What's wrong with a bit of drama in C Wing?
By Libby Purves
No amount of tabloid indignation can change this truth: entertainment and arts projects in jails are good for all of us
A month ago in this space, I recorded the dismay spreading through the UK Prison Service as a result of Jack Straw's banning of a well-established comedy course at Whitemoor Prison. Some nasty little toerag outed it to indignant tabloids looking for something to get cross about.
The result, you may recall, was the Justice Secretary's ruling that comedy in prison is “totally unacceptable”, “not a constructive pursuit”, and that all inmate activities - even if not funded by taxpayers - “must be justified to the community”. Comedy sounded too much like fun, even though heaven knows the science of laughter is devoted to laying bare just the kind of stupid failures of judgment that tend to get you into prison in the first place.
A PSI - Prison Service instruction - followed this, laying down formally that all activities must now be judged not only by whether they do any good but by how they “might be perceived by the public”. Sir David Ramsbotham, the former Chief Inspector of Prisons and patron of several prison arts projects, robustly described the PSI as “lunacy”. Organisations that take arts into prison were more cautious, not wanting a fight; but they were scared, disheartened and in some cases had projects abruptly cancelled by understandably nervous governors. Nobody, after all, has defined the parameters of a “public acceptability test”, and where convicts (or even remand prisoners) are concerned some media can work themselves up into a rage over anything better than bread-and-skilly and the lash.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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