Straw clamps down on prison comedy classes
Justice Secretary accused of 'gross overreaction' against arts courses in jails after press reports spark stand-up row
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Comedy School director Keith Palmer said: 'We were told the project needed to stop immediately because of a request from Jack Straw'
Jack Straw has ordered a clampdown on activities designed to rehabilitate criminals, after he was embarrassed by revelations that some prisoners at high-security Whitemoor prison have been getting lessons in stand-up comedy .
Critics claim the move by the Secretary of State for Justice is "lunacy" and a "gross overreaction", threatening hundreds of rehabilitation programmes.
Now, the Prisons Service has warned governors to ensure all activities are "acceptable, purposeful and meet the public acceptability test". In a leaked memo, seen by The Independent on Sunday, governors have been told they must consider how activities "might be perceived by the public and victims" and avoid "indefensible criticism" that undermine public confidence in the Prison Service.
But experts say the clampdown has led to a curb on scores of programmes which use the theatre and the arts to rehabilitate prisoners.
In an outspoken attack, former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Lord Ramsbotham, described the move as "lunacy". "The Justice Secretary threw all the arts organisations out of Whitemoor prison and eventually produced this extraordinary order saying that only activities that would be approved of by the public would be allowed.
"Who's going to be the judge? It was a gross overreaction. What the voluntary sector does in prisons is work to help people rehabilitate. If you say you really are trying to protect the public, you'll damage that, if you don't allow rehabilitation."
The Comedy School – which has used stand-up classes to improve prisoners' social and literacy skills – was an immediate victim of the clampdown. It was pulled out of Whitemoor prison following tabloid newspaper outrage.
Comedy School director Keith Palmer said: "We were told the project needed to stop immediately because of a request from Jack Straw. I wouldn't mind if it was a new idea, but we've been doing this programme for 10 years now. I'm trying to understand what other areas of criminal justice The Sun gets to decide."
Juliet Lyon of the Prison Reform Trust said: "Draconian cuts and fear of tabloid headlines will reduce prisons to human warehouses and staff to mere turnkeys. Shocking self-harm and reconviction rates ought to be the public acceptability tests that keep the justice secretary awake at night."
Fine Cell Work, a charity which teaches sewing to prisoners and sells their work, fears the new approach might see their projects barred.
Executive director Katie Emck said: "Prison disorder is caused by inactivity and prisoners desperately need things to do. As for value for money, there are hundreds of charities, working in prisons for free, that are now under threat."
David Hanson, the Justice minister, said yesterday: "The types of courses and the manner in which they are delivered must be appropriate. What happens inside the prison gates has ramifications outside, on victims and their families, and on taxpayers."
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Comments
For a while back there, during the Blunkett years, memories of Straw's pathetic hard-man posturing faded. But now he's back, a classic playground bully, picking on people who can't fight back while cheered on by a little gang of insecure tabloid editors who have to pander to their and their readers' outsized inferiority complexes.
The truth was that the prison officers were given an extra hour at home with their families, so that meant that prisoners were in their cells for an extra hour before unlock.
Then the senior prison officer who had dressed as Santa for the visiting children of Styal prison, was told he could no longer do it because Howard was scared the newspapers would find out.
Now we have Straw, a man like his name, blown over in one breath by the tabloids. No inner authority, no strength.
Education and rehabilitation have been abandoned in order to make the the building and running of prisons attractive to the private sector. Education and rehabilitation is a visible cost which does not attract votes from an uneducated public who fail to appreciate the hidden costs of recidivism.
Where to now Jack? The treadmill and the sewing of hessian mail bags to be burnt. The mail bag workshop was still in operation in Wandsworth prison in 1989. Hessian mail bags sewn by hand by inmates were burnt as they were no longer used by the post office which imported nylon bags from China.
The movement away from the 'treatment model' to one of 'humane containment' is what paved the way for privatisation of prisons. This was sold as a new era of freedoms for prisoners, taking away the State's right to intrude into the psyche of prisoners.
TV sets in cells may be regarded as soft option on the face of things to a taxpayer struggling to pay their extortionate television license fee, but televisions in cells have nothing to do with going soft on prisoners. rather they are a cheap prison officer and also replace expensive education departments.
The Guardian has recently published an interesting article about a juvenile court judge in the States who has admitted receiving a $1.2 million payment from a company which built and runs a prison for juvenile offenders. A scandal which has been dubbed 'Kids for Cash'.
There is a lesson to be learned there as the privatisation of prisons is morally questionable. The interests of politicians and judges must be very carefully scutinised. Is it a coincidence that an explosion in prison populations coincides with the advent of privatised prisons?