I will ask the question if nobody else will, what is someone as corrupt, or incompetent, or both, as Charles Falconer doing in a public office? I know he is a friend of Tony Blair and that the Prime Minister appointed him to office. However, the Department of Constitutional Affairs is responsible for justice, rights and democracy. In my view, the Prisoners' voting rights consultation paper Written ministerial statement http://www.dca.gov.uk/pubs/statements/2006/st061214.htm by the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton, appears to be irresponsibly drafted. In other words, it is another dodgy document.

It cannot be comfortable for the government to be taken to the highest court in Europe by a legally unqualified jailhouselawyer, who suffers from a form of autism called Aspergers Syndrome, and to suffer such a humiliating defeat when their qualified lawyers were unable to defend the indefensible. I pay attention to detail. For example, Lord Falconer's opening paragraph is not only outdated but is also nonsensical. He claims that the right to vote in the UK is a privilege. A right is one thing and a privilege is another. In HIRST v. The United Kingdom (No2)(Application No. 74025/01), “The applicant submitted that the right to vote was one of the most fundamental rights which underpinned a truly democratic society. It was not a privilege, contrary to the view expressed by the Secretary of State in February 2001”. The Court agreed with my argument. Having lost this argument, why is the Lord Chancellor regurgitating it here? He claims that his view has the considered support of many, but does not produce any evidence to support his claim. He claims “that persons who are convicted of an offence serious enough to warrant a term in prison have cast aside that privilege and entitlement for the duration of their sentence”. However, “the Court does not consider that a Contracting State may rely on the margin of appreciation to justify restrictions on the right to vote which have not been the subject of considered debate in the legislature and which derive, essentially, from unquestioning and passive adherence to a historic tradition”.

For the first time in history the government was questioned on its blanket ban on convicted prisoners being denied the franchise. It looked around for justification. The best the government could come up with was arguments that the Canadian government had already argued and lost in court. Therefore, it is untruthful to claim that “Successive UK Governments have held to the view that the right to vote forms part of the social contract between individuals and the State, and the loss of the right to vote, reflected in current law, is a proper and proportionate punishment for breaches of the social contract that resulted in imprisonment. That remains this Government's position, and that of a number of other Council of Europe states”. The government lost first in the Chamber, and then lost its appeal to the Grand Chamber, and then has the audacity to claim it still holds those views after two defeats? Before the case, a minority of Member States operated blanket bans on prisoner voting. As a result of the case, these Member States have changed their position. The UK is alone on this one, the odd man out in Europe.

Because the government is in an uncomfortable position, it has resorted to the tactic of procrastination. As the issue has to be debated in Parliament, the consultation process is a meaningless exercise. When the government did not want to give women the vote, it decided to talk about women and the vote rather than give women the vote. This is just history repeating itself. I suspect that the government is trying to drag it out until after the next election. The published consultation document does not consider the principles of prisoner enfranchisement, nor does it include all the options available to the UK. Moreover, the document puts up for consideration the total disenfranchisement for all convicted prisoners, which the Court has ruled out as not being within the terms of the Convention.

Given that the government recognises that it must respond to the Grand Chamber judgment. Why does it not recognise that it should respond with honesty?

This morning I posted the following on Conservative Home.



On the subject of blogs.

Tory A List candidate Iain Dale who has a blog called Iain Dale's Diary, yesterday spat his dummy out and threw it out of his pram. On his blog he operates a system called comment moderation, which allows the blog author the opportunity to read comments submitted before deciding whether to publish or not publish any comment.

Rachel North London, a survivor of the 7/7 bomb attack, also runs a blog. And she questioned Iain Dale's judgment on allowing a comment to be published on his blog which not only attacked me but was off topic. I read this comment by someone claiming to be Peter Hitchins, and posted a moderate response to this rabid attack, which Iain Dale also published.

Oddly, Iain Dale then proceeded to throw out the baby with the bath water in a tantrum one would not and should not expect from someone who wants us to elect him to become a MP. That is, he punished the innocent along with the guilty by banning me from posting further comments. I fought a case and won the right for prisoners to speak to the media. Only to face unfair censorship by Iain Dale. If he behaves like this now, what can we expect if he ever came into real power?

Iain Dale is guilty of publishing a libel on his blog. The least he should do now is apologise to the injured party, and set the record straight. He has allowed his blog to degenerate to the gutter level of that other Tory blog operated by Guido. Unless the Tory Party cleans up its act, it can forget about winning over the electorate. Sleaze is just as dirty in opposition. Perhaps, it is for the best that it is going down the drain.

Posted by: John Hirst | 20 December 2006 at 13:20

I await Iain Dale's response.

I came across the following load of crap in the Torygraph. Although they invited comments, no comments are recorded. I submitted my comment, which they did not publish, so I add it here at the end of this piece of garbage.

Prisoners don't care about their right to vote

By Jonathan Aitken
Last Updated: 2:56am GMT 15/12/2006

Comment on this story Read comments

Of all the troublesome problems and pressures facing Britain's ever-increasing prison population, the one that led to yesterday's judgement by the European Court of Human Rights on votes for prisoners must rank in importance about as high as tiddlywinks does in the Olympics.

The ECHR's advice (and I hope our MPs remember that in constitutional terms it is no more than advice) for the UK Government to give prisoners the right to vote while serving their sentences will no doubt get a full hearing and airing by the chattering classes.

But the criminal classes are likely to be less impressed. I can offer some well-informed guesses about how my old cellmates in HMP Belmarsh might react to the news that their Christmas present from Brussels is to be a new right to put their crosses on ballot papers from behind bars.

Indifference, incomprehension or dismissive expletives would be their likely responses. By contrast there would be serious interest in almost anything that improved their prison living conditions or their post-release employment prospects. So it needs to be recognised that this issue is much more about the priorities of European lawyers than the anxieties of British prisoners.

Let's hope that Parliament will be given the chance to debate and vote on this judgement by the ECHR for it raises moral, practical and constitutional questions that go deeper than the Whitehall establishment's usual reaction to questionable ECHR pronouncements: "We never refuse to write the Court's judgement into UK statute law."

The moral argument for ignoring the ECHR's advice starts with the commonsense view that prison is meant to be a punishment. A custodial sentence has always resulted in loss of freedom and loss of democratic rights for the duration of a prisoner's sentence. Why change that? Is there any moral imperative for such a change?

According to John Hirst, the former life sentence prisoner now released on licence who won his case before the ECHR: "The human rights court has agreed with us that the Government's position is wrong – it doesn't matter how heinous the crime, everyone is entitled to have the basic human right to vote."

The problem here is that what Mr Hirst and the European judges consider a basic human right is the opposite of what many human rights respecting nations including Britain, the United States and Australia, have long considered to be basic common sense.

The main point of a prison sentence is to show the offender and society as a whole that criminal behaviour results in loss of freedom and most of the rights that freedom offers.

Different societies may wish to argue about precisely which rights should be suspended along with liberty as the cost to the individual of criminal wrongdoing. But the place for this argument to be held is in national legislatures who even in today's EU still have control over criminal laws and penalties.

To pretend that voting is something as "basic" as the right of access to a lawyer is at best special pleading and at worst judicial meddling in the right of EU member states to decide how they will punish their criminal offenders.

The practical reasons for opposing the legislative changes required by the ECHR judgement will be less obvious to outsiders than insiders. But to give an insight into the problems which could be created for prison officers by this new voting right for prisoners, let us make an imaginary visit to the Isle of Sheppey in the General Election of 2008 where the sitting Labour MP, Derek Wyatt will be defending a majority of 79.

I know one part of Mr Wyatt's electorate all too well, the three prisons on the island – HMPs Swaleside, Elmley and Standford Hill – for I was incarcerated in two of them. Between them these jails currently house 2,224 inmates. They probably make up the biggest single interest group in the constituency.

Will Mr Wyatt and his opposing candidates be allowed to canvass the prisoners, to address them at public meetings and to answer their questions? If not will yet more "basic rights" be infringed in the opinion of the ECHR?

But even if some modicum of common sense prevails, these prison voters will be sure to be highly interested, if not highly excited by the promises they are or are not made by the competing candidates via letter and leaflet.

So spare a thought for the prison officers of Sheppey, who already often struggle in a tinderbox situation to maintain order, calm and discipline. Suddenly they will have to cope with the atmospherics of a marginal seat during the run-up to an election in which every vote counts.

"Getting lairy with the screws" (uppity and argumentative – or worse – with the officers) is already an occupational hazard in the prisons of Sheppey. Charles Dickens' Eatanswill by-election will seem tame by comparison to what might happen among the imprisoned voters of Mr Wyatt's constituency.

It is possible that this imaginary Eatanswill/Sheppey situation that I envisage might be avoided by only allowing prisoners to vote in their own constituencies, although this will be easier said than done because so many prisoners are of "no fixed abode" and others are truly local to their neighbourhood prison.

But whatever the circumstances in whatever the prison voting rights are bound to create tensions, dramas and probably excuses for inmate-to-inmate violence at General Election time.

Unworldly judges sitting in European courts have no idea what life is like at the coalface of Britain's overcrowded prison system so they would probably pooh-pooh the previous paragraphs as exaggerated nonsense. Well, wait and see.

