be poor, and poverty is yet
another predictor for legal troubles later in life. Jesus’ own
family at one point feared that he might be mentally ill, as
are 20% of all prisoners today. While it might be possible
for conservatism to see this as a complete misreading of the
story (Jesus shows the poor that they can transcend their
environment conservatives might say), a deeper form of
compassion might be more appropriate. The homeless, the
poor, the prisoner, the mentally ill are our neighbours and
they are all loved by God. Did the cop believe all of this
stuff? Not recognising the two new lads – they were not
members of his usual clientele, but from another part of the
country - the tubby officer gazed with concern written on a
gentle and handsome face. David wanted to hate the cop

300
Soering, Jens. Another Christian Statistic. Cross Currents. 54,
no.4. (2005): 108-111

351
but couldn’t. Nor could he put it together that a policeman
– his natural enemy – might be a good man.
If the chase had pumped excess adrenaline through his
veins, deadening his sense of fear, the friendliness of the
policeman had numbed his understanding. They handed
cigarettes around and sat chatting in the van as they made
their way to the police station.
Once there, the sergeant’s wife cooked them a meal and left
the cell door open. They must have provided it out of their
own store. The skinny prisoner felt guilty, already
regretting the thoughts he had experienced during the heat
of the chase. There was a Gideon Bible on the bench.
At half past nine the following morning, a van came with
two Scrubs guards in it. They bundled the two captives into
the back and took a leisurely drive back to the prison. The
skinny prisoner’s heart sank. Anywhere but there. He slept
fitfully, suffering the sickness from his constantly present
stomach condition during the return journey. He couldn’t
face another journey like the one from Norwich Prison two
months earlier. He could not believe that people could love
one another without some ulterior motive, just because they
loved one another. Where did love come from? You had to
have something to gain from loving another person.

352
He had already learned that sleep was an effective narcotic,
and had used it often. It was ironic. Earlier the day before,
he had left the Scrubs filled with anticipation and joy.
Then, he had felt the poison of a desire for freedom seeping
into his heart. It had begun to spread until it had filled his
mind and driven out all reason and sense. Then, when he
made the break, the poison seemed to transform into nectar,
and he had sped towards freedom at its insistence. But
what was ‘freedom’?
In the early hours of the new day the freedom that had
promised so much had revealed itself as a cancer that had
grown and spread, endangering life and soul on the open
road. It was no longer pleasurable. All it had left was the
empty space where joy had been and hope had found a
tenuous resting-place. It had eaten its fill and was sated.
Joy was embittered and all hope was gone.
It was back to prison. Back to that dark, grey, hateful place
that stunk of faeces and urine. Back to the boredom and
grinding poverty of social contact. What had he learned
from the experience? That he was a fool; that he was sad
and powerless and without hope; that he was an idiot; that
he had failed to make a plan, and that freedom did not exist
unless you had money and somewhere to go.
The guard kindly offered the two lads a cigarette. Grateful,
they sucked the smoke into their lungs.

353
‘Thanks, brother.’ Said the skinny captive to his natural
born enemy.

354
355
 TWELVE: SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
Inner life

After his return to Wormwood Scrubs he was placed in a

cell with a small red lamp burning continually in the
ceiling. He had been before the board of visitors, who had
held their court in the Governor’s Office and sentenced him
to three days bread-and-water to be added to his borstal
sentence. This happened in the absence of habeas corpus
or a defending barrister. That was the way things were
done. Once you were beyond the legal process, no records
were available, so no evidence existed.
The Habeas Corpus Act was passed by Parliament in 1679.
It promised that a person detained by the authorities would
be brought before a court of law so that the legality of the
detention may be examined. In times of social unrest,
Parliament had the power to suspend Habeas Corpus.
Clearly it is here being suspended when dealing with the
punishment of children in England’s prison system.
It was overkill, and they need not have bothered anyway. It
was sufficient punishment for him to have been returned to
the Scrubs.
David resigned himself to his punishment; his banishment;
his branding. The punishment block it was, then.

356
Prison chaplains, he thought, after a beating in the block at
which the chaplain was not present, must come in to the job
for very special reasons to be able to justify all of this.
Maybe the post attracted radicals, socialists. Theologians of
liberation had a socialist perspective. Could the prison
chaplain activate the social passion of the prophet Amos
and the socially-aware disciple James without denying the
need for bringing someone seeking salvation to the crisis of
justification by faith? How could he tell someone already
rejected and convinced of his total depravity that he is yet
more deeply rejected, this time by God? Somehow it did
not seem to get noticed that when Christians accept free
enterprise and a market economy; the lottery of the stock
markets and the principle of usury as fundamental working
values, they have made a political decision every bit as
much as any of the theologians of liberation. Five myths
which arise from this cultural captivity and that creep
unawares into much preaching were: the possibility of
success, the virtue of challenge, the wisdom of the rustic,
the presence of conspiracy, and the desire for a Messiah.301
Christians who were called to proclaim Christ ought to do
so in the awareness and appreciation of this context of
cultural assumptions. Liberationists sometimes used

301
McKinniss, Rick. Preaching Truth, Justice & the American Way.
Leadership Journal. 7, no.4. (1986): 58-63.

357
Scripture to sustain positions developed outside its orbit.
Their view that all humans will finally be saved could lead
to concentration exclusively on the mundane and
intrahistorical form salvation takes. Counterbalancing an
acute awareness of human sin their belief that on account of
the Incarnation, God is now permanently present in
humanity, could dull the keen edge of the seriousness of
sin. This would usually be accompanied by a lack of
enthusiasm to win people to Christ.302 David knew that life
often lacked fairness. There was a lopsidedness and
randomness to its distribution of windfalls and pitfalls.
Was there any sovereign logic to who gets sick, who gets
rich, who would be beautiful, who disfigured, who would
be a socialist and who a capitalist? In the midst of life’s
unfairness, options often seemed to narrow down to
something so simple as: ‘Do the right thing.’ ‘Have the
right attitude.’ “Do the right thing and you will be
accepted”, God said to Cain. David would be a criminal on
one judgement, a vulnerable adult on another, poor and
marginalized on another, young on another, free from heavy
and burdensome responsibilities on another, gifted
intellectually on another, and with healthy genes on
another. He had a desire to do the right thing, but what was
the right thing? Faith, according to the Christians, was the
302
Pinnock, Clark H. Liberation Theology: the Gains, the Gaps.
Christianity Today. 20, no.8. (1975): 389 – 391.

358
right thing.303 God punished Cain, but God also showed
grace to Cain. He promises Cain protection and marks him
with a sign of it. Like Cain, David is being punished, and
like Cain he has been marked with a sign of his punishment
- the unwelcome tattoo. Cain is a cursed man and a blessed
man, like David. Like Cain, David is rejected, banished,
cast out, but also protected, kept, watched over. ‘It will go
well with you’ was not about life being fair, or being spared
from untimely or difficult death. It was about acceptance,
about starting again, about being spared the second death.
What can be said about the bread and water
punishment? The ascetic tradition of many major
religions emphasized fasting and abstemiousness in diet,
and food avoidances and taboos are common in many
traditions. There were people in the country that would
happily deny prisoners even bread and water. It was not a
luxury, but who would expect to be rewarded for escaping?
The trick, he thought, for survival and sanity was to treat it
as being on a diet, or perhaps as religious, ecological or
medical fasting.
Malcolm Hamilton discusses ideas in the relevant literature
concerning the spirituality of alternative dietary practices,
presenting findings from an empirical study that surveyed
whole food, health food and organic consumers and also
303
Buchanan, Mark. Life Is Unfair (and That’s Okay). Christianity
Today. 45, no.6. (2001): 92-99.

359
vegetarians, though not prisoners under punishment in
British jails. He draws conclusions and raises questions
concerning the alleged spiritual and perhaps religious
nature of such dietary alternativism. The study shows how
dietary practices are to an extent associated with a
worldview of which ecological concerns, holistic
orientations and perhaps seekership, as here,304 are
prominent. They seem to go beyond a concern simply with
physical health or survival. The nature of these secular
cults, - in David’s case not a ‘cult’ so much as a lone
personal pilgrimage, - is such that the traditional categories
of (theological) thought are not particularly useful for
dealing with them.
The dreadful thing was not the bread and water, it was the
prospect of spending another two months in that rats’ nest
of an institution. Part of the problem was that one was
unable to make any friends or to make contact with another
individual on a social level. Even if it were physically
possible, whom could you trust to share your secrets, fears,
heartaches and needs with? Truth telling builds intimacy
and confidentiality. Authentic confession is possible only
in a relationship of mutual trust and fidelity, including the

304
Hamilton, Malcolm et al. Eat, Drink and Be Saved: The Spiritual
Significance of Alternative Diets. Social Compass Journal. 42,
no.4. (1995): 497-511.

360
dimensions of truth telling and confidentiality.305 Listeners
need to be sensitive to the authority and power held by a
listener, the moral implications of one’s own views of guilt,
sin and/or fears, and to the moral obligations to listen
truthfully. It would not be wise to do this with any of the
regular run of ordinary convicts. They were not skilled and
not trustworthy and were neither available nor interested.
They had their own problems, and to show vulnerability
was to become open to exploitation by the other prisoners
and by the guards.
Many people have two sides. There’s the hardened
battle-scarred outside – the crusty bit, full of bravado and
daring, spoiling for a fight or planning to escape and be a
hero. This is the guy you meet when you first enter prison.
This is the guy people think populates the prison system.
He fits. He lives up to the stereotype. He’s the hard and
worldly criminal who lacks respect; the leader, the initiator
of evil crimes and desperate acts of larceny and violence. A
loner, he needs the company and support of no one and is
powerful in his chosen craft.
Then there’s the other side. It’s the side he hides from
onlookers and inquirers. He is disinclined to reveal it. This
side is his awareness of his madness, his illiteracy, his inner
emptiness, his need for love, his low self-image, and his
305
High, Dallas M. Truth, Confidences and Listening. Lexington
Theological Quarterly. 20, no.1. (1985): 18-27.

361
shame for his family and origins. This is the side of him
that feeds crumbs through the bars to sparrows when he’s
on bread-and-water for fifteen days. He understands about
homelessness and single parenthood and family oppression,
because it’s what he has lived with since for ever. He
understands about illiteracy and innumeracy, because none
of his friends can read and write, and neither can he. It
feels unjust. However, what can he do? It feels as though
someone has failed him who ought not to have done, but
who? He has no way of knowing. What he must do is to
be more uncaring, more violent, more of a thief, than any of
the others. That way, he gains the respect he would have
had if he could read and write.
The self-doubting, vulnerable side of this criminal is kept
mostly locked away. He trusts and confides in no one. The
world is too big and complex for him. The best he can aim
at is merely to survive day-by-day and not reflect too
deeply. People, he knows, have two sides; they have a
physical and a spiritual, mystical, or non-physical side,
though he could never really hope to understand more than
that about it. Radhakrishnan’s was a mysticism based on
the premise that the world was real and must be dealt
with.306 No less real are human spirits with their

306
Lyon, Quinter M. Mystical Realism in the Thought of Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan. Journal of Philosophy East and West. 16, no’s. 3 –
4. (1966): 221 - 233

362
individuality and freedom. The relation between the world
and spirit is not one of duality, but of polarity, with mutual
dependence.
The existentialism of Radhakrishnan grew out of his view
of maya as positive, as the threat of nothingness which
human beings face.307 In overcoming karma, the human
spirit, looking inward, could enter into ‘Being’ and
experience mystic bliss through truth and goodness. In
keeping with his gradually developing humanism,
physically removed from enjoyment of most of the physical
world, David acknowledged that his spirit nevertheless
needed the objective order to realize itself through
economic, religious, political, and other more intimate
human relations. Radhakrishnan’s mysticism approaches a
humanistic interpretation of Hindu mysticism. It could be
argues that it remains mysticism, since the divine in nature
and the individual, while transcending the intellect is,
nevertheless, internal to the spirit of the person.
From a psychic point of view, the skinny prisoner’s
assertion of persons having ‘two sides’, was particularly
relevant and complex in the process of one prisoner seeking

307
Maya, (from Sanskrit ma [‘not’], ya [‘this’]) in Hinduism, is
many things. Maya is the illusion that the phenomenal world of
separate objects and people is the only reality. For the mystics this
manifestation is real, but it is a fleeting reality; it is a mistake,
although a natural one, to believe that maya represents a
fundamental reality.

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to evaluate the trustworthiness of another prisoner – or
prison guard, or prison chaplain - with regard to assessing
whether that individual could be trusted to be single-
minded and consistently trustworthy when he had read that
it was possible to distinguish at least five types of psychic
duality in persons.308 These were, bipolarity, bimodality,
contrariety, dualism, and the coincidentia oppositorum.
Bipolarity is the basic division of the psyche into egoic and
nonegoic (physico-dynamic) poles. Bimodality is the
division of egoic functioning into active and receptive
modes. Contrariety is the division of the nonegoic sphere
into opposing sympathetic and parasympathetic systems.
Dualism is the organization imposed upon the bipolar
structure by primal repression. The coincidentia
oppositorum is the condition of psychic integration that
would emerge were dualism to be transcended and the
bipolar structure (together with the bimodal and contrarietal
structures) unified into a higher whole. Whom could he
trust, and in whom might he confide his vulnerabilities? In
light of this, there was no one, and no likelihood of there
ever being anyone. Except, perhaps a God.
What he did know was, that no one knew him as he really
was…

308
Washburn, Michael. Human Wholeness in Light of Five Types of
Psychic Duality. Zygon Journal. 22, no.1. (1987): 67-85.

364
On 14 November 1959, in the small village of Holcomb,
Kansas, wealthy farmer Herbert Clutter, his wife Bonnie
and their teenage son and daughter Kenyon and Nancy
were shot and killed in their home. The two young men
who committed the crime were Dick Hickock and Perry
Smith. David had been reading that they were hanged for
their crime in 1965, just a year ago. A fellow prisoner of
Dick Hickock who had worked at the Clutters’ farm had
told him that this would be an easy job of robbery with big
money there for the taking. As it happened, it didn’t work
out that way. Mr Clutter didn’t have a safe on the premises
(he did all his transactions by cheque and carried very little
cash on his person). Dick and Perry got away with a
portable radio and about $40.00. It could just as easily
have been David and Derek, had there been a gun culture in
England as there had been in Kansas.
Four gunshots, and eventually six lives were ended. More
than anything else, this left the skinny captive with a sense
of wasted lives, the killers’ as well as their victims’, and
that was something the gallows did not put right. The
reason the young men’s actions in murdering the Kansas
farm family appeared senseless was because no one
understood their social, emotional, and psychological
landscape. They did not know or understand the real, true,
essential nature of these two young men, which was their

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weakness, emptiness, vulnerability and thirst for
acceptance. No one appreciated their ‘other side’.
Similarly, few people truly understood the inner landscape
or social wilderness of this skinny captive. Someone like
the writer Truman Capote, who subsequently wrote a novel
about the brothers’ story, might. Most would not.
David felt like that about himself. He remembered what a
relief it had been when he discovered that other prisoners
cried when they were alone in their cell, just like him. He
was glad when he discovered other cons were lost and
anxious, just like him. It gave him tremendous strength and
encouragement. He never dreamed that the hard and
ruthless convict, living a few doors along the gantry,
actually cried himself to sleep every night, and that he hid
his face in the pillow to muffle the sound. It might say a lot
in his favour, since it demonstrated some humanity.
The guards too. They were not hard and heartless. They
felt things, just like the prisoners. They cried sometimes
when they thought about all those wasted lives. Why else
did some of them occasionally show kindness and
compassion? Why else had there been a long line of
resignations of prison governors through the years? They
understood all right. After all, they had a living to earn.
He had been told by one of the governors that he is on the
verge of tears when he recalls the incident of an old

366
prisoner who did not want to be released because he had
nowhere to go and no friends except those in the prison.
Sending him on release had been tantamount to a death
sentence. He was dead in a month through living as a
vagrant on the streets of Luton. It used to amaze the skinny
prisoner how people could be so hard on the outside when
inside their shell they were so soft and vulnerable.
He had mixed feelings, this much was clear. Whilst
objecting to being sentenced without recourse to the legal
process, yet he was still philosophical about the generosity
of his sentence. Three days incarceration on a bread and
water diet. It wasn’t much for escaping from prison and
stealing three cars and endangering the lives of the police
and members of the public. Had two escaping borstal boys
not committed it, but two members of the criminal public, it
would have carried a considerable sentence in an ordinary
court. The Board of Visitors must have sensed how
wrecked these two captives were by their experience that
they decided to go easy on them.
It was sad, really. Ordinary people, like convicts and prison
guards, being kind. It used to confuse him, and he couldn’t
understand why all this love had to be cloaked by a mock
hatred. It was the system that demanded it, not the people
themselves. It took him another two months in Wormwood
Scrubs to realise that. He knew, from then on, that he

367
hadn’t wasted his time. He was a learner, and he valued
what he learned as though it were precious gold. He had
begun to discover something about people; something
dynamic and real, powerful and promising. It was a long
time before he realised exactly what it all meant, but when
he did, it was a revelation and a valuable new tool in his
people-kit.
After the two months had ended, he was called in from his
lonesome walk in the exercise yard – from the time of his
return to prison, he had been branded an escapee and
clothed in the special uniform, called ‘patches’ that depicted
him as such, and allowed to exercise away from other
prisoners, on his own in the company of a guard. Armed
guards escorted escapees everywhere they went.

‘How do you feel? Asked the Governor.

‘I feel OK, Sir.’ He replied.

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‘ It has been decided, after due consideration of all the
facts, that you will be returned to Gains Hall. The
Commissioners thought that you should be given another
chance. I hope you won’t let them down. You must realise
this. It means that if you betray their trust, next time they
will come down on you much harder than they have this
time. They’re sticking their necks out for you. I’d advise
you not to let them down.’
He did not want a second chance. He wanted to be put
through the system as quickly as possible, and he knew that
if the opportunity arose he would escape again. The time
would come when he would want a second chance, but he
rightly sensed that he was not yet ready for it. He lacked
the courage, and he did not believe that he could succeed in
making a life. He had no sense of sin or of his guilt. He
saw himself as a victim, not as a culpable perpetrator. He
was halfway through a painful search, but not at its
conclusion. He was not ready for the concomitants of a
second chance, which were forgiveness, reconciliation,
discipleship and truth.
Following the Golden Calf incident in Exodus, Moses was
the intermediary of a second chance granted to the people
of Israel. Their sin was forgiven, and their connection with
God renewed. Moses too received a second chance,309
309
Hadda, Janet. On Second Chance. Journal of Reform Judaism.
37, no.4. (1990): 37-42.

369
reassured that God was with him and was given a sense of
safety, calm, and protection. Were they ready for it? Two
contemporary analogies exist: Many Jews were given a
second chance in life when they narrowly escaped the
Holocaust. Psychoanalysis today provides a second chance
to individuals enslaved to principles and perceptions of
their own inner reality. Responding to a second chance
takes courage; the fear of repeating past failures may
impede. Again, using Anne Tyler’s novel, ‘Saint Maybe’,
Paul Wadell’s study pursues the retrieval of a sense of sin.
He finds a powerful example of confronting sin and
discovering authentic forgiveness after a difficult personal
search - anger leading to a death and its wrenching effects.
Restorative forgiveness demands a thoroughgoing revision
of a basic approach to life. Confession becomes
conversion. God interrupts the continuity of life in order to
heal and renew that life. Though Jan initially thinks he can
work it out, he learns it is a gift. His experience of rebirth
within the Church of the Second Chance310 demonstrates
this; it also shows him he needs to find it in community.
Taking the gift to heart and letting it change him in
surprising and lovely ways he would never have chosen
nonetheless made him a saint, maybe.

310
Wadell, Paul J. Redeeming the Things We Can Never Undo: The
Role of Forgiveness in Anne Tyler’s Saint Maybe. 8, no.2. New
Theology Review. (1995): 34-48.

370
Similarly, Stanley Hauerwas reflects on the necessity of a
second chance311 in the order of truthfulness. Readiness to
reconcile alone makes truth viable and defensible. Borrows
the storefront name, ‘The Church of the Second Chance,’
again from Anne Tyler’s ‘Saint Maybe’. Commends
Mennonites for reminding other Christian churches that
forgiveness is a community process, which makes
discipleship possible. Peace is the name for the complex
relationship between forgiveness, reconciliation,
discipleship and truth. To be shorn of the demonic, truth
must serve the cause of reconciliation and peace.
The skinny prisoner had his own thoughts. He rationalised
rather then ‘reasoned’ that he had not asked for their trust,
and so, since it had been imposed upon him without his
consent, and unilaterally, he could betray it without
breaking a moral code. The reason that he could do this
was that in the same way a slave might have no option but
to be trusted by his master, the overwhelmingly greater fact
of the injustice of his slavery, in principle, overarched and
took precedence over any subsidiary matters of morality
that might flow from the lesser fact of his slavery. He had
the right to be free. That was primary. In subsidiarity to
that, he well understood that they had the right to expect
him, in response to their generosity in giving him a second
311
Hauerwas, Stanley. Why Truthfulness Requires Forgiveness.
Cross Currents. 42, no.3. (1992): 378-387.

371
chance, to require him to respond positively to the exercise
of their trust in him. However it was a trust that he would
not seek the higher morality, namely, his freedom from
their slavery.
That was their world.
This was his.
He did not request soft treatment, or the exercise of their
trust in him; they had been that way by their own choice.
To respond to trust, you have to be trusted. What they were
doing was sending him to borstal. He did not feel that he
deserved borstal in the first place, so where did this ‘trust’
come from? It came from their world, and not from his.
They ‘trusted’ him to obey their demands. That is a
command, not a trust mechanism.
He was in his own hopeless intellectual and moral world
without the knowledge that his thoughts were accurate,
insightful and true. He lacked education and the confidence
that flowed from it. He believed at that time that although
he believed them, these thoughts of his were wrong, the
preoccupation of a criminal intellect, and therefore not
right.
He did not know that in years to come they would be
vindicated and find proper expression through the exercise
of his chosen vocation. He did not question whether there
was such a thing as a ‘criminal mind’; since everybody he

372
knew believed that the fact of criminal mentality had been
long established. In fact, it was a stereotype and not based
on any medical evidence, despite the existence of a plethora
of books by so-called experts312 claiming that there was.
A typical example of such a study is by Stanton Samenow.
It is long on assertion and short on evidence. Dr. Samenow,
a clinical psychologist, though legitimately disdainful of
explanations of criminal behavior that blame everyone
(society, family, violent television, etc.) but the criminal for
his actions, lacks the counter-arguments that would
persuade many. He makes frequent sweeping
generalizations:

Even the most hardened criminals who spout anti-police

rhetoric to one another recognize society’s need for
police…

and provides nothing other than anecdotes in support of his

position that all criminals break the law consciously and
deliberately. A short chapter added in the latest edition on
terrorism illustrates perfectly the limits of the author’s
methodology - he defines the issue down to link Al Qaeda
with any criminal whose actions frighten someone, and

312
Inside the Criminal Mind. Stanton Samenow PhD. Times Books.
1984. The book claims that it shatters long-held myths defining the
sources of and cures for crime.

