For the second time in my life my head has been full of John Martyn for a couple of days. The first time was after his concert at Long Lartin prison in Evesham where I was resident for a while in the late eighties and early nineties. (I wrote about it for the Guardian here ) – and now again with his sad passing. The sadness of losing such a gifted and talented individual is exacerabated by his relative youth – 60 is no age these days – but also because his lifestyle had contributed so much to his early demise. Look on the covers of his early albums and you see a good looking, vibrant young man, bursting with energy and life – and hair. He looked like a man that could go on forever. I managed to get a copy of Solid Air  in HMV in Covent Garden at the weekend – it was the only copy left. When I got home the first track I put on was May You Never - at full volume.  Brought back so many memories, of ups and downs. The song always gave me hope – still does. So grateful that John Martyn lived.

My recent visit to Skien prison was sobering. Walking onto the exercise yard and talking to men who were serving long sentences was surreal in many ways. The prison walls were high. The men were serving up to thirty years. We chatted about the respective regimes of the UK and Norway. They knew little about the UK system – but I could see the difference. The biggest was the fact that prisoners at Skien are allowed access to the Internet via computer in their cells. Access is monitored and firewalls are set up to avoid any embarrassing security breaches. In the UK few prisoners are allowed access to computers, never mind the Internet. A friend of mine, who has been in prison for decades was allowed to have a lap top in his cell four years ago. His mother and I clubbed together to buy it for him. Now the lap top is malfunctioning and needs repairs – but it would be cheaper for him to purchase another laptop. The only problem is the prison now has a different governor who does not like prisoners having computers in their cells. If my friend hands out his lap top he will not be allowed to have a replacement – “no more computers in cells,” says the governor. The Norwegian prison is secure and the prisoners are not going anywhere. But while they are in they are provided with opportunites to improve and feel that they are still connected to the world. Is that such a terrible thing?

It was a great evening, I mean a really great evening. Charlotte Raven and her partner Tom Sheehan opened the doors of their beautiful Kentish Town home for friends, family and fans of The Grass Arena. It was a magnificent gesture of generosity from Charlotte and Tom and everyone who made it appreciated it. The long drawing room made an impressive but intimate venue for John to present his reading. Tom first of all read a piece that John had written some years ago putting The Grass Arena in context for anyone present who might not know its history. That was followed by a brief airing of some archive audio and video footage of John in interview mode. The television interview of John on the Good Morning programme almost 20 years ago was startling. John was sharp, funny and amazingly telegenic. It was the first time I had seen the footage and I was struck by how well he looked and how articulate he was. The drawing room was packed - there were 60 seated and another thirty or so standing. After the footage John, absent from the proceedings thus far, entered the room. The atmosphere was full of anticipation. The audience went very quiet while John took his place – then burst into applause as he prepared himself. “Thank you,” he said and then began. He read about the time he was arrested on suspicion of murder. It is a powerful piece and John performed it with an even,  measured tone. He read on for half an hour and then looked up when he had finished. “Thank you,” he said again and the audience responded with another huge round of applause. Then he took some questions. “What does it mean to you now that your book has been re-published as a modern classic?” I asked first. He replied that he hoped it might pave the way for a new publishing deal for his new work, “Because I haven’t got any more classics under the bed,” he quipped. The Q&As were good natured and lively and the queue for his book signing afterwards was long and patient. Charlotte had spent the previous day cooking vast pots of delicious food that Tom’s mother and father served later on the evening of the event. It was excellent. John is appearing at the Bluecoat Arts Centre in Liverpool on Monday October 13th as part of the Bluecoat’s first Chapter and Verse Literary Festival. After his reading he and I will be on stage in conversation. 

 Daniel Day Lewis on The Grass Arena: “The last thing John Healy needs is a tidy snippet of blurb from the likes of me which is a good thing because economy defeats me; I don’t know how to be moderate or concise in praise of his startling autobiography `The Grass Arena’. So economy I’ll leave to him, a master storyteller with an ear, an eye and a voice that should be the envy of many men with weightier reputations. There is no perceptible distance between the words, which seem to have chosen themselves and the experiences from which they blossomed like a garden of wild flowers. Armed to the teeth with his wit and self-knowledge he takes us to that other place, his grass arena, the one which we pass how many times in any given day, averting our eyes? The one into whose violent clutches we might descend more easily than we dare to contemplate. He is our jaunty, gleeful tour guide and messenger from hell. His fellow combatants, exuberant, murderous and sentimental, by turns touchingly loyal, vengeful and treacherous seem to have sprung from the same bloodlines as Falstaff, Pistol, Nell and their fellows. They pitch their tents in the same refuse-filled shadows as their forebears; a confederacy of the dispossessed. Healy’s life, were it not for an astonishing turn of events, seems predestined to be a short one. As in Knut Hamsun’s mighty book `Hunger’, we are utterly compelled both by the power of Healy’s story and his great power in the telling of it, no matter how bleak the outlook, to stay by his side until the last word is writ.”