But long before that we will have to wait and see what happens in the House of Commons where much Parliamentary time will have to be expended on making legislative sense of this unwelcome Christmas present from the EHCR.

The Lord Chancellor on The World at One gave a dangerous hostage to fortune when he said yesterday, "Not every convicted prisoner is in the future going to get the right to vote … we need to look and see whether there are any categories that should be given the right."

Oh really? So are we going to have the umpteenth Criminal Justice Bill to categorise one criminal offence after another as qualifying or disqualifying a convicted prisoner for voting? Pull the other one Charlie!

Here's a better idea. The real constitutional issue behind the judgement of the ECHR's is the Court's indefatigable drive for uniformity within the EU. Because some nations in Europe have given their prisoners voting rights, Britain should now do the same, is what the Eurojudges are really saying.

Surely Britain's MPs should exercise their constitutional right and reject the ECHR's advice. Even if it would be the first time it happened that would be one "prison escape" which majority Parliamentary and public opinion would really approve of.

Comment on this story

A golden rule of writing is that author's should only write about what they know. Otherwise they are in danger of making a complete fool of themselves. Jonathan Aitkin should have borne this in mind when penning this piece of rubbish, which is best suited for the waste paper basket.

Prisoners do care about their right to vote. The editor might recall that it was the Daily Telegraph which broke the story about my setting up the Association of Prisoners. This was formed as a direct result of the European Convention being incorporated into the Human Rights Act (1998). And, it was a ballot of the members which decided that obtaining the vote was a priority.

Not only have you spelt judgment wrong, Jonathan, in my judgement, it was not yesterday, but 30th March 2004, when the the ECtHR handed down its judgment. Where have you been all this time, on Planet Zog? Twiddlywinks is a game, the Olympics sport. This is the world of politics. Welcome to it! I thought even you would have known this.

The ECtHR does not give advice. It makes decisions which are binding on Member States. Your advice to MPs, I suspect that they do not really want to hear what you have to say on the issue, is so out of date in this modern world and totally inaccurate. Had you given me this advice I would have sued you for negligence! The constitution has moved on from the days when you read it at public school. Grow up!

You are so well informed that this Xmas present comes from Brussels. Sprouts might. The Court is in Strasbourg! Wherever did you get this notion that Britain is a human rights respecting nation? It has the worst record of human rights violations in Europe. Moreover, there are 50 cases in which the UK has yet to remedy the human rights violations found against the State in the ECtHR.

I think it is a bit cheeky to claim that you are an insider. You were only in long enough for a shit and a shave! Even in there you were an outsider, someone not to be trusted. Anyone who tries to let someone else take the rap for their crime is deemed to be as low as a child molester.

Unworldly judges sitting in European Courts? They are far more wordly-wise than yourself Jonathan, and our judges in the main, and most of our politicians. I wish you well in whatever other profession you choose to dabble in. Leave the professionals to do what they know best.

I accuse the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer of Thoroton of being not only intellectually dishonest but also of being corrupt in this affair. The issue is "Voting Rights of Convicted Prisoners Detained within the United Kingdom". However, the subheading is not factually accurate and contains government spin on the truth to create the impression that the inaccurate statement is true. It is accurate in so far as it states "-The UK Government's response". However, it is not true to claim that it is "to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of Hirst v.The United Kingdom". This is because the judgment states one thing, and the politician asks himself a different question, and answers some of it himself, then purports to throw the whole thing open for consultation, when in fact it has been drafted by a decision-maker who has approached the subject with a closed mind. This is unlawful under the WEDNESBURY reasonableness test. This is not "A consultation produced by the Department for Constitutional Affairs". This is just another dodgy document.

In the "Foreward by Lord Falconer of Thoroton", he states "The right to vote in the UK is considered by many to be a privilege as well as an entitlement, and that persons who are convicted of an offence serious enough to warrant a term in prison have cast aside that privilege and entitlement for the duration of their sentence". This statement is irrelevant to the issue under the WENDESBURY principle. I am privileged to have the right to vote O Lord and Master, doff me cap to you Sir, with thou 17th, 18th and 19th century patronage thinking. Bullshit. What is relevant is paragraph 59 in the judgment: "As pointed out by the applicant, the right to vote is not a privilege. In the twenty-first century, the presumption in a democratic State must be in favour of inclusion, as may be illustrated, for example, by the parliamentary history of the United Kingdom and other countries where the franchise was gradually extended over the centuries from select individuals, elite groupings or sections of the population approved of by those in power. Universal suffrage has become the basic principle".

I suspect that the Lord Chancellor, now that he has lost the case at first instance, and then lost his appeal to the highest court in Europe, is now attempting to unlawfully appeal to the electorate to bail him out of this mess. I state this because the arguments he is advancing have already been advanced in the Court, and they were ruled out by the judges. Here is more of the Lord Chancellor's Victorian mentality waffle: "Successive UK Governments have held to the view that the right to vote forms part of the social contract between the individual and the State, and that the loss of the right to vote, reflected in the current law, is a proper and proportionate punishment for breaches of the social contract that resulted in imprisonment. That remains this Government's position, and that of a number of other Council of Europe states".

The right to vote has sweet FA to do with Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) philosophy of the social contract. "Prior to the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867, the right to vote was limited and based on rights in property" (Hilaire Barnett). It is an outright lie to claim that in relation to convicted prisoners "that the loss of the right to vote, reflected in the current law, is a proper and proportionate punishment". This loss of the right to vote dates from the Forfeiture Act 1870. And yet, the effect of the 1867 Act was only to increase the total of people entitled to vote to 14% of the population! It is not proper, because Parliament has never debated the issue of disenfranchisement of convicted prisoners. It is not proportionate, because the Court ruled that the blanket ban was not proportionate. It is not a punishment because only judges can impose punishment and no judge has ever stated that a convicted prisoner loses the franchise when passing a prison sentence. There is no lawful authority for "That remains this Government's position", when that position has been defeated in the highest Court in Europe. "And that of a number of other Council of Europe states". It was the UK and not other Council of Europe States which I took to court. Moreover, the large majority of other Council of Europe States already allow convicted prisoners to vote. And those that did not before the judgment have had to change the law to comply with the judgment, for example, Ireland which has passed a Bill to allow for prisoners to have the postal vote.

This morning, I got up and had a fag whilst I had a shit. Then another fag with my first cup of tea of the day. Then off into Pearson Park to take Rocky for his first walk of the day. My mobile rang, and then went dead before I could answer it. I rang the number that had called me and nobody responded. Continued with the walk, and the mobile rang again. It was Southern Counties Radio informing me that the government had announced that it had started the consultation process on whether prisoners should have the vote. And, would I be prepared to be interviewed. I agreed. There was just time to finish the walk, have another fag, fry a bacon butty and have a coffee and another fag before the interview. Apparently the story is on Ceefax, but because I do not have a TV Licence, I do not watch TV so could not see it there. I think the interview went well, the switchboard lights up like Blackpool illuminations as all the irate listeners want to stone me to death! Then I did the soapbox on Radio Humberside. In the afternoon, Iain Dale emailed me to offer me the opportunity to go on 18doughtystreet.com in the New Year to talk about the prisoners votes case. I emailed him back to say that I would like this. I cannot help but wonder, given that I started all this, why the government has not spoken too me first in its consultation exercise?

John Reid admitted yesterday, to the Home Affairs Select Committee, that the two suspected terrorists who broke their control orders by removing their electronic tags and going on the run in August are still at large. However, he added, that he was satisfied that the two on the run presented little direct risk to public safety. This begs the question why they were deemed terrorist suspects, and subjected to house arrest in the first place?

Since getting a computer for a present last Xmas, I have gone from being computer illiterate to being a prolific blogger. According to Google, jailhouselawyer has posted 534 times. I did a few under LadyMargaretThatcher, and TrollsRus, but the switching of identities back and forth can get a bit confusing, so now I stick to the one nick. I found some flattering comments about me on Frank Fisher's blog, from names I remember when CIF was the in thing before it went down the pan. Frank Fisher even used jailhouselawyer in a quiz, what was the case he won at the ECtHR? Upon giving the answer, that it was the prisoners votes case, Frank Fisher added the comment that is a sore point with me. That is, that the government has not responded to the victory as yet. This is nothing personal, whilst conducting some research, I discovered from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, that there are another 49 cases in which violations were found against the UK and the government has not remedied these either. When I started to study law, I remember in one of the text books that it said a right is not a right if it cannot be enforced. There is machinary in place to enforce the decisions of the ECtHR, but it requires the will to start the machine up and the will is absent in those who are supposed to monitor compliance. I recall Tony Blair making his statement with great fanfare about bringing rights home. Then, he said that prisoners because they had committed crimes had lost the moral authority to vote. However, moral authority has never been a qualification for the franchise. On the other hand, I would argue that Tony Blair has lost moral authority by taking the country into a war that is illegal under international law.