373
then simply discounts any outside influence as
meaningfully contributing to the making of a criminal.
All of David’s guards and captors probably knew only the
dominant world-view. This was the legally based criminal
justice one. 313 It was within this code of understanding and
that prevalent view, in which ‘criminal-mindedness’ was an
unquestioned though anecdotal element, that the provision
of this touchstone of all argument that took place in his
prison and at this time in his life was made, despite the
availability of an alternative, though largely un-researched,
view.
He knew he would escape again. It was not entirely
complex. Yes, it was complicated in that it was a matter of
justice and fairness, but David was a young person, and
escape was exciting, and it held out the promise of a break
from the mindless monotony of four walls, the stink of stale
faeces, and the wooden-headedness of the daily routine. He
did not like this experience in the Governor’s office that
313
North, Richard. Medicine versus Law. Hibbert Journal. 58.
(1959) 71-74. An appeal against conviction for double criminal
murder was made for Bernard Hugh Walden, with the defence that
he was suffering from an abnormality of mind, impairing his mental
responsibility. The historical conflict between medicine and law
shows an almost unbroken line of victories for the doctors. It is
however true that the amelioration of penal codes is largely to be
attributed to the medical profession’s beneficent discoveries.
Someday the medical profession will accept without reservation the
exalted doctrine that sin is pathological, and that punishment for a
crooked back is as inappropriate as punishment for a crooked mind.

374
reminded him so much of his schooldays, of being treated
like a naughty schoolboy and caned to bleeding by the
headmaster. Much as he had wished, they had not decided
to send him back to an open borstal – he would much
preferred them to have sent him to a closed prison – the
deal was done. He had not been consulted about it. He had
simply been told. If they had asked him, he would have
told them. As it was, he heard what the governor said and
let it go.
Back in the cell, he cried all night. He knew the same
process of the past two months was going to be repeated,
only next time worse. He knew he would be out of there as
soon after the van doors opened as possible.
He spent another two weeks at Wormwood Scrubs,
avoiding violent or sexually abusive contact. Fortunately,
he was on the move. There was no time to establish long-
term co-dependencies. He said nothing. His daily round
was silent and resentful. He avoided speaking to anyone
whenever possible. In a sense, by choice, he was isolated.
He would not knuckle under; he felt that there was, perhaps
ironically, since we are thinking of what is going on in the
mind of a guilty and convicted criminal, no justice and that
he was unable to cooperate with his captors. His was the
opposite of what possibly went on in the mind of Israel
Kastner some years earlier. Historians had tried to

375
understand what motivated the Labour party representative
accused of making possible the efficient deportation of half
a million Jews to Auschwitz through the cooperation of his
committee with Eichmann (though the defenders of Kastner
argue that he actually tried to save the Hungarian Jews
through negotiating with the Nazis) to testify on behalf of a
Nazi war criminal after World War II, when he was no
longer obligated to do so. It is possible, and there is
support for the view,314 that Kastner underwent
psychological processes that influenced his testimonies; he
saw the war period as the climax of his activity, and desired
to remain in his position of power after the war ended,
whereas David saw his past as a decline into non-existence.
Applying the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance’ it
could be concluded that Kastner turned the war criminals
(David’s warders and the justice machinery) with whom he
had negotiated into purer individuals in his own mind, in
order to be able to live with himself. David questioned
whether he was doing a similar thing in beginning to treat
his incarceration as a kind of university or seminary
experience for his spiritual and moral development. He
truly hated the situation he was in; he hated being
humiliated, beaten, locked up and denied any comforts. At

314
Barri, Shoshana. The Question of Kastner’s Testimonies on
Behalf of Nazi War Criminals. Journal of Israeli History 18, no.2-
3. (1997): 139-165.

376
the same time, he believed himself to be a vulnerable
person, only very recently a child, and in a deep sense
innocent of anything evil or deserving of the judgement that
was being made upon him. Nor were his captors pure,
good, or right. Documents relating to this episode in
Kastner’s life raise the possibility of a more comprehensive
explanation.
For Kastner’s actions to be fully understood, they would
need to be examined in context, including and going
beyond his personal motivations. Equally relevant are the
motivations of the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Allies,
during the post-war period. However, there are plenty of
relevant documents that demonstrate why popular
explanations for his behaviour are insufficient. David knew
that his situation equally evaded popular explanations. The
process of resolving Cognitive dissonance might well apply
in his case, however. He was clear about his hatred and
rejection of his tormentors, though powerless to harm them.
He could only harm himself. What was the alternative?
Adopt another attitude that would bring some relief – that
prison was an expensive and elite public school. He was
not alone. Research demonstrates that most prisoners
perform similar somersaults.
A report of research by J.M.Cudrin on whether prison
inmates related themselves to references to the wicked

377
typically heard in public prayers. It was thought that guilt,
if found, would provide a basis for therapy. While most
men admitted to their crimes, the results showed no poor
self-concepts or tendencies to admit that they were
criminals. A favourable self-concept was typical. The
research uses the psychoanalytic model to interpret this
tendency to maintain self-esteem, employed here by David
in this transitional period between prisons, in spite of
trauma, and uses the cognitive dissonance theory to explain
the phenomenon.315 The study also offers possible
implications for rehabilitation.
It became less difficult being locked in the cell alone for
twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. He coped in
various ways; doing nothing, or as little as possible; sitting
almost catatonic in his cell; breathing shallowly; sleeping
much; counting and re-counting the bricks in the walls, the
planks in the floor, the flies on the ceiling, the lime
encrustations on the water vessels.
The guard came on the appointed day. The captive took his
bits and pieces with him. He collected his plastic use-it-for-
everything shaving and eating bowl and his toothbrush. He
stripped, had a bath, got dressed in stiff prison underwear,
got into the van, ignored the weather, and waited for the
journey to end. It happened. Just as he knew it would.
315
Cudrin, J. M. Title missing. Journal of Religion and Health. 9,
no.1. (1970): 60 – 70.

378
Nothing had changed, except that he had been further
punished, ignored, and condescended to. The urge for
freedom welled-up inside his soul and it was sweet like
poison. He knew this second time that the freedom he
would gain would be empty, but what else was there to
attain to? That beautiful killer was present in his spirit.
Derek was beside him. He had received the same disposal
from the Prison Commissioners. As Oscar Wilde had
discovered on a fateful day in Reading Gaol, something
was dead in each of them…

A prison wall was round us both,

Two outcast men were we:
The world had thrust us from its heart,
And God from out His care:
And the iron gin that waits for Sin
Had caught us in its snare.

We were as men who through a fen

Of filthy darkness grope:
We did not dare to breathe a prayer,
Or give our anguish scope:
Something was dead in each of us,
And what was dead was Hope.316
316
Lawrence, D.H. Poem: The Ballad Of Reading Gaol (In
memoriam C. T. W. Sometime trooper of the Royal Horse Guards
obit H.M. prison, Reading, Berkshire. July 7th, 1896). The Old Stile

379
 He could not know it, but his next prison was to be
that same Reading Gaol experienced by Wilde seventy
years before.
They did not escape the moment the vehicle’s door
opened. They spent ten days at the open borstal the second
time. They had been under observation. On the tenth
night, off they went, across the fields, down the road and
far away to Bristol at the other end of the country. The
weather was foul. Wet, cold and with a cutting wind. Life
was not at all pleasurable. They slept in barns, fields and
store doorways, and lived on raw potatoes and sprouts from
the fields. One morning at three o’clock, sleeping in
cardboard boxes in the shop front of a posh store, they were
washed away by a jet of water from a hosepipe. It was the
local town centre managements’ clearing-away-of-the-
vagrants hour.
Most of the time the two children wandered until they were
lost. Lacking an aim or anywhere to live, and without any
street credibility or local knowledge, just as they had gained
their freedom, they realised they were in yet another prison.
It was a prison of their own making, though it had no bars,
and there was no prison cell. Freedom had curdled and

Press, 1994.

380
gone sour. For a week, they waited to get caught, but no
one came for them.
They were children alone in a big city whose streets were
concrete and cold. Hungry, soaked to the skin, footsore and
weary, they wandered into a village along a country road.
Had the weather been better, things might have been
different. The hunger-pangs gave the illusion of walking
six inches above the ground, creating a feeling of
intoxication and light-headedness. They felt disoriented
and were close to fainting. The village, friendly and
intimately scattered around a central grassy knoll, with little
pink-washed cottages and bright green lawns, echoed their
longings for security, comfort and love. The two free lads
sat on the green verge at the edge of the road with their
heads in their hands. There was no love here. These were
merely private houses, private families, and exclusive
groups of individual people.
There was nothing for the likes of them in a place like this.
They had run out of tobacco. Sighing heavily, Derek said,
I’ve had it. What about you?
Their fight had gone. Their energy was drained. They had
been defeated again, as the skinny escapee had already
known.
There’s a police station just down the road. He said.
Yeah. Said Derek.

381
What about it? We’ll get a meal…
Let’s go. He replied
They approached the front door and pressed the bell;
introduced themselves as two escaped borstal boys and
went in. The sergeant’s wife telephoned her husband and
while they waited for him to come home, just like the
woman in the previous episode, she cooked them a meal.
He thought of a story he had read in the Bible about a guy
who was so hungry he sold his inheritance for a bowl of
soup. Whether he had believed the story when he read it at
the time, he now knew it was possible. It was quite likely
someone would give away his freedom for a meal.
Cynically he thought that as it was, freedom wasn’t worth a
meal anyway, so he’d got the better end of the deal.
The policeman entered the kitchen. He and his wife were
friendly and talkative. He made a telephone call, and the
two lads braced themselves for whatever revenge the now
angry and frustrated Commissioners at the Scrubs would
take. Whatever it was, it would be much worse than before.
To their minds, they had betrayed their trust. The prison
commissioners and governor had expressed a particular
view about that, which was not the same as the view of the
skinny prisoner.
Remembering what the governor had said, they were
troubled at the thought of their return. There was every

382
chance that they would be sent to Detention Centre for
some real punishment. Reading Detention Centre was the
place every convict thought of with dread. Like they say
with the Royal Marines, 99% need not apply. These two
escapees did not want to be included in the prison system’s
equivalent of the Marines’ glasshouse. They did not want
to be part of the one percent. It was rumoured that Reading
Detention Centre was a place of painful and unrelenting
punishment – a version of the 19th century’s inventive
conceptions of hell.317 The Commissioners, David had
heard rumoured, were reluctant to send prisoners there,
especially obese, diabetic, mentally ill or physically small
prisoners. On the other hand, other convicts in the
extended English prison system treated people who had
been through Reading with the utmost respect.
The skinny prisoner, whatever fears he may occasionally
have had, thought that he had already been saved from
whatever abuse would be hurled his way. He had given up

317
Wheeler, Michael. The Limits of Hell: Lodge, Murdoch,
Burgess, Golding. Literature and Theology. 4, no.1. (1990). 72-83.
Explores the idea of hell as it is used in contemporary British
fiction, not as a central theme, but as a point of reference. 19th cent.
literature conceived of hell on earth as extreme suffering, whether
caused by alienation or the breakdown of love. 20th cent. concepts
saw hell as the absence of other people who represent the
possibility of redeeming love. Focuses especially on the works of
David Lodge, Iris Murdoch, Anthony Burgess, and William
Golding.

383
hope and adopted cynicism as his approach to everything in
life. He had ceased caring since it hurt so much.
If he had not set his mind in this way, he would have
become a quivering wreck, for he was no hero, nor very
brave. A recurring part of his speech had become the
phrase, ‘Who cares?’ It was not a question, but a spat
rhetorical statement of fact. No one cared, least of all him.
He had provided himself with an emotional shock absorber.
He would have been as unmoved if the Board of Visitors
had sentenced him to death.
Later that day a vehicle arrived outside the village police
station and three officials got out. They went to the house
and shared a cup of tea with the sergeant, his wife and the
two who had surrendered themselves. Neither lad knew
any of them, which was surprising, because they knew
every guard on the wing at the Scrubs. After a friendly chat
and the cup of tea, the three got up, and led their captives to
the waiting car. It was to be a short drive – much shorter
than the drive to London, and in the opposite direction.
‘Where are we going?’ Asked Derek.
‘Gloucester Prison.’ Came the terse reply.
‘What’s it like?’
‘A prison.’
It did not look like a prison. Prison was tall, forbidding and
grey, with great bars across the windows and pallid faces

384
staring into the void, like the Scrubs. This was a small red
brick structure. Although parts of it were two hundred
years old, the front had the appearance of a modern,
architectural structure, completely unlike the Scrubs.
Instead of a high forty-foot blank exterior wall, it had an
extensive entrance hall built into the front, and a third of the
way up the wall, a long row of ordinary toughened glass
green-tinted windows that reflected the blue of the sky ran
along two thirds of the building. There was no razor wire
to be seen, and two patches of garden, opening to the public
street, enclosed in low sandstone walls, lovingly tended,
sprouted palm and bamboo greenery. Flowering blooms
lay at the foot of a flight of wide grey Portland stone steps
leading to the front office. Standing square in full view of
stores and public streets, it could have been just another one
of the blocks of offices.
Behind the façade was another story of course. A Category
‘B’ local facility, the certified normal capacity for the
establishment being 236, it had an operational capacity of
330, which meant that it was overcrowded. In other words,
many of the inmates had to share their cell that had been
built for single occupancy with another.
Although the prison was on an inner city site, perhaps
because of the gardens at its entrance it appeared to the two
boys to be surrounded by open country. It was a strange

385
illusion. The prison was however filled mainly with yokel
prisoners with Southwestern and Bristolian accents. There
were many young people who appeared to the untrained
David to have psychiatric disorders,318 and whose
intuitional perception would in many surveys continue to be
supported by the service’s own internal statistics which, for
example in a 1998 survey would show that remand
prisoners suffer from a range of mental health problems.
According to the Office for National Statistics more than
three-quarters of male remand prisoners suffered from a
personality disorder. One in ten had a functional psychosis
and more than half experienced depression. Nearly two-
thirds of female remand prisoners suffered from depression.
The survey commented upon the fact that research had
found that 9% of remand prisoners required immediate

318
Rosik, Christopher H. The Misdiagnosis of Multiple Personality
Disorder by Christian Counsellors: Vulnerabilities and Safeguards.
Journal of Psychology and Theology.23, no.2. (1995): 75-88. The
complexities of multiple personality disorder (MPD) continue to
create significant opportunities for misdiagnosis by Christian
counsellors. Examines some potential contributing factors for
misdiagnosis, with special focus on the risk of overdiagnosis among
Christian clinicians. Offers an extensive literature review which
highlights features differentiating MPD from several other
diagnostic groups. Assessment instruments and strategies which will
assist counsellors in minimizing misdiagnosis are also delineated.
Christian counsellors are urged to approach the diagnosis of MPD in
an informed and balanced manner.
317
Singleton, N et al (1998) Psychiatric Morbidity among Prisoners
in England and Wales. London: Office for National Statistics.

386
transfer to the National Health Service for mental health
problems.319
This has always been, and as far as I can see will continue
to be, an important aspect of all systems of incarceration of
criminals. As it was then, so it would continue to be thirty
and forty years later. According to a story from BBC news
on 11th November 2005 about the mental and physical
healthcare being provided at Feltham Young Offenders’
Institution in West London, inspectors were very critical of
the level of care offered to sometimes very seriously
mentally ill inmates.
A judicial inquiry was in the process of being held into the
racist murder of Asian inmate Zahid Mubarek by his white
cellmate, who had a personality disorder, five years
previously.
Anne Owers, chief Inspector of Prisons, said progress had
been made in race relations since, but that more work was
needed on safety and healthcare. In Dave’s experience of
prison existence, the diplomatic politico-speak ‘more work
needed’ may be read as a euphemism for a lack of safety
and a lack of care. Feltham is an unsympathetic and
difficult establishment to extremely volatile young people,
many of whom are vulnerable and damaged. Anne Owens
went on to say:

319

387
Feltham is undoubtedly a different establishment from the
one that attracted so much attention and criticism in the
past. However, she also said that Feltham would continue
to need vigilant management and well-supported and
engaged staff. However, the west London institution would
also need more external support and assistance so it could
provide a stable environment for the young people it holds.
Mental health care facilities must be made available outside
the prison system to assist, she said.320
There were in fact in 2006, mental health in-reach teams in
102 prisons. Prison regimes have always been able to do
little to address the mental health needs of prisoners.
Recent research has found that 28% of male sentenced
prisoners with evidence of psychosis, for example, reported
spending 23 or more hours a day in their cells - over twice
the proportion of those without mental health problems.
Prisoners with severe mental health problems are often not
diverted to more appropriate secure provision. The Chief
Inspector of Prisons estimated, based on visits to local
prisons, that 41% of prisoners being held in health care
centres should have been in secure NHS accommodation.321
Research found that there were up to 500 patients in prison
320
These statistics are taken from Singleton et al (1998) Psychiatric
Morbidity among Prisoners in England and Wales, London:
321
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2004) Annual Report of HM Chief
Inspector of Prisons for England and Wales 2002-2003, London:
Stationery Office.

388
health care centres with mental health problems sufficiently
ill to require immediate NHS admission322. The government
recently committed itself to a programme of standardizing
court diversion schemes across the country.323
Anne Owers also highlighted inadequacies in the general
level of healthcare provision, pointing to the case of one
young inmate of Feltham whose injury to his finger was left
untreated for six weeks. In the end the injury had become
untreatable. Inspectors also found anti-bullying procedures
were weak in the establishment and that juvenile offenders
from ethnic minority groups were more worried about
safety than their white counterparts. They also reported
more negative treatment by staff than white inmates. But
Ms Owers praised Feltham’s advances in staff-prisoner
relations, race relations, training, education, and work with
juveniles.
Phil Wheatley, director general of the Prison Service, said
Feltham manages some of the most disturbed young
offenders in the country. Many of these suffer from mental
illness and are abusers of hard drugs, he said. Despite these
considerable challenges Feltham is, without doubt, an
improving prison that has made great progress in recent
years, he said. He added that he was pleased this had been
322
Reed, J. Mental Health Care in Prisons. British Journal of
Psychiatry 182, (2003):287-288.
323
Hansard, House of Commons written answers, 12 September
2005, column 2570W.

389
recognised. But he acknowledged there was still a lot of
hard work to be done, particularly in the field of healthcare
services. The inquiry into the death of 19-year-old Mr
Mubarek, who was beaten to death in his cell the night
before he was due to be released, was due to report
sometime in 2006. The fact is, as was reported by Richard
Garside,324 keeping a prisoner for a year at Feltham works
out at roughly twice the price of keeping a pupil for a Year
at Eton.
Sometimes Gloucester Prison felt to him like a psychiatric
hospital. The prison catered for the administrative court
area that included Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, South
Worcestershire, and parts of Avon and Somerset.
A report many years later to be published about the young
prisoners in Gloucester Prison was to highlight the concerns
of the staff themselves about their parlous mental and
emotional health...

‘ We continue (as we have mentioned in previous

reports) to be extremely concerned about individuals
being held at the Prison who have psychiatric or
personality disorders. We urge that these individuals be
transferred to secure hospital facilities in order for them
to receive appropriate specialist care and treatment. We
have also noted that there appears to be an excessive
324
Garside, Richard. Wrong Question, Wrong Answer. Prison
Service Journal Issue 61, (Oct.2005)

390
 amount of time taken for individuals to be transferred to
suitable establishments at the present time.’

Here was the most clear statement and admission of a

scandalous situation. This prison whose intention was
punishment, not medical treatment, was incarcerating
mentally ill people. Behavioural and mental health
problems were particularly prevalent amongst children in
prison. Of prisoners aged 16-20, around 85% showed signs
of a personality disorder and 10% exhibited signs of
psychotic illness, for example schizophrenia.325 How many
of these people were needing chemical treatment,
counselling and talk therapies, surgery, deep psychotherapy,
behavioural support, social interaction and the rest? What
were they actually getting? According to the prison officers
themselves - who were not employed for their
compassionate natures - accustomed to guarding young
people and incarcerating them in these stinking tiny cells,
depriving them of social interaction and sexual contact as
well as of their freedom, this seemed to him to be wrong
and ought not to have been happening. One may only
imagine how it felt to the skinny prisoner and others who
were not prison guards but their victims.

325
Singleton et al (2000) Psychiatric Morbidity among young
offenders in England and Wales, London: Office for National
Statistics.

391
Mental health problems amongst prisoners were often
linked to previous experiences of violence at home and
sexual abuse. In research, about half of women and about a
quarter of men in prison have suffered from violence at
home while about one in three women report having
suffered sexual abuse compared with just under one in 10
men, and Half of all those sentenced to custody are not
registered with a GP prior to being sent to prison.326
‘Is this it, then?’
‘Yes. This is the place.’
The electric gates swung open and a guard peeked out.
Waving the vehicle through to the courtyard, he closed the
gates behind it. The consignees got out of the car and their
escorts unlocked the cuffs, asking without irony whether
they had hurt the boys’ wrists. They looked at their wrists
and said, ‘No’. As they strolled in a friendly group towards
the Reception block, they chatted in the warm sunshine.
The two captives were confused by all of this. They had
expected to be roughly treated and punished for their recent
escapades. They had yet to understand how the system
works. Despite the overcrowding and the preponderance of
mentally ill convicts, Gloucester Prison had a
compassionate Governor and some kindly officers.

326
Melzer et al Prisoners with psychosis in England and Wales:a
one-year national follow-up study.The Howard Journal 41, (2002)
1-13.

