Pupils named this as Julie-Anne’s law.
I did check up on Sean after his release and he had returned to his old job and his girlfriend had waited for him and they were now planning their wedding. I declined an invitation to the wedding as I had a heist to arrange but I didn’t mention that to Sean
Chapter 10. Prison and IPP
During my many years spent working in the prison service I have seen a lot of cases where the inmate had been treated harshly but there was one group of prisoners that I really felt sorry for and these were those that instead of being given a set prison term to serve were placed on the IPP system. IPP which is short for Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection (IPP) is a complicated system and for you to understand how IPP came to sit on our statute books you’ll need to read the short history behind IPP to understand it but briefly this is the history behind this crackpot idea. In 1997, Tony Blair led his Labour party to a landslide victory. While in opposition, Labour had talked a good fight on putting the prison system to rights. In 1993, when Blair was shadow home secretary, he said: “The purpose of any system of justice should not just be to punish and deter, but also to rehabilitate, for the good of society as well as the criminal”. Once in power, though, Labour changed its tune. As shadow home secretary, Blair had promised to be “tough on crime, tough on the underlying causes of crime” – but IMO as prime minister, he stayed true only to the first part of that pledge.
Thousands of new laws were introduced which increased the prison population by 20,000. Among other things, the Labour government seemed intent on slapping every kid on a deprived estate with an Anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs). But in my book, the worst offence came with the introduction, in 2005, of indeterminate sentences for public protection (IPPs), a scheme dreamed up by David Blunkett. The idea was that high-risk criminals, mainly convicted of violent or sexual offences, would be given a tariff instead of a fixed-term sentence. They could only be released at the end of that tariff if the Parole Board were satisfied, they could be managed safely in the community. If not, they stayed in jail. However, the judiciary went beyond the stated remit of IPPs. Between 2005 and 2012, when the sentence was abolished, a total of 8,711 prisoners were given IPPs. The majority of those had tariffs of four years or less, which showed that the offences were not on the scale of seriousness that IPPs were supposedly brought in for.
The plight of James Ward, who has served 11 years in jail after initially being sentenced with an IPP to a minimum of 10 months for arson in 2006, is just the latest case to be highlighted – he is now due to be released shortly. As of November 2019, seven years after IPPs were abolished there are 2,223 people serving IPP sentences who have yet to be released and a further 1,206 serving an IPP sentence who are back in prison having been recalled while on licence. Despite its abolition in 2012, 93% serving an IPP sentence are still in prison having passed their tariff expiry date. This is not because the Parole Board considers them a threat (though some may well be), but because the system simply cannot cope with the logistics of putting these prisoners through the required release process. Before satisfying the Parole Board, IPP prisoners must complete an offending behaviour courses but even now, many are still waiting to participate in such courses. Not all prisons run the required courses and prisoners can wait months, or years, for transfer to an appropriate jail that does. The Prisoners’ Advice Service, which helps many in this situation, told me that some of their IPP clients experience cognitive difficulties, making it difficult to ever complete the behaviour course.
Shockingly, one such female prisoner is eight years over her tariff. The chair of the Parole Board, Nick Hardwick, was appointed March 2016. He was deeply concerned about the IPP situation and he made progress since he took charge, hearing more cases in less time. 2017 has saw more IPP prisoners released than any year since they came into being, but he said the situation is still unacceptable and cites the high level of suicide and self-harm among those caught up in this shameful legal limbo. Unfortunately, Nick Hardwick, in 2018 resigned as judges overturned a decision to release the rapist John Worboys from jail. One lady that writes about the prison system is Polly Toynbee a British journalist and writer and has been a columnist for the Guardian newspaper since 1998. ‘Polly’ whose real name is Mary Louisa Toynbee wrote an article ‘Tough on crime’ created the prisons crisis. It’s time for justice to be rational. The article stated that Tony Blair (Labour Prime Minister) liked “eye-catching” anti-crime announcements and Labour created over 3,500 new criminal offences in 50 criminal justice bills during his reign as PM. In an issue of Inside Time, the national newspaper for prisoners and detainees, Nick Hardwick proposed that the rules of this cruel game should be changed. He says that for those with a tariff of two years or less, the onus should be on the state to prove they are likely to commit another offence, rather than on the prisoner to show that they are not. Hardwick, the former chief inspector of prisons, is a good and humane man whom I am loathed to disagree with – but I do on this. Change the rules, but let the state prove danger in all these cases. The state created this lousy logjam, it should use its executive power to set those undeservedly trapped in it free.
During my time as a prison counsellor several IPP inmates were on my list but there was little I could do for these inmates as I had no release date to work with. With over 3,000 IPP prisoners still behind bars it not only makes our prisons overcrowded but cost the state over £1.35 billion every year to keep them locked up. It’s about time that the government listened to people such as Polly Toynbee and organisations such as the Howard League and set up a plan to tackle problems such as IPP, drug addiction and alcoholism. If they did this, then we wouldn’t need to spend billions of pounds (that we don’t have) on building new prisons and save on salary and pension cost of prison staff as just a few changes could make a big difference. IMO it would be worth testing new rules for prisoners with an addiction. If they had not been clean of their addiction for six months then they shouldn’t be released as figures show that they have a higher chance of reoffending if not 100% clean.
