Journey to nowhere

Journey to nowhere


For the growing prison population of lifers trapped in a black hole of hopelessness, even death might seem a better alternative, says Erwin James.

Monday June 11, 2007
SocietyGuardian.co.uk

In 1979 the average time a "lifer" spent in prison in the UK was nine years. Now it's around 15 or 16, although minimum terms of 30 years plus are regularly handed down by the courts to those who commit the most serious offences.

As a consequence, "doing life" in a British prison has never been more arduous. Nobody outside is complaining, however, although the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, did comment a while ago that the increasingly long fixed terms given to those whose crimes merit a life sentence means that we are in danger of creating a whole generation of "geriatric lifers".

Most victims of life-sentenced prisoners would be hard pressed to be concerned, I guess. The idea that people who cause suffering to others deserve all they get is a perfectly reasonable one, and there is a still a significant number of the law-abiding majority who believe that life should mean life.

But only around 30 life-sentenced prisoners in fact will serve "natural life" (Ian Huntley and Rose West are perhaps the most easily identified among this group). The majority one day will be released. For the individual serving the time, however, it is a hope than can be difficult to hold on to.

This was brought to the attention of the Italian public recently when more than 300 of their countrymen serving life co-signed a letter from a convicted gangster urging Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, to bring back the death penalty. The letter, written by 52-year-old Carmelo Musumeci who has been in prison for 17 years, was candid. Musumeci said he was tired of "dying a little bit every day". We want to die just once, he said, "and we are asking for our life sentence to be changed to a death sentence".

By all accounts, Musumeci has made great changes in his life in prison. The fact that he has passed high school exams and achieved a degree in law demonstrates how constructively he has used his prison time. But his sentence, he says, "has transformed the light into shadows". He told the president his future was the same as his past, "killing the present and removing every hope".

Doubtless, victims of serious crime and those constantly calling for tougher sentences will have little sympathy for the likes of Musumeci. But there will be many life-sentenced prisoners in the UK who will be able to empathise with him. As someone who has been through the experience and managed to get out the other end, I certainly can.

I remember a fellow prisoner serving life in the next cell to mine sticking a note on his cell door that read: "The light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off." Hopelessness abounds among the lifer population. Many fail to get to the end, some commit suicide, some die of natural causes. Doing life can seem like a hopeless existence, an endless journey to nowhere.

For those who keep going, the struggle not to give in to despair is a tough one. And I think it is going to get worse. In 1979 there were fewer than 2,000 lifers in the system. Now there are 8,000-plus, a figure set to rise spectacularly due to the introduction of the new ISPP (indeterminate sentence for public protection).

Such sentences are usually accompanied by shorter tariffs, perhaps as low as two or three years. In reality the system is not geared to operate at such a pace. And since the sentences are based on risk, it is harder to convince the authorities that risk has been reduced, hence many ISPP prisoners will end up serving not much less than the average life sentence.

Home Office predictions suggest there will be upwards of 20,000 people in prison serving ISPPs by 2015. It should come as no surprise if, sooner rather than later, we hear words similar to those of Carmelo Musumeci and his associates coming from British prison cells.