392
It appeared to him that it was the rule of the Governor that
determined the ethos of the institution. Good Governor,
compassionate prison. Rubbish Governor, rubbish prison.
It might not be fair, but it was the way it seemed to work.
Many good governors found themselves having to deal with
unpalatable political realities – like having to be an
unofficial psychiatric unit - such as in this case.
For the two lads, this was to become a place of refreshment
and putting on weight, of good food and regular exercise
and good relationships. For him, if the sentence had ended
at Gloucester Prison under that regime, he would have
come to heel as an ex-offender much sooner than he did. It
was not, however, to be. There was a lot more to be learned
yet, and there was a crucial meeting that would change the
direction and quality of life that had not yet taken place for
David.
The reception officer waved them towards some piles of
clothing.
‘We should have something here.’ He said, as he
rummaged through a heap of shirts. He instructed his
Trustee to fit the two lads up.
An escapee has to wear a special kind of clothing, which is
distinct from that of he ordinary convict. It marks him out
as someone who is likely to attempt escape. The uniform
of such a man consists of a battledress navy blue jacket

393
with a large bright patch – usually Day-Glo yellow or blue,
bordered with white – sewn on the left breast. The trousers
are the usual grey flannels but with a wide bright yellow or
blue patch running down the whole length of the leg. The
other leg had a narrower yellow or blue stripe opposite,
depending on the colour of the other stripe. Every escapee
has this distinctive uniform. The main purpose was to
immediately distinguish escapees or absconders from other
prisoners in the prison. A prisoner in this uniform is
described as being ‘in patches’. He has a constant escort on
exercise or work detail and on transfers from one institution
to another. He is escorted to and from the lavatory and
does not associate with the other prisoners.
Despite this constant surveillance, his stay in Gloucester
Prison was not totally unbearable. His experience of the
officers was that they were generous and kind. His cell was
fitted with a red light bulb that was never switched off. He
was fast getting used to sleeping in that red glow. It
stopped bothering him after a short time. He was kept
locked up twenty-three hours a day. His food was brought
to the door every mealtime and pushed through the flap in
the door. Every afternoon he was taken by armed escort on
a circular walk round and round the exercise yard for an
hour. As he walked with a cigarette, the escort leaned
against the wall with his cigarette.

394
This went on without interruption for two weeks. He had
begun to wonder what sort of a place this was. No work.
No free association with the other cons. He had spent a
whole two weeks in his cell on his own with only the
occasional guard to say hello to at meal delivery times.
Being a small person, and having always all of his adult
life, been nine stone and two pounds, it was in Gloucester
Prison that his weight rocketed to ten-and-a-half stone!
After two weeks he asked why he was being kept in solitary
confinement. The guard did not know why.
He was soon to discover the answer to his question. Mid
afternoon one Tuesday an officer asked him if he would be
prepared to talk to someone. He said he was ready to see
anyone, having had precious little companionship of late.
He was escorted to one of the visiting rooms. He could not
imagine who could have come all of this way to see him.
He wondered if it may have been his parents, but they were
poor and angry and would not have spent precious
resources on such a trip. He was intrigued. Maybe it was
someone from Gains Hall or the Scrubs. The guard opened
the door of the visiting room and waved him to a
comfortably upholstered chair. Opposite the chair sat a
huge man in a suit. He had never seen him before. He was
a police representative of some sort. C.I.D. maybe. After

395
two weeks of talking to no one, he was prepared to talk to
anyone.
‘Hello, David.’ He offered his hand in greeting, cheerfully
welcoming him to sit down.
He replied, cursorily declining the offer of fellowship,
preferring to relax in the first proper chair he had sat in for
months.
‘ How are you feeling? Cigarette?’
A pack of expensive cigarettes crossed the table and he took
one. He had the feeling all this had been planned a long
time ago. He had come to soften him up for interrogation.
He had waited two weeks in the hope that the prisoner
would be ready to talk. And now, there he was, offering
friendship and cigarettes and a few minutes of comfort in
exchange for a little bit of grassing. The prisoner decided
to let him know how he was feeling.
‘Bloody lovely, mate. Haven’t felt better for months. I’ve
discovered that I am the best company I could ever had, and
I’m reading stuff you wouldn’t believe. Plato, Aristotle,
Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Descartes, Shakespeare, Dickens,
Kierkegaard, and Milton to mention but a few. They’ve got
a great library. You could do with a bit of this yourself!’
‘Enjoying it, are you? Oh well, that’s good then. Only
some blokes go nuts being locked up all the time for weeks
on end, poor bastards.’

396
The last phrase had no doubt been added to convey an
expression of some empathy for the poor solitary prisoner.
He did not mistake it for sympathy.
‘ Come off it, mate.’ He said. ‘That’s just what you want.
Blokes start going round the twist, like a lot of them in this
place, and then you come along and ask for a confession.’
‘Confession? Who said anything about a confession?’
Innocent, smiling look on his face, eyes opened in mock
surprise. Eyebrows lifted. He had misjudged the prisoner
and was treating him like a fool. The prisoner, though
young and inexperienced, wasn’t going to have it. He
leaned across the table, engaged the officer’s eyeballs,
placed his fingertips on the polished surface, and said very
slowly,
‘All right. What do you want to know?’
He felt that if he knew what he was after, he would be
better able to avoid telling him. Suspecting what was
happening, the police officer’s eyes narrowed and hardened
into little steely balls. Though his mouth still smiled, his
hands had clenched.
‘Two weeks ago, I met a police officer and his wife and I
would have told them anything. But not you. Not here,
either. I like it here. I really do. The food’s good, and I’ve
got a cell of my own on the ground floor. No one bothers
me. I don’t have to get to know any of the cons or nutters

397
in this place. I’ve got no worries, and I am not going to
speed-up my transfer to the Scrubs and God knows where
else after that. While I’m here with what I know and your
bosses want you to find out, I’m happy. You can visit me as
often as you like.’
There was nothing the policeman could do to him that had
not already been done. Once, he used to worry about other
peoples’ feelings, but he had become cynically hardened
against that kind of weakness.
‘Believe it or not, I enjoy being locked up on my own. I
read and write and I’m getting an education. I’ve never had
time before. I hope it lasts for as long as it can. I’m a very
happy bunny, and I’m not bothered if I spend the rest of my
sentence here in Gloucester Prison. There’s no chance
whatsoever that I’ll confess to anything or that there is
anything I have to confess to.’
The officer did not mind. There was little he could do if he
had. He was there, according to prison tradition and rules,
at the sufferance of the prisoner he had come to visit.
David could terminate the interview at any time, just by
saying so.
‘All right lad, I’m going to put my cards on the table. Now
I don’t want you spending the rest of your term in solitary
confinement. I don’t care what you say, it can’t be much

398
fun, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. As for me putting
you there, all I can say is that it wasn’t my doing..’
‘All I need is for you to admit to taking a number of motor
vehicles and some clothing. That’s all I want, and it’s just
to clear up the records. I’ve got books to be cleared, and
more important things to do, quite frankly. It’s not as
though we didn’t know you are guilty. We’ve spoken to
Derek, and he’s told us all about it anyway. We do know
what happened and what you did. But we need a statement
signed – clear the books - and there’ll be no more trouble.
How’s that, eh, lad?’
Of course they were guilty. Everyone knew it. He had all
the circumstantial evidence he needed. Just a confession
and a signed statement and he would be on his way back to
borstal, and the sentence would be resumed. After all, the
strongest argument to sign the statement was that as long as
he refused, he would be spending time in prison that was
not being counted towards his borstal sentence.
Three things stopped him. First, he was not a ‘grass’.
Second, in an odd way he enjoyed the police officer’s
visits. It was like a friend from the outside world. Not that
the friend cared. He also enjoyed the visit because it was a
game of wits, and a game in which he felt he had some
power. He had something they wanted. It was a new
experience for him. Third, putting off the evil day when the

399
fear and dread of going back to the Scrubs and getting a
Detention Centre sentence would be realised. The longer
he could make the present situation last, the better.
He smiled at him, told him to prove his allegations, lit up a
cigarette and summoned the guard.
‘What I’ve got is time, and plenty of it.’ He said as he left
the room.
‘If you want to talk anytime, tell the Governor and I’ll be
down. Don’t forget, now.’
He did not contact the Governor. He called to see him once
again during those three months, but he refused to see him.
By the time of his transfer from that comfortable institution
he had spent over three months in solitary confinement, and
had read through most of the prison library. He had even
got hold of a copy of Das Kapital and read all three
volumes. What a collection! Poets, philosophers,
economists, biographies of all kinds of people, histories and
historians, politicians, thrillers, novels, brilliant literature,
the lot. Each one bore its own stamp, its own worldview,
its own insights and learning. They had each been
impressed with the stamp of an idea and etched out of the
fabric of hard thought and experience. The idea that a
human being is intended for something more than what at
first appears. Greater than a physical body, a human being
is more than the sum of its parts. Greater than the body and

400
more than a stack of dinners. Every book – even the pulp
fiction thrillers knocked together in a week and sold in a
month, was saying something greater about humankind.
Writers, he came to understand, were all optimists,
whatever it was they wrote, because they believed it was
worth taking the trouble to put it on paper – that there
would be people with sufficient commitment and yearning
to read what they wrote.
Ideas of ‘eternity’ and ‘life after death’, and ‘life before
death’ sprung from the mythologies and religious works
and histories and biographies and works of fiction. The
idea that people can live better than they do, and love better
than they do filled the pages. These things frightened him
at first, because he thought they were about other people,
and not himself.
But he soon came to understand that he was included in
‘humankind’327 Drawing upon experiences as a prison
chaplain and a state director of prison chaplaincy services,
Stephen Hall proposed a working theology of prison
ministry. Such a theology begins with an understanding of
the inherent worth of humankind as created by God in his
own image, addresses the question of hope, embodies the
incarnate presence of God by being present with people in

327
Hall, Stephen T. A Working Theology of Prison Ministry. JPCC.
58, no.3. (2004): 169-178.

401
their alienation, enables the giving and receiving of
forgiveness, deals with issues of power and control, and
respects the diverse paths that humans take in their walk
toward and with God. David knew that that these
aspirations could be his also. Some of the books denied
there was a God or an afterlife. Others asserted that there
was. But the mere fact that they all, in some way or
another addressed the possibility, intrigued and captured his
imagination, spurring him on to even further reading. It
was ironic and an indication that God might have a sense of
humour, that it was to be just after this period, in Reading
Goal, famous most of all for the retrospectively wicked
incarceration of the writer Oscar Wilde in solitary
confinement, awaiting punishment from the state that most
of David’s prison reading was to be done.
He had a battered Bible. Half the pages were missing,
because they made great cigarette papers. One day he went
on a thieving trip around the cells until he found a Bible
that was complete. Taking it back to his cell, he spent a
whole week reading from cover to cover, missing some of
the boring bits. He discovered some beautiful stuff there,
and some shocking stuff, too. One thing that surprised him
was how many of the Old Testament leaders of the
Hebrews, who were God’s people, had been adulterers,
murderers, and morally reprehensible individuals! Not just

402
Cain, but Abraham, Moses, King David. Yet, there was
Jesus – the best man who ever lived, some said, part of the
same story. It was full of surprising stuff. He could see
why it was called the Book of Books. It was about
everything.
The policeman came again two weeks before David was
finally transferred to Wormwood Scrubs. He told him
nothing, as usual. He went away. Clearly he had been told
to waste no more time on it. After all it had been three
months, and it did not look hopeful for him.
It was a sad day for David when he left that prison.
Reading Detention Centre (Reading Gaol) and the Scrubs
loomed up ahead, and he had also made friends with some
of the guards at Gloucester. Two of them escorted him to
the station where he boarded the train in the company of
two guards from Wormwood Scrubs. A special
compartment had been labelled, ‘Reserved for H. M.
Prisons’ on the window for all to see. The occupants of the
compartment fell into uneasy and fearful silence as they
neared London.
The Scrubs officer at the station looked hard at the young
man in handcuffs who alighted from the train. He had been
separated from his companion Derek. There was no sign of
recognition or welcome from the officer. David feared that
what the future held was pain and suffering of a kind he had

403
never experienced before. He wasn’t angry about it, for he
had known it was coming, and he had nothing to measure it
against. The only way it could happen was like this. This
was not going to be like Gloucester Prison.

404
405
 THIRTEEN: READING GAOL
Violence, repression, and retribution as tools in the
reformative process

The officer came to his cell in the Scrubs and led the skinny
prisoner to the room where the Commissioners waited to
pass sentence. By this time, after a few weeks of the
Scrubs routine, the old fears had been socialised back into
him. He had become less confident as the day drew nearer.
Those easy months of weight-gain and education in
Gloucester had softened him. He’d allowed thoughts of
love, mercy, goodness, justice and fair play to get a hold on
him. He had secretly hoped he would get a soft sentence;
that they would question him about his new philosophy of
life and detect the change in his attitude. Maybe he would
get six days bread and water and a return to Gains Hall. If
so, he would settle down to the rest of his term and behave.
He had learned much. He had learned that he could modify
his feelings, state of mind and behaviour simply by
determining to do so in his head. He could act
independently of feelings, and keep a calm head in very
difficult situations, without feeling that his human dignity

406
had been violated because ha had not acted passionately, or
directly from a felt need that had arisen suddenly in his
will. Polythress had compared the traditional medical
model of treating prisoners up for disposal from the courts,
with its emphasis on personal free will and self-
determination with newer, behavior modification models of
social determinism, as they are responded to by the legal
profession. Treatment and/or punishment prescriptions
emerging from the courts tended toward discounting and
leaving aside behavior modification programmes on the
presumption that determinism constituted a violation of
human dignity. This study328 reaches the conclusion that
that this is a misinterpretation of the nature of such
procedures, and offers suggestions for professionals in
legal, religious, and behavioural science areas to revisit and
perhaps modify their philosophical presumptions. He had
realised this in his own intuitive practice and experience. It
was not the same David who emerged from that place who
had gone in to it a few months earlier.
He had been asking questions about what constituted his
basic humanity. What is a human being? How does the
human differ from the other creatures who inhabit the
earth? If I am ‘special’, why? Through all of this,
328
Poythress, N. G. Behavior Modification, Brainwashing, Religion,
and the Law.. Journal of Religion and Health. 17, no. 4. (1978): 238
– 243.

407
influenced deeply by the poets, he had come to a realisation
that there were few real villains in the world. Most of those
whom the world had defined as such were in fact just
ordinary people. The plea made by Dominique de
Courcelles for universal solidarity329 illustrated exactly how
the emerging David now viewed his world. This shows
clearly the necessity and indeed the urgency of reflecting on
the political, emotional and social significance of one’s
personal morality. Both humanity and the individual cease
to be human when they decree that there is no longer any
room in the world for whoever is their enemy. He supposed
that he must have enemies, but he could not for the life of
him think whom they might be, and he truly believed that
he hated no-one. Thus it turned out that of all emotional,
political and social stock-in-trade, discord had become the
most precious item. Good-versus-evil-brainwashing, and
calls-for-brotherhood-on-one’s-own side of a conflict, could
be used to mask totalitarianism and violence, but universal
solidarity, he suspected, included everyone and implied
universal concord.

329
Courcelles, Dominique de. Plaidoyer pour un espace a plusieurs
voix. A propos des rapports entre pensee et politique selon H.
Arendt et A. Finkielkraut (Plea for Universal Concord. Concerning
the Connection between Thought and Policy According to H. Arendt
and A. Finkielkraut). Revue Des Sciences Philosophiques Et
Theologiques. 73, no.2. (1989): 249-257.

408
With these thoughts in his mind, plus a dread of the
unknown horrors that might wait in Reading Detention
Centre, he approached the panelled door and entered the
Commissioners’ room.
Half a dozen people sat around a polished table. He knew
from the aura of the group that the sentence was going to be
a punishing one. He could read their faces.
The saga of his former crimes, including the most recent,
was read out to him. He had not realised there had been so
many. More than fifty, in fact. He had been a bad lad, but
it was only he, it seemed, who knew it was a long scream
for understanding and for help. No one had understood
this, as they say they do now. He had seen a painting by
Francis Bacon that depicted exactly how he felt, as though
internal pressures were blowing off his head. A persistent
criminal was a persistent criminal, and the punishment of
the criminal should fit the criminal’s crime. That was fair,
wasn’t it?
Well, no. It might be a good line in a comical musical, or
headline in a tabloid, but not a good guide for criminal
justice. However, you can’t know what you don’t know,
and these people didn’t know what was happening in the
skinny prisoner’s heart and mind.
He was berated with the reminder of their previous
kindness and generosity, and how they had forgiven his

409
betrayal of their trust, although he had consistently rejected
them. He was no longer to be trusted. He must learn that
the disposals of the Commissioners must be obeyed. He
was accused of betrayal of trust, and a general lack of
honesty and dependability.
He was in no mood or position to argue, and his silence
may have been taken as insubordination and a refusal to
repent. One of the Commissioners informed him that he
was sentenced to spend fifteen days in solitary confinement
in the block on bread and water. Three days on and three
days off meant that he would have at least another month in
the Scrubs before where he was to be sent from there. He
reeled at the size of the disposal. Fifteen days worked out
at almost a whole month in the punishment block. That
was a long time.
Conventional Christian ethics are fundamentally
pathological, derived not from notions of happiness and
pleasure but from alienation and the collective
schizophrenia of the late Middle Ages. A morality failing to
recognize the basic unity of soul and body resulting in a
morality of duty, preaching sin rather than the forgiveness
of sin. Ple shows the damage done by a traditional morality
of duty:330 neurotic sense of guilt, projection of a false
asceticism and an equally false image of God, a do not
330
Ple, Albert. The Morality of Duty and Obsessional Neurosis.
Cross Currents. 36, no. 3. (1986): 343-358.

410
mentality, individual and power-centred (by-passing
community and service). It promotes infantilism, having
recourse to authority for decision making; subservience to
political authority - sacralization of the status quo of the
ruling power; legalistic and casuistic; a priori (Kantian)
morality - rejecting empirical information or confirmation
from experience. A morality that recognises the basic unity
of soul and body would seek to reintegrate pleasure in our
moral life, drawing on the Gospels, Aristotle, the Fathers,
and especially Thomas Aquinas. What is needed is a moral
theology that refuses to ignore any aspect of the human
person or to mutilate the person in anyone.
Before he could recover from the blow this had dealt him,
the voice of one of the Commissioners pierced his skull:
‘You are also to be sent to Reading Detention Centre for a
period of punishment for not less than three months.’
Silence. A female fly buzzed against the windowpane. The
universe was empty. A quarter of a year being punished by
Her Majesty’s government’s professionals! He could not
imagine what this might amount to.

Sitting on the floor – there was no chair - in the isolation

punishment cell, dazed, it was at least half an hour before
he was able to seriously address even considering what
implications there might be of this sentence with any

411
amount of mental clarity. He crossed his legs and rocked
from side to side for some hours. He made the sound of a
gentle humming to reassure his spirit. Though not directly
addressing this situation, an academic theological reflection
by Dwyer-Voss331 nevertheless contains an element of light
to be shed upon it in the sense of supporting the principle
that God is just, elucidates how in his view confrontational
(Christian) ministry tears down what is bad and plants and
builds that which is good - Jeremiah shows us that God’s
instructions to confront are never separable from God’s
reassurances – reassured David that all was not completely
without purpose. Thus he sat for hours, swaying gently
from side to side.
For the length of the bread and water punishment he
communicated with no one. He was not allowed any
reading material apart from a Bible, which he read little of
during that time. He grabbed the bread when it came and
saved none for later. He spent hours of his time quoting
Shakespearean soliloquies from memory. He had made
them a part of his emotional furniture. They expressed
exactly what was in his heart and mind. They anchored
him in his humanity and saved his sanity. He thought of
God occasionally and cursed Him for his modesty in

331
Dwyer-Voss, Ron. Called to Tear Down: Confrontational
Ministry. Journal of Currents in Theology and Mission 22, no.1.
(1995): 43-45.

412
refusing to reveal Himself. He learned to mimic lots of
famous people, and would set up and hold conversations
and debates between them. He found a bit of matchstick
that had been burned, and started to draw the face of a
person on the glossed back wall of the cell. It was the face
of a woman. Although the guards couldn’t have avoided
seeing it, they took no action to have it removed. They said
nothing. One of the kitchen trustees kept him supplied with
pencils and a bit of sandpaper through the broken eye of the
door. He spent many days on the picture, drawing, erasing,
smudging, and re-drawing until it seemed to emerge into
life off the wall. The proportions and shades had to be
exact and true to life. He couldn’t be satisfied. He had
become totally engrossed in the drawing so that when his
bread and water arrived, it was an intrusion into his primary
activity. Eventually it was done. He felt that whatever way
he looked at the picture it was perfect. It completely
satisfied him. There was not a line or shade or highlight
out of place. The image was lifelike. It stood out from the
wall, giving life and human femininity to the whole dead
room.
One day a guard intruded into the privacy of the bread and
water skinny prisoner’s room. He ordered him to wipe the
picture off the wall. To the guard, it was a picture. Who
could tell the whole long story of what it was to the

413
prisoner? Whose job was it to explain? The letter of the
law required the removal of the illegal scrawling, but the
spirit of hope required it’s immortalising.
‘Take that effing scribble off the wall!’
The effing scribble came off the wall, as the guard had
commanded. Its effing impression remained in the heart of
the skinny prisoner however, and it remains to this day, 40
years later.
The Day came for transfer to the Detention Centre all too
soon. Among the rest of the victims, chosen for this special
period of torture, he got in to the vehicle. It was a transit-
type van, with a row of seats on either side fitted with
handcuff stations especially by the security service. These,
of all borstal boys, had been chosen for the esteemed
honour and special victimisation of being selected for a
term of punishment in Reading Goal. They lit their
cigarettes and recounted jokes and stories they had heard
thus far in the prisons. This group of secretly terrified
prisoners appeared to consider themselves old hands at the
business. If one were to ask, ‘the business of what?’ One
might answer, ‘The business, this time, of being victims’.
David had not yet learned the glorious truth that the
Christian doctrine of original sin states universal human
victimhood.332 This article came close to David’s feelings
332
Omerod, N. Original Sin: Good News for the Poor. Downside
Review. 114, no. 395. (1996): 116-128.