28 August 2008
Dear Secretary of State for Justice

On the day that the Government’s consultation closes, we are writing to you to highlight our opposition to the building of Titan prisons.

The Government’s proposals to build three Titans, each housing around 2,500 prisoners, would cement this country’s position as the prison capital of western Europe, while squandering billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money which could be better spent elsewhere. The proposals ignore evidence that smaller, local prisons work better than large ones, raise serious concerns about the wellbeing and safety of prisoners and prison staff, and would put at risk relationships between prisoners and their families.

The Government cannot build its way out of the current crisis in the prison system, as you have previously acknowledged, and further expansion of the prison estate would be damaging both socially and economically. Instead of rushing headlong into an expensive prison-building programme, the Government must shelve its plans for Titan prisons and instead focus on addressing the causes of the growing prison population.

The evidence is clear; Titan prisons are not the solution to the prisons crisis. As members of the Criminal Justice Alliance, a coalition of organisations working in the criminal justice system, we urge you to abandon these misguided proposals for Titan prisons before they become a reality.

Yours sincerely

Lucy Gampell, Director, Action for Prisoners’ Families
Davlin Brydson, Chair, Association of Black Probation Officers
Angela Clay, Chairman, Association of Members of Independent Monitoring Boards
Emma Norton, Bindmans LLP
Denise Marshall, Group Co-ordinator, Birth Companions
Christopher Jones, Chair, Churches’ Criminal Justice Forum
Clive Martin, Director, Clinks
Dr Katherine Rake, Director, Fawcett Society
Professor Mike Hough, Director, Institute for Criminal Policy Research
Rob Allen, Director, International Centre for Prison Studies
Deb Coles and Helen Shaw, Co-Directors, INQUEST
Sally Ireland, Senior Legal Officer (Criminal Justice), JUSTICE
Gareth Crossman, Policy Director, Liberty
Paul Cavadino, Chief Executive, Nacro
Harry Fletcher, Assistant General Secretary, Napo
Chris Thomas, Chief Executive, New Bridge
Andy Keen-Downs, Director, pact
Colin Moses, National Chair, Prison Officers’ Association
Juliet Lyon, Director, Prison Reform Trust
Pat Jones, Director, Prisoners’ Education Trust
Alan Hooker, Director, Prisoners’ Families and Friends Service
Paula Harvey, Programme Manager, Quaker Crime, Community and Justice Group
Joyce Moseley, Chief Executive, Rainer Crime Concern
Sebastian Saville, Executive Director, Release
Harriet Bailey, Chief Executive, Restorative Justice Consortium
Paul Corry, Director of Public Affairs, Rethink
Baroness Linklater, Chair, Rethinking Crime and Punishment
Kevin Ireland, Interim Chief Executive, Revolving Doors Agency
Fran Sainsbury, RSA Prison Learning Network
Sean Duggan, Director of Prisons and Criminal Justice Programme, Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health
Lucie Russell, Director, SmartJustice
Gary Kernaghan, New Business Director, SOVA
Steve Rolles, Research Co-ordinator, Transform Drug Policy Foundation
Bobby Cummines, Chief Executive, UNLOCK
Suzanne Sibillin, Director, Women in Prison

Lord Carter’s interview this week in the Guardian was very disappointing. It read to me like a load of ducking and diving around this crucial issue of whether or not the so called Titan prisons, holding at least 2500 prisoners, are going to benefit our society in any way. As far as answering his critics goes, he said very little.

