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Issue No. 74 SPRING 2016

TROUBLE AT T’VILLE


With no disrespect intended to the other contributors to the last newsletter, the most striking item by a country mile was the first page and a half of Bob Duncan's regular feature, entitled "Your Letters", so much so that I had no hesitation in placing the item very early in the newsletter as the piece just had to be read. I have no doubt that fellow retired colleagues were as shocked as Bob to discover just how much HMP Pentonville has deteriorated in recent years, resulting in a 2015 HMCIP report that was even worse than the one for the 2013 visit, which itself had cast doubt on the future viability of the gaol. This he contrasted with a report from April 2000 which was hugely complimentary. Bob was far too polite and far too modest to mention that he was in his third year as Governor of Pentonville at the time of that report. Those of us fortunate enough to have worked under Bob and been exposed to his unique brand of leadership would have expected no less. Equally Bob is not the sort of man to tell anyone who is listening that "the service was better in my day", because as we all know it was in some ways but definitely not in others.

No-one would want to go back to prisoners slopping out or hiding drunken officers in empty cells until the lunchtime session had been slept off. On the other hand many of us believe that the modern service is the worse for privatisation, performance targets and political correctness. It is certainly worse for paring down staffing to private sector levels, but that was the price trade unions paid to avoid contracting out. Prison service top management cannot be held responsible for a Government policy of slash and burn, but how can anyone with an ounce of humanity defend the 2013 reduction in Pentonville's food budget from an already miserly £2.10 per day per head, to £1.96? You can just hear the echoes of Marie-Antoinette. I understand that for senior civil servants and in-charge Governors the only alternative to implementing austerity is to resign. Integrity comes with a high price if there is a mortgage to pay, (although of course you have to have it in the first place) and not everyone can find a niche with the Prison Reform Trust. However senior civil servants can and should be held responsible for allowing far too many staff to take voluntary severance without a comprehensive recruitment strategy in place. The blame must also be laid at Directorate level for the intolerable burdens piled on pared-down management teams in prisons from central bureaucracy. The beast must still be fed. Nevertheless, HMCIP were caustic about leadership failings and all the resources in the world will not remedy that deficiency.

I don't know the current incumbent of Bob's old chair at Pentonville, nor his predecessor who was about to move to Wormwood Scrubs at the time of the 2013 inspection. It would be wholly wrong of me on that basis to make any adverse comments about them as individuals. I do know Bob's two immediate successors, the late Gareth Davies and the workaholic Nick Leader. Gareth would have been the first to give credit to an SMT that contained some stellar talent. Nick sadly was driven into the arms of the private sector when, despite being rightly cleared of any involvement in the notorious Wandsworth/ Pentonville prisoner swap of 2009, he felt that the service had played politics with his reputation. Like Bob, Nick Leader was a beacon of integrity that NOMS could ill afford to lose.

Readers may not be aware that Bob has written histories of two of the establishments that he governed during a long and distinguished career; "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush: House Of Correction 1595 - HMP Wakefield" and "Peerless Priceless Pentonville: 160 Years of History". I'm not suggesting that Governors should write histories of establishments to prove their devotion to the job, but I would venture to suggest that those who viewed our profession as a vocation have been steadily elbowed aside in favour of those who view governing as a mere staging post en route to greater things. Reaching senior civil servant status requires compromises with personal and professional integrity, in that it demands discreet silence, always being ‘on message’ when permitted to speak, and a general willingness to operate within the narrowest intellectual tramlines. MOJ recruiters should stop and ask themselves whether as a consequence they are getting the service they deserve rather than the one the public needs, if, as appears to be the case, the days of people putting their heads above the parapet and using the dignity of their office to speak on behalf of prisoners and staff have long gone. Can anyone imagine a modern Governor doing what Bob Chapman did in 2000 when he went public about the squalid nature of the Health Care Centre in the establishment he governed, HMP Brixton, and went on to lambast the Home Office for failing to provide the necessary investment? The answer of course is "No." In some respects Bob Chapman got away lightly in that he was only transferred and smeared. A modern Governor could expect to meet the same fate as a Lewes prison officer did recently as a consequence of speaking out. The Chief Inspector of Prisons is also contemplating his fate, the non-renewal of his contract. Dismissal is now the penalty for pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes. In this kind of climate there can only be more Pentonvilles.

PAUL LAXTON, EDITOR

P.S. At only 24 pages long this issue will probably feel a bit on the thin side. This can only be resolved by readers getting on their laptops and sending me contributions. There is no other way to keep the newsletter alive. 
Paul Laxton