The familiar envelope lay upon the door mat face up, having just been delivered by the postman, TV Licencing logo, catching my eye. I thought, 'here we go again'. (See TV Licencing case, archive, November 11). The letter is addressed to "The Legal Occupier". Its a title of sorts I suppose, but I prefer to use my own name. The letter is headed threateningly "OFFICIAL WARNING - THIS PROPERTY IS UNLICENCED". I am sorry, but I do not take kindly to an organisation that assumes it has the power to issue me with an official warning. Especially, as I have done nothing wrong to receive such an official warning. I am not a naughty schoolboy in front of a headmaster at school. I am past all of that. The letter states, "You are hereby notified that we have authorised officers from our Enforcement Division to visit your home and interview you under caution, as our records show there is still no TV Licence at this address and as yet we have received no response to previous communications from you". They can send the whole division for all I care. I will send them packing without even letting them inside the house, let alone interview and caution me. I have made my position clear, "there is still no TV Licence at this address" because I don't want one nor need one, if they don't like it tough shit. It is a false statement to claim "we have received no response to previous communications from you". If my going to court upon receiving a summons and defeating the prosecution is not classed as communication ie sending a strong message, then I don't know what is!

"Your statement will be taken in compliance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and is the first step in our action to prosecute if we find evidence that you watch or record television without a valid licence". My statement will not be taken, because I will not be making one. The last time it was not in compliance with PACE, because there was no evidence to find. I could not believe that I was prosecuted in the absence of evidence. Even more absurd was the magistrates finding that I was technically guilty. On appeal to the Crown Court, my appeal against conviction was allowed. It might be a good idea if some of the TV Licence fee went on improving the communication breakdown within Crapita!

I deem these letters to not only be junk mail, but also to be offensively threatening in nature. If Crapita continues to send these letters, I just might begin my own legal proceedings against the company.

Yesterday I received a phone call from Radio 5 Live asking me to take part in a show last night hosted by Stephen Nolan. The topic for discussion was the Law Commission Report on Murder, Manslaughter, and Infanticide. Whilst Stephan Nolan questioned some chap from the Law Commission on the subject, he seemed to think that he could then subject me to trial by radio which was off topic. I declined to allow him to get away with taking this liberty, and would question the BBC's legal authority to subject people to trial by radio. We have courts in this country to subject people to trials which are conducted within a legal framework, this allows for fairness and justice to be done. Although Stephen Nolan was unable to get his own way with me and act as judge, jury and executioner, he succeeded in subjecting another lifer on life licence to a hard time. I felt sorry for this lifer as he got mauled. It was a pity that a serious subject did not get the airing it deserved because of Stephen Nolan's abuse of his position. I trust that the BBC will now examine the conduct of Stephen Nolan, and take the appropriate action to prevent him from abusing other peoples civil, human and legal rights.

It is not April Fools Day, nonetheless, the Grauniad has an article written by Alan Travis, headlined "Public to be sold shares in new prisons", and subheaded "Buy-to-let scheme planned to fund building of 8,000 new jail places". According to Phil Wheatley, Director General of H.M. Prison Service, "Nonsense". And, he should know. He added, "You shouldn't believe everything you read in the newspapers". I don't. For example, it is claimed that Alan Travis is "home affairs editor". There are fairies at the bottom of my garden...

Guido Fawkes mentions on his blog that the Home Office has now started to monitor the blogs for any reference to the Home Office. Fancy buying a prison ship, spending money on it to make it fit for purpose, just to sell it for scrap and then to buy it back again, to spend money on it to make it fit for purpose...

When I saw the photograph in the Torygraph showing the Harmondsworth immigration detention centre, I thought it looked like a prison. Admittedly, it is a modern structure. Nevertheless, it reminds me of the rotting hulks that used to house prisoners before transporting them to Australia. Given that the detention centre is close to Heathrow Airport, I fail to see why those who are to be deported are not simply taken straight to the airport and boarded on an aeroplane. There are those who have not committed a criminal offence living along side those who have but have served their prison term. This beggars the question, why are people still in a prison environment after time for the crime has been satisfied? To treat people who should not be prisoners as though they are prisoners, is it any wonder that they decided to riot against unacceptable conditions?

More people in UK prisons than ever before, states the Daily Torygraph headline, 29/11/2006. It makes a refreshing change to see prisoners referred to as people. They are precisely that, every one of them is someone's grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter. They are not scum, or whatever some newspapers and some people prefer to call them. They are, bottom line, human beings. And, as such, are entitled not to be treated as sardines in a can. The system cannot cope with 80,000 prisoners. The prisons in the system were not designed or built to house 2 or 3 inmates in a space only fit to house one person. What we have at present is large scale inhumanity towards man. The public should be screaming out, not in our name. But, the public voice is mute on this issue. However, I have heard the welcome voice of Rachel from North London speaking out about this disgrace.

What has the government done about the impending crises. Nothing, until it was too late. Then the Home Secretary, John Reid, belatedly decides to act. He does not release from prison all those who do not need or deserve to be there, rather, he decides to use police cells to house the over flow. This means that the police do not have the cell spaces available to house those who might need locking up until they go through the due process, so the police do not police and some people who deserve to be arrested do not get arrested. I fail to see how this equates with public protection. The Torygraph reports that John Reid has met with penal experts and criminologists from Britain and Europe to discuss the way forward for prison policy. He has not met with me, bigger fool him, as I do have expertise in this area, and his going around in circles is not the best way forward. It is ironic that prisoners walk around in circles on the prison exercise yard. John Reid is a prisoner of his own stupidity. What is needed is a radical approach.

The government has rightly diagnosed that the general public has lost confidence in the Criminal Justice System. So, the government is thinking up ways to deceive the general public into having more confidence in the system. There is that old saying that you can fool some of the people all of the time but not all of the people all of the time. Community penalties are a good thing, but the government PR scheme appears to be in tatters. The public has been lied to too often to trust in what the government has to say. Iraq is just one example. Whenever I hear John Reid speak about policies designed to protect the public, I cringe because if you look closely you will see that what he advocates is not protecting the public, rather, the policy is about depriving the public of civil liberties.

John Reid is asking the question, how can we reduce reoffending. Well, John, for a starters, I would reduce the prison population to a manageable size. Face it, its unmanageable in its present state. By adopting a reductionist policy instead of expansionism, this breathing space will allow prison officers and professionals to work with prisoners on a one to one basis and in small groups. This works better than just locking them up and throwing away the key until it is time to release them. You need to win the hearts and minds of the public not at large, you cannot do this by ignoring them except to treat them as being less than human beings.

Another question John Reid is asking is how the system can control the most dangerous offenders. My experience is that the situation is usually dangerous and not the offender. For example, a car with no brakes parked on a hill is safe enough whilstever the brick is underneath the front tyre. Remove the brick and the situation then becomes dangerous because the car is now out of control. There are some people for whom prison is the only safe place available. This is an inescapable fact. However, the number who cannot ever be released is small and managable. So is the number who must serve a very long time before they may be deemed acceptably safe to be released. As each individual is precisely that, it is pointless having a regime which, in effect, says one size must fit all. I recall being asked which route I wished to take through my life sentence, and when I replied the education route, the Prison Service spent the next 10 years denying me education, as a result they had a control problem for those 10 years. I was right all along, had I been listened to, both sides could have saved having to do battle, as the price of my not being a control problem was to better myself by education. I do not believe that I asked too much and that the price was too high to pay. I proved that reform can work if you give it a chance and take the rehabilitation issue seriously. The punishment is the sentence handed down in court, not what people feel should be inflicted upon prisoners who are at their mercy and are at the mercy of the State.

John Reid is also looking for answers to how they can balance the need to deter with the necessity to punish. There is general and individual deterrence. Most people are deterred by the law, it is usually the individual deterrence which needs to be examined. Having the desire to be too punitive, in the first instance, instead of using prison as a last resort, tends to be counter productive. The going off the rails tends to be in early childhood and schooling. By the time one is caught in the Criminal Justice trap it is often too late. The person has already suffered and the punishment only serves to make the person worse. I recall my barrister in 1971, telling the trial judge that I needed help, to which the judge replied, he will get all the help he needs in prison. The judge was wrong, as the help was not available and I got worse over the years. Luckily, it was not too late for me, but most offenders give up hope that they will receive the help they need. There needs to be individual treatment for individual cases.

The public has to make up its mind. Do they wish to continue being vindictive and losing out, or do they want a system that works and benefits all?

Might I take this opportunity to remind the Tories that it was not Polly Toynbee but Winston Churchill who, in 1910, introduced legislative proposals for reducing the scale of imprisonment. It is worth repeating part of his famous speech, as it appears that the Tories are floundering about in a dinghy witout a paddle and no sense of direction.

"The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. A calm and dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused against the State, and even of convicted criminals against the State, a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate in the world of industry all those who have paid their dues in the hard coinage of punishment, tireless efforts towards the discovery of curative and regenerating processes, and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every man - these are the symbols which in treatment of crime and criminals mark and measure the stored-up strength of a nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virture in it".

Take note David Davis. Bow down and proclaim how unworthy you really are.

Memo: To Polly Toynbee, try matching the above and I will follow your leadership qualities.

Those Polly Toynbee worshippers in the Tory Party, stop being complete tossers!

