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Paul Laxton
Issue 87 Autumn 2022
Barbara E Treen.
GATE HAPPY: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE AND TIMES OF A PRISON GOVERNOR
Author: Barbara E. Treen
Reviewed by Paul Laxton

Enoch Powell was referring to politics when he said that 'All careers tend to end in failure.' Barbara Treen reached what she would have seen as the top of her chosen profession in that she successfully governed HMP Brockhill, but never governed again, and was never admitted to the hallowed ranks of the Senior Civil Service, to whose denizens the power once held by Governors has long since drifted away. It's clear that the decision to take voluntary redundancy at the tender professional age of 51 after 29 years service commencing in 1983 is tinged with regret and a huge sense of unfinished business.

Going into print is also fraught with dangers from critics firing off cheap shots on Amazon under the cloak of sometimes ill-concealed anonymity. The internet is a wonderful place for trolls, and anyone sufficiently interested can look at my response to the individual who trolled my professional memoirs. Barbara can 
expect to be accused of score settling, and more insidiously of having an inflated sense of her own importance and ability. Well, I can vouch for Barbara Treen's talent because I had the privilege of being line managed by her at HMP Woodhill. I can vouch for her intellect and her compassion which are clearly visible in the chunks of the book that she devotes to her time at Brockhill and then at Headquarters working on policy in the female estate. I think Barbara offers an expert critique of the way we as a society treat female offenders, the baleful role of populist politicians, and the bureaucracy presided over by senior civil servants which contributes little to the humanisation of women's experience of custody.

Barbara is passionate about reform in the women's estate, and I urge colleagues who like me are fairly ignorant of the female experience of custody, to read over the relevant chapters slowly and meticulously. She is ferociously critical of the decision to shut down the Women's Group and hand back establishments to Area Managers, not least because hers clearly regarded Brockhill as a cuckoo in the nest. The re-rolling of Brockhill to a male establishment ended her career as an in-charge Governor prematurely when she still had so much to give at the sharp end.

One of the most amusing features of the book is the identification of key players in her career by nicknames such as 'The Eel, The Bank Clerk and The Machine.' Perhaps she was too polite to employ the label of 'The Dalek.' Having worked under Barbara at Woodhill I can easily identify the characters concerned without sharing her opinions of them. I'm sure readers will be able to identify a number of others. Barbara Treen joined the service at a time when the Prison Service still recruited an eclectic mix of characters to its Assistant Governor scheme. The recruits may not have met the modern definition of diversity, but they did include the charismatic, the sociopathic and the plain eccentric. It recruited devout Christians and staunch atheists. It recruited the straight and the gay (though rarely openly), the monogamous and the promiscuous. The scheme attracted those with real missionary zeal and towering intellects as well as those content to administer the status quo. It recruited the comic and the terrifying, sometimes contained in the same person. Barbara Treen's use of nicknames rather than real names brings this lost service to life when character and substance mattered rather than targets and KPI's.

Barbara Treen is candid about her weaknesses to the extent that she must have occasionally suffered
from Imposter Syndrome, not unusual amongst those who have emerged from unprivileged backgrounds. Now comfortable in her own skin, she has no concerns about telling self-deprecating stories against herself, which further humanise the narrative. Barbara is a fluent writer, and the reader will find that the pages pass by quickly. After you have read it once, read it again, because there is plenty of nuance you will have missed. Gate Happy is a welcome addition to the prison service canon. I commend it to Newsletter readers.

PAUL LAXTON