Prison Writings: Charles Hanson December 2002

"I am under no illusion that prison staff are my friends"

Charles Hanson, 'The Current Psychological Approach to Offender Rehabilitation'

"Prisons do not protect society from crime. Instead, they avoid the far more challenging solution of economic justice by reinforcing patterns of economic and social inequality."

Charles Hanson, 'The Offenders Socio-Economic Status'

 

Dear MOJUK

Having recently been awarded a diploma with distinction in criminology with a heavy emphasis on criminal psychology, a subject matter which I have been studying since 1998, I thought it might be useful to send you copies of two essays, 'The Current Psychological Approach to Offender Rehabilitation', and 'The Offenders Socio-Economic Status' which I submitted as part of assignments which were both marked as A grade.

Having already obtained a certificate in criminology followed by a diploma in psychiatric studies, one can image the chagrin felt by the behavioural modifiers employed in our prisons.

One must not be permitted to play in their 'ball park; and at all costs be prevented from doing so. Certainly not something to be encouraged or funded out of prison budgets

However when one is able to acquire the funds from other sources (charitable trusts) it becomes a feat on its own.

I have been receiving a number of letters from various hostages, some which appalls me at the way in which the Prison Service is intent at undermining their struggles by making life difficult for them, coercing and threatening them to undertake offending behaviour programmes, interfering with their legal rights and correspondence and patently violating their Human Rights.

Prison staff have it seems become the arbiters in deciding the guilt or innocence of hostages and even though one will have been convicted by a jury and is the criteria upon which the Prison Service rely we know only too well how wrong juries have proven to have been in so many cases.

It is clear that nothing has been learned by the Prison Service in spite of all the current fads in so called offender rehabilitation which is but a veneer for persuasion and control.

What is remarkable in all of this is that prisoners are encouraged to form trusting relationships with prison staff, yet prison staff are not only encouraged not to become too familiar with individual prisoners, but their whole ethos is one of mistrust of prisoners.

We are liars, deceitful, we exaggerate, elaborate, manipulate and 'work the system' we are certainly never trusted. Such trust therefore can only be a one way exercise to the advantage of those who work in our prisons whatever capacity and whatever their role in which they're employed.

I am under no illusion that prison staff are my friends whoever they are, civilian or otherwise, or that I can expect to be treated in a neighbourly fashion.

I do not recognise them as social workers, counsellors or sources of advice when I have unresolved problems. Neither do I believe that prison staff see that as their role. Would they want me knocking on their door on my release to ask for help or advice?

I think not, I am sure that police officers would shortly arrive on the scene and 'cart me' away.

Under the veneer of humanity which some staff present is one of the capability to make one's life hell, to delay or lose one's mail, to become petty minded and trivial bordering on the childish, to be bullies and apply their version of the rules at times, life must be so utterly frustrating for the simple minded.

It is claimed that the Director General of the Prison Service and one time prison governor Martin Narey has vision though I am not certain whether his glasses are rose tinted for I see little evidence of what he is perceiving and I am not certain for that matter whether he actually believes his own hype.

Prisons are becoming increasingly chaotic and given that over 60 per cent of its inhabitants will be re-convicted within two years of release I am left wondering what Mr Narey's vision amounts to for I have seen little or nothing in the way of progress, prison is prison and prison staff are our keepers, what is in abundance however is a colossal amount of self-righteous public relations propaganda and hype, but nothing has changed.

For those protesting their innocence, I am sure they know only too well that they can expect no favours, indeed quite the contrary.

Yours in struggle,

             Charles Hanson

Charles Hanson

V V 1638

HMP Kingston

Milton Road

Portsmouth

F036AS

11 December 2002