I’ve been in and out of prison pretty much all my life (no surprise there I hear close friends muttering). Seriously, for various reasons, I have visited several jails and what the Home Office used to call “incarcerative institutions”,  from Category A jails for dangerous criminals to Young Offender Institutions for callow youths covering up their fearful insecurities with outrageous bravado. I’ve been to Open Prisons and highly secure establishments such as Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth, now rebranded “Special Hospitals” housing the so-called criminally insane including the likes of the infamous Ronnie  Kray until his death in 1995.

My first experience of prison life came when, aged eleven, I was playing with a school friend in his garden. His father was governor of Wandsworth and their house was attached to the prison. Suddenly a bell of tocsin volume pierced the warm July air and my chum’s father flew down the steps of the house straight into the prison.  Train robber Ronnie Biggs had just gone over the wall at the start of what was to be decades on the lam.

In adult life I was to interview prison governors and advise Home Office civil servants on communicating more effectively about the challenges of housing criminals to wider audiences, including what they called “the public” who often just want to “lock ‘em up and throw away the key”. What’s clear is that the vast majority of the 90,000 currently “banged up” shouldn’t be there at all. Most are affected by the twin scourges of drug addiction and/or mental health issues.  Very few are really “threats to society”. What singles out all prisons is the sheer despair.  The inmates are desperate; the officers and others charged with looking after prisoners are desperate too. The stress levels in our jails are immense.

As a past victim of violent crime myself I know how strongly the urge for revenge and retribution can well up immediately after the attack. The sense of defilement felt by those who have been burgled or mugged is palpable, but somehow a civilised society needs to rise above knee-jerk reactions. We want things put right, but how?

Nearly 30 years ago the head of Hampshire’s probation service who sat on my Prince’s Trust committee introduced me to the then relatively new concept of restorative justice. It wasn’t for everyone, but where a criminal showed genuine remorse, and only if the victim consented, the criminal had to confront his crime with the victim articulating their feelings, often with astonishing results. With the then Prince of Wales’ support we tried something even more radical, meditation. There had been a significant reduction in stress levels in jails abroad where it had been tried in places like Senegal. The governor of Winchester prison enthusiastically agreed to a pilot. We raised the funding and were set to go. Then there was a change of governor. He told me, in terms, that prisoners didn’t deserve such mollycoddling, no doubt he thought reflecting the views of “the public” and of course of the Daily Mail. Our pilot stress reduction plan was dead in the water.

And so we come to today’s pretty pass. Our jails are full. Police and courts are being encouraged not to keep sending miscreants. Many inmates are being released having served 40 percent of their sentence rather than the customary 50 percent – a norm which already surprised and outraged many of “the public”. The majority of those released early will reoffend within a year – not really surprising when they are discharged with just a few quid and precious little support – having learned new lessons in felony at the feet of hardened fellow inmates. 

There’s truth in the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child”. So too does it take all of society to reform a criminal.  So don’t turn your head.  Don’t look the other way.