414
about his situation, using the analogy of an abused child
who grows with a distorted sense of self, later perpetrating
a cycle of abuse. Attitudes to victims parallel attitudes to
original sin, the denial of victimhood - the myth of being in
control and masking brokenness; blaming the victim -
blaming people for the state of being sinned against.
Healing the victim requires loving confrontation, allowing
grace to heal brokenness. Jesus’ concern for victims led to
conflict with the self-righteous, so leading to the cross
where he became the divine victim mediating God’s
universal compassion for all victims of history. In the
Resurrection God raises the victim, Jesus, who, when he
judges, identifies with history’s victims.
The building, like Gloucester Prison, was made of red
brick. Its perimeter wall rose 45 feet above the pavement.
There was no razor wire on the summit. Beyond that wall
rose another, red brick with a line of white bricks along the
top, just below the rim of the building. In the centre of the
inner block rose a tower. Red brick again, castellated, a
mixture of Georgian and Victorian styles, with two large
stacks of Victorian chimneys. The cell windows were
picked-out in white against the red brick, and the whole
building was square and squat surrounded by its car park.
Above the wall few cell windows were revealed to the
outside world. It presented as a private place. It seemed to

415
him that he was entering a very special place – a place with
a culture and way of life that was completely separate and
distinct from those of the host culture. Many years later,
the best parallel he could find to characterise the nature of
this dichotomy was to draw an analogy between the Amish
and Mennonite way of life, commented upon in Morgan
and Vorster’s study333 of Amish and Mennonite culture. In
comparison to the culture that surrounds its historical
existence, the most conservative Amish reject many
technological advances, modern clothes and college
education. Worship takes place in homes or barns.
Maintenance of this distinct way of life reflects a resolve to
remain separate from the outside world. They are
committed to a particular web of beliefs and a discipline,
which has been upheld by succeeding generations.
Paradoxes and complexities characterize the Mennonite and
Amish way of living, especially their selective use of
modern technology. In spite of pressures and demands on
these religious groups, they are flourishing and continue to
pose questions as to the values and attitudes underlying the
outside world. This is largely due to their historical
background, which supports and explains their practices.
All of this was true of Reading Detention Centre.

333
Morgan, E.R. Vorster, J.M. The Mennonites and the Amish: A Critique
of Religious Conservatism with Special Reference to the Old Order
Amish in Pennsylvania. Journal SHE. 29, no.2. (2003): 53-77.

416
Indeed, what went on in the confines of those walls was
mostly a shame and a disgrace, which the outside world
either did not care or did not want to know about. These
prisoners, however, were soon to be initiated into the whole
enchilada of a sadistic regime that persisted at that time.
They were to soon realise that they had now become the
victims of it. He thought that probably, in their defence, the
Sentencing Commissioners at Wormwood Scrubs had no
idea of the detailed truth of events that regularly occurred
against immature boys and psychiatrically sick children and
Tom o’ bedlams in this place of shame. That it was, at least
partly, staffed by predatory sadists and abusers.
How could it be explained? It was difficult for him then,
and remains so today. There were many parallels with
Fackenham’s insights reflecting upon Peter J. Haas’s
‘Morality After Auschwitz’, regarding the Nazi ‘ethic’ that
facilitated the holocaust334 Haas showed that the Holocaust
was perpetrated by both ‘idealists’ and ordinary jobholders,
so the crime could not be termed as merely a work of
sadists or barbarians, and that the Nazis were inspired by
their own ‘ethic’ and those tolerating it yielded to it. But he
unwittingly trivializes the Holocaust by viewing the Nazi
Fackenheim, Emil L. Nazi ‘Ethic, Nazi Weltanschauung,
334

and the Holocaust (A Review Essay of: Peter J. Haas:

Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the
Nazi Ethic, Fortress, 1988). Jewish Quarterly Review. 1,
no.2. (1992): 167-172.

417
‘ethic’ as a specimen of the species ethic, whereas it should
be understood as flowing from the Nazi Weltanschauung
that, like traditional religion and metaphysics, had to be
coherent and comprehensive. It also had to be made true,
i.e., if Jews were vermin they had to be exterminated. In the
end, its coherence could only be ‘proven’ by appealing to
its Fuhrerprinzip and claiming that Hitler was right about
the Jews.
The officers that accompanied the prisoners from the
Scrubs were sent down from Reading, and were sharers in
the ‘Weltanschauung’ towards their captives, the objects of
their sadism. Right wing elements in society, if needed,
would unerringly provide the Fuhrerprinzip if ever needed.
The officers seemed friendly enough for most of the
journey, joking with the prisoners and taking some insults,
harmlessly intended, from them.
The group of prisoners, unaware that they were in fact now
caught without redemption in the victim net, had begun to
feel quite at home and brave after their initial reserve. In
fact, the skinny prisoner was beginning to wonder why
everybody had made such a fuss about Reading Gaol.
Perhaps, he thought, it was a hangover from the myths
about a former famous prisoner, Oscar Wilde. All convicts
knew that he had written a heart-wrenching poem about the
demonic and heartless lack of a compassionate nature in

418
this place – the hanging of a guardsman who killed the
thing he loved… The myth had obviously gotten out of
hand.
With no introduction and without warning the heavy blade
of the guillotine, balanced for the first few miles of the
journey in its unseen cradle above them, sliced into the
block of their complacency. ‘Chooonk!’
‘Right, you lot of slimy worms, get your effing boots, belts,
ties and braces off! I want them on the effing floor. Socks,
trousers, ties. Ten seconds, and if they’re not on the floor
by then, you will be.’
After ten seconds and one of the prisoners had not managed
to quite comply – he had forgotten to remove his prison tie
– the promise was unequivocally kept, because the officer
kicked him hard in the groin and tore the tie from his
bruised and reddened neck. He was, as he had been
uncompromisingly promised, on the floor.
To confirm what he had done, he said:
‘We do not eff about at Reading.’
This was very calmly pointed out, and it was clear that it
had now been understood.
The prisoners had magically become totally subservient. In
the ordinary world some of them would have fought back.
But this was a power and politics and psychology game, in
which the guards held all the cards. The prisoner – like the

419
slave of old – could not win. He was the property of the
state - body, mind, and soul. The state gave him birth and
the state gave him death. All power and glory to the state,
and to the state’s officials all obedience. Amen.335
Israel knew her God primarily in the events not of
nature but of history. Genesis chapters one to three are the
Israelite’s conception of his pre-history, which was a
history of the origins of the earth and humankind
culminating in creation of the chosen people. Man is god’s
image because of what he is given - a share in divine
sovereignty over creation. Subjection of all things to man,
and man to God, (but not, significantly of man to man), is
visualized as the primordial order, the idyllic shalom of
implicit covenants between man and God, and creatures.
In the Yahwist account the same theological assertions are
implicit. Man is not given dominion over man in this
covenantal sense of the shalom. To eat of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil means to usurp God’s
prerogative; man is given a share in dominion over
creation, in naming the animals. These notions are
underlined in the two judgment scenes. The growth of
polytheism, and of abusive dominion over other people,

335
Asselin, David Tobin. The Notion of Dominion in Genesis 1-3.
Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 16, no. 3. (1954): 277-294.

420
entailing a subservience to nature and its urgings, is
implicitly the result of rebellion against God.
The usurper of the place of God, the Reading Gaol escort
guard, grasped his truncheon. The other guards followed
suit. He had never seen a truncheon at close quarters
before. Heavy and dangerous. He dared not study it too
closely, though it fascinated him. He just did as he was
told, double-quick time. They were approaching the gate of
Reading Detention Centre.
‘Cigarettes! Here! Now!’ He pointed his stick at a precise
spot on the floor. All knew that he wanted the stuff right
there, on that exact and precise spot. Not to the left. Not to
the right, but there!
‘You won’t be leaving this place the way you arrived.’ He
prophesied. At that time, none of them knew what he might
have meant. Certainly, few would have understood some of
the subtler psychological and cultural transformations that
this regime would force upon them. In fact, for David this
was to be the process of demythologising of the prison
system and the banishment of the myth of rehabilitation,
and a major step towards the conversion of his soul.336 He
was to come to understand at Reading Gaol, that the
emperor had no clothes.

336
di Nola, Alfonso M. Demythicization in Certain Primitive
Cultures: Cultural Fact and Socio-Religious Integration. Journal of
the History of Religions. 12, 1. (1972): 1 – 29.

421
Rudolph Bultmann’s exegetical procedures suggest a
process observed in primitive cultures where sacred texts
are transformed or ‘translated’ as the culture acquires a new
level of consciousness. Male initiation, illustrated from
Australia and Melanesia, embodies this transformation: the
pre-initiate and women know the myth, the elders explicate
it during the ordeal. Names vary from tribe to tribe, but the
process is widespread. The ‘devouring monster’ is revealed
to be a theatrical fiction produced by the elders, but the
initiate gains an awareness of the cohesive function of the
myth. Adult women often know the truth and consent to
being excluded. Initiation is like being told there is no
Santa Claus. Those who accept the non-mythic reality are
prepared to give leadership to the social order. Thus, to defy
the taboo would indeed be to ‘destroy the world,’ the
foundation of the community.
To bring this home, the ‘sacred text’ is the legislation
surrounding the rights of prisoners, backed by prison
reforming and monitoring groups such as the Prison
Reform Trust, the Howard League, Amnesty International
et al., and the ‘Devouring Monster’ is the denial of original
sin; the pretence that it is only convicts and felons who are
the sinners and breakers of the law. To defy these taboos
would be to bring the social order to its knees and initiate
chaos or ‘destroy the world’.

422
The transit van braked at the interior gatehouse, and they
were kicked unceremoniously out.
‘Line up! Five seconds! They formed themselves into a
single line, side by side, facing forward.
‘Right. Get down them stairs, across the nick and line up in
the corridor. Get moving!’
No one knew where ‘the corridor’ was, having only then
arrived. Like the Gadarene herd being driven into the
sea,337 they followed the victim in front, headlong through
the courtyard in the general direction of the guard’s pointed
finger. It happened that he was heading in the wrong
direction. The guard hit him across the head and he ran in
another direction. The rest followed him, and the
intelligent ones decided that here in Reading punishment
prison, you did not take the lead. If you did, you would be
punished. They did not reward leadership here. They took
it to be rebellion.
Eventually, after a long sadistic ritual that led the little
group around most of the courtyard, they discovered the
‘corridor’ and shuffled into a line against the wall.

337
Tzaferis, Vassilios. A Pilgrimage to the Site of the Swine Miracle.
Biblical Archaeology Review. 15, 2. (1989): 44-51.
One site on the northeast of the Sea of Galilee early on excited both
pilgrimage and scholarly interest. Describes the discovery (1983)
and subsequent excavation in the area of Tell el-Kursi, the site of
Jesus’ cure of the demoniac and the destruction of the herd of swine
in the Sea.

423
A nasty little guard with a piggy face and empty metallic
eyes like ball bearings waddled to the front of the group
and strutted along the row. He was small of stature and
with a generous ‘beer-gut’. His nose was crooked. Had
someone slammed a cell door against it?
A fascinating piece of raw oral tradition arising from within
the history of this unique culture then ensued. The guard
swore for about five minutes, his face reddening as he tore
through the script of his angry soliloquy. He had done this
before. The mythic process of initiation had begun. It was
politic to behave in ritualistic fashion; to stand and listen
and not move.
The flesh, however, inevitably has to intervene, and sure
enough one of the lads had a moist nose and had to keep
sniffing. He happened to give a particularly hard sniff that
unfortunately coincided with a silence in the guard’s rant.
He decided to take this as an insubordination. Tightening
his fist into a hard little ball, very slowly and deliberately,
he rammed it hard right into the prisoner’s face. There was
a squelch and a crack. The prisoner tottered backwards and
regained his balance. The little officer looked at him with a
steely intensity, willing the prisoner to sniff again, and
annoyed that he hadn’t, knocked him to the floor.
Although intent on having another go, his attention was
diverted by another victim, who momentarily shuffled with

424
rage, surprise, or discomfort. Rebellion? The guard set on
him, and kneed him hard in the groin. The boy dropped to
his knees moaning and clutching himself. The little officer
was sweating and grunting with rage. He looked along the
line. The skinny prisoner was terrified that he would be
noticed – for being skinny or small or for something he
hadn’t noticed about himself. He stayed as still as he could,
standing at attention like the rest of them.
Engaging his eyes unblinkingly, ‘Empty your pockets.’ He
ordered.
Nothing but a handkerchief. He had escaped. The guard
had moved along the line.
‘Empty your pockets.’ He ordered again. A tall, gangling
prisoner with a sunken chest. He turned his pockets inside
out. A handkerchief. Nothing else. The guard by this time
was very angry. He grabbed the lad’s pocket and jerked it
from its stitching, taking the pocket right off. Ramming the
torn pocket into the lad’s face, he screamed,
‘What’s this?’
‘Pocket, sir.’ Said the new victim.
Crunch! The officer’s fist sunk into the lad’s abdomen; the
lad lurched forward. The guard’s knee came up and met his
face and as he straightened up in recoil from the blow the
officer smashed his head into his face. All the time the
guard was shouting and screaming and cursing.

425
The other officers present witnessed the whole thing from
start to finish. They did and said nothing.
‘Tobacco!’ Screamed the little stubby officer. ‘Tobacco!’
In the corner of the stitched pocket was the tiniest trace of
Black Shag dust that must have been in that pocket through
the laundry a dozen times. The guard, the prisoners now
understood, did not really need an excuse, and the strict
letter of the law was on his side. You did well to remember
this whilst spending time in this institution.
The skinny victim’s stomach tightened throughout the
episode, though he did not dare grit his teeth and betray a
tightened jaw muscle that might have set the sadist off
against him. However, every one of them must have
wished to kill the officer. At that moment, he might have
qualified as being the most hated man in the prison service.
The command to run to their cells was given. They ran as
hard as they could, but no one had told them which cell was
theirs. It was a question of trying each empty cell and see if
it fits. Each carried a huge bundle of clothing and bedding.
A guard prodded and harried each prisoner as they
struggled in their crazy quest. Eventually, the skinny
victim found a cell and tripped onto his face, sprawled on
the floor among the dishevelled clothing.

426
For a minute, he was disoriented and dazed. Looking up,
he saw a friendly-looking prison guard and said without
thinking,
‘Oh! Hello, Sir.’
He could not think of anything else to say. Then there were
two guards at his door.
The smaller guard moved towards the little prisoner, fists
flailing. He tried to scramble to his feet and tense his
stomach muscles and protect his face with his arms, waiting
for it to happen.
It did. For about ten minutes.
Then, it was over.
He lay sobbing in a corner of the cell. Another officer
popped his head in ten minutes later to see if Guard
Johnson had done a good job on him. Johnson appeared at
the door, and the skinny prisoner got into a foetal position,
waiting for another beating. The guard said,
‘Next time this door opens, I want your effing name and
number, and I want you standing at attention. Even if
you’re on the lavatory. And you say ‘Sir’ before and after
everything. We are not your friends. Got it?’
He said, ‘Yes, Sir.’
The officer stood above him, his great black boot touching
his face as he lay on the floor.
‘That’s, Sir Yes Sir!’

427
‘Sir, Yes Sir.’ He replied.
The door slammed shut. They were gone. Blood had
soaked down his shirt. He was defeated, locked up and
unwanted. He had the strange feeling that his body had
been invaded, like a rape, although it wasn’t a rape. It was
an intimate enforced intrusion. It cut much more deeply
than the flesh. It invaded his soul. If the function of
institutionalised violence was to defeat the victim’s spirit,
its function had been achieved in this instance. Knowing
where his best chance for survival lay, he quickly
surrendered to the Gradgrind mentality of the institution by
the voluntary subjugation of imagination and creativity.
For many months to come he was to repress these vital
aspects of himself. It would be a long time before his spirit
returned. When eventually it did, the transformation was to
be miraculous and acknowledged by all.
‘God!’ He prayed, ‘If you’re there, help me!’
He retreated into the world of his head, and there he
survived.338 In the world of the ex-convict writer and poet,
Solzhenitsyn, there were four natural laws: liberty, privacy,
property, and habit. From the realm of ultimate reality,
these emerge into life, affecting overt behavior. For him, it
is impossible to completely deprive a person of privacy -

338
Clardy, Jesse V. Clardy, Betty. Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Ideas of
the Ultimate Reality and Meaning. Journal of Ultimate Reality and
Meaning. 1, no.3. (1978): 202-222.

428
some small corner to think private thoughts. These thoughts
are free to range through time and space: liberty is
consequently there. A modicum of property facilitates
privacy. Whatever the situation, habits, privacy, a little
property, and freedom of thought will occur in
Solzhenitsyn’s creation. The positive characters live more
in tune with these laws than the negative ones, who corrupt
themselves with the external and become slaves of the
system and participants in their own dehumanisations and
destruction. David felt that it was not only safe, but also
morally good to live in the intellect and imagination and to
avoid the painful realities of the corrupting external world.
Beatings and humiliations went on for weeks, rarely being
relieved. The prisoners had to be out of bed by 6.30 in the
morning and standing at attention by their beds. Snow or
rain, in physical training sports gear, they had to be running
round the exercise yard before the days’ work, which itself
was killing. The first morning, an obese prisoner was
finding it hard to get through the exercises. He could not
physically jog-trot for more than a few strides at the best of
times. The little guard caught sight of his next victim
struggling to jog as fast as he could round the exercise yard.
Seeing another opportunity for fulfilling his lust for violent
sadism against people for whom he had a duty of care, the
nasty little officer grabbed the fat boy by the shorts and

429
dragged him around the yard on his bleeding knees. His fat
body was battered and torn on the black gravel of the yard.
Sobbing and bleeding he was left in the yard by the
lavatory. Out of breath for running, the guard kicked the
sobbing body, took up his stick and strutted to his next duty.
The boy did not appear among the new intake prisoners
again. None of them knew what had happened to him. One
of the other guards said that after that episode the fat boy
was put among another group and, quite miraculously, ran
like the rest of them. The prisoners had a different myth.
They said that he had killed himself. No one could say
which was the true account.
Two hours were spent every day in the most gruelling
physical exertion. It was nothing to have to spend half an
hour hanging upside down on the wall bars on the orders of
the instructor. Every time the body quivered with the
strain, because the arms were threatening to tear themselves
from the sockets, the instructor would shout and bawl to
keep them going. Prisoners would hang on, however,
because they had seen the alternative, which was a beating,
or starting again with a trebling of the amount of time
hanging on the bars.
The skinny victim spent every waking hour of his time at
the Detention Centre in terror for his life. Word had gone
round the prison on a number of occasions that this or that

430
lad had killed himself. Each moment in his cell, he
expected something terrible to happen. Every time there
was a footfall on the gantry, he froze. His body suffered
this level of heightened anxiety, with the concurrent
flooding over-production of adrenaline, every day for over
three months.
An anomaly is that while the prison setting provided an
opportunity for the health service providers to access a
normally hard to reach, predominantly socially excluded
population,339 imprisonment was known to worsen both
mental and physical health. Watson, Stimpson and Hostick
(2004) 340 had pointed out how the goals of imprisonment
(punishment and correction as well as rehabilitation to the
community) conflicted with the aims of health care in what
had been somewhat euphemistically described as an
intrinsically non-therapeutic environment.341 Opportunities
to care for one’s health were limited by the restrictions
prison life placed upon the individual. Autonomy in
meeting one’s own health needs had also been identified as

339
Daly, R. (2002) Opportunistic healthcare in Norman, A and
Parrish, C. Prison Nursing. Oxford: Blackwell Science.
340
Watson, R., Stimpson, A., Hostick, T. Prison Health Care: A
review of the literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies. 4.
(2004): 119-128.
341
Smith, C. ‘Healthy Prisons:’ A contradiction in terms? The
Howard Journal. 39, no.4. (2000): 339-553.

431
a factor in limiting well being in prison,342 affecting
physical as well as mental health.343

Although no aspect of his health appeared to be an issue for

the guards, it was of paramount importance for David. His
only aim was to survive and emerge from this place of pain
intact mentally, spiritually, and physically, Alongside the
two hours physical exercise in the gymnasium, was the
daily work.
This consisted of two possible occupations.
The first form of work was the sawing of railway sleepers
by the use of a two-handled manual band saw. This
required one prisoner at each end of the saw. The teeth of
the band saw were about half-an-inch deep, and bit into the
tar-and-bitumen-soaked wood reluctantly as the tool was
dragged back and forth for three hours in the morning
without stopping, and then another three hours in the
afternoon without stopping. The sawn sections had to be
six inches long. The sleepers were about nine feet in
length, and the requirement was for six sleepers to be sawn
in the morning and another six in the afternoon.
A convict dressed in black battledress jacket and long grey
flannel trousers stood at either end of the saw. The heavy
342
Willmott, Y. Prison nursing: the tension between custody and
care. British Journal of Nursing. 6. (1997): 333-336.
343
Waring, T. Prisoners with Diabetes. Nursing Times. 92, no.16.
(1996): 38-39.

432
clothing made them perspire, and the sweat dripped off the
ends of their noses. The saw swung back and forth, singing
merrily in the sunshine with the vibration of steel against
hard and bitter wood. Neither worker made a sound.
They’d fix themselves to the saw, work, and wait for the
end of the day to come. The sections fell to the ground in a
regular litany as the row of workers swung back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth. This was not ‘fun’ in any
sense that a filmic chain-gang might be caricatured as fun
in the deep South of the United States, where there was
camaraderie and the recognition of a common enemy.
There was none of that there. Here it was each individual
for himself. It was malicious and it was torture, as it was
intended to be. A guard watched from under a canopy
shaded from the burning sun. One wrong move or the
slightest indication of talking invited an intervention by a
guard who meted out a punishment that could be anything
or nothing.
From just across the way the sound of thunder rolled out
from under the roof of a large wooden hut. Continually.
Inside the long, low hut about twenty young lads were
chopping the sticky black sections into firewood. Sharp
little hatchets flashed up and down almost faster than the
eye could see. Each stick of wood measured half an inch
by half an inch by six inches. Any deviation from that

433
approximate measurement would be met with dire
consequences. These victims, too, had a quota to complete.
By the end of the day, most victims were physically
exhausted. Cutting and slicing injuries were common, and
increased in number as the day went on. It was not
unknown for a lad to lose a finger.
In the Office of Science Policy and Communication
(OSPC) physical health survey (Bridgwood and Malbon,
1995)344 the respondents were asked if in the three months
prior to interview they had any accident including injury
resulting from fights or assault that resulted in them
needing to see a doctor of going to a hospital; 16% had.
The accident report rate was higher in the men less than 35
years (20%) compared with men over 35 years (7%). Men
in open prisons were less likely to report having had an
accident. The most common accident reported was a sprain
or strain (5%) followed by an open wound (4%) and
bruising and crushing (3%). 5% of all respondents said the
injury happened during a sport or exercise activity, 3% said
it was during a fight, another 3% said they had fallen or
tripped and 2% said they had been injured at work. The
authors say the results should be viewed with caution
because it is possible that those reporting injury under these

344
Bridgwood, A., Malbon, G. Survey of the Physical Health of
Prisoners 1994. London: Office of Population Censuses &
Surveys. (1995)

434
categories of accident may be hiding self-harm practices.
2% of respondents did report that their accident or injury
resulted from self harm.
In the Reading punishment work regime, if a saw operator
cut himself, a chopper would be moved along to take over
his handle, and a bundler would be moved to the chopper
position. However, the bundlers would still have to keep
up. Making bricks without straw, these subjects of the
monarch however had no Moses representing them. The
operator who had cut himself would be back at bundling as
soon as his wound had been bandaged.
The second form of work - the knitting of steel wire fencing
- was equally exhausting and physically demanding. The
process was housed in a shed containing five large knitting
machines about nine feet tall. Each machine had a long
metal handle-crank at one end. A prisoner would crank this
large handle very slowly, causing a pulley to thread a long
wire forward through the machine. A system of cogs in the
machine caused the wire to bend at regular intervals of two
and a half inches and curl over, threading itself through the
previous length of wire that had been through the same
process. As each length of wire was fed through the
machine, a prisoner would snip the end and tie it around the
previous wire-end in a single deft twist with a pair of pliers.

