Founded 1980
Chair:        
Secretary: 
Treasurer: 

Graham Smith
Jan Thompson
Graham Mumby-Croft


Paul Laxton
Prisons are among our oldest human institutions. Anecdotes about prisons – often scandals or disasters – are chronicled from very early times. Despite long experience, our record of running acceptable penal institutions is at best varied and at worst disastrous.

When States authorise detention, individuals lose freedoms. But detention can result in individuals suffering poor living conditions, the threat of pain and injury through violence from fellow detainees or staff and - in very extreme circumstances - death. The Nazi Concentration Camps are a stark reminder of the terrible depths to which humanity can sink when treating detainees.

Since 1946, many staff and many prisoners within the Prison Service in England and Wales have been through a torrid time. In 2020 the Covid 19 Pandemic added a new unprecedented challenge. Staff and prisoners face a very difficult future. It was this additional threat – and possible opportunity - that spurred me to complete my book.

Since I retired, many people had encouraged me to write about my years in the Prison Service of England and Wales. So this book began as a record of my experiences to help provide a reasonably accurate account of the very troubled times the Prison Service endured since 1946. There are few accounts available written by Governors. My recollections will not give a complete picture - rather how events appeared to me at the time and after reflection.

Public ignorance about the Service is hardly surprising. Locked away behind high walls, life in prisons is largely hidden from view. What emerges through the media is frequently misleading and almost always lacks balance.

The work of the Prison Service is often caught up in wider public attitudes towards crime and offenders. Unfortunately public debate on reducing crime and making the public safer is usually woefully short on evidence and too often fuelled by dubious sound bites. Decades of prison crises have failed to enlist sufficient public support for reform.

 If we are to have a Prison Service playing a full and constructive part in our Criminal Justice System, substantial changes are needed. The starting point for change and improvement is understanding what went wrong and why. Because the book has been written over many years, I have had time to reflect on and re-examine some recent prison history. As radical improvements are urgently needed, I include suggestions for launching a programme of change.

While many diverse issues have beset the Prison Service in England and Wales, two fundamental problems stand out throughout the last seventy years.

First, the accommodation available in prisons – especially the number of cells – has been totally inadequate to house the avalanche of prisoners committed to prison by the courts. This challenge, first emerging around 1946, has never been adequately addressed. Now a chronic disorder, overcrowding has crippled the service.

Second, and of at least equal importance, is the failure to provide adequate numbers of suitably trained and motivated staff. This omission is equally chronic and has led to decades of missed opportunities for delivering positive regimes for prisoners to reduce re-offending and better protect the public.

In my opinion, it is the combination of these two chronic failures that have led to the Prison Service in England and Wales having such a lengthy and disturbing record of successive disasters.

In this book, as well as describing life in seven establishments, I focus on a number of key concerns impacting the Service. To assist readers, I identify those chapters most relevant to each concern. To understand these concerns, considerable detail is necessary because the task of running prisons is complex.

These are:-

  • Overcrowding - Chapter 14 and 35
  • Staffing - Chapter 15
  • Management of Prisons - Chapter 16
  • Regimes - Chapters 20, 22, 26 and 31
  • National Management and Leadership - Chapters 32 and 33
  • Industrial Relations - Chapters17, 24 and 36
  • Contribution of the Governors Representative Organisations - Chapters 13, 25 and 34-37

The core of the book describes my experience of working with prisoners and staff in the seven establishments in which I served. This included two tours at Manchester Prison, opening the new Borstal Recall Centre at Onley; experience of Lowdham Grange, an “open” young offender Borstal; in charge of both male and female offenders at Risley Prison; working at Birmingham’s Winson Green “Local” Prison and at the “Training” Prisons at Featherstone and Preston.

I begin by painting a picture of how establishments worked fifty years ago as seen through my eyes as a junior and inexperienced assistant Governor. My career took me through several establishments as Deputy Governor – so I attempt to capture the way different establishments worked and the varied duties and challenges faced by a Deputy Governor. Then as a senior Governor during difficult times, what was it like to be taking considerable responsibility in the thick of crises – both in establishments and when holding HQ and Regional posts?

Throughout the book, there is a focus on leadership. Senior staff in the Prison Service faced considerable ongoing challenges and some exceptionally demanding situations. I endeavour to capture the complexity of the problems of leadership and to highlight what appeared to work. This may be of interest to those currently working in prisons and perhaps in other organisations.

Being elected Chairman of the Governors Representative Organisation from 1977 to 84 (The Governors’ Branch) and from 1990 to 1995 (The Prison Governors Association), I worked closely with many senior people in the service and met many politicians who served as Home Secretary and as Prison Ministers. In particular, I had an unusual – perhaps unique - opportunity to see how politicians and their senior advisers dealt with some of the many crises that beset the Prison Service between 1963 and 1996. Very little has been recorded about the work of the Governors’ representative organisations so I shall provide some insight into how we operated and what impact – if any - we had.

There are many unanswered questions including:-  

  • Why has prison overcrowding lasted so long and what damage has it done?
  • Why did the Prison Service suffer disaster after disaster?
  • Why were acute staffing and Industrial Relations problems not tackled earlier?
  • If Ministers and senior officials knew that Prison Officers did not have the right to strike, why was it kept so secret?
  • Were there undisclosed factors around the decision not to try and retake Strangeways on April 2nd 1990?
  • Why is the prison population in the UK so high when many of our European neighbours have much lower prison populations?

Unanswered questions are often the most interesting. Can this book shed any more light on them? Perhaps! Many of these questions require further research. Accurate analysis of past prison issues should help to provide a sound basis for developing effective and relevant future prison strategies.

THE DEFINITIVE PRISON SERVICE MEMOIR...Part 2

Book Review by Paul Laxton


Issue 85 Autumn 2021
In the last edition of The Newsletter, Paul Laxton produced an in depth review of the book that, at that time, was about to be published written by Brendan O’Friel and called “Prison Governor’s Journal”. The launch took place in April on The Isle of Man, and early indications are that the book has been very well received across a wide spectrum of reviewers. Brendon has kindly provided the following piece, “About The Book” for reproduction in The Newsletter.

You can find more information about the book at:
https://www.prisongovernorjournal.com/