Michael Howard once famously adopted a saying in America, and used it out of context over here, to claim that prison works. In what ways can it be claimed to work, and what evidence is there to support this? If we take the limited view of individual deterrence, it is true that whilst an offender is incarcerated s/he is not in a position to commit any crime outside of prison during the period of incarceration. But, this does not affect general deterrence because others will still be committing crimes outside. In addition, if the offender does not address the offending behaviour and the system just acts as a penal dustbin, there is a danger that the offender comes out worse than when s/he went into prison.

In the same way that a teacher cannot teach a class of 60 pupils, the penal estate has become too large to manage effectively. Smaller, more manageable prisons, with a smaller, more manageable prison population, is a small step in the right direction. Because prisoners are individuals, they need individual treatment programmes. This one size fits all does not work with clothes, why should it work on something as complicated as personalities?

To be continued...

'It's not like I'm killing someone now because there's no lids for my jam jars'

In 1979, John Hirst was jailed for brutally killing his landlady. He believes remorse is a 'middle class thing' and he's done his time. The victim's daughter says she can never forgive him. Andrew O'Hagan reports
Andrew O'Hagan
Saturday November 18, 2006

Guardian
John Hirst was 28 and recently paroled from prison when Mrs Bronia Burton took him in as a lodger at Normoor Road near Burghfield Common, Berkshire. It was the spring of 1979, and she gave up the main bedroom in her house to the itinerant labourer partly for a bit of extra cash, but mainly for company. She was lonely in the house. Though the incident that happened next would create the gravest upset in dozens of different lives - end relationships, darken psychologies, consume lawyers, haunt dreams - there seems to be no doubt about what actually happened. Let us use the words of Barbara Calvert QC, who prosecuted Hirst in the trial that followed. "On the evening of June 23 they were watching television when Mrs Burton asked the defendant to collect some coal from the shed. He went to the shed, got the coal and at the same time picked up a heavy hand axe. He returned to the living room, put the coal on the fire, and then approached Mrs Burton and hit her, perhaps seven times, on the head with the axe. He then went to the kitchen to make coffee and drank it, waiting for Mrs Burton to die."

There was some dispute at the time whether Hirst had struck the victim six or seven times. It seemed important, signifying a higher or lower level of frenzy. After finishing his coffee, it was stated, Hirst walked six miles to Reading police station, where he gave himself up. The man at the desk thought he was drunk and told him to go home. "No," Hirst said. "I killed her and she's dead."

Twenty-seven years later, Nina Burton-Harris is crying into a handkerchief in a Somerset pub. "My mother and I had had a little disagreement," she says, "so I hadn't seen her for a while. You know how these things are. I didn't know he was living there: Hirst hadn't been there long." The morning after Mrs Burton's death, Nina received a phone call from a police officer who said there had been an accident and could she come to the police station. "I went there and things just got worse," she says. "I wasn't allowed to identify her because of the nature of the crime."

Mrs Burton was 63 when she died. She was born in Russia, but Nina doesn't know exactly where. "My mother never admitted to people that she was Russian," she says. "She'd pretend to be French. She didn't have a great knowledge of the English language and that frightened her. I think she was afraid they would deport her or something." Mrs Burton met Nina's father in Haifa during the war, where she was working as a nurse and he was enlisted in the Palestine police. The family moved to England when Nina was four, and they had long been settled in the Reading area.

Nina says the nightmare really began when she and her then-fiancé Bob had to clear out her mother's house. "I stood outside for nearly an hour and Bob went in. I knew there was still blood there. I knew where it happened and my limbs wouldn't stop shaking. I was sick several times and the shock of being there brought my period on." She dabs her eyes as she thinks back on it. "You see," she says, "I had no experience of violence."

I ask her what Hirst's room was like. "All I remember is the books," she says. "There was Tolkien, Lord Of The Rings - that's all I remember. It must have been a double bed. I remember saying at the time he was a very intelligent man, just because of the books. But I couldn't stand for anything to be left at the house. I cut up all the furniture because I didn't want anybody else to have it, and I destroyed all the roses in the garden because my mother loved her roses."

According to evidence presented at the trial in February 1980, Hirst appeared almost impervious to the shock of what he had done. He said that Mrs Burton hadn't liked him going out and that she nagged him constantly. "She just kept on at me," he said. On the night he was arrested, a police officer remembered asking Hirst in his cell if he felt any remorse. "No, it is part of life," he said. "It is all in the past and I can forget it now. I bet she had got a bit of a headache."

At the trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. "In court I was just crying," says Nina. "Screaming. At one point in the trial, I looked over and he was to my left. I stared at him and I had these really bad thoughts. I couldn't believe he was alive and my mother not. He looked back at me and I know he could feel it. I just kept staring at him."

In the end, the prosecution at Reading Crown Court accepted Hirst's plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and he got 15 years. "I have no doubt you are an arrogant and dangerous person with a severe personality defect," said Mr Justice Purchis. "Unfortunately, this is not suitable for treatment in a mental hospital."

I ask Nina Burton-Harris whether she thinks the trial was weighted in Hirst's favour.

"Yes," she says. "He'd had a bad upbringing. He was sexually abused. And I do feel very sorry for him for that. But there was no reason to be a criminal. The judge said he should serve a minimum of 15 years, but I just couldn't believe it. I wanted him in prison for the rest of his life. I did have times when I thought, yes, capital punishment is a good thing. People who do that shouldn't be allowed to come out of prison and lead relatively normal lives.

At least, they should not be allowed out of prison at all."

In the end, Hirst spent 25 years in prison because, the authorities say, of violent offences he committed while he was a prisoner, but he was finally released a few years ago. "Yes," says Nina, "he spent a long time in prison - a lot longer than most murderers do, and I'm very grateful for that - but even so. He was reported as saying, 'What else does she want from me?' but I want the rest of his life."

I ask what is sufficient. Is there not a question of forgiveness, or the possibility of redemption?

"I'll never forgive him," she says. "I'll never, ever, ever forgive him. He took my mother away. And he broke up my relationship with my fiancé. I was prescribed tranquillisers, but I only took them once and then learned to cope without them. And it affected my father's life - I lost my mother and my father in the end. My father was never the same again and then he died. I'm not a tolerant person any more. I feel angry a) that he was in a position to do that to her and b) that he's still walking the streets."

According to the Home Office's own figures, people in Britain serving life sentences have doubled in the past 10 years. Newspaper reports of judges' leniency are strictly opposed by the facts: not only are lifers doing something closer to life, but prisoners in general are spending longer in prison. Yet earlier this year Tony Blair set out an agenda for overhauling the criminal justice system in such a way as to "greater safeguard the civil liberties of victims at the expense of offenders". But while prisons are full to bursting - inching up to the highest-ever figure - a new sentencing row seems to be instigated every other week by "public outrage" at single cases of recidivism or early release. We are, in point of fact, the biggest jailer in western Europe.

Sitting with Nina Burton-Harris, I can see how all these arguments and all these statistics come down to a very human hurt: a woman crying in the afternoon about a terrible event that still controls her life, 27 years after the event. "I do feel the families should have some say and should be taken account of," she says. "It seems the prisoners have all the rights. They can do and go wherever they want. The idea that it wasn't his fault the way he turned out, because of his upbringing, I just don't believe that."

A while later, I wrote to Nina to ask if she truly hated the person who had killed her mother. "I hate the word 'hate'," she replied. "Such an intense word. But I think it is justified. I fucking hate him, honestly."

John Hirst lives in a part of Hull where the terraced houses are decayed and where broken cars stand rusty and flat-tyred against the pavement. Set back from the road, his house wears a feeling of nervous exhaustion, and as soon as I touched the bell I knew that a dog would immediately start barking. Hirst came to the door through a hail of barks and with eyes that seemed accustomed to a hostile world. "Never mind him - that's Rocky," he says.

If one is thinking straight, it's impossible not to be in two minds about people with a violent past. Meeting a person who once hit another person six or seven times on the head with an axe does, despite all one's views about the aims of society, present an immediate challenge to one's liberal contentment. It is obvious within seconds of meeting Hirst that he is probably neither a monster nor a model citizen, but he presses his Open University learning on you without ever knowing that the overwhelming sense he gives is not of educated reasonableness but of chaos and vast insensitivity. This is just an observation: he makes a case for himself very persuasively, but everything he says makes you wonder whether this man is totally in control of himself. He talks endlessly about society's powers of control, as if he were endlessly defined by others' need and hunger to restrain him.

I arrive in his living room to see that he is able to watch me coming on his own DIY closed-circuit television unit. His TV set shows pictures of the yard outside his front door and then it flicks, for seconds at a time, to show other vistas: the backyard and other views about the house. Stacks of video tapes stand here and there in the room, and I notice the clock on the screen that shows the path I had just walked up: 14:34:07, it reads. By the time that 35th minute elapses, Hirst is sitting across from me, swearing about a woman who has thrown out the lids of his jam jars.

"Oh for crying out fucking loud," he says. "Stupid cow. I don't fucking believe this." Then he stands up and goes back into the kitchen, from where I can still hear him cursing and tantrumming. "She's fucking thrown the fucking lids out, the stupid cunt. Fucking stupid fucking cow. Stupid bitch."