435
The result was the creation of the wire fencing that could be
seen along a million gardens and establishments throughout
the world. This fencing operation was as physically
demanding, and even more mentally and psychologically
stultifying, than the railway sleeper sawing. It was the job
no one wanted, especially on the days when someone on
the outside had ordered a thicker-gauge, or a green plastic-
covered fence, to be knitted.
Russia continues to labour under a repressive regime. The
difference between today’s repression and the classic Gulag
is like the difference between Jim Crow and slavery.345 The
Gulag was the special section created within the secret
police in the early Stalin years as they took full control of
the country’s labour camps and prisons. It reached its peak
of 2.5 million prisoners in 1950. It is clear that Stalin took
an intense personal interest in the Gulag. Although unlike
Stalin’s attempt from the 1920s onward to make the Gulag
an economic asset, one of the Gulag’s cruel features, shared
by Reading Detention Centre was that it placed non-violent
offenders at the mercy of thugs. In the case of Reading
Detention Centre, although the torture of prisoners was
condemned by the state, ‘Jim Crowe’ conventions allowing
convicts to be abused were nevertheless operative in the
prison.
345
Uzzell, Lawrence A. Remembering the Gulag. First Things
Journal. 137. (2003): 38-45.

436
Few considered escape from Reading Prison except through
suicide. If not physically, psychologically escape was
impossible. There is a point at which a humiliated and
downtrodden victim thinks of himself as rightly and justly a
slave, and accepts his position. Welcomes it, even, as a
relief from the struggle. When this happens, the thought of
escape or any aspiration for something better becomes a
blasphemy against what is right and true. Talking was not
allowed anywhere in the prison. It was like the Roman
Catholic monastery at Mount St Bernard, where David was
to spend some time later in his life, in which the unspeaking
monks glided silently by, as though unwilling to bruise the
holy air as they glided silently through the chapel. Each
prisoner was entirely isolated and alone. Indeed, the only
two ways out of the system were suicide or psychological
repression.
Occasionally a prisoner would try to get out by faking a
suicide attempt. They knew that the masters got politically
embarrassed over suicide rates in prisons. They reasoned
that the authorities would want to remove from the system
any individuals who showed a tendency to suicide,
especially in a stressful situation such as at reading
Detention Centre. The last thing they wanted was a
spotlight on the regime at Reading.

437
A good thing about the goal was the food. There was
plenty of it, and it was excellent. Even better than the food
at Gloucester Prison. After two months of exercises in the
gymnasium, sawing and chopping, no smoking, and turning
the fence-handle in the wire shop, David had lungs like
bellows and a body like a greyhound. Every muscle shone
and gleamed, every twist of hard flesh stood against the
skin, straining to burst, like little piles of rocks, his arms,
legs, abdomen and shoulders shone. He could run for hours
with no effort and was never tired. When ruminating in his
books, every word went in and his memory had improved
beyond anything he had experienced before. He felt that he
was newly alive. The previously hated physical exercise
had become great fun and relaxation, and the cold showers
every session, ironically made life into a luxury. After three
months he had bowed to the system and accepted it. He
was fit in every part of his body. He no longer feared any
of the beatings, which no longer hurt, and every mealtime
there was fantastic food.
He often looked through his cell window during those last
days. He could see the river and a park, and didn’t mind
that he couldn’t go out and enjoy it. In his cell he was safe.
He didn’t really want to go to another borstal after that. He
would much preferred to stay where he was.

438
After thirteen weeks the day came for him to leave. He was
kicked into the van, which didn’t bother him. He said
goodbye to the sadists, and started his journey to Rochester
Borstal. He had been told that Rochester was where he
would complete his sentence. The borstal differed from
Gains Hall in that a wall surrounded it. It was both good
and bad to leave Reading behind. He never got to love the
guards, but he had come to enjoy the routine, and the
security provided by the discipline. At least he was not to
be sent to a private prison. However bad it might have
been in the usual kind of British prison, at least, he felt, the
staff had been answerable to the government, and not to
some blank-faced anonymous manager somewhere in a
posh tower in Central London whose bosses were
accountants and players of the roulette of the stock market.
In 2006, private prisons accounted for 10% of the prison
population holding around 7,500 prisoners. What sorts of
people work in these institutions? Some of the answer may
lie in an evaluation of the pay and conditions for staff in
private prisons, which are inferior compared to the public
sector with estimates that staff personnel in private prisons
are up to 70% worse off than their public sector
counterparts.346 If employers get the quality of staff,
generally speaking, that they are able to pay for, then they
346
Sachdev, S. (2004) Paying the cost? Public Private Partnerships
and the public service workforce, London: Catalyst.

439
are paying up to 70% less for private prisons staff than for
government funded institutions.
There are currently eleven privately run prisons in England
and Wales. Nine were built and are being run by the private
sector under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts.
These are Dovegate, Altcourse, Ashfield, Forest Bank,
Lowdham Grange, Parc, Rye Hill, Bronzefield and
Peterborough. Peterborough is a prison (the only one),
which accommodates men and women on the same site.

Additionally there are two prisons (the Wolds and

Doncaster) that were built and financed by the public sector
but are run by private companies under ‘management-only’
contracts.
‘Serco’ is the largest provider of private prisons, operating
Dovegate, Ashfield, Lowdham Grange and Doncaster.
‘Falck A.S.’, formerly owned by Group 4, which is the
holding company for GSL, operates Rye Hill, Altcourse and
the Wolds. ‘UK Detention Services Ltd’, owned by the
Paris-based multi-national corporation Sodexho, operates
Forest Bank, Bronzefield and Peterborough. ‘Securicor
Justice Services’ (now owned by Group 4 Securicor)
operates Parc prison.

440
Overall private prisons have lower staff / prisoner ratios
than public prisons, with an average of 17% fewer staff per
prisoner than in public prisons.347 The National Audit
Office has highlighted the high turnover of staff in the
seven PFI built and managed prisons. For example
Dovegate lost nearly 30% of its staff in 2001-2002. The
staff losses were far higher than in public prisons which on
average lost just 6 % of staff in the same year.348
Prison officers working in private prisons tend to have little
or no prior experience of working in prisons and have
generally been in their post for much less time than their
public sector counterparts.349 Staffing problems mean some
private prisons struggle to create a safe environment for
prisoners. There were a high level of assaults at Dovegate,
Ashfield, Rye Hill, Forest Bank and Altcourse and
prisoners in these jails expressed concerns about their
safety due to the relative inexperience of staff. These
concerns have been raised by the Chief Inspector of Prisons
in recent reports on Rye Hill and Forest Bank in
particular.350

347
Ibid
348
National Audit Office (2003) The Operational Performance of
PFI Prisons, London: Stationery Office.
349
Ibid.
350
HM Inspectorate of Prisons reports on Rye Hill (April 2005) and
Forest Bank (August 2005).

441
The overall average amount of time that prisoners spend in
purposeful activity in private prisons is higher than in the
public sector. In 2003-2004 in private prisons it was 26.7
hours, higher than the public sector average of 23.2
hours.351
The UK has the most privatised prison system in Europe,
and although there are not as many private jails as in the
United States the proportion of prisoners in private prisons
is higher.
Private prisons352 the government has increased the number
of prison places by around 17,000 since 1997.The total
operational capacity of the prison estate is planned to reach
79,100 by June 2006, and 80,400 by 2007.353 The Home
Office had to withdraw the long-term prison population
projections released in January 2005 because growth was
clearly exceeding them. The new projections released in
July 2005 predict a population of up to 91,500 by 2010.354
The current prison population already exceeds the high
projection.

351
Prison Reform Trust (2005) Private Punishment: Who Profits?,
London: Prison Reform Trust.
352
For full details on the performance of private prisons, the
companies and their profits see Prison Reform Trust (2005) Private
Punishment: ‘Who Profits?’, London: Prison Reform Trust.
353
Hansard, House of Commons, written answer, 2 November 2005.
354
Home Office, Updated and Revised Prison Population
Projections 2005-2011, July 2005, Home Office: London.

442
HMP Peterborough, a new purpose-built prison, opened in
March 2005 providing 840 places, 480 for men and 360 for
women. The National Offender Management Service owns
two sites, one in Merseyside and one in London, with
outline planning consent to build two 600 place prisons.355
The Budget 2003 settlement provided funds to acquire at
least two more sites in 2004-05 for the future development
of ‘large multifunction 1,500 place prisons’.356
The Scottish prison population is predicted to rise to 9,300
by 2015.357
The prison population is expected to rise in Northern
Ireland by 6%, year on year for the next five years, and by
5% in the following years, with the population of life
sentenced prisoners up by 50% within 10 years.358
When he had gone through the periods of being locked
away all alone he had made the best of it. He had
occasionally even found it enjoyable. The experience in
Gloucester Prison’s library had started him on a self-
starting and self-sustaining course of lifelong learning.
When he had undergone the hell of Reading Detention
Centre he had become physically fit, and made the best of
355
Hansard, House of Commons written answers, November 15th
2004.
356
Ibid.
357
BBC News online, 25/11/2005.
358
Interview with Robin Masefield, Director General of the
Northern Ireland Prison Service, 12 February 2006 – Belfast
Telegraph.

443
developing his physique. Both forms of incarceration had
been terrible experiences in their different ways. Yet he had
been able to assimilate and overcome them, adding them to
his bag of experience.
It seemed wonderful to him that the human personality
could suffer all kinds of humiliations and shocks, such
potentially devastating blows, and yet become reconciled to
them and come out claiming not merely survival, but
victory.
He had discovered that a human being had deep reserves of
physical and mental power. He learned that a physical
person was also a spiritual entity. He was reminded of the
prayer that he had prayed in his cell at Reading Detention
Center under torture, when the chips were down and he had
finally acknowledged defeat and had recognised the
termination of his personal resources.
‘God, if you’re there, help me.’
He reflected – maybe a God had been there, and maybe the
God had helped him.

444
445
 FOURTEEN: ROCHESTER BORSTAL
An historical survey of the prison system’s goals.

“ Despite lethal explosions of violence from within and

critical assaults from without, it seems certain that
prisons will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.”

In his book, 359 Gordon Hawkins argued that certain key

issues, which attend the use of imprisonment as a penal
method, must be dealt with realistically. With co-author
Michael Sherman, he then wrote Imprisonment in America:
Choosing the Future (1981), which was an extension of
‘The Prison: Policy and Practice,’ where he had written,

“. . . [some] would argue that the failure of prisons is due

to their not having been sufficiently punitive. But both
past and present experience clearly indicates that the only
result to be expected from the implementation of a more
punitive policy in prisons would be greatly intensified
unrest, turbulence, riot and revolt, and a substantial
increase in death and injury for both staff and prisoners.”

359
Hawkins,  Gordon   J.   The  Prison:  Policy  and Practice.   1976 
Series: (SCJ) Studies in Crime and Justice.

446
“Turbulence, riot and revolt” is what had occurred in the
New South Wales prison system in 1970. On the 3rd of
February 1974 it was repeated at Bathurst gaol and a large
section of that institution was burned. Hawkins was
influential in promoting the notion that prison riots were a
symptom of mal-administration.
Beginning with a discussion of the ideology of
imprisonment and the principal lines of criticism directed at
it, Hawkins examined such issues as the prisonization
hypothesis (the theory that prisons serve as a training
ground for criminals), the role of the prison guard, work in
prisons, and the use of prisoners as research subjects for
medical experiments. He also dealt with the prisoners’
rights movement and its implications for the future of
prison administration. Hawkins made specific
recommendations for reform, and carefully appraised the
barriers, which obstruct their implementation. He devoted
a large portion of the book to a discussion of some crucial
policy activities that tend to stifle meaningful reform and
then offered suggestions to how some might be modified.
The book concludes with a chapter devoted to a discussion
of impediments to change that is required reading for all
serious students of theology and imprisonment.

447
Idleness was and continues to be a leading characteristic of
the British prison system. It is a feature so familiar to
prison administrators and penologists that many accept it as
inevitable. One need not share Calvin Coolidge’s view of
work as the only means to manhood and the measure of
civilization to regard this situation as deplorable. Two
explanations have been forcefully propounded and widely
accepted. One is that economic forces over which it is
impossible to exercise control preclude a satisfactory
solution to the prison employment problem. The other is
that lack of policy and determination rather than inexorable
external constraints have been the crucial factors in the
failure to use prison labour efficiently. Although the
problem of prisoners’ work and prison industry has
commonly been viewed as peripheral to penal policy, it is
in fact a key issue. The barriers to a rational solution to this
problem are not insurmountable; effective and grounded
theological intervention into the political sphere, initiating
enthusiasm/determination and political will leading to
effective policy ought to be possible. What about, for
example, presenting a broad theology of work/employment
in terms of its possible meaning, beginning perhaps with
something like the interesting survey by Charles A
Meteer.360 This study surveys aspects of the theology of
360
Meteer, Charles A. “A Survey of the Theology of Work.” Evangelical
Review of Theology. 25, no.2. (2001): 154-169.

448
work, understood as the entire range of constructive and
purposeful human endeavours. It includes paid
employment, volunteer work, spontaneous charity,
academic studies and domestic duties. Why not include
prison work, work done by prisoners? Whereas work
encompasses manual and intellectual tasks, labour is
confined to physical efforts and connotes the difficulties
and hardships in what we usually designate as toil. For
Christian theology, all work done as to God, carried out in
obedience to Christ’s command to serve others, and
accomplished under the Holy Spirit’s prompting is an
honourable and sacred activity.
By the time he got to Rochester, David had lost all taste for
escape. He had not obtained this ‘higher aim’ of the
theology of work and service in terms of the master whom
he served – he remained a prisoner of Her Majesty the
Queen rather that of His Majesty the Lord God! He just
wanted to finish his time and leave. He knew that this
would happen more quickly if he behaved himself and
obeyed the rules. He had become quite convinced by this
time that the little man was no match for the huge and
complex police and prison system. This was Rochester. He
had decided that this would be his settling-down place. He
had been through his rebellion.

449
An official report on the prison described Rochester Prison
as ‘a disgrace’ and warned some of its practices could be
illegal. Chief Inspector of Prisons Sir David Ramsbotham
had said that Rochester Prison was guilty of ‘institutional
neglect’, and particularly criticised the treatment of illegal
immigrants and young offenders.
He said that ‘the young offenders’ wing, in what had been
Britain’s first Borstal, was filthy and infested with vermin’.
David was to discover the truth of this. He was to be
locked in a large wicker basket in the prison laundry as an
initiation prank by other prisoners, and to find to his horror
that the room was crawling with cockroaches.
Sir David’s report said that nearly seventy prisoners aged
seventeen to twenty-one years were living in a wing that
was ‘filthy, vandalised, infested with vermin and subjected
to an impoverished regime in which the only constant was
its unpredictability.’
This was the place to which David, who had already
completed seventeen months of incarceration, but had not
yet started his borstal sentence, had finally been consigned.
Far from ideal, it was nevertheless to become for him a
moment of destiny.
When he arrived therefore at the gatehouse of Rochester
Prison he was, as far as legally was concerned, a ‘new boy’,
just beginning his borstal sentence. He was treated as a

450
new boy by the guards. He was taken through all the
reception preliminaries, like having a medical, undergoing a
personal strip search, which was, as usual, perfectly
designed to produce a degrading and humiliating
experience, getting personal details recorded and listing any
personal property. This had all been done many times
before in each of the six prisons and borstals he had been
to. He was an old hand at it, and knew the patter of the
officers as they ran through the rules and regulations for his
intake group:
Guard: ‘Wallet, one. Money, none. Watch, none. One
large, nearly white, handkerchief. O.K., lad that’s you.
Next!’
Prisoner: Sir!
Guard: ‘Religion?’
Prisoner: ‘Don’t know, Sir. Not religious, Sir.’
Guard: ‘Well you’re not Jewish. Roman Catholic, C of E,
Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or what? Pick one.
Prisoner: ‘None, Sir.’
Guard (turning to the scribe behind the desk): ‘That’ll be
Church of England, then!’
David the borstal boy didn’t know much about the
differences, and this was not a theological discussion. It
didn’t bother him and he didn’t argue. He believed there
might be a God but didn’t know exactly which God to have,

451
or what the gods might be like. He had read about Greeks
and Romans, but knew nothing about Allah or the deities of
Hinduism. He had heard that gods could be nasty as well
as nice, that they could be political, and that they liked
middle class people who were well-educated. He wasn’t
really into religion. It was something for politicians and
posh old ladies. He was a working class male whose class
throughout western Europe, let alone in his own nation, had
totally rejected the religious traditions of their countries,
even though large numbers had remained nominally
Protestant or Catholic, they had in fact become largely
alienated from their churches. Hugh McLeod’s research
paper361 describes some different models of this process he
calls ‘dechristianization’. There was one that could be
applied to communities and occupational groups that had
never been under any considerable Christian influence.
This was the one to which David saw himself as belonging.
He was an outsider in the religious sense as in every other.
Another model focussed upon the disintegration of urban
community, and in Paris, an ardent adherence to the ideals
of the Revolution, an intellectualised, humanistic
movement, seen as an all-sufficient program for the
regeneration of humanity. Under these conditions it had

361
McLeod, Hugh. The Dechristianisation of the Working Class in
Western Europe (1850-1900). Social Compass. 27, no’s 2-3.
(1980): 191-214.

452
become increasingly difficult for those of different classes
to meet together in the same church. Many religious people
had theorised about it, but basically it was not that the
working classes were unresponsive to the Gospel so much
that the Gospel was never preached to them in terms that
they would understand it. There were very few working
class ministers in the free churches and few Anglican
working class priests. In addition, Christianity, especially
Protestant Christianity appealed to the mind; lacked
involvement in working class culture, and was too busy in
362
doing other pastoral work. According to Newton it
would have been helpful if patterns of training had included
ways to minister in non-book cultures, there being ‘a
tremendous hunger for the gospel in the non-book
communities of Britain’.
It used to be urged on believers that they should be able to
give an account of their faith. Today it is more important
for the unbeliever to know what and why he does not
believe. Our century is one, which makes religious belief
difficult for a generation that had been taught to test
everything by reason. We feel an incipient scepticism when
we hear statements such as, ‘Now history teaches...’ Today
Christianity plays no part in a man’s life because it is absent
from the background of his culture. Belief for many people
362
Newton, David. Why No Mega-Churches in the Inner City?
Journal of Urban Mission. 9, no.3. (1992): 45-56.

453
will be restored only when they come to see their faith
established in the right places.363
Working class British convicts did not have an interest in
church. Could having some kind of strong religious
experience help with coping in this horrible situation? A
study comparing two measures of psychological strength to
the report of incidence of having had religious experience
found a measure of psychological strength based on the
psychoanalytic regression model, which indicated a high
correlation between ego weakness and a report of religious
experience. However, as predicted, a measure of
psychological strength based on more normal coping
mechanisms indicated a positive relationship between ego
strength and a report of religious experience.364
It was reported in the journal, ‘Mental health, Religion and
Culture’365 that of the several significant relationships
emerging from an objective study examining main and
interactive relationships between religious upbringing and
coping in prison (spirituality, participation, pleading, and
discontentment), and mental health outcomes (depression
363
Spinks, G. Stephen. The Significance of Disbelief. Hibbert
Journal. (1959):107-112
364
Hood, R.W. Psychological Strength and Report of Intense
Religious Experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
13, no 1. (1974): 65 – 71.
365
Lonczak,Heather, S. Seema, L. Clifasefi, G. Alan Marlett, Arthur
W. Blume, Dennis M. Donovan. Religious Coping and
Psychological Functioning in a Correctional Population. Mental
health, Religion and Culture. 9, no 2. (2006): 171 – 192.

454
symptoms, anxiety symptoms, somatization, and hostility),
being raised with a formal religion was significantly
predictive of both decreased depressive symptoms and
reduced hostility. Second, there were significant
interactions between religious discontentment and gender
for all four outcomes, indicating that relationships between
religious discontentment and depressive symptoms, anxiety
symptoms, somatization and hostility were larger for
females compared to males. Third, relationships between
pleading and both depressive symptoms and hostility were
significantly moderated by stressful life events. There was
also a marginally significant relationship between religious
pleading and increased somatization. This study does not
investigate whether or how soon after emerging into this
religious heritage these beneficial effects might be
predicted of an individual who had come most recently to a
religious faith. Certainly, David had been in a process of
coming to religion for some time now, and had been in that
sense within its ambit and under its influence. Perhaps he
might expect to enjoy these benefits in years to come…
At the front of the borstal chapel, behind he
communion rail there stood a life-sized carving of Jesus
hanging and dying on a cross. It was executed in rich red
mahogany that suggested bloody pain. Jesus on his cross.
Many had been the time he had studied that statue. It was

455
full of pain; like David had been when as an innocent he
had been getting an unjust beating in Reading Goal. Like
David had been when he had stood at the charity shop with
his mother trying-on second-hand shoes. Like David had
been when his mother had tried to kill herself and he had
been dumped in a children’s home. There was that about it.
A sense of the injustice of Jesus’ suffering. Yet is was full
of something else; something beautiful – beyond the art of
it; something peaceful and resigned, or wise. It fascinated
him. He’d often watch it as the preacher did his stuff in the
pulpit, or the priest intoned his words at the Communion
table. Off he would go into his own world, through that
carving, all alone, watching the wooden face.
Two theories have been held about the relationship between
religion and the arts.366 One, that the artist and priest are
mortal enemies - religion disregards the present world. The
other, that art and religion is the same thing. Both, he
thought, were mistaken. The actual relationship between
art and religion was subtler. If the artist happens to be also
a Christian, his salvation is not achieved through his art, but
through the means open to every other believer. At the
same time, his art did serve, David knew, to awaken others
to religious reality, and could become a means of setting
them on the road to God.
366
Walsh, Chad. Christianity and the Arts. Theology Today. 6, no.4
(1950): 514-523.