Chapter 11. Muslim inmates & Halal meat
We have all faiths and nationalities in prison, and we try to assist in all beliefs with prayer times, diet, etc but we do get a lot that try to go too far. I will always remember Mohammed Alfresi who originated from Saudi Arabia and he pushed and pushed trying to change the way we ran things. He was serving a five-year sentence for fraud as he was caught trying to pass himself off as a Saudi prince and not paying his hotel bill in some of the top London hotels. I had had my fill with his constant moaning and I said that if he didn’t like our system then the UK had just agreed to a prisoner exchange with Saudi Arabia and if he wished I could place him first on the exchange list.
It took him only a nano second to say no, as he knew that you wouldn't wish your worst enemy to be a prisoner in a Saudi jail. I took the opportunity to make him clear on where I stood, and I told him that he really should stop moaning about how bad it was for Muslims in the U.K. I told him that if I visited Saudi Arabia (the home of Islam) I couldn't pray in a church as there weren't any, yet he had a choice of nearly 400 mosques to choose from in the UK. If I wanted to take a bible into the home of Islam it would be binned at the airport, yet he could read, buy or borrow a copy of the Quran anywhere in the U.K. Once out of prison he could visit any city in the UK yet as a non-muslin I would be barred from many cities in his ideal land. I informed him that to me it doesn't matter what church, mosque or synagogue you worship in as we all worship one God. What faith worries me the most is atheism as they only worship themselves? I finished by saying that if I heard any more whinging from him, I would make it a priority to add him to the exchange prisoner list. I never heard another thing from him.
Catering for ethnic minorities is a continuing struggle as we cater for all religions and their associated diets. At the end of March 2018, just under half of the prison population was of a Christian faith (48%) – a decrease of jus
t over 10 percentage points compared to June 2002. The proportion of Muslim prisoners however had increased from 8% in 2002 to 16% in 2018. The proportion of prisoners with no religion in 2019 (30%) was down slightly from 31.5% in 2002.
At the end of March 2019 there were just over 9,000 foreign nationals within the prison population. These foreign nationals came from 161 different countries. Of that 9,000 Europe accounted for the greatest proportion within the prison population (43% from EEA countries and a further 11% from non-EEA European countries). Those from Africa (18%) and Asia (12%) contributed the second and third largest proportion, respectively.
Diet is also a major challenge as we have to cater for all religions and in an article published in the Daily Telegraph in November 2017, it stated that “Prisoners are given a minimum of five choices for dinner each night under new guidelines. Inmates can choose their dinner from menus, which are varied frequently so that there is a different range of options for every day in each month. Every menu must contain at least one hot, one cold, one vegetarian, one dairy-free and one halal option, while the menu must meet prisoners' "cultural, nutritional and diversity needs". It’s the Halal option which worries me most as I have dealt with a few former butchers that have passed my door and some of them wanted to be assured that they were not being fed “Halal” meat as they were strongly against the way halal meat is slaughtered. Apparently, most animals are slaughtered humanly in the UK by stunning (electric shock to the brain) the animal first before killing the animal. Halal slaughter means no stunning and the animal throat is slit whilst it is still conscious. According to the butcher without stunning all the muscles (which is the meat we eat) tighten up due to the shock and you end up with very tough meat. Fred Griffin was one such butcher and a Sunday preacher, said that in the bible Genesis 1:26 it states that “God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Fred went on to also quote Proverbs 27:23. God requires the merciful treatment and humane care of these creatures of His. He was adamant that by slitting an animal’s throat whilst it was still alive was anything but being merciful. Fred went on to state that if the government didn’t want to ban this cruel method then an alternative would be to introduce a law that once an animal is slaughtered using the Halal method than the carcass should be stamped ‘Halal’ on all sections of the carcass such as on the legs, shoulders, loins, etc and any packaging used in the supermarket or butchers shop should clearly state that the meat is halal. This would prevent the vast majority of UK shoppers unknowingly buying something that had been cruelly slaughtered.