I'd say, even if you didn't know, that you'd think you were in the living room of an ex-convict. Hirst has been out of prison a few years, but the living room is in every way like a cell. The CCTV is one thing, but every surface is covered in fag ash; the smell of socks and male sweat is overwhelming. His dog seems a loyal beast, and its presence is everywhere: the sofa is matted with its hair and a couple of chewed footballs lie on the floor next to the grimy window. A bottle of Tesco's Whole Orange Squash stands on a table crammed with papers. Among his video tapes is a copy of The Shawshank Redemption, and dozens of books on English law crowd the shelves next to the fireplace. In the middle of them I see a paperback copy of Crime And Punishment, and, as Hirst comes back in, I think of Raskolnikov and his brutal time with the old lady. He is squat and his hair is shorn, and where his skin seemed tough, his eyes are soft and show a certain bewilderment every time he smiles. He sits on the edge of the sofa wearing a loose T-shirt and a pair of paint-splattered trousers.

"I found security in prison for the first time in my life," he says. "I stopped wetting the bed when I went to prison. And here ..." - he points to the front window and then to the back of the house - "nobody can come that way and nobody can come that way." He talks in a strong Yorkshire accent about violent difficulties with his neighbours. "Their claim to fame," he says, "was they got rid of all the asylum seekers off this street and I said, 'Well, you're not getting rid of me.' I tell you what it reminds me of: First Blood, Rambo, you know, I mean 'don't push me'. I've backed myself into a corner.

I did the same in jail whenever I got into situations, backed myself into a corner."

Hirst was born on November 18 1950 in Bradford. His mother was Latvian and she came to Britain at the end of the second world war. She had four children, but she and the father divorced before Hirst was two. He says his mother couldn't cope with her children and the younger pair, including him, was placed with Barnardo's. His only memory of the home is of cutting his foot on glass from a broken milk bottle. The records show that each time he was returned from a foster home, he was described as "uncontrollable". He says he wasn't uncontrollable; he was suffering from Asperger's Syndrome, though that was only diagnosed much later. "Children were meant to be seen and not heard," he says, "and I was bright and I'd ask a question. I'm still like that."

He went from being with one foster family called the Butterfields to doing labouring work, then he did some time in a factory. Listening to Hirst, you soon notice a pattern: each stage of his story leads into a pocket of difficulty, and in each case he likes to speak of being let down by authority. Foster parents were wrong when they said he was difficult. The union was wrong when they said he was working too many hours at a bakery. "Once someone's shit on me that bad, I don't give them a second chance," he says. He tells me about prices in the early 1960s, and how you couldn't live off the money you got on the dole, so that the only option was to start stealing. "I started supplementing my income. I was quite a good burglar - prolific." He is clearly proud of it. "I could actually get through a six-inch gap," he says, "which is what you'd have for a cat flap."

"But you got caught?" I say.

"But I didn't really care. I was a drifter and I'd always seen myself as being like a dinghy without a paddle. I didn't believe I had any control over my life: everything was preordained."

Hirst suggests he had some involvement with organised criminals in Leeds and Manchester. He mentions some violent activity at that time, but maintains he never used violence when it came to any of the robberies. There was arson, which led to a five-year prison sentence at Albany Prison on the outskirts of Newport. He puts the time he spent at Albany down as the beginning of a deep psychological disturbance. He speaks of being brutalised by prison officers and of a jungle mentality in prison, which shook him up like a bottle, he says, and it was just a matter of when the top would blow off. "If you put enough pressure on anybody, then eventually they will crack." He lights another cigarette and looks into the wall; the dog is by now sleeping soundly across his lap. "Good boy," he says.

Mrs Burton was called Bronia, but she liked it better when people called her Betty. By 1979, she was divorced from her husband and arthritic, and life in Normoor Road could be very lonely. Her daughter said she did not have a particularly untroubled life. "She wasn't easy to get on with, my mother," Nina Burton-Harris says. Partly to stem the boredom, Mrs Burton started taking in lodgers. She wasn't a natural landlady, but she couldn't make the stairs in her house any more and so it wasn't any burden to surrender her bedroom to the occasional paying individual.

John Hirst was on parole in May 1979, having served half of a two-year sentence for burglary. He had no address and stayed for a while with the Langley House Trust, but he wanted out of there and the probation service gave him Mrs Burton's name as someone who was known to take in lodgers. He moved into her house on June 12. Eleven days later, in the evening, Mrs Burton was watching a Judy Garland film on television when Hirst appeared in the sitting room to say he was going out. He says she then nagged him: he claims she didn't want him to go out.

It has to be said that Hirst has a slight tendency to pathologise his victim. "She'd had six or seven ex-offenders living there," he says, "and they couldn't bear her. She was unbearable. She stole our food. It was as though I was her carer, and I was so fragile it was unbelievable. I was like a walking time bomb. She claimed she had been in a concentration camp. She was trying to control my life and ... wanted to be waited on hand and foot. I had my own life to lead."

She asked him to put some coal on the fire. He went out, muttering under his breath, wishing she would leave him alone, and walked to the shed where the coal was kept. As he filled the bucket, he looked up and saw an axe hanging on the wall. He walked back to the house, and when he reached the kitchen he told himself not to be stupid, so he put down the axe.

"Then she started on me again," he says. When he came in from collecting the second load of coal, he picked it up again, switched on the kettle and went through to the sofa where Mrs Burton was lying. He hit her seven times. "I used the blunt end," he says matter-of-factly. As he speaks about it, Hirst lifts his cigarette tin to simulate the top of the axe and uses the ashtray in front of him to indicate Mrs Burton's head. "It could have been anyone," he says. "In the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Were you relieved?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says. "I put the kettle on. I've killed her. I've heard the kettle go click. I've gone back and carried on making the brew. Then I sat down to drink it and that's when I'm having a fag ... and that's the relief, the pressure's gone. I've looked down at my feet and thought of that line from Laurel and Hardy: that's another fine mess you've got yourself into. As I'm sat there, I'm thinking, well, I'll get a life sentence and maybe I can study for a degree or something."

I wonder if Hirst knows how callous he sounds. It is difficult to avoid seeking a connection between the coldness of his descriptions of what he did - "It was like swatting a fly that's buzzing around you" - and the question of whether he is truly reformed. Sitting in his living room, I begin to feel afraid of John Hirst. He would say such fears were stupid, because the stupidity of other people's doubts about him are self-evident to John Hirst, but something in him seems amoral and the self-control he often speaks of seems teetering in his case. When he stops talking about how he killed Mrs Burton, he stands up and returns to the kitchen. I look again at the CCTV showing the space outside and wonder if I could handle him.

"Fucking 'ell. Look at this," he shouts. I take a deep breath and pick up my notepad. As I enter the kitchen, I see that he is standing over by the sink, his hands and arms covered in red liquid. The red stuff stands in pools on the worktop and is running down the cupboards underneath. "No lids for these fucking jam jars," he says, and the pool of jam seems to glow redder. He looks up at me. "You'd think I'd killed the landlady in here," he says. I step backwards into the sitting room and, as I go, see a calendar on the wall, which has "Sign on" scribbled in pencil, and nothing else, two Mondays a fortnight apart.

Does prison really change people and serve the good of society? We have to believe that it does, and that in order to be civilised we have to invest as much in the idea of reform as in retribution. But on a gut level, people are frightened of those who have proved themselves capable of violence.

John Hirst did his time. In the end he did 25 years. But he is free now. He got educated, he appears to have put crime behind him, and he is making jam. He has also committed himself to an impressive workload of prison reform, taking the government to the European Court of Human Rights over issues such as voting rights for prisoners (they found in his favour) and the right of prisoners to have telephone conversations.

We look for remorse to be the guarantor of moral change and the stamp of decency. If an ex-offender is sorry enough, we may begin to think them normal. This may be a game, but it is nevertheless one that everyone expects violent criminals to play. Hirst was helpful all the way through the process of my writing this article, but it is quite striking to observe that my taped interview with Nina Burton-Harris reveals many pauses for tears, whereas Hirst's is filled with his own laughter.

When I ask Hirst about remorse, he looks at me as if I'd missed the point of him. "Remorse is a middle-class thing," he says. That's a good line, but it's not true: the people who call for criminals to rot in jail are readers of the Sun and people who might, on the basis of Hirst's behaviour that day in Hull, ask for him to be returned to jail until he learns how to speak with respect about his victim and her family. At one point I tell him it is very difficult for Mrs Burton's daughter to move on from such a thing. He lifts a Rizla packet from the table and rips it in two. "That's her mother," he says. "You can't put that back together."

He has a great deal to say about freedom and rights, and wishes Nina Burton-Harris would move on. "She thinks I'm free," he says. "My life sentence goes on until the day I die. But she is filled with assumptions about my life being all freedom and jollies. In a sense, your life sentence only begins the day you get out."

"But do you want to be forgiven by her?"

"Honestly, I don't give two fucks," he says. "That might sound callous, but it isn't. Her being in the court brought home to me what I'd done. Here's someone now before me who hasn't done anything, and I was feeling for the daughter, but all I could see was her anger and bitterness coming back. She probably wanted me to be hung, but it still wouldn't have brought her mother back ... I've satisfied retribution. I've satisfied deterrence. I owe society nothing now." He strokes the sleeping dog and looks at the pictures of his own front yard on the TV set. "Society owes me," he says.