456
Jesus clearly knew what it was to suffer. He wondered why
they did it to him, being as he was innocent and that
everyone knew it.
On the other hand Jesus had been like him, a criminal. Just
like the rest of the people in Rochester Prison. Crucifixion
was the authorities’ way of sorting out criminals. David
thanked God he had been born in the Twentieth Century.
There was something about the statue that wasn’t
quite right, though. Not for a man who had been strung up
as a criminal. Not for someone who had been accused of
stirring-up violence and murder. It was something about
the face. The person who had carved it could have made
his face hard, but he hadn’t. He had made it angelic and
innocent; otherworldly. Why would he do that?
Over the months, Sunday after Sunday, he began to
understand the statue’s face, though it remained baffling.
Once a week, two men dressed in what the prisoners called
‘brown frocks’ but that the wearers called ‘habits’ would
visit the prison. They were Franciscan Friars. They were
doing some religious course down the road in the village
near the prison, training to be priests. In the early days of
their visits the lads would mock them, but after a while they
were not noticed. They would bring cigarettes, and take
some of the prisoners out for a meal occasionally. All the
lads thought that they were gay, but no one ever

457
complained about them. They were friends of the Prison
Chaplain, who was after getting as many religious
conversions as possible from among the prisoners. David
was OK with that. After all, it was the prison chaplain’s
job.367 Drawing upon experiences as a prison chaplain and
a state director of prison chaplaincy services, Hall proposes
a working theology of prison ministry. It begins with an
understanding of the inherent worth of humankind as
created by God in his own image, addresses the question of
hope, embodies the incarnate presence of God by being
present with people in their alienation, enables the giving
and receiving of forgiveness, deals with issues of power
and control, and respects the diverse paths that humans take
in their walk toward and with God.
This prison’s Chaplain was tall and skinny and with large
hands. He would visit the prison every Sunday after
supper. He never brought cigarettes, but had the same sort
of look as the Jesus statue. David couldn’t figure him out.
Why was he there, in a prison, when he could be
somewhere else in a wealthy parish drinking sherry with
the local freemasons?
David was having a play fight with some of the lads after
lunch in the prison kitchen. ‘Chopper’ was present. They
were playing with the kitchen knives. Chopper grabbed a
367
Hall, Stephen T. A Working Theology of Prison Ministry.
J.P.C.C., 58, no.3. (2004): 169-178.

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carving knife and started waving it about, approaching
David in a mock-threatening challenge. David jumped
away in fun and made a face at Chopper. Chopper
continued to advance, knife in hand. The knife flashed
above his head and he brought it down in a stabbing motion
David recalled Norman Bates in Psycho that had been on
the silver screen just before David’s imprisonment. They
were only playing. It was a game. What if he were to
accidentally misjudge one of those lunges? David was
scared and smiled at Chopper, asking him to put it down
now the game was over. Chopper had not finished. He had
sensed David’s fear, and this fed into his madness. The
knife was sharp. David made a submissive gesture towards
the door, signifying that the game was over. Chopper did
not pick-up on the cue. The knife was raised again, just
above David’s face, and began to descend with some speed
and force. He lifted his forearm towards the knife, and his
right hand grabbed at Chopper’s wrist as the instrument
descended.
His hand caught the blade of the weapon and he could feel
the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger gently
slice down to the bone.
This injury had to be explained to the guard without
implicating Chopper. All injuries had to be reported. Were
this incident to be reported in a certain way, the man who

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had two convictions for armed robbery and was now
serving a borstal sentence for grievous bodily harm may
have seriously intended it as a violent attack. Might
someone assert that it had been an attempt to murder
another prisoner? Might it lead to Chopper spending
another five years in gaol? More importantly, might it
mean that David would have to spend the rest of his
imprisonment in mortal fear of Chopper’s prison revenge?
Whatever had been on Chopper’s mind, he did have a
history of macabre violence. He used to tell the story of a
Rocker who visited his cafe in London. The lad sat at the
bar with a lager in his hand, and Chopper, who got his
name from his job as a butcher’s boy, approached him. He
said to the lad,
‘I like your parting.’ Pointing to the Rocker’s ‘D.A.’
hairdo.
‘Wot parting?’ asked the rocker.
‘That one!’ Said Chopper, bringing a meat cleaver down on
the lad’s head, splitting his skull in two, and performing
what Chopper described as ‘the world’s first frontal
lobotomy without an anaesthetic!’
It would not do to make too much of a fuss over the
incident in the kitchen. Just be thankful for one small cut.
David explained the cut to the guard, who took him across
to the Medical Officer, who stitched it up with no

460
anaesthetic. Owing to the rapid rise of personal violence
during these years (the 1960’s), many British and
Americans appeared willing to accept technological
solutions to social problems. Some scientists, however, as
well as a number of legislators, had voiced objections to
widespread psychosurgical and biomedical research on
violence, warning that subjecting to surgery inmates of
such institutions as prisons and mental hospitals raised the
spectre of indiscriminate operations to ‘pacify’ those
considered dissidents.368 In the 21st century, Ritalin, the
‘chemical cosh’ is increasingly being used in British
educational institutions to pacify ‘hyperactive’ children.
Scientific advance does not automatically makes life more
meaningful however.
The Chaplain was in the hospital office when David
arrived. They fell into conversation and he asked the
question that had been on his mind for some months about
why Jesus was in the prison chapel. They talked for a
while, as his hand was being stitched, and David accepted
his invitation to attend a Bible class.
The prison Chaplain spoke of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who,
though from the upper middle class, with its educational
and professional advantages, had practical pastoral
experience in Harlem NY, and later in a Nazi prison. This
368
Rogers, Cornish. Biomedics, Psychosurgery and Laizzez-Faire.
Christian Century. 90, no.39. (1973): 1076 - 1078

461
had endeared him to adherents of the theology of liberation,
to which David felt himself to adhere.369 During these
discussions, four facets of his lived experience and written
material began to resonate within him: his solidarity with
the oppressed – convicted felons; his appeal to a suffering
God whose power is revealed in human weakness – the
Jesus carving in the prison chapel; his call for a non-
religious, this-worldly Christianity – David had never been
part of the ecclesiastical institution, and lastly, his demand
that the church live up to its promise to be Christ to the
world – something of a rebel. His poignant question, ‘who
really is Jesus Christ for us today?’ - from one of his prison
writings – remained a challenge to David thirty years later,
and would continue to inform his mature theology for the
rest of his life.
The Bible studies went on each week for some months on
Friday evenings, and he attended and enjoyed every one.
David was now to be trained for the workplace by being
given work experience.
A Select Committee on Home Affairs First Report370
provides the following figures relating to work training in
the prison system:

369
Kelly, Geffrey B. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Theology of
Liberation.” Dialog Journal. 34, no.1. (1995): 22-29.
370
Select Committee on Home Affairs First Report Annex 8 HM
Prison Service ‘Production Workshops’, (2005).

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Ten production workshops constitute the majority of
operational workshops across the prison estate offering
work experience to prisoners.
Engineering provided fifteen workshops, offering 885 work
experience places and formal training including basic/key
skills and NVQs. Products were produced in the main for
the internal market ranging from simple repair work and
cell doors to sophisticated bespoke items such as fire
escapes and spiral staircases. The woodwork experience
offered work for 763 prisoners in 14 workshops including
the manufacture of ‘safer cell’ furniture. National
Vocational Qualification (NVQ’s) were available at some
production units. The furniture provision was HM Prison
Service’s largest production partnership. This was with a
US office furniture company, Leggatt and Platt, who had
extensive experience of working with correctional facilities
in the USA. High quality office furniture was being
assembled in a number of establishments produced for the
internal market but with the aim of eventually supplying to
the external market. Work experience in Plastics was being
provided for 165 prisoners in seven workshops, and four
footwear workshops offered 203 work places. There were
nine printing workshops: seven being conventional and
digital printing workshops, and two desktop publishing
units. 179 prisoners were currently employed. Products

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were produced mainly for the internal market with a small
amount of external printing produced mainly for charities
and hospital trusts. The Prison Service was currently in
discussion with the British Printing Industries Federation to
introduce NVQ training across printing workshops. Textiles
and Clothing was a major internal industry. There were
seventy-four workshops in 59 establishments, offering
2,918 work places. There were also three Sewing Machine
Repair workshops, employing sixty-five prisoners. The
Clothing and Textiles workshops constituted 27% of all
prison workshops and produced almost exclusively for the
Internal Prison Market, providing over £12m worth of
goods to establishments. It provided employment for 2,673
prisoners at an average of 27.5 hours per week. The
Internal Review Report quoted an annual loss for the
industry of £4.8m.
The Concrete training provision consisted of three
workshops employing 33 prisoners. There were
approximately 4,000 prisoners involved in catering
performing food service preparation and packaging, and
producing 82 million meals per annum. Seventy-eight
prisons were currently registered for the delivery of a range
food preparations qualifications, allied to basic and key
skills. Laundry was another major provision. Forty-two
industrial laundries serviced all prison establishments,

464
offering 1049 work experience places. Laundry was
processed in the main for the internal market was assessed
at an annual commercial value of approximately £17m. A
number of establishments also operated external contracts
‘to fill free capacity’. In this department of work, formal
training was also available in the form of the Guild of
Launderers and Cleaners accredited course in Laundering.
The desperation of the Prison Service to discover
something positive about this situation is revealed in the
Report’s comment that, ‘one national laundry company had
guaranteed to provide job interviews for successful students
from this course…’ and, ‘A similar accredited course was
also available for Laundry Instructors.’ At the same time,
the positive spin that ‘An investment programme, costing
£2.3m, is underway to replace some of the inefficient and
worn out laundry machinery that had hindered the provision
of a modern and reliable service.’ Is put upon the fact that
the equipment used for training was hopelessly outdated.
All laundry machinery purchased on this scheme was to be
‘…similar to that which [ex]! prisoners would operate in
commercial laundries on release.’371
In terms of Home Office commitment to the provision
of work experience and training, the prison service in total
provided around 7,351 work and training places for a total

371
Information provided by HM Prison Service (March 2004).

465
prison population of around 77,774, leaving a shortfall of
around 70,423. Even if these resources were limited to
young people in prison, and not at people over twenty-one
- a tiny proportion of the whole prison population - at 24th
March 2006 there were 8,597 young people aged between
18-20 in prison in England and Wales,372 leaving 1,246
young prisoners’ work training not provided for. For the
considered view of the Howard League for Penal Reform
see endnote.iv Not only was the quantity of training tiny,
but the quality of the training might be at least partly
deducted from noting the poor quality of the training
equipment.
They put David to work as an operative on the ancient
machinery in the laundry.
He found this great fun; shoving everybody’s clothes
into an industrial washing machine and watching it go
round might be hypnotic but it was better than staring at a
cell wall. It was not a heavy labouring job, and he was able
to wear clean clothing for it. One of the fun bits about this
machine was its behaviour when it was overloaded. The
tub would spin and wobble, threatening to tear it from its
moorings. This would upset the civilian Launderer Trainer,
employed to train the lads in the job, and who was not a

372
Home Office (2006) Population in Custody, 24 March, 2006,
London: Home Office. This figure includes some 21 year-olds not
classified as part of the adult population.

466
prison guard. The laundry lads had a new shirt every day,
and with the longest collars. A long collar in prison was an
Alpha Male signal. Ironic, in that there were no females to
impress.
There were a number of other jobs in the laundry. The
colander machine, like a huge heated mangle on which
sheets were ironed, was a warm and cosy job, especially in
the cold winter. You could put food particles in it and see
what shape and colour stains you could impress on the
clean pillowcases and bed linen.
Round the back of the laundry was the drying room, in
which large wicker baskets were used to store the dried
garments prior to transporting and distributing them to the
prison wings. The baskets were placed in front of two huge
industrial fan heaters built into the wall. The heat was
stifling. An initiation ceremony for new laundry-lads was
to lock them in one of these baskets and leave them for an
hour directly in front of the drying fans. It was pure luck
that no one, as far as anyone knew, had been killed in this
process. The place was crawling with cockroaches, which
seemed to love and thrive on the conditions of heat and
damp.
Chad joined the group one Tuesday morning. He was tall
and thin and had a large tattoo of an eagle across his
hairless and sunken chest. When the Launderer was busy

467
elsewhere, the lads grabbed Chad and stuffed him in to the
large industrial Bendix washing machine and turned it on.
It had been installed with the viewing window facing to the
front, and was about five times the size of a household
machine. His terrified face peered out from behind the
toughened transparent plastic. It was very funny, especially
when one of the lads pretended to reach for the water-tap.
The lad was frightened out of his wits, as he went round
and round with the washing.
Joe decided it wasn’t funny enough, so he turned the water
on. They could dry Chad out in the laundry basket later,
doubling the torture of his initiation ceremony. Slowly the
water crept up the plastic window. It had begun to get
serious. Chad was helpless and terrified. Someone hissed,
‘Turn it off!’
No one moved. The water kept rising and the initiate’s eyes
were popping. Suddenly someone leapt forward and went
to release the lever to open the door. Instead, he turned the
machine on, and the whole barrel began to move in a
circular motion. He was screaming soundlessly through the
transparent door. Trying to walk along the tumbling barrel,
he kept losing his footing and falling over.
Suddenly a shout from the other side of the room broke the
spell. It was the Launderer Trainer. He knocked the lever
off, opening the door. Both water and bedraggled borstal

468
boy tumbled to the floor. He was wet and a bit shaken, he
said to everyone, but no harm had been done. The
Launderer Trainer did not want disruption reported on his
watch, and he swore everyone to secrecy. The deal was, he
wouldn’t mention it. The new lad escaped the planned
basket experience.
He did not escape another form of torture, though. Because
had had escaped the drying-room initiation, it was felt by
Lucky that he should undergo another one. This time, it
was to be administered in the dormitory, in the evening,
every night at 20.00 hours. The new lad had become the
House Victim, and was to suffer accordingly. It had been
partly to do with his escaping the Basket, but also because
of his macho tattoo, that failed to match up to his actual
character. The tattoo said, ‘I am a hard man’, whereas his
character demonstrated the opposite. This mismatch had
not been lost on Lucky, who saw himself as the House
Daddy. He would brook no competition, especially if he
could trounce the opposition. He was, like all bullies, a true
coward.
Thus, every evening at eight o’clock, Lucky would call the
new lad to his bedside. Lucky would be there with his
small entourage of acolytes, and he would order Chad to
remove his shirt, which Chad would do. He would them
command him to turn around. The next order would be to

469
Andy, who would be told to wrap his arms round Chad’s
sunken chest.
‘Now, Chad, take ten deep breaths, holding each one in for
as long as you can.’
Obediently, Chad would take the ten deep breaths and hold
each one in for as long as possible.
On completion of the breathing ritual, Andy – or whichever
one of the circus troupe had been appointed the task that
night – would be ordered to squeeze as hard as he could for
half a minute.
During these thirty seconds, Chad’s body would tremble,
palpitate, go limp and collapse to the floor. He would be
left in his unconscious state until he recovered and
stumbled back to his bed. Some nights, when Lucky had
been in the mood, this ritual would be repeated over and
over again until his sadism had been satisfied. Whether
only once or for multiple times, this would happen every
night without fail. One of the repeated ritual’s effects was
to reaffirm the government of the dormitory by means of
fear and threat, but many of those who laughed at the
nightly prank were not really laughing, and the mature
David now wonders if the mature Chad ever took revenge
for this abuse, or whether it damaged him so badly that the
rest of his life had been wrecked. For this prisoner, custody

470
was to deliver a tragic outcome in terms of his evaluation of
his own worth as a person.
He suffered really badly. The whole of his time at
Rochester was spent undergoing initiation ceremonies, and
some of the indignities he was subjected to were hideous
and degrading. He was lucky though. He was eventually
discharged in one piece. The House Victim of the
neighbouring dormitory was so badly beaten and physically
deformed – in the process he was emasculated – that he was
released early from his imprisonment. He had been beaten
so severely that he was unable to be returned to a
communal situation. Whenever the dormitory lost its
Victim in this way, David, no doubt with others, spent a
period of heightened anxiety whilst the next Victim was
being selected.

During this time David continued visiting the Chaplain’s

discussion group. It was the first time in his life that he had
been a member in a group that shared views and arguments
without shouting, fighting or going off with resentment and
threats of revenge.
Although the overall approach of the group towards the
Bible for example, was fundamentalist, he was not ejected
from fellowship with the group for objecting that the

471
 373
Communist Manifesto, subtitled ‘confession of faith’,
seeing practice and theory as dialectic, could produce a
synthesis that dealt with improving the real world rather
than a religious theory that would please academics but not
effect the lives of ordinary people, such as you could find
in, for example, the Beatitudes of Jesus.
He was reminded that this practice and theory as dialectic
brooked no correction from experience: it was the
existential practice or living-out of what is a priori
professed. The manifesto spoke of economic determinism
and class struggle and called the workers who are not
spiritual entities but mere ‘instruments of labour’ to liberate
themselves, despite the denial of freedom. The proletariat
is presented as a messiah-class awaiting its καιροσ to be
transubstantiated. So far, he was reminded, the miracle had
not occurred. The role of the Party was to provide
conscious direction to the brute, to be the gnostics of the
process of salvation. He was firmly told that if he became a
Christian, it would be his job to take seriously the analysis
of economic above ethical forces and the real slavery of the
disenfranchised. Marxism, he was told, was a self-
destroying prophecy, and that it had not produced its
promised εσχηατον.
373
Hollenweger, W. J. “They Changed Our Thinking: II. Karl Marx
(1818-1883) and His Confession of Faith.” Expository Times.84,
no.5. 1973): 132 – 137.

472
Regarding the group’s insistence on believing in the Bible’s
divine inspiration, the proposal was made to him (instead of
threats of violence), that precision regarding biblical
authority was essential in view the foggy character of
theology. Like any Christian doctrine, the witness of Christ
and the apostles established it. Inspiration related
specifically to the text of the Bible and insists that what the
Bible says, God says. Biblical infallibility, a noble and
useful term, was asserted to be a necessary inference drawn
from the doctrine of inspiration. It was, for instance
impossible to reconcile error with the Word of God. To
maintain infallibility, the group said, was not to be blind to
problems, many of which had anyway been met and solved
in the past. It was during these discussions in Rochester
Prison that David became convinced that genuine spiritual
renewal in his time would require a return to the
inscripturated word, the Word of God.374
Listening to these well-educated people talking about love
and mercy, to him – a mere convicted criminal - he once
called to mind the in-house (prison landings) victims, and
learned about the Scapegoat in the Old Testament. This
idea was new to him – that there was such a thing as an
animal that the priests put all the community’s sins on, and
sent into the wilderness, and in this way, to cleanse the
374
Pinnock, Clark H. “Our Source of Authority: the Bible.”
Bibliotheca Sacra. 124, no.494. (1967): 150 – 156.

473
community, or to bring it the benefits of forgiveness of its
wrongdoings. He was appalled at the thought that there in
the wilderness the scapegoat died of starvation and thirst, or
at the hands of marauders, thieves, bandits or wild animals,
and that the Jesus statue in the chapel, they said, was a
carving of God’s own - human - Scapegoat. He took the
sins of the whole world on his back and carried them into
the wilderness where he was killed, carrying David’s, and
the Bible study group’s sins with him.
After each of these meetings he would go quietly back to
the dormitory and lie in his bed, thinking about things.
Why Jesus had to be killed on a cross, as a criminal. The
Chaplain had said Jesus wasn’t really a criminal; it was just
that they trumped up the charge to get rid of him. David
believed that, though he used to have really heated
arguments with him sometimes – swear at him and tell him
he was a liar, or deluded, or mental. There was no getting
away from it; when someone is telling the truth, over time,
it becomes clear. The Chaplain, he decided was telling the
truth.
‘Jesus lived a perfect life without any wrongdoing. He was
tempted in many ways. Even in those days there were
some alluring forces and grim realities in peoples’ lives. In
his long pilgrimage of reading in his cells over almost three
years, he had thought about the various cults and religions

474
that had gone on over time. He had thought about the
people who started them, or about their leaders’ lives. All
of them fell short, and some fell badly. Biographies of
these people, some of whom had millions of followers, only
made him wonder how lives so poorly, superficially, and
immorally lived could be so revered by some people.
On Sunday, the Chaplain had got into his pulpit. He was
really letting fly from the pulpit that Sunday.
‘In contrast to all of the leaders who have ever lived, the
life of Jesus stands supreme and impeccable. Some of the
greatest scholars in history have recognised this about
Jesus. Some of them are Christians, yes, but others are not.
W. E. H. Lecky for example, is a non-Christian, but in his
book, ‘A History of European Morals from Augustus to
Charlemagne II’ he says that the impact of Jesus is
unequalled in both what he said and in how he behaved
morally. So incredible was this unblemished life that, in an
effort to make his own defeated aspirations seem normal,
the noted intellectual Nikos Kazantzakis, in his novel, ‘The
Last Temptation of Christ’, had tried desperately to
construct a Christ who succumbed to the impulse of
sensuality. Nikos failed in his attempt because he robbed
himself of the life changing truth that it was Jesus’ purity of
mind and life that made it possible for him to provide his
empowering grace to humankind. Jesus was not able to

475
save sinners because he was a sinner also. He was able to
save them because he was blameless in word and deed!’
David, for one, often left the prison chapel after the
Sunday service vitalised and renewed. He was beginning to
find someone he could believe in. A real man who actually
told the truth, and who wasn’t afraid to say so.
One night, after one of the discussion groups, he went back
to the dormitory and immediately felt that something was
different. There was something in the air. It wasn’t
directed at him, though he didn’t know what it was. The
idea that it was resentment about him visiting the
Chaplain’s house did occur to him, but it wasn’t that.
Paul greeted him, and they had a play-fight on the floor, as
they did most evenings. Then came lights-out, when
normally everyone snuggled down and went to sleep, there
being no other available light source. Then, one by one,
from all parts of the dormitory figures began to form in a
circle in the centre of the room. He got up and went to
investigate out of curiosity.
About six prisoners had gathered around a huge cigarette.
He had never seen a spliff before. He sat down and joined
them. The smoke from the large cigarette smelled sweeter
than Black Shag. It was pot. Each participant took a deep
intake of the smoke and passed the spliff on, holding the
smoke deep in their lungs for as long as possible to get the

476
full effect of the drug. Before long the group were out of it.
One lad went completely white and was sick. David
became quite paranoid, and spent the rest of the evening
waiting for the guards to drag him to the block and kick
him to pieces.
He had no sleep for the whole of that night, waiting for
something bad to happen to him. Doors banged and
echoed, and voices repeated themselves over and over
again in foreign languages that he didn’t understand. A
firework, which did not belong to him, was launched into
the sky, turned into a dragon and ate the moon. It was
David’s fault the moon was missing in the morning. What
had he done with it? It was his firework that had done it.
Everybody in the street was talking about it, and the police
would be coming…
It was work as usual the next day. The episode had passed
off with no recriminations. The guards had been
completely unaware. However, he would not do that again,
thanks very much.