The government have been persuing an expansion of the prison system almost from when they came to power in 1997, and have constantly been justifying it in a most disingenuous way. It seems to me that what Carter has done with this new plan, to provide accommodation for a further 20,000 prisoners at a capital cost of £2.3billion by the way, is to hand the government a sort of mandate to increase the prisoner population – providing reassurance that what they have been doing anyway is the right thing to do. The fact that Carter is very close to Justice Minister Jack Straw, (Carter was Straw’s best man at both his weddings) smacks of something unsavoury going on, especially since Carter’s recommendations following his review of offender management were taken up but failed to deliver what he and the governmemt anticipated. Isn’t it time for someone else to take a look at this?

And why has Carter been able to get away with coming up with all these big ideas and not having to present a single shred of evidence to support his recommendations? I know that the media and government believe that people generally are not really interested in prisons, other than the scandal stories and tabloid romps about cons having it too good – and maybe that’s why the government habitually behaves so irresponsibly in its prisons policy. It knows it can get away with it. But if people are properly informed about the reality of the issues I believe they would think very carefully indeed about how we use prison, and in particular about whether we really need a prisoner population of 100,000 plus. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.

Maura Kennedy, director of last year’s Cuirt, Ireland’s premiere literery festival, and now literary director of the Blue Coat arts centre in Liverpool described John Healy as, “an Irish writer, unfairly fogotton.” Of course John was born in London, but to Irish parents. It was Kennedy who tracked him down, through his old probation officer Clive, now Lord Soley who has a credit in John’s book, ”for aiding my escape from the Grass Arena.” As he describes in The Grass Arena, he had quite an affinity as a child with his native country. Whe knows, if his parents had not moved to England and had his life been one of peace and security, he may well have grown up to be indeed a major Irish writer. For his writing talent, like his talent  for chess, was always there. It just never got the chance to manifest until he’d been through the mill and back a few times. Having known John for a while now, and having come to like him very much, as a friend as well as a much admired author – I’m just hoping that he gets a chance to get his other work published. He is a prodigous writer and still has much to offer I feel. It seems outrageous to me that The Grass Arena was taken out of print before it had a chance to really establish itself as the classic it has now been deemed by Penguin. John lives a very humble life and deserves, I think at least, to be given the rewards his talent was due if his career had not been cut short when it was. His life has been one of extremes, and it really is amazing that he is still alive. Most Pengun Classics authors are long dead.  I will be interviewing John on stage as part of the the Blue Coat literary programme in October 2008.

Seeing Barry George freed - unbelieveble – but not such a great surprise to many people. Like most people in this country, I can remember exactly where I was when the news broke that Jill Dando had been shot dead on her doorstep. I was in a prison workshop – the news came over the radio. It was almost like a second Princess Diana – nobody could believe such an event could happen to such a well-thought of personality. But when Barry Georg was arrested, me and people around me in prison were sceptical – it just didn’t feel right. The more that came out about George’s odd behaviour and personal life with all its problems, it began to stink even more of a fit up – typical of many big police investigations, once a prime suspect is identified all resources are directed to securing a conviction - regardless of  any “irregularities” that might suggest they have got the wrong man. Then after the victim of a miscarriage of justice is cleared, the police drop hints that, well as far as they are concerned, they had the right man – exactly as they have in George’s case. It’s pathetic – serves nobody, certainly not the family of Jill Dando, or justice – ar anything in fact other than the police. I wonder how “Cambell of the Yard” – the chief investigating officer in the case for a while – is feeling this weekend? Seeing what the detectives said to the press after George was cleared makes you wonder what exactly they have said to Jill Dando’ family. We’ll have the same sort of inuendo when Michael Stone is eventually cleared, which he will be – its only a matter of time. Interesting that both men have fantastically loyal sisters supporting them – as loyal as Antigone.

Banged Up featuring David Blunkett - the “prison reality” show on Channel 5 set in redundant Scarborough prison, which finished this week cause my pal Big Rinty, currently in his 31st year of real imprisonment, to choke on his corned beef sandwich during the first episode. He was so upset he refused to watch the rest of the series. “It made me so angry,” he said, “I wanted to attack the television.” Rinty is normally a very placid guy – in spite of being recalled to prison for something he didn’t do in 1997 and still struggling with the machinations of the system to get back out again – he is level headed, calm and rational. (How the hell he manages that in those circumstances I don’t know, but he does, and fair play to him.) I asked Rinty to watch Banged Up as I wanted a view from someone inside currently just to see if my harshly sceptical view was shared by any prisoners. “The thing that got us,” Rinty said, “was that it had absolutley no relevance to the prison debate. That was the general view in here anyway.”  That was what got me about it too I think. The fact that David Blunkett was involved and was flagged as being the “overseer” of the series just made a mockery of it long before the first episode went out as far as I was concerned. As soon as I saw and heard his contributions I knew I’d been right to be sceptical. In the end he hardly featured at all – a couple of token appearances and  a few meaningless sentences to the young subjects while pretending to be the chairman of the “parole board” was ludicrous. Writing in the Guardian the other week David Wilson, the phony prison’s phony governor said he had been “heartened” by the response to Banged Up. I wonder who that response was from?