"I did my sentence. It's not like I'm killing somebody now because there's no lids for the jam jars."

After weeks of wondering about John Hirst and Nina Burton-Harris, I called a lawyer named Humphrey Forrest. Forrest had worked with Hirst over many years, and his educated voice seemed to elucidate some of Hirst's views about himself and his predicament. "We met," he says, "when John was a prisoner in Hull. It came to my attention that he was being treated appallingly. One time he was disciplined for having cigarettes and placed in solitary confinement for 21 days. The warder had implied it was fine to give him the cigarettes, and as soon as we left John was punished. It was entrapment. An action for misfeasance in public office was later taken and the disciplinary was quashed. But he was treated appallingly because he challenged authority."

Forrest goes on to say that, in Hirst's case, the fact that he spent 25 years in prison rather than the 15 recommended by Justice Purchis at his trial was not because he continued to pose a threat to the public, but because he continued to buck the system. "He challenged authority by suing them, not by punching them in the face," he says, "and he was gravely punished for that. If he had knuckled under - as many of us advised him to do - he would have been out much earlier."

"But wait," I say. "He was violent in prison. He committed further offences."

But Forrest insists that Hirst did not commit 10 extra years' worth of offences. He was simply judged to be unfit to re-enter society because he "disrespected authority" by challenging the decisions they were making. "There came a point in prison [about the time he'd done 15 years], where he had a road-to-Damascus moment. He discovered the law, and he channelled his sense of frustration and his sense of justice into knowing the law."

"But does that mean he was no longer a threat to public safety?"

"He was no longer a physical risk to anyone - he hadn't attacked anyone for a long time. The circumstances that had led him to do what he did had totally changed. There was no evidence that would lead one to suspect he would ever commit such an offence again. Prison psychiatrists weren't saying he was dangerous: they were deducing dangerousness from the fact that he would not respect their authority."

I make the point to Forrest that Hirst seemed at times to show contempt for his victim and for her family. "He hasn't expressed this view to me, and I'd pull him up if he did," Forrest replies. "The fact about John is that he has a very literal view of justice: he did the crime and he served the time. He got 15 years and he did 25. He accepted what society said of him at the time and his position now is to say, 'Enough is enough'. He is probably wrong not to betray more sensitivity, but that does not in any sense mean that he is a risk to the community."

Bronia Burton, or Betty, is long gone from the house near Burleigh Common, and she will never know how her ending was both a gross culmination of anger in one person and the terrible beginning of pain in the lives of others. Her daughter and her killer will never meet, yet they are condemned to meet in their respective imaginations: the whole of England separates them, but they must always live with the thought of what happened in the house in Normoor Road. In the end, it was the house I kept coming back to. I thought of its quiet modern facade - the house at the centre of the evening. "Home is so sad," wrote that other one-time denizen of Hull, Philip Larkin.

It stays as it was left

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft.

A factory near Burghfield Common used to produce nuclear warheads, and now it is the great place for decommissioning them. The housing estate where Mrs Burton lived is not far from there, and is these days very quiet in the afternoon, the dogs walking without a sound on the pavement and the children at the end of the summer running out towards a stretch of grass as if the future means nothing to them. But there are new shoots in Mrs Burton's garden, and change is evident. "I dream of him sometimes and just wish he would disappear," Nina Burton-Harris had said. "At the end of the day, you just want to move on and live a decent life."

· Andrew O'Hagan's latest novel, Be Near Me, is published by Faber & Faber
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

The Sunday Times November 19, 2006

Treasury cuts Reid jail plan
David Cracknell, Political Editor
GORDON BROWN has questioned key parts of John Reid’s new “get tough” prison sentencing plans, leaked cabinet letters have revealed.

In what may be seen as another demonstration of the rivalry over who takes the lead on crime and security, the chancellor is challenging the cost of the home secretary’s proposals.

According to an exchange of confidential letters, the Treasury has asked Reid to cut costs by using more suspended sentences, electronic tagging and bail for offenders rather than create more “inflationary” pressures on the beleaguered prison and probation services.

The tension between the camps has risen in recent weeks since Reid has publicly refused to rule out standing against Brown for the premiership. The home secretary was dismissive of Tony Blair’s “endorsement” of Brown as his successor last week, and Reid’s aides have claimed in recent weeks that the Treasury has blocked his plans to double the number of new prison places.

A new battle line has been drawn over Reid’s sentencing plans, due to be published within weeks.

Stephen Timms, Brown’s chief secretary to the Treasury, has written to the Home Office to suggest Reid’s plans will create “substantial new pressure” on the prison and probation services.

He points out that the home secretary’s proposals for extending supervision of persistent offenders could cost the equivalent of 450 extra prison places — adding tens of millions of pounds to taxpayers’ bills. Timms says he “could not agree” to such an expensive programme.

The Treasury minister also urges Reid to come up with more creative ways “to stabilise sentencing and manage the prison population” by using more suspended sentences, fines and community orders.

The clash is revealed in a letter sent to cabinet this month by John Prescott, who is seeking to broker a compromise.

In his letter, dated November 8, the deputy prime minister reveals a split high up in government over a review of sentencing that began in the summer.

The review was prompted after Reid clashed with senior judges in June, accusing them of handing out “unduly lenient” sentences, following the release of a convicted paedophile after just over five years. The Tories blamed the government, saying the judge was merely following the sentencing guidelines in Labour’s own Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Prescott makes clear that the row between the Treasury and Home Office could delay the publication by Reid of plans to toughen up sentencing.

In his letter, headlined “Sentencing consultation”, the deputy prime minister reveals the Treasury and other departments have written to express concerns about Reid’s proposals.

He wrote: “Stephen [Timms] expressed concern at the short deadline. He noted the proposals would create substantial new pressures on the prison and probation services.

“The proposal for extended periods of probation supervision for prolific offenders might require more than 450 additional prison places. He could not agree to the inclusion of this proposal, given the current pressures on custodial capacity and the probation service.”

Timms asked that, before Reid’s proposals are published, the Home Office would have to sign up to an “agreed plan” showing that the “national offender management service” would live within “planned capacity” — Treasury code for not running over budget.

Prescott added: “Further steps would be required to stabilise sentencing and manage the prison population. Stephen wanted the consultation to be used to address the increase in the use of suspended sentence orders as a substitute for low-level community orders . . . Stephen felt that [Reid] should consider what more ambitious steps could be taken to address the declining use of fines.”

Prescott’s letter, to Baroness Scotland, the Home Office minister, and circulated to the cabinet and prime minister, goes on to summarise the result of ministerial consultation on the subject: “You assured Stephen that you would continue to pursue measures to offset the impact of ensuring dangerous offenders are retained in custody, by working with sentencers to stop sentencing drift, addressing the increased use of suspended sentences, and continuing to encourage tagging on bail as an alternative to remand. Stephen has indicated that urgent work to take this forward was a condition of his agreement.”

Sources close to Brown blamed the leak on “rogue elements” trying to “destabilise” the succession.

The devilish advocate

The devilish advocate John Hirst taught himself law in jail, and has never lost a case against the prison service. Erwin James meets up again with the former 'lifer' who won inmates the right to vote

Wednesday October 12, 2005
The Guardian

It began as an act of "devilment", explains John Hirst, the 55-year-old former prisoner who last week defeated the government in the European Court of Human Rights on the issue of voting rights for convicted prisoners. I'm sharing a sofa with him in the cramped, untidy sitting room of the three-bedroom terraced house in Hull that he rents from a private landlord for £60 a week. He works casually, as a driver. His only company in the house is his dog, a lively labrador cross called Rocky - a "rescue dog" - that is clearly loathe to be out of his new owner's sight even for a moment.

"It was October 2000 and I'd been listening to the news in my cell when it came on that the Human Rights Act had been incorporated into UK law, he recalls. "I thought, 'Right!', and I went down the landing and spoke to a couple of other lifers. They were two grumpy old men who always sat at the same table during association, but I knew they had a little bit of legal knowledge. I said: 'Do you fancy setting up a union?' One said: 'They won't allow that.' I said: 'They can't stop us now, we've got the Human Rights Act.'"

In fact he ended up setting up an association, instead of a union, because, he explains, it sounded "less threatening". And here is the devilment. After searching through his library of law books, built up over the 20 years he had already spent inside, he discovered that anyone could set up an association in direct opposition to any other association that was already in existence. "It was obvious," he says, still tickled by the memory. "Prison officers had the Prison Officers' Association, the POA, so I thought, we'll have the AOP, the Association of Prisoners."

As is the way in prison, word got around fast, and soon the minimum of 10 members necessary to form an association had been recruited. After agreeing on a constitution, the members met in Hirst's cell to plan objectives. Somebody suggested pushing for better food. Somebody else proposed conjugal rights. But Hirst had a better idea. "It was when someone mentioned that we should try and lobby the House of Commons," he says. "I'd read about interest groups lobbying and pressuring politicians to change things, but I knew that, as prisoners, we weren't allowed to vote. It was obvious that politicians only take notice of people who do have the vote - that's why there's never been any real will in parliament to take prison reform seriously. I decided to find out why we weren't allowed to vote."

During his research, he read books on the British constitution and studied the suffragette movement. Eventually, he felt confident enough to mount a legal challenge to the government. It wasn't the first time that he had decided to take legal action to address his grievances in prison.