Doing my job in prison I was always being challenged by one religion or another and a work friend of mine had an uncle who worked in the middle east and he always followed what was happening in the region and I suppose unknowingly I also took an interest and we would discuss matters such as the Iran war, the Jewish settlement in the west bank and so on. Even though my work friend is no longer with us, I still take an interest in anything “Middle east”. One story about the Middle East that linked my work friends’ interest in the area and my interest in anything to do with prison, was a story I had read in the Independent newspaper. It was to do with the UK which had always had a strong relationship with Saudi Arabia but it was reported in the Independent newspaper that the British government lost over a million pounds on a Ministry of Justice commercial venture that was due to run the Saudi Arabian prison system, an investigation by the National Audit Office, the Government’s spending watchdog, found that Just Solutions International (JSI) had costs £2.1 million and generated an income of £1 million during its short existence. JSI, the trading face of the Ministry of Justice, was set up by civil servants in 2012 to bid for commercial contracts abroad using UK state expertise. In the autumn of 2015 Michael Gove, the then newly appointed Conservative Justice Secretary, wound up the venture and pulled out of contracts in countries with poor human rights records such as Saudi Arabia and Oman. To me it beggar’s belief that some non-elected civil servants could come up with such a stupid scheme that cost the British tax payer over a million pounds to provide services to a country that still publically execute prisoners on a Friday morning. It does make me wonder who is exactly running the country. I thought that it was the elected parliament but the more I dig, I keep finding that it’s the non-elected civil servants that are steering the ship.
It should also be noted that the country that gave the world Covid-19. China is the world's most active death penalty country; according to Amnesty International, China executes more people than the rest of the world combined per annum. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, the numbers of executions are also very high.
I strongly feel that Religious Education (RE) should cover all the main religions and that all the main faiths should be taught in the same classroom with no optouts allowed. If this were the case then children would leave school with an understanding of what different religions believe in and how all religions should accept and understand others.
I also believe that if a non-UK person appears in court for any offence and found guilty, then they and their family should be deported from the UK. You will get people who will state that this would be against their human rights and the 1951 Refugee Convention. In February 2020 the Human Rights Watch.org stated that “In December 2019, the newly-elected Conservative government set out its priorities, which include setting up a new commission to look at human rights, the judiciary, and the courts, a move its election manifesto said would ensure “a proper balance between the rights of individuals, our vital national security and effective government.”
During the weekend of the 8th of May 2020 whilst penning this section, it was shown on the BBC that over 300 refugees were rescued from unsafe inflatable dinghy’s whilst crossing the English Channel from France. These were the ones that they caught but it was estimated that hundreds more reach the English coast undetected. The 300 plus were taken to an immigration centre to be assessed but other illegal immigrants will head for the cities or head for a contact they know that has previously made it to the UK.
On the 14 Feb 2020 - UK prime minister Boris Johnson's newly formed cabinet has agreed to restrict the flow of low-skilled workers into Britain from January 2021. This will work the same way as the Australia system which is on a point system basis. However, this won’t become Law until 2021 and it will do little to correct the immigration problems that voters were facing up and down the UK in 2019. I would estimate that there are around a million illegal immigrants in the UK and unless Boris can clear our country of these ‘illegals’ then he will not win the next election.
Chapter 12. UK Housing Crisis
You may ask what the heck has the housing shortage to do with the prison service. Well I can clearly state that national problems outside of prison walls usually end up inside them. Take the case of James Pringell who was a nice young man in his mid-twenties serving a 36-month sentence for theft. James wasn’t married but was engaged to a local girl who had grown up with him in the small town of Wells which is in a beautiful part of the north Norfolk coast.
As usual I try to go easy on my first session and try to get them to see that I’m here to help and any problems they face whilst inside, then tell me about them and I will see what can be done. James said that he had been engaged for four years but they wanted to wait until they had a home before getting married and starting a family. He said that the problem was that almost a third of all homes in the town where he lived are now either second homes or holiday homes. The increasing numbers means it is becoming even more difficult for young people to buy affordable homes in the town where they grew up, as prices rocket to meet demand from out-of-town buyers. He had put his name down for a council house, but the council were no longer building homes to rent and couldn’t help. They did say that if my girlfriend got pregnant then that would move her up t
he waiting list. James said that they were both Christian’s and wouldn’t go against their faith just to move up the property ladder.
With second home buyers coming in from outside Norfolk and buying these homes, it takes them off the market for local people. It puts up the prices of property in Wells and makes them less accessible, so there is a real shortage of affordable homes. My girlfriend who works for a local estate agent keeps her eyes open but even if we were to get a starter mortgage of 90% it would still need a deposit of around £30,000. Neither of our parents had that type of money so we didn’t go on holidays, we didn’t go out much and we saved as much as we could but at this rate he soon realized that they would be around 40 before they could muster up that type of deposit.
I asked James what had got him a prison sentence and he said in desperation he was robbing from his employer to try and build up a nest egg for a mortgage deposit. He said it went well for the first six months but as he worked as assistant manager for a large bookmaker his employers insisted that he take a two weeks holiday. He said he didn’t need a holiday, but they said it was company rules and he had to take two weeks off. What I was doing was training to become a manger and one of his duties was to clear the cash machines at the end of the day and place the money in the safe. He had been creaming off around £50 a day and putting that in his pocket. What he hadn’t realized was that the machine had its own in-built computer and kept a record of everything in and out of the machine. It just happened to be that whilst he was away the company ran a six-month audit and it highlighted that the banking showed a shortfall of £1,300.00 and when I returned the area manager was waiting for me.
The Bedford Heist Page 6