Apologies for lack of posts for a couple of weeks. My laptop was stolen while I was attending a conference, the theme of which funnily enough was on the merits of employing ex-offenders. I was a speaker at the conference – I spoke forcefully, I like to think, about the necessity to give people a chance, more than one if necessary. I’d left my laptp in the “business centre” of the conference venue while I attended a workshop. I was only gone 15 minutes – when I got back I was looking at an empty space. Very disappointing – hundreds of hours of work gone – just like that. The police phoned this week. They caught the culprit. “Can I speak to him,” I said. “He’s a crackhead,” said the officer. “Can I speak to him, see if I can get my laptop back – I don’t have a back of my work – I need it back if possible,” I said. “And I’d like to help him,” I said. The officer told me that the perpetrator stole “up to six laptops a day,” to feed his habit. The chances of me getting mine back were negligible. The machine wasn’t worth much. I’d been leasing it since my first one got nicked off a train when I fell asleep a couple of years ago. But the work was irriplaceable. At least I was insured, I thought at the time. It turned out - because I’d left it unattended - it wasn’t. So I have to replace the machine (at a cost of around £600) and continue to pay the £30 a month lease payments for the next 18 months. The attitude of the lease company stank. The deal they sold me was worthless. I’ve forked out some cash for another, low spec laptop, just to get back to working mobile. I’m hoping the stealer of my machine and me can meet up eventually. For me the loss was big – but somewhere along the way – his loss has been bigger. I’m not naive – I don’t expect to transform his life – but he really needs to know the trouble he’s caused me.

I spent a lot of time talking to young men in Young Offender Institutions this week. I went in to discuss what seems like an epidemic of violent crime perpetrated by young people mostly against other young people that appears to be sweeping the country just now. The Archbishop of York said earlier this week that the problem had got so bad that Jesus was “weeping in the streets.” Certainly mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters have been crying out loud, with grief, anger, confusion. Hardly a week passes without news of another young life lost to violence. Families paying tribute to their fallen children have become a regular feature of the news. When I left Parc prison on Thursday afternoon 19 teenagers had been killed, stabbed, shot or beaten to death in London alone since the beginning of this year. The killing of a 19-year-old man yesterday has brought that figure to 20 already. Blades – knives have caused most of the deaths. More young people than ever these days it seems are carrying some sort of weapon, and more are prepared to use them. I wanted to talk to some of the people involved who had been convicted and sentenced. I was surprised to find among those I spoke to, a worrying acceptance that weapon carrying is now a routine part of life for many. “Some people, when they carry knives, they don’t mean to stab someone,” said Has, a 19 year old serving five years for affray. “It’s about intimidation, it’s about protection, and respect.” How respect? I asked him. “Believe me,” he said, “if I take out a knife and it’s like, this big, believe me, I’m gonna get respect.” I told him that that didn’t sound like respect to me – that sounded like pure fear – and fear does not equal respect. “No, man,” he said, “that’s respect.”

Yet Has, and the other young men I spoke to would not have looked out of place in any club, pub or takeaway anywhere in the country, on any night of the week. To a man they were affable, talkative, sometimes endearing even. Yet all had caused serious distress to others at some stage in their young lives, some with shocking regularity. Hearing those who had inflicted dreadful wounds on their victims describe their actions, it was clear that there were massive regrets all round. The saddest thing for me, I think, was that I could see my young self in many of the young prisoners I spoke to. It was obvious, that in everyone of them there was more to them than the crimes they had committed. There was so much potential that had been sacrificed, through immaturity and selfishness. Many had developed well in prison, but the majority it seemed to me, were destined for more imprisonment in the future. Gordon Brown said yesterday, “We will make it absolutely clear that carrying a knife is unacceptable in our country.” But until the culture of weapon carrying is decried by the young themselves, I fear change is going to be a long time coming.