Hirst was sent to prison for life after being convicted of the manslaughter of his landlady, Bronia Burton, in 1979. She had asked Hirst to bring in some coal. Hirst felt he was being "nagged". He says this caused him to "snap" and attack Burton, hitting her several times on the head with the blunt end of an axe taken from the garden shed. After hearing all the evidence, the court found that he had acted with "diminished responsibility". He eventually received a tariff of 15 years, but served a total of 25 before being released in October last year. He believes his activities as a litigant against the Prison Service and Home Office are the main reason he had to serve the extra years.

Locked in solitary

Hirst proved to be the most prolific prisoner litigant of modern times - and, he says, like Perry Mason and Rumpole of the Bailey, he never lost a case against the Prison Service. He won the right of prisoners on segregation punishment to keep their beds in their cells during the day, and overturned the blanket ban on prisoners communicating with the media. He also, after he was kept locked in solitary for 28 days without a break, successfully sued a prison governor for "malfeasance in public office".

It took Hirst a while to settle into prison life. He quickly gained a reputation as a "difficult" prisoner who would stand up against the authorities if he felt that things were not as they should be. "I've always been someone who questions," he says.

There are clues in Hirst's early years that give some indication of the attitude he exhibited in prison. He was born in Hull in 1950. A year later, his mother gave birth to his brother, and soon afterwards his father left home. A year after that, unable to cope with the children, his mother handed him and his brother into the care of a Dr Barnardo's home in South Yorkshire. By the time he was seven, he and his brother were in their fourth foster parent placement and Hirst had a history of bed wetting and soiling. "We were all over the place," he says.

His bad behaviour caused the foster parents to send him back to the institution, but he would return intermittently for holidays. When he was 10, a primary school teacher described him as "vulnerable, easily hurt, good sense of humour, never bored or fed up, willing, with a nice social manner, very loving to animals". Yet by the time he was 13, his foster mother reported her concerns about Hirst's temperament. "John gets furious easily," she said, adding that she was "afraid of what he might do". Incidences of "pilfering" and general bad behaviour continued to be reported.

He left secondary school at 15, with no qualifications, and got a job as page boy in a city hotel. Two months later he was dismissed for "extreme impudence", after arguing about the sugar allocation for the porters. Afterwards, he embarked on a life of casual work and petty crime. "Building sites, burglary and car theft," he says. A series of prison terms, ranging from six months to five years, followed until he was 30, when he was sentenced to life. "The wetting and soiling never stopped until I went to prison," he says.

As a lifer, he was moved around the system regularly, and frequently spent periods in prison segregation units. In 1989, he attacked a prison officer. He says that on that day the officer had "offered out" (challenged to a fight) a number of prisoners. Hirst was working as a food- serving orderly, and one of the "perks" was extra milk for his cornflakes. The officer stopped the extra milk and, when Hirst argued, he says the officer offered him out. The ensuing violence left the officer in an intensive care unit for some days. Hirst was segregated immediately and later transferred to a special high security unit in Hull prison.

The unit was experimental, designed to hold at most a dozen prisoners marked down as being among the most difficult and dangerous in the system. Ironically, the unit provided prisoners with better treatment and conditions than would have been available to them otherwise.

Hirst began to read more. Stephen Shaw, now prisons ombudsman but then director of the Prison Reform Trust, visited the unit and gave Hirst a copy of a book published by the trust, Prison Rules: A Working Guide. Armed with the correct information, he successfully sued the prison governor for compensation regarding a quantity of his property that had disappeared during his earlier transfer. "The first law book I read was on administrative law," he says. "I opened it up on a chapter on power and the abuse of power. I thought: 'This is what prison is all about.' Suddenly, my brain seemed to kick into gear. I wanted more books. I had them sent in, or teachers would bring them for me. My brain was insatiable for knowledge of the law." So does he see himself as anti-authority. "Not at all," he says. "I'm just anti the abuse of authority."

As we talk, I am reminded of the time that I knew John Hirst when we were fellow prisoners on the same wing in a closed prison in 1994. I didn't know him well, but I knew of his formidable reputation for legal knowledge. Everybody on the wing knew where his cell was. He had a sign on his cell door: Prison Law Centre. Underneath, another sign proclaimed: Free Legal Advice. Every morning before breakfast he had a queue outside his cell waiting patiently to take advantage of his legal skills and his straining shelves of law books.

Legal eagle

Hirst did not discriminate. Even prison officers were known to open his door occasionally during "bang up" to ask for advice on problems affecting them inside or outside the prison, and the self-taught legal eagle was always happy to assist - although not all prison officials were impressed. A psychologist reported that he "showed no remorse for the people he had litigated against".

His first success in the property case marked the beginning of a preoccupation with the law and prison conditions that has left modern law books littered with dozens of references to his cases: Hirst v (numerous prison governors), Hirst v Secretary of State for the Home Department; and, in relation to last week's ECHR judgment, Hirst v UK.

When I get up to leave, the dog bounds into action, yelping and excited for some exercise. "Shut up, Rocky," Hirst says gently, stroking and hugging the animal. "Silly dog." I ask him about his plans for the future. "I'm going to keep on fighting," he says. Any regrets? "No," he says, and then thinks for a second and adds: "Well, just one. If I could go back to the night of the offence and change it, I would."

As quotes go, it does jump out of the page at you: "It's not like I'm killing someone now because there's no lids for my jam jars". It is an off the cuff remark, and at the same time I am making a self judgement of a continuing acceptable risk to the public. Not that I killed for that reason in the first place. True, there was an outburst captured by Andrew O'Hagan. I had let him into my personal space to conduct an interview for a piece he was writing for the Guardian Weekend magazine. It appeared in print on 18 November 2006, my 56th birthday, and I was informed of this by my friend Lucy sending me a text. I went out and bought a copy of the Guardian. Sometime later I went to Lucy's house to collect my birthday present, and she asked what I thought of the article. I said that I liked the photo, and that I had only scanned the article quickly and that I would need to read it a couple of more times before I was able to respond properly. I did add that initially I thought that it was less than flattering.

The subheading appears to be a mixture of two sides to the story, mine and the victim's daughter, and the writer being judgemental. Andrew O'Hagan appears to have used artistic licence to describe the area I live in as being decayed, I am not proud of the neighbourhood but I have seen worse. And he describes pushing my doorbell. This is fiction because I have a gothic looking doorknocker. He says he just knew that a dog would start barking as soon as he pressed the bell. He maybe psychic, if not observant, but as soon as he entered the gateway the sensor on the CCTV camera would detect his presence and a audible "beep!" would alert the dog if he had not already sensed the intruder and barked his warning to me. In my view, the writer has probably got his timing of the events confused in his mind because of his apprehension at meeting me.

It is not as though I have a sign above the door like that at Dartmoor Prison "Abandon all hope ye who enter here". He lived to tell the tale, for what it's worth. It is a well written article from an established author. It's not what I would have like to have seen, or written myself. But, it is realtively accurate and he is entitled to his opinion and I support the notion of freedom of expression. At least it wasn't a hatchet job like the gutter press are fond of doing on me. I had forgotten that the idea was to tackle the story from two different angles. I got confused with sentencing which is what Duncan Campbell wrote about. So, to be confronted with the victim's daughter again was uncomfortable. She is unforgiving and wants me dead. I cannot say that I blame her for holding these views. She wants to transfer some of the guilt she is feeling onto me, and I won't wear it. I did suggest in a Ch4 news programme, that she needed to move on. It is interesting to note that Andrew O'Hagan ends the article quoting her saying, "At the end of the day, you just want to move on and live a decent life". My sentiments exactly. This is what I had to do mentally, move on, and now I try to live a decent life with what time I have got left.

Yesterday, Tony Blair came out with the Queen's speech. I noticed that he failed to address the issue of his government's continued breach of prisoners human rights to vote. Given that Ireland has fulfilled its obligation to the Convention on this issue, there really is no excuse for Tony Blair failing to act. I am not happy about Tony Blair remaining in power if he does not support human rights. What makes it worse is that he introduced the Human Rights Act (1998), into domestic law. Clearly, Tony Blair is a law breaker. That makes him not fit for purpose, he should resign or be removed from office for setting a bad example.

IPRT welcomes introduction of prisoner voting legislation
Date: 18 October, 2006

On 5 October, the Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2006 reached second stage debate in the Dáil. When passed, this legislation will enable prisoners to vote in forthcoming elections by postal ballots.

The IPRT has been lobbying the Government and Opposition parties on the issue of prisoner voting rights since the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2004 that blanket bans on prisoner voting contravened the European Convention on Human Rights.

The IPRT welcomed the introduction of the Bill by Local Government Minister Dick Roche, and was pleased that it received all party support in the legislature.


Following the second stage debate, the Bill will go to committee. The IPRT was asked by the Government to provide a written submission on the proposed legislation in advance of the committee hearings. This submission was made in mid-October. In it, the IPRT welcomed the Bill, and made a number of technical proposals to modify aspects of the legislation with the goal of ensuring prisoners are best able to register and vote at election time.

The Government has stated that it hopes the Bill will become law before Christmas.