477
478
 FIFTEEN: THE KEY AT LAST
Christian conversion

The prison chaplain was always around somewhere. Out of

all David’s acquaintances, he felt that the Chaplain was
different. He asked to see him, and the Chaplain explained
why he was in Rochester Borstal when he might have had a
good job somewhere else. After all, he had a Cambridge
University education and didn’t need to be working for the
Prison Service amongst convicts. He said that his main
reason was to help prisoners to find Christ. What did he
mean, ‘find Christ’? Change culture? Become middle
class? Get an education? Get religion?
David could not see the reasoning. How, could the
middle-class Gospel of the English Evangelical Anglicans
from Oxbridge be communicated to an uneducated
working-class borstal boy from prison? And anyway, why?
What would be the purpose of such an endeavour?
He joined the Chaplain’s Bible study group, in which
it was explained that God had revealed himself to Peter in
terms of Hebrew language and culture, but then Peter had
to go from that culture to Cornelius’ culture and present
Christianity in another, completely different cultural form.

479
As the then-called ‘Judaizers’ of the early church had
wanted all Christians to be Jews as well, so then, in that
borstal, the missionaries could easily have seen 1611
Jacobean King James Bible-type Oxbridge Anglican
cultural Christianity as the only form of ‘true Christianity’.
If any example were needed, the success of missionary
schools was a prime example of conversion to the white
middle class man’s science, mathematics, and religion, i.e.
culture. He was told of African women in their villages
wearing brassieres because they had become Christians!
However, David had learned, because God had already
been speaking to him through His Spirit, that God used at
least one other culture (his own) to speak to people.375
Studying the contents of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians
forced the study group not only to speak of love toward
God and other people in general, but also to become aware
of the specific relationship between the church and Israel
and the church and the convict. The Gentiles’ adoption into
the household of God was comparable to the prodigal son’s
reception in his father’s house. In this Epistle, Paul had
considered three relationships constitutive of the church’s
life. The church lived, first, from Jesus Christ, second, in
solidarity with Israel (whoever ‘Israel’ may be), and third,
as the herald of God’s love for every person. The second of
375
Kraft, Charles. “Christian Conversion or Cultural Conversion.”
Journal of Practical Anthropology. 10. (1963): 179 – 187.

480
these three ‘nerves of life’, or ‘bonds of unity’, had been
often neglected in the church’s theology and conduct. The
brotherly relationship of the Christian to the Jews (and by
legitimate hermeneutical extension to the borstal boy)
would be the test of the group’s faith in God and of their
love to their fellow human beings.376
There was an inseparable connection of the freedom
the group enjoyed and the Christian faith. They believed in
the separation of church and state, not because the state was
sufficient to produce good citizens, and not because it did
not need the infusion of informed God-fearing people, but
because this need would be better served by a church and
government that functioned separately. It was pointed out
that the only way for America (for example) to become
Christian would be by the conversion of many more
millions of its people to Christ, rather than by saying it was
Christian by an act of Congress, and in the same way this
was true of David the convict and of all the people of his
class and culture.377 Would the Anglican Church be up to
the challenge? What if David were to become ordained
into the established church? Would that help…? Would
that forward the mission…?

376
Barth, Markus. Title: “Conversion and Conversation.”
Interpretation. 17. (1963): 3 - 24 (No. 1)
377
Shoemaker, Samuel M. “Faith at Work in a Free Society.”
Christianity Today. 2, no.19. (1958): 3- 5.

481
 The missionary problem had been whether to convert
people at all. Factors both external (the growth of
nationalism, the study of non-Christian religions) and
internal (questions about the basis of theology, and of
disillusionment with the church) had combined to challenge
traditional assumptions. Citations showed that secular
theology was concerned to idealise a ‘concerned
community’ that may quite legitimately even repudiate the
name, ‘Christian’. There were three problems that needed
to be overcome - satisfaction with a purely rational
presentation of the gospel; the wedding of cultural heritage
to the gospel; confusing established religion’s organisation
(the church) with God’s self-revelation in Christ.378
Conversion had to be a transformation to something other
than a particular class, or secular cultural heritage. In some
circles the word ‘conversion’ was shunned; ‘repentance’
was however inadequate to render ‘µετανοια’, which
suggests a revolutionary, even catastrophic, change.

It does not mean merely movement of one’s

membership from this club to that. It may mean movement
from one system to another or a change in intensity:
378
Sharpe, Eric J. “The Problem of Conversion in Recent
Missionary Thought.” Evangelical Quarterly. 41, no.4. (1969):
221 – 231.

482
Hinduism to Islam; nominal to existential commitment;
secular to spiritual understanding; non-Christian to
Christian; abandonment of Christianity; or within
Christianity, nominal to passionate commitment.379 For
David it would need to be from non-Christian to Christian,
but also in a subtle way, from religious to secular. At this
time Lampe was pointing out how secularised religion
concentrated its attention, not upon an unseen eternal
world, but upon human society and individual personality.
Thus God is discerned within the human situation rather
than beyond it. Thus, the dichotomy of two realms, sacred
and secular, was rejected. That there is a tendency in the
New Testament towards secularisation could be seen in the
doctrine of creation, in the fact that the object of God’s
work in Christ is humanity, and in the truth that those who
accept the gospel live their daily lives in the world. The
patristic age also gives evidence of two further
developments in the direction of secularisation: first, as I
have already mentioned, that it is the Christian’s duty to
serve the State; and second, the church’s acceptance of
philosophy as a preparation for the gospel. The moment the
church embraced culture, the value of the world was
affirmed.380
379
Neill, Stephen. “Conversion.” Expository Times. 89, no.7.
(1978): 205 – 208.
380
Lampe, G. W. H. “Secularisation In The New Testament And
The Early Church.” Theology. 71, no.754. (1968): 163 – 175.

483
 The group members who were Christians said that
Jesus was still alive, even though he had died on the cross.
He had physically risen from death by God’s miraculous
power. David scanned the Chaplain’s face. It was genuine
and earnest and true. He could not detect even a trace of
the con man about him. Here was a man who truly and
really believed that someone had come alive after dying
and been raised from the grave! Yet he wasn’t some
ignorant peasant in the backwoods somewhere believing in
magic beads, or a gullible idiot, but an intelligent, well-
educated modern man who was not at all stupid,
superstitious, or gullible.
Was Jesus still around today, then? Yes, he believed
he was. Not only that, but it seemed that he cared about
David, the person, the individual, the complex creature who
made up all that David was. Yes, him. Him, himself.
David the prisoner; David the escapee; David the victim;
David the object of scorn and punishment; the Beaten-Up
David; David the Worm; David the scum-of-the-earth;
David the Borstal Boy; David the religious inquirer; David.
Well, that did it for him.
The Chaplain said that Jesus wanted David to become
His prisoner rather than the prisoner of the Queen. He did
not know what to say. David searched the young priest’s

484
earnest face and detected nothing but complete and total
honesty and belief. He told David that Jesus loved him.
Flushed with embarrassment, he had never been, himself,
homosexual, although he had met people in prison who
were. However, the priest explained that the love of Jesus
was a different kind of love; it was ‘αγαπε’ love, and he
explained what that meant - a pure and spiritual love; it was
a moral love; it was Jesus’ pure joy and excitement at being
in David’s company! He could not imagine anyone in the
world ever enjoying his company that much! He had no
response. Lost for words, he searched the priest’s face for
even a trace of a lie, but found none. He was telling the
truth about what he believed as well as he knew it, and
David knew it too.
‘Can you accept Jesus as your saviour?’ He asked.
David looked down at his own hands that were torn with
labour and hard with calluses from sawing at Reading and
working on the farm and in the laundry at Rochester Prison.
Did God want these hands, this heart, and this love?
He opened his mouth to say,
‘Jesus wants hands like this…?’
However, the words would not come. They rose in his
throat and gurgled to a stammer. He couldn’t voice it.
After all the months of putting up a front it had finally
come out into the open. He could not pretend any more.

485
This would be it, then. Spreading his hands on the table, he
said,
‘Jesus, if you want them, they’re yours.’
Then he sobbed quietly. The Chaplain laid his hand firmly
on his shoulder and waited for him to finish. There was no
hurry. He said a prayer, and David wiped away the tears
from his face and composed himself for his re-entry into the
dormitory among the lads where he would have to pretend
that nothing had happened. He would pretend that it was
just another discussion group at the Chaplain’s house.
Crossing the courtyard in front of the gatehouse he stopped
and thought things over. He remembered Reading
Detention Centre. How Jesus had been kicked and slapped
and spat upon and treated like so much human refuse, fit for
nothing but the hill outside the walls of Jerusalem, where
they hung Him out to dry. They had kicked David in
reading Goal. But they had kicked that Man on the cross,
even though He was innocent – whipped him with vile and
tearing scourges even, until his flesh crawled with his own
gore and his guts were torn from his body. He remembered
all the nearly three years of lonely nights. He recalled
sitting in the corner of the cell after lights out. Sitting there,
listening to the screams of the desperate, and the moans and
fantasies of the psychiatrically sick, and the taunts of those
who had gone beyond despair and entered the realms of the

486
macabre, he remembered his extreme terror. Then there
had been the sounds of life beyond the walls; a girl
laughing, the sound of the aeroplanes overhead, or the
underground speeding by and the hoot, hoot of motor
horns, desperately alone. Jesus in the Garden of
Gethsemane, where his sweat fell like great drops of blood
into the ground as he debated with God about the fate that
awaited him in Jerusalem.
Jesus had been lonely and desperate too. He knew what it
was like to weep your guts out in the long silence of the
night. He was not one who could expect escape or release,
for He was already condemned. He had no choice but to
suffer and to go on suffering, even when it had become
unbearable to him and to those who watched. No-one, not
even the poor people who thought that they loved Him,
offered a grimy hand. All He could think to say was,
‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are
doing.’
What a man!
David slowed his pace as he approached the dormitory.
‘Jesus Christ’, how many times he had used them as swear
words. He had never known before what they really meant.
He had never known – how could he – that those two words
contained the entry into everything he would ever need to
know about life, love, the truth, and the world. He had not

487
known that this was the Philosophers Stone, the
Transforming Moment, the Meaning of Everything, the
Ground of Being, and the Meaning of Life. For such a long
time he had never known.
Immediately he thought of the millions of others who also
did not know. Millions. There must be millions of folk
who had been swearing for years about the very Thing that
they yearned for – Jesus Christ, the Man who was God.
The God who knew what it was to be kicked about, beaten,
abandoned, in despair, and alone.
It was at that moment that the phrase, ‘Jesus Christ’ became
a term of love rather than of hatred. It was at that moment
that David realized the Missionary Commission.

He had understood from the teaching that the Great

Commission was binding on him and on all believers. The
Reformers had believed that the command to preach the
Gospel was binding only on the original apostles. For them,
spreading the Gospel to new areas was the responsibility of
Christian governments, and the Christian faith was spread
through the conversion of ethnic groups by the sword. In
that sense, David had been converted to that kind of
Evangelicalism that wanted above all else to spread the
Gospel and make conversions, with little or no interest in
religious institutions.

488
489
 SIXTEEN: HOME LEAVE
Reintroduction to social belonging

In the cold light of day he immediately wished those things

had not happened on that Friday night. He wanted to forget
it, because it was potentially embarrassing. He dreaded
meeting the Chaplain again. What would they say to each
other? Would the Chaplain still feel the same, or had he
been on some sort of religious ‘trip’ that evening?
He couldn’t forget it, because it had happened, and they
both knew it had. He was mostly afraid, not that he had
done what he had done, but that he had misjudged the
chaplain. Perhaps he hadn’t really meant what he had said,
but had just had a bad night or had been smoking a spliff or
had been feeling particularly religious at the time.
If David had decided to deny the events of last night,
his life would have taken a completely different course. It
had been a night of destiny. There was, for him, no going
back. While evangelism had much to learn from pastoral
care, one of its really important roles in David’s life had
been that of the gadfly; for real pastoral care – the offer of a
transformation for the prisoner caught in the endless cycle

490
of crime and punishment - must not neglect the deeply
personal reality of commitment to God that he had come to
experience; true healing surely takes place only when
personal life is related in love and obedience to the God of
life and destiny.381 Was that what the Chaplain believed? It
was what David had come to know.
At first, he did not say anything to anyone. He did not want
to become stereotyped as ‘religious’. He felt it was better
to let things ride and stay cool. It wasn’t difficult to do,
although there were times when he wanted everyone to
know, although he managed to keep it in. Soon his release
would come through, when he could start a new life with a
new persona.
The time came for him to visit home prior to being
released. He would be allowed to go home for a week to
see his family and make contact with the Probation Office
in his hometown. From a Home Office point of view, this
was a way of setting-up a resettlement and surveillance
plan that would keep tabs on this released borstal boy. For
the religiously converted David however it was quite a
different thing. It was a new start to his new life. He went
home and saw his parents for the first time in three years.
His home seemed so tiny after all those years. He tried to

Homrighausen, E.G. “ Evangelism: Ministry of the Church.”

381

Journal of Pastoral Psychology. 7, no.69. (1956): 12-16.

491
explain what had happened in his change of heart, but was
unable to make them understand. He did not really fully
understand it himself, but he hoped they would see
something different in him.
His father dismissed it with the comment that religion was a
good thing if you happened to be that way inclined. He had
been in India during the British Raj, and had seen some
stuff. David did not know what, but something had
hardened him against established religion. Since they never
talked together, he never found out what it was. As it was,
David described his wonderful Friday night experience to
his mother, who seemed to empathise.
The thing was, he had banked everything on the belief
that he had discovered the outside edges of something that
was true. True religion. If what he had discovered were
some awful joke then he would never be able to trust
anyone again. When he got to his own family, he
discovered that no one except his mother was interested.
Even his mother didn’t get excited about it. She was kind,
but there was no one who really cared what he’d found or
whether he had found anything or not.
There he was, suddenly with a hope for the future that he
had previously given up as a joke years ago. Now that he
had found that hope again, no one he knew seemed to be
able to understand or was interested. All anyone was

492
concerned about was that he should get a job as soon as
possible and make an appointment with his probation
officer; earn some money and keep the police happy and
away from the door.
He tramped the streets of Ipswich for a miserable week of
Home Leave, looking for work but finding none. His leave
came to a close and without a job and with much less hope
for the future, exhausted emotionally, he returned to
Rochester on the designated train, glad to get back. He felt
strangely safe, reassured, and at home.
He went to the dormitory and lay down on the bed. He
conjured up memories of things that had happened on his
home leave. He had walked the five miles to town. He’d
gone to the job centre and visited factories looking for work
but finding none. No one wanted him, especially with his
history. An ex borstal boy was not a safe bet, especially if
there was money lying around, or an open window to climb
through, or a car door unlocked. Other people, respectable
people, also wanted jobs. Why choose a thief and a liar
when you could have someone who had always been law-
abiding? He had tramped all week looking for jobs and
been refused time after time. He did not want to go home,
because there was nothing for him there. His only reason
for returning would be so the police, knowing where he
was, would not come searching for him. His bedroom at

493
home, he realised, was no different from his prison cell.
There was nothing to do and there was nowhere to go.
He thought of his decision to visit his father. He had a job
in a car park. Not knowing which car park his father
worked at, David had visited each one in town until he
eventually found him. It was a crushing experience.
He had only seen him once on his home leave – the day he
had returned home. They had not said much to one another.
He wandered from his little hut on the car park and gave his
son a cigarette. They had tried to talk but the words had not
happened. There had been so much to say, but no way of
saying it all. Where would they begin? With whose pain
should they start? Even more complicated, David had
wanted to talk about the pain of Jesus, his new Love, and
not about his own small suffering. Also, he felt so guilty
about the shame and suffering he had brought down on the
family. They agreed that the weather was cold for the time
of year. David said that he should keep himself warm, as
he was not getting any younger, and his father had pointed
to the single-bar electric fire in his little shed. There was
nothing more to say. It was difficult for David to believe
that this was the man who had written him such profound
and understanding letters when he was in prison. He could
not fathom what it was that separated them. They had
never had an easy relationship. It had always been as

494
though there was a barrier between them. Much as he tried,
he felt that he never got close to the man inside his father;
the man of tenderness and sensitivity he knew was there.
He presented as proud and noble – austere, even. A man
oppressed in so many ways by the class he had been born in
to, and who had surrendered to a low opinion of his own
worth and capabilities.
David rubbed his hands together to keep them warm and
get the blood circulating. Frozen air billowed from his lips
like puffs of smoke and flattened itself against the window
before transforming into water-drops. He banged his feet
on the floor. His father followed suit. A car arrived and he
lifted the barrier. David commented that some people had
plenty of money to be able to afford cars like that and park
them at such prices. They grinned across their separation.
His father put a cigarette to his mouth. The smoke
wandered up his face, and looking at his watch he said it
was dinnertime.
Their eyes met. Father gazed into son and son saw all the
longing as clearly as though it had been laid out on the
tarmac. He must have seen something younger, less hurt,
but similar in the eyes of his son, because a tear came to his
eye. He was beginning to grow suddenly old. His hair had
turned from rich brown to white in the past two years. His
generous moustache was ginger-white and frosted with the

495
cold. They stood together drawing something from one
another’s hearts and eyes for a moment. He turned his eyes
away from those of his child as though he had seen
something there that he did not want to see. His prediction
of his son’s future maybe. He probably saw nothing but
destruction and wreckage. It would make sense,
considering how it had gone thus far. The son wanted to
say,
‘I will be all right. I have found Jesus. He will be my
guide.’
He could not share this with his father. A son who had gone
wrong, a prodigal son, though. One who has learned a
lesson and returned changed. The time was not yet. The
father handed his son a small amount of money and
suggested he buy some cigarettes. It was most probably,
said his probation officer, an attachment thing…382

382
Shaver, Phillip R. & Lee A. Kirkpatrick. “Attachment Theory
and Religion: Childhood Attachments, Religious Beliefs, and
Conversion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 29, no.3.
(1990): 315-334.
Attachment theory (John Bowlby and others), offers a theoretical
framework for the psychology of religion. This paper investigates
the relationship between individual differences in respondents’
childhood attachments to parents and adult religious beliefs and
involvement. A sample of 213 respondents to a newspaper survey on
love completed a follow-up mail survey concerning their religious
beliefs and family backgrounds. Multiple regression analyses
revealed that certain aspects of adult religiosity can be predicted
from the interaction of childhood attachment classification and
parental religiousness. God may serve as a substitute attachment
figure.

496
Back in Rochester Borstal he wondered where was Jesus,
who would give the key to this new life, to be found?
There was the irony that although He was everywhere to be
seen, He was not to be found. His image was paraded at
every state occasion, when He was so famous as to be
unavailable to ordinary people. Then, he was dangled
around the necks of people for an ornament, and, again,
unavailable because He was so ubiquitous! He was in the
churches and cathedrals, with diamond-studded eyes and
injuries as he hung on gold and silver crosses. He was
unavailable in this case because He was religious. He was
hidden away out of sight among the middle classes, because
He was their culture, and He was hidden behind
insurmountable walls of academic philosophical and
theological achievement. He was safely enclosed in books
written for the educated, and preached to the already
believing in sermons for clever people, or gullible people,
or people who were desperate for a leader because they
lacked the ability to lead their own lives. He was in the
expensive Schools and seminaries, where they had their
own special Chaplains - and what, he reflected, was Prison
but another part of the Public School system? He was in
university lecture rooms, and wheeled out at the start of
every Parliamentary Day. He was dusted-off for the
occasional wedding, funeral or Christening, but where was

497
He truly to be found for a life-enhancing and transforming
relationship?
Jesus had been an artisan. He was born, probably in a
hovel. He lived his life for other people, and died taking
the blame for crimes he did not commit. Who was there
who could let ordinary people know about this? Who was
there that had such contempt for money and status that they
could work to bring this truth to light?
He lay on his borstal bed and knowing that Jesus was a very
special key to the successful living of a good life, wanted
his social group - his class of people - to have access to it.
He knew that Jesus’ Gospel needed to become
contextualised for the poor. It looked like an impossible
task. Jesus was to the working classes what salt was to a
thirsting wanderer. How was it that He had become so far
removed from them? Maybe it was because the rich end up
with everything and only a few drops trickle down to the
poor. This was a question that had already occurred to
missiologists, and would continue to engage their strategic
planning for the Gospel.383 ‘Contextualisation’ meant ‘the
need to pay attention to the context.’ But here in Great
Britain there were many contexts within the same location
community. How then does the church choose among

383
Ingelby, Jonathan. “Trickling Down or Shaking the Foundations:
Is Contextualization Neutral?” Missiology. 25, no.52. (1997): 183-
187.

498
them? The missionary enterprise had always struggled with
this issue and had frequently come up with the wrong
answer. Choosing the dominant culture – and this did not
always mean the ‘majority’, had appeared a natural strategy
because it gained the cultural high ground and power. Yet
David suspected that this very strategy had distorted the
gospel and created long-term difficulties. Could he accept a
trickle down methodology in mission, or was something
more radical required? He suspected the latter would be
required.
David saw something dimly, but it was there, and it was
very simple. The deep light that shone out of his father’s
eyes in the car park that sad day, shone not from the face of
a wasted and worthless human scrap-heap, but from the
face of Jesus Himself. Jesus, he understood, was in some
indefinable way present in the very soul of his own father.
That light was not the harsh glare of the demand for more
money, more goods, and more possessions, however much
the working classes deserved, needed or wanted these
things. It was the light of a desire for something much
deeper, which David was beginning to see, reflected in the
words of the Bible. The Bible, he had discovered, preached
the message that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor
and oppressed, to heal sickness, and to initiate people into
His special Community – to give them eternal life. Jesus

499
had not stopped doing that when He was nailed to the cross.
Neither did He hang on ornate crosses in wealthy churches
with rubies for eyes, diamonds for nail-heads and gold for a
cross. He would have been at a loss to know what to do
with such things! Nor was He limited or exclusively
contained by academic ownership.384 Having well educated
priests would have both blessings and curses. The blessings
would include more knowledge, insight and training. The
curses would be less devotion to individual churches,
increased uncertainty about their commitment to knowledge
and understanding of New Testament Christianity, its
backgrounds, its history, and its implications for the present
age, and more alienation from those less trained. The
benefits from higher education could not ‘trickle down’ to
the less educated if scholars refused to teach in the local
congregation setting. Why was it that the most educated
had the most doubt about the fundamentals? It was
important to David that the simple Gospel and missionary
methods of the New testament Church, and the pristine
message of Jesus, untainted by other things, needed to be
restored to the working classes in Britain. He did not want
his service of the Gospel of Jesus to be sacrificed on the
altar of scholarship.

384
Lewis, Jack P. “Bridging the Gap between the University and the
Church.” Restoration Quarterly. 1993, 35(1): 1-8.

500
His head had been swimming with these things since his
evangelical conversion at the Chaplain’s house. It was as
though he had re-discovered something that his own culture
had lost long before he had been born. He’d dug up a
treasure. He’d found a mission, a reason for living. The
light of the moon shone in through the bars. There was the
wisp of a cloud across the face of the silver disc, and he
watched its almost imperceptible precision movement in
the still air. He gazed into the Milky Way – that amazing
living photograph of time that had passed – and after a
short while, walked over to the window and pressed his
face against it, like a child at a candy shop.
He whispered,
‘Jesus, if you are alive, and I believe you are, come and
heal me. I want to know you. Forgive me for all the things
I have done wrong. Give me power, so I can tell my
brothers and sisters in every class about you. I know you
love everybody however bad they have been. If you are
alive, come and be my companion.’
He remained standing at the window for a long time
praying. Slowly, he felt, a lot of negative energy and
sickness was being drawn from his mind and body. He
began to see all men and women as just men and women,
and each one a miracle and precious to God. There was no

501
longer any ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’. All were
equal. It would be many decades before he came to a
deeper Christian understanding of multiculturalism, in
which the true worth of distinctive cultures is valued and
affirmed. In the meantime, the evangelical imperative was
to treat all people in the same way, as Saint Paul had
advised Christians, that in Christ there is no difference
between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free,
between men and women. They are all one in union with
Jesus Christ. If they belong to Christ, they will receive
what God has promised.
From now on, there were no longer rich nations oppressing
and exploiting poor nations, but men and women either
loving or not loving one another; individuals responding to
the urgings of their own God-inspired hearts to needs of
others in the world. The world was full of people who
wanted the assurance that there was meaning in their
existence and that ‘Jesus is alive and well’. The call for
change in society was no longer the call for a change in the
systems by which society was being run, but in the hearts of
the individuals within them.
David stood at the window and promised Jesus that he
would take on the job of letting people know their need of a
heart changed by faith in Jesus Christ.

502
He went happily about his daily work, which now consisted
of duties in the Administration Block, situated in the Gate
House. There, he managed to get his prison poetry typed
by one of the secretaries, who bound it in a folder for him.
Every day he prayed and studied the Bible and read books
with Christian themes. His appetite for learning, and
especially for theological learning was insatiable.
Spring was coming to a close and summer approached with
the promise of warmth and open air, with the freedom to
enjoy them. Above all, he had found Jesus. He felt good
towards everybody, even the guards. He loved even
himself, whom he now deeply knew to have become an
honest and truthful person. He felt clean and good. He felt
that at last he had come to accept himself, and with that, to
make himself even better. He believed that soon Jesus
would come again and those beautiful things men and
women felt in their hearts about one another would be
given the freedom to be expressed without shame or fear of
rejection.
He loved Jesus, who had given his empty and meaningless
life fullness and meaning that excelled anything he could
have imagined and which overflowed every moment with
unutterable joy. It was hard to think that only a few short
months ago he had wanted to destroy everything, and had
wished that he had never been born.

503
Now there was nothing like that. He felt he had a fullness
of life and a reason for living that would sustain him for the
rest of his earthly existence, and would keep him safe for
the whole of the pilgrimage that lay ahead. Living water
seemed to be bubbling up from within his soul and flow
through him, providing such a power of love and mental
and physical vitality – of euphoria – that his joy was full to
overflowing.
He would offer himself to become a Christian Minister. He
would go forward as an Anglican priest to make more
Christians for Jesus.

504
505
 SEVENTEEN: THE DREAM – THE REALITY
The world as it really is
‘Tickets, please.’
The ‘please’ surprised him as he walked through the
railway station exit at the local terminal and pressed his
soggy stub into the attendant’s money-stained hand. This
was the freedom side of the gate. He felt the train journey
had dragged bits of borstal along with it. He had been glad
to hear the low hum of the gate closing behind him at the
prison. It put a punctuation-stop at the end of the three
years, concluding the trauma.
His hometown lay before him. Nothing had changed from
three years ago, except that it all seemed bigger. The roads
seemed wider and the traffic more dense. He remembered
how it used to be when he was a child – the slums that ran
all the way down to the docks and the River Orwell,
stinking when the tide was out and whipping like a snake
with deadly underwater currents when it was in. He and his
father used to catch elvers and occasionally fully grown
eels there.
That was many years ago. Their slum housing had been
cleared after the 1952 Spring Floods, destroying what little

506
possessions they had, washed most of the structures away.
He now thinks that at four years old he had been what the
modern black residents of New Orleans are today as far as
some parts of government were concerned - scum, not
worth planning for - except to imprison and punish, or
exile. Oh, what a waste of talent there had been then, all
those years ago, as there now is in New Orleans! His
family had been allowed to rent a corporation council
house, away from the docklands some miles out of the now
gentrified commercial centre of the town. Many a day he
had spent, skipping off school, playing alone or with a
friend on the mud flats at the mouth of the stinking but
friendly river, like Tom Sawyer, innocent in youth, not
knowing the dangers. One afternoon he had almost been
cut off on the mud banks by the tide…
All had gone. All had been demolished and was past -
recoverable only in his memory, and physically beneath the
brand new Fisons Fertiliser Head Office.
At the other end of the bus journey fifteen minutes later, he
walked along the street that had been the location of his
home, and the home of his grandfather and his cousins. He
felt the eyes of strangers, gentrified and upwardly mobile,
staring from behind drawn curtains. He got the bus to the
site of his new home on the corporation estate, reached the

507
front gate and walked to the door. It opened before he had
time to knock.
He’d had lots of fantasies about that moment. He’d
dreamed about it from the start of his sentence. It had
always been kisses and open arms. Not from his father, of
course. They were not dressed in white, like angels, and
they had not bothered to get a cake or to organise any kind
of party. There was no music.
What was happening was that one of the children of
the community, who had shamed his family and been to
prison had come crawling in shame back to the street. Who
was to know what new trouble he would be bringing with
him? It would be best for the family to keep it as quiet as
possible. Only those who happened to be at home at the
time and looking out of their windows would see him
coming up the street and would know about it. Otherwise,
it was best to stay quiet, make sure he got a job and hope he
would leave the community as soon as possible. Then
everyone could get back to normal. From his point of view,
what David needed was the offer of hospitality, but it could
not come from his family. It was too much to require of an
unregenerate community that lacked an intuition of the
divine. Where was he to find acceptance? In homiletics
the assembled congregation participates by granting the
word of God a gift. This is the gift of hospitality. In this

508
the preacher and congregation conspire, willingly to make
room for the Stranger, the one who comes sometimes as the
Outsider, even as the Improper One, like David, from
beyond the bounds of familial propriety; the Word of God
in its often surprising freedom.385
David then spent some months out of work, sitting in
the tiny front room that was hardly bigger than a cell,
staring at the world going by. He felt the irony of the new
cell, and the realisation that everyone else was the same.
There was a street full of bored and wasting people, not
knowing what to do, and lacking the means to find out.
Prisoners outside the Prison Service remit. The only way to
escape from that kind of prison was to be rich. You didn’t
get rich if you are starting from there.
His brothers were at work in the tanning factory, using
among other deadly chemicals, arsenic386. They did not get
home until half-past-six, by which time they were worn out.
He glanced at the clock. Half past two. Father would not
be out of his bed until half past four, when he would want
his tea and be miserable. Two hours at least before
385
Floyd, Wayne, Jr. “Proclaiming the Divine Hospitality”. St
Luke's Journal of Theology. 32, no. 4. (1989): 265-268.
386
According to Dittfurth and Röhring (1987) about 250 different toxic
chemicals and heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, arsenic, zinc etc.
are used by the leather industry. The operation in tanning which gives
rise to effluents is categorised into pre-tanning and post-tanning
processes. Pre-tanning is employed mainly for the removal of impurities
from the raw materials. The tanning processes themselves are used to
alter the characteristics of skin or hide. Most of these operations have
since been exported to third world countries like Bangladesh…

509
something happened, and that event would be a miserable
one! The dog twitched in her slumber, chasing a phantom
rabbit. The suffocatingly small, dark front room lapsed into
a brooding silence. This had been the third week and the
sixth day and the fifteenth hour of his new incarceration on
a council estate in a provincial township. He couldn’t stand
it any longer.
‘Is that clock right?’ He whispered to his mother.
‘Ten minutes fast. I keep it ten minutes fast.’
‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘You want to get yourself a job,’ she confided.
Then solicitously,
‘You know what he’ll be like, with you hanging around all
the time, and the neighbours…
‘Yeah, yeah. I will soon.’
‘Yes, well don’t you get into any trouble. If you do, don’t
bring it home here. We’ve got enough to worry about.’
He wanted to say he’d changed his ways, but he didn’t
bother. Why waste his breath?
Out beyond boundary of the corporation estate, walking the
dog, he communed with his new Master.

Change, the kind of change he had undergone, and was now

experiencing, rapid and revolutionary, is the hallmark of
our time. He wanted to take seriously the injunction of his

510
Master that he discerns this time. His life needed to be
viewed in the light of God, the changing in the context of
the changeless and eternal, in hope that insights may come
to help him understand his world and his duty. The human
symbol of our time, he felt, is the outsider; life for the
unregenerate was a journey through rejection, alienation
and dread.387 Yet his time – having tasted the grace of
forgiveness and new life – new hope – had become one of
God’s springtimes, a time for leaders to take the lead. He
touched base with the Holy Spirit’s imperative - believe in
God; be God’s man; love your neighbour; love one another;
let Christ be your life. Lighting another cigarette, he sat on
a five-barred gate and after this long conversation with
Jesus had become convinced that God had a job for him to
do, and that he would need to go and get some education.

‘Go and see the parish priest and tell him what we’ve
been talking about today, and all about your
experiences. Go and see him now.’

The young man immediately took the dog to the priest’s

house, banged on the door, went in, and told him
everything. Somehow he sensed that the minister would
accept that the community of Christian faith, being

387
Mackay, John A. “The Eternal Imperative in a World of
Change”. Theology Today. 14, no. 1. (1957): 89-105.

511
constantly reminded by Scripture to remember the
sojourner, the outsider, and those ‘Unproductive’ people on
the margins of society would welcome him in.388 In offering
simple friendliness, he introduced him to a new kind of
love. This is the church’s greatest tool in evangelism, but
so many Christians were friendly only to those within their
own community. The fundamental mission of the church of
Jesus Christ, David was learning, was the ability to say:
“You are one of us now.” to every individual in creation. It
had been said to him that very afternoon. Returning home
later that day, David knew that everything had changed.
Something had been set in motion that was to shape the rest
of his life.
How did he know?
He just knew. The date was July 1966.
On September 22, 1974, just seven years later, he would be
made an Anglican priest in the Church of England at
Leyton parish church in London.

388
Mosser, David N. “Welcoming the Sojourner”. Liturgy. 9, no. 2.
(1990): 67-69.

512
513
514
i
A Personal Testimony By Dave.
Have you ever wet yourself in fear, or had a knock on the head so hard you saw stars?
I have…
As far back as I can remember I was a punch bag for my father’s rage, I was so
frightened I used to wet myself before any blow was struck.
I can remember being awakened one night and being hit so hard I couldn’t go to
school the next day, as I had a handprint that covered one side of my face. I was 10
years old when he broke the butt of a rifle fracturing my right cheekbone, and from
time to time the swelling appears as a reminder. I became an angry teenager who got
comfort inflicting violence on others. By the time I was seventeen, I had served two
detention centres (boot camp) sentences, and by the time I was twenty, I had been to
Borstal three times…
1976 was to be a turning point in my life; I was at Stafford Prison serving twenty-two
months.
A prison cell can be a lonely place, as it gives you time to reflect on the past, and on
the future, my life seemed to be going nowhere, and I could see no future, the past
was all I thought about.
One evening, to get out of my cell, and with the promise of tea and biscuits, I went to
the prison Chapel, an ex-convict the Rev. Roy Catchpole was giving a talk, I sat and
listened as this ex-convict poured out his life story, and I remember him saying,
It’s not too late to change your life, just ask the Lord for forgiveness, ask him
into your life and you will be saved…
I went back to my Cell after eating half his biscuits and drinking his tea! But I kept
thinking about the ex-convict vicar and the dynamic way in which his life had
changed I was at a real low point in my life, Prison had become my home and I was
getting tired of it, and with the words of Roy catchpole going through my mind I got
out of my bed, knelt down, and with nothing to lose I asked God for his forgiveness, I
asked the Lord Jesus into my life…
Some time after this I became a ‘collector’ for the ‘Shogun’, going from wing to wing
in the prison collecting tobacco debts and money owed to this highly respected
convict, on this one occasion I got jumped by two inmates who owed money to ‘the
man’, I gave a good account of myself, but two of us ended up in hospital, I had been
stabbed with a potato knife. The thing is, I could have been killed, but I wasn’t. God
had a plan…
In the months that passed after my release I forgot about prison and the prayer for
forgiveness, I even forgot I had ever met the Rev. Roy Catchpole. I had met my wife,
who at the time belonged to a local Church; because of our relationship and problems
at the Church she left, and for twenty-six years, never went back.
I settled down to family life, but trouble seemed follow me. To earn cash I would do
anything, I was even enjoying myself, debt collecting in an unofficial capacity, and as
I battled with this, there seemed to be ‘something’ stopping me going that little bit too
far, stopping me going back to prison, and because of my ignorance I always took
things for granted, putting everything down to ‘coincidence’.
Eighteen months ago a set of circumstances brought my family to a chapel called Fox
Hill, my wife said it was ‘like coming home’ – personally, I couldn’t see what all the
fuss was about but my wife Pam and daughter Paige were happy to be at Fox Hill, so
I decided to stick around for a while. I had not stepped into a chapel by choice in
over twenty-eight years; So Fox Hill would be something of a challenge but I was to
be challenged further.
A ‘Christianity Explored’ Bible study course was forced upon me! (Thanks to Phil
Collishaw). Ironically, by a man that was once a policeman, but the Bible study gave
me cause to reflect upon those twenty-eight years… and to my life before.
Since coming to Christ, and becoming part of a different kind of family I have learnt
that the coincidences in my life are the work of God, Which for me all started by
saying a prayer, in a prison cell twenty-eight years ago, God had been working in my
life and I didn’t know it. David.

Psychosocial Categories addressed in this document:

ii

Psychosocial categories of needs and needs-met were relief of anxiety, hope, moral
support, acceptance, privacy, aspirations, self-image affirmation, and optimism, plus
the three general higher category needs of Maslow – Esteem: achievement, status,
responsibility, reputation. Belongingness and Love: family, affection, relationships,
work group, etc, and Self-actualization: personal growth and fulfillment.

Prison Overcrowding
iii

A report published by the Prison Reform Trust on 18th September 2002 showed that
over three-quarters of prison watchdogs were concerned that prisons in England and
Wales were suffering from a deepening overcrowding crisis which was threatening
prison safety, leading to prisoners being held in inhuman and degrading conditions
and damaging attempts to reduce re-offending by prisoners.
‘Prison Overcrowding: The Inside Story,’ draws on findings from a study of Boards
of Visitors, the independent watchdogs appointed by the Home Secretary to monitor
prison conditions. Each prison in England and Wales has a Board of Visitors,
responsible for monitoring and safeguarding the well-being and rights of all
prisoners. Boards of Visitors enter prisons on a daily basis and are in a strong
position to provide detailed independent information on the state of prisons. This
report was the first time that their views on the extent and effects of prison
overcrowding had been collated and made public in this way. In all, 100 Chairs of
Boards of Visitors took part in the study, the first of its kind, which was carried out by
the Prison Reform Trust and the National Advisory Council of Boards of Visitors.
The prison population is currently at an all-time high of over 77,700. Prisons have an
obligation to accept all prisoners sent by the courts and so have no control over the
number of people they receive. As a result, many prisons have become overcrowded.
Building new prisons has not proved a solution to prison overcrowding. In the last
ten years, 19 new prisons have been opened. Of these, 15 are already overcrowded.
This report reveals that many prisons are struggling to provide a safe or constructive
environment because of overcrowding.
77 Boards of Visitors (77%) said that the prison they monitored was adversely
affected by overcrowding.
Prison overcrowding is preventing prisons from providing adequate work, education,
offending behaviour programmes and resettlement advice for prisoners.
Visiting arrangements for prisoners and their families are being affected and some
prisoners have to go without visits because of the distance they are being held from
their families. Prison security and the safety of prisoners and staff are threatened by
overcrowding. In some prisons, the level of assaults and incidence of self-harm
increased.
Prisons have to hold prisoners inappropriately, either in the wrong security conditions
or in unsuitable parts of the prison. Some prisoners are being held in segregation
units or healthcare centres, because these are the only parts of the prison with spare
beds.
The report showed that Boards of Visitors had a wide range of concerns about
overcrowding, many of which they felt had not been taken seriously by the
Government. Comments from Boards of Visitors included:
Prisoners must use the toilet in the presence of their cell mate. There is only one
chair in each cell, which means that one prisoner must use the toilet as a seat when
eating their meal. The Board sees this situation as degrading and inhuman and one
that is likely to cause increasing unrest amongst prisoners as the population increases.
Prisoners with severe mental health problems, who have been sectioned, are still
being held weeks later. In one case it took a Court Order for the prisoner to be
moved. These people need treatment urgently, prison staff are not trained to deal
with these severe problems and the prisoner quickly deteriorates.
Prisoners are located where there is a cell with no regard for family ties and
resettlement programmes.
There has been an increase in assaults…more fights have broken out and there has
been a rise in Mandatory Drug test positive results.
Due to numbers, prisons are becoming containers only and regimes are failing.
Overcrowding inevitably places a restriction on the ability of the prison to deliver
rehabilitation and resettlement. This in turn leads to more inmates reoffending and
returning to custody after they have finished their sentences, adding to the already
dire population problem. And so the problem gets worse. The constant movement
away from home areas has a major effect on family contacts and is an indirect
punishment of relatives for the crime committed by the individual. The system
cannot continue without radical changes.
The report, which has been sent to the Home Secretary, the Prisons Minister, the
Director General of the Prison Service and the Home Affairs Select Committee,
warns that urgent action is needed to reduce the prison population. If prison numbers
continue to increase further, there is a danger that the prison system will be put under
even more pressure and the functioning of the entire criminal justice system will be
jeopardised. The report concludes that unless the Government acts urgently to divert
less serious offenders away from prison and into supervision or treatment in the
community, the overcrowding crisis will deepen and attempts to prepare prisoners for
release into society will be severely undermined.
Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust said:
This was the first time that Boards of Visitors, appointed by the Home Secretary as
independent monitors of prisons, had spoken out together against the overwhelming
pressures of overcrowding. They make it clear that inside most jails in England and
Wales, overcrowding is damaging prisoners, their families and prison staff, and
undermining attempts to reduce reoffending. This Report must act as a wake up call
to the Government to reduce prison numbers, promote community penalties and
reserve prison for serious and violent offenders only.
Bryan Baker, Chair of the National Advisory Council of Boards of Visitors added:
This Report is a comprehensive picture of the difficulties faced by prisons as a result
of overcrowding. Boards of Visitors across the country are concerned at the impact
that overcrowding is having on prisoners and staff. Unless urgent action is taken to
ensure that further disruptions to prison regimes do not occur, already overstretched
prisons will face major problems.

iv
Prison Employment and Work Experience
Since the late 1990s, the Howard League for Penal Reform has been investigating the
reality of the work experience in prison and making recommendations to encourage
good practice.
The investigation involved visiting prisons, interviewing Governors, industry staff,
working and unemployed prisoners, conducting a literature review reviewing prison
inspection reports, conducting a historical survey, reviewing legislation and prison
rules, meetings with Prison Enterprise and Supply Services.
The Howard League for Penal Reform’s investigations found that there is
disagreement even about the objective of workshops in prison - are they to give
prisoners an opportunity to enhance their employability, or just a way of keeping
them occupied out of cell? Work in prisons is menial, usually involving repetitive
and low skilled tasks. The work available does little to reinforce the work ethic or
provide the broader aspects of gainful employment such as social status, social
interaction, career progression, long-term financial reward or involvement in
workplace development. It does little to reinforce the lifestyle choice not to commit
further crime.
The nature of prison work is usually unlike that on the outside, machinery and
processes are outdated, interruptions reduce productivity and prisoners are usually
passive and uninvolved in the development of the products they produce.
Few prisoners are offered the opportunity to undertake integrated qualifications that
relate to their work and are important in enhancing their future employability.
Prisoners who work receive a token salary of £7-12 per week. Those who are
unemployed receive an average income of £2.50. Current wage levels provide little
incentive to work and help to reinforce a negative picture of legitimate work. Crime
pays better. Because remuneration is so low, prisoners do not take part in the full
earning experience including paying tax and NI, or learning about savings or
budgeting to support their family.
A small number of prisons have embarked on public/private partnerships where
private companies supply the equipment and materials, and pay enough money to the
prison to cover the prison salaries and overheads.
These private companies are effectively using prisoners as cheap labour, giving them
the most menial tasks that might otherwise be exported. A handful of the
public/private partnerships have resulted in higher salaries of £40-£50 per week,
which makes them popular with prisoners regardless of the nature of the work
involved.
A positive outcome has been that some of these companies have interviewed and
employed prisoners once they leave custody. Five prisons in England already run
small print firms (known as print shops or print workshops) but these are not operated
along fair trade principles as prisoners are paid an average of £10 - £12 per week.
Nor do they compete openly on the market for business; the Prison Service itself is
their largest customer.
In 2000 the Howard League published the results of these investigations and the
report, ‘Rehabilitating Work, revealed a picture of prisoners engaged in basic
activities that did little to improve their rehabilitation once they left custody. To
further encourage good practice the League held national conferences in February
2001 and February 2004, with leading academics and practitioners, as well as
publishing a number of articles in the national and sector press.

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