It is disappointing that this story from the Grauniad has not received more coverage in other newspapers and media outlets. It is a subject that should have the public going hopping mad, instead they go about their daily lives with their heads buried in the sand...

Prison whistleblower lifts lid on 'regime of torture'


· Violence at Wormwood Scrubs involved 160 staff
· Knowledge went higher than admitted, says report

Vikram Dodd
Monday November 13, 2006
The Guardian

More than 160 prison officers were involved in inflicting and covering up a regime of torture which saw savage beatings, death threats and sexual assault inflicted on inmates, a secret report reveals today.

The Guardian has learned full details of the Prison Service's reports on a nine-year reign of terror at Wormwood Scrubs in west London. Many incidents which the Prison Service had publicly refused to admit are acknowledged in the reports, which remained confidential until now. Some managers colluded in the abuse and turned a blind eye, says one report, which brands the terror as the worst case of prisoner abuse in modern history with 164 officers involved from 1992 to 2001.

Article continues
The author of one report, Peter Quinn, has decided to turn whistleblower and told the Guardian that there was a real possibility of inmates being assaulted today by officers who got away with their abuse. Mr Quinn's report, which was prepared in 2004, found more than 100 officers who had been involved in or turned a blind eye to the assaults still working in the Prison Service, with more than 50 still at Wormwood Scrubs. He said: "Because they have not been disciplined and because there's been no inquiry, those still remaining in the Prison Service may well feel they've got away with it and can assault prisoners again. Because there were no consequences they may feel invulnerable."

The documents and Mr Quinn's statements show knowledge of the abuse went much higher and involvement was more widespread than officially admitted. The reports were obtained under freedom of information requests and have fuelled demands for a full inquiry into the scandal, which the government has opposed.

Mr Quinn, a prison governor with 30 years' service, said he was shocked by what he found. The report described the assaults as "a prolonged period of staff brutality ... Often this approximated to torture, and was of greater gravity than in any British prison, at least over the past 40 years ... There has never before been such a concentration of sustained malpractice as illustrated in this review."

Blatantly falsified records were signed off by managers. Paperwork on the day of one assault shows the names of the staff on duty being recorded as officers "Nobody", "Officer Invisible, Non-existent and Absent". Mr Quinn's review concluded an inquiry should be held. But that decision was overturned by the then home secretary, David Blunkett, a position his successors have stuck to.

The Quinn report said: "A public or other official inquiry would be a manifestation of public accountability from which policy makers, senior managers and governors could learn."

Last week the current home secretary, John Reid, used Wormwood Scrubs as a backdrop for a speech announcing reforms in the probation service. The jail has improved since 2001, but other jails are still dogged by allegations of abuse. A report by the official prisons inspector, Anne Owers, in October found that one in eight inmates at Wandsworth jail claimed to have been assaulted or kicked by staff.

The prison was at the centre of a police investigation which began in 1998. Three officers were jailed for violence and 24 were cleared or had the cases against them dropped. The Prison Service dismissed six officers, including three cleared on appeal.

The Prison Service paid nearly £2m in compensation to settle claims for assault, with £2m spent in legal fees. One inmate was paid £100,000 after saying an officer raped him, which Mr Quinn says he believes. The Quinn report said disciplinary charges against officers could not be brought because of patchy or inaccurate record keeping, and because too much time had elapsed.

Solicitor Daniel Machover, whose dogged work secured the Prison Service reports, said: "A public inquiry would help the government to learn crucial lessons."

A Home Office statement said: "The government does not believe that there is a need for any further inquiry. The management of Wormwood Scrubs has vastly improved, the internal investigations were thorough and critical and the vast majority of the recommendations have been implemented."

Backstory

The review by Peter Quinn into allegations of assault at Wormwood Scrubs was ordered by ministers the day after the Guardian reported revelations about the prison in December 2003. The paper reported that after legal proceedings brought by inmates who had suffered at the hands of officers, the Prison Service had admitted 14 prisoners had been assaulted.

In one incident, an Irish inmate was choked as eight officers beat him, with one shouting for him to call him "English master". Others were left with broken bones; one was so terrified that he slashed his wrists. On several occasions officers psychologically tortured prisoners by threatening to hang them.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, has displayed that he too is not fit for purpose and therefore should not become the Home Secretary. I refer to his comments that it has set a disastrous precedent for a party to settle out of court when faced with an indefensible case. This is not a disastrous precedent, it is a well established principle of English law that a party who has been injured can sue the offending party. It is common sense to pay up rather than incur extra costs trying to defend the indefensible.

What got David Davis's goat up was that the Home Secretary has abused prisoners over failing to allow them to have the treatment they were entitled to under the NHS. That is, methadone as a heroin substitute whilst they were weaned off drugs. The Home Secretary forced the prisoners to suffer cold turkey in an attempt to save money. The message from David Davis is clear, he wants the opportunity to abuse prisoners and not suffer any responsible accountability.

I am disappointed to read in prisonworks.org that I missed a challenge by John East to anybody to prove that prison doesn't work. Apparently, Alan Drew made a halfhearted attempt at accepting the challenge but then bottled out and joined the otherside. It takes two to tango, so I accept your challenge John East. There is no debate if only one side speaks up. I am reminded of the advice from publishers that authors should only write about what they know about. I don't believe that either John East or Alan Drew know what they are talking about. They take a positivist approach and begin with an assumption, this is followed by so-called argument which is supposed to support the assumption. However, if the critical approach is employed instead, which attacks the assumption, and the assumption falls, so does the so-called argument that follows. I believe that John East and Alan Drew have built a house of cards, and will set out to prove them wrong for using a foundation stone that is not supportive. When an author like Jack Higgins wrote The Eagle Has Landed, he craftily wove fact and fiction together and leaves the reader wondering how much of the yarn is true. It becomes all the more believable if the blend is just right, I suspect that this is what John East and Alan Drew have done. So, it a question of separating the chaff from the wheat. Or, as I call it, getting the shovel out to plough through the bullshit.

TV Licensing abandons case against unlicensed TV owner

OUT-LAW News, 10/11/2006

A former prisoner at the forefront of prison law advocacy has overturned a TV licensing conviction on appeal. John Hirst said that he used his television only for watching videos, DVDs and CCTV footage of his own house but was found 'technically guilty'.

Hirst, who tells this week's OUT-LAW Radio about the case, represented himself at Hull Magistrates' Court despite suffering from Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism. Again representing himself, he won his case on appeal to the Hull Crown Court when the TV Licensing Authority decided not to defend the case.

Hirst claimed that the interview on which his conviction was based was improperly carried out when representatives of TV Licensing visited his home. An unusual verdict at the Magistrates' Court found him 'technically guilty' but gave him a complete discharge.

Hirst said that he thinks that is because the court believed him that he did not view television broadcasts on his set. "That was when I knew they believed I was telling the truth," he said.

Despite the fact that Hirst was discharged, he took the appeal on a point of principle. "The TV Licencing Authority assume if you say that you don't watch your TV for live broadcasts you're a liar," Hirst told OUT-LAW Radio. "It's still down to the prosecution to prove guilt, not for the assumption to be there that you are guilty and you need to prove innocence."

"As far as I am concerned there is nothing such as 'technically guilty' in English law, you are either innocent or you are guilty," he said.

Hirst is an expert in prison reform. Convicted for manslaughter in 1979 he was a violent prisoner who was moved from prison to prison. In the late 1980s he applied for an experimental educational programme and learned that prisoners had the right to air their grievances through official channels that he said prisoners were never told about.

Diverting his energy to legitimate protest he successfully used the Human Rights Act to challenge the governments' attempts to ban prisoners from speaking to the media and in 2000 formed the first prisoners' representative group, the Association of Prisoners.

Hirst believes that if more prisoners knew about their legal rights they would not have to conduct riots to voice their objections to their treatment. "I realised that I could now start complaining and receiving responses to complaints rather than start throwing the desk around and being violent," he said.

It was a sense of injustice that led him to take his TV licence case as far as he did. "It began with a whole lot of letters that came, each letter got more and more threatening as it went along," he said. "It was a whole lot of assumptions that I was doing something wrong."

"I have admitted to offences as sever as manslaughter and arson, so I'm not going to lie on something as piddling as a TV Licence," he said. "They got that wrong, they picked on the wrong person."

When contacted, the TV Licensing Authority did not say why they did not defend the Crown Court appeal.

See: OUT-LAW Radio

"Judges given more sentencing powers", claims the Guardian headline in an article by Matt Weaver, 9 November 2006. This is contradicted by the first paragraph which begins, "Judges are to get powers...". It annoys me that the Guardian has sunk to the gutter level of the Sun in its attention grabbing headlines. It does not appear to matter that the headline is not true. Whatever happened to integrity in journalism?

This is another attempt by the home secretary John Reid to restore public confidence in the Criminal Justice System. In my view, public confidence is gained by seeing a system that works and not seeing a system that is continually failing. These so-called new measures have been tried before. It is rather like trying to stick a soggy plaster on the hole in the Titanic.

Why is John Reid looking towards the American system to bring their ideas over here when they have failed over there? If it is success he is looking for, he only has to look as far as the Netherlands where they have a Criminal Justice System that works.

To be continued...