26 Years Behind Bars

Paul Laxton

Description

The book is written from the perspective of a participant observer. It is not strictly an autobiography or a history, although it has elements of both, as it would fail without them. It is intended for both the general reader and criminal justice professionals. My intention is that the book is educational, showing the prison system over three decades in the context of social, political and organisational change, in particular the impact of the decline of deference, the growth of public managerialism and the rise of political correctness. The trenchant opinions expressed are based on intellectual rumination, observation of human behaviour, and personal and professional experience. I have deliberately chosen a thematic approach for the book so that explanation and information work in tandem, giving a unique insight into the modern prison service and the workings of the public sector.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528956246
• Langue: English

Extrait

26 Years Behind Bars
The Recollections of a Prison Governor
Paul Laxton
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-01-31
26 Years Behind Bars About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Prisons and the Society They Serve Chapter 3 Prisoners Chapter 4 Prison Officers Chapter 5 Prison Governors Chapter 6 Prison Workers Miscellany Chapter 7 Prisons and Politicians Chapter 8 Prison Service Inspectors and Reformers Chapter 9 Prison Service Employment Practices and the Headquarters Culture Chapter 10 Prison Service Staff Corruption and Discipline Chapter 11 Postscript: A Prison System in Crisis
About the Author
Paul Laxton was born in Darwen, Lancashire in December 1952. He was educated at St Mary’s College, Blackburn, which was then a Roman Catholic Direct Grant Grammar School for Boys. In 1979, the author graduated from Keele University with a Bachelor of Education degree (upper second class honours) in history and education. He taught at High Schools in King’s Lynn and Newcastle-under-Lyme before joining the Prison Service as a uniformed officer in 1984. The author served at nine different jails, rising to hold posts as Deputy Governor at Dover, Ford and Lewes prisons, before retiring in 2010. An active trade unionist, he served on the National Executive Committee of the Prison Governors Association from 2007 and was awarded Distinguished Life Membership on retirement. After leaving the service, he moved to West Yorkshire with his wife, Leonore, where he keeps himself busy as Editor of the Retired Governors Newsletter, Chair of the West Yorkshire Civil Service Pensioners’ Alliance, and as an active member of the Campaign for Real Ale. When he can find the time, few things make him happier than a day at the races. Paul Laxton is a lifelong Blackburn Rovers supporter and a member at Lancashire County Cricket Club.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my former colleagues in the Prison Service, who despite the massive spending and staffing cuts, and the indifference of politicians and public alike, keep on doing a superb job under the most trying working conditions in a generation.
Copyright Information ©
Paul Laxton (2020)
The right of Paul Laxton to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788788472 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528956246 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
To my long-suffering wife, Leonore, for her unstinting support and quiet acceptance of frequent and lengthy retreats to my study.
Chapter 1

Introduction
I formally joined Her Majesty’s Prison Service on 8 May 1984 having taken my entry test at Leicester on 1 st October the previous year, and having been interviewed at Norwich on 22 December 1983. My recall does not extend to knowing when the letter of acceptance arrived, except that it was some weeks later, and neither can I recall the medical examination. As ever in the Civil Service the wheels ground slowly. The only criminal justice connection to my seniority date, as it was known, that I can find is that 8 th May is Gary Glitter’s birthday. Rather more pertinent and better known is that it is also the anniversary of VE day. My final day in the Prison Service was 14 October 2010, curiously enough the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. On reflection, the coincidences seem very apt given the extent to which I felt embattled in the latter part of my service as my hopes of career advancement were met with a blank wall of senior civil servants and their acolytes of which more is said in Chapter 9.
I can recall certain events from the first day with almost as much clarity as the last. Walking up to the gates of HMP Stafford in the same lounge suit that I had worn for my wedding some two years earlier, I was filled with natural trepidation about whether or not I had done the right thing in abandoning the familiar world of school teaching for the alien world of prison. The Governor of Stafford at the time was the late Colin Heald, a formidable man who dominated a room and in front of whom we swore the oath of allegiance. Even though I am a confirmed unbeliever, I could not summon up the courage to ask to affirm, rather than swear. Later that morning, the four of us who had reported that day sat on a swivel chair to be photographed. We were told with great relish that this chair was perched on what had once been the trapdoor for the gallows at Stafford. Whether this was true or not, I cannot say with absolute confidence. The last execution at Stafford actually took place as far back as 1914. The prison was closed for civilian use in 1916 and did not re-open again until 1940. During World War II, it was used as an overspill local prison and so did not have a direct relationship with the courts that could hand out the death sentence. After the war, Stafford became a training prison, which it remains to this day. A working gallows was therefore not needed. However, the accommodation used to take photographs at HMP Bedford where I served from 1991 to 1993 was most certainly based in the old hanging shed last used for the execution of James Hanratty, the A6 murderer, in May 1962. The building was demolished in 1993 after a Category B prisoner who had broken out of his cell used the old hanging shed as a bridge to the perimeter wall and made good his escape. After the demolition, many staff obtained gate passes to take out bricks from the building as souvenirs.
For the record, I will list the establishments and HQ divisions where I served for over 26 years, but otherwise this book takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach and these will fit into the narrative to illustrate the theme under review. After completing an initial four weeks of induction to the service at Stafford, it was off to the Officer Training School at Wakefield for eight weeks before being posted to HM Detention Centre Werrington House, close to my then home in Stoke-On-Trent. There I remained as a Prison Officer until October 1990. In that year, I had been accepted on to what was then the new Accelerated Promotion Scheme, and so I was off to Wakefield again; this time to the now defunct Staff College at Love Lane just by the prison, as a member of APS 1 for six months of management training before being posted to HMP Bedford as a Principal Officer; thus missing out the Senior Officer rank. The uniformed rank structure is explained in detail in Chapter 4. I served at Bedford from April 1991 to October 1993 and after leaving the Accelerated Promotion scheme transferred to Wakefield which still houses the largest concentration of sex offenders in Europe, many of them Category A. Having been promoted to the junior Governor grade, Governor 5, I transferred to HMP Woodhill, then a local prison, in May 1995. Two years later I was promoted in situ to Head of Operations and Security in what had just become a high security establishment. In November 1998, I moved on for a brief sojourn as Head of Security and Regimes Training at Prison Service College Newbold Revel near Rugby. I returned to the field in January 2000 as Deputy Governor of HM Young Offender Institution Dover and in April 2001 moved sideways to be Deputy Governor of Ford, an open prison in West Sussex that has had its fair share of negative publicity in recent years. During my tenure at Ford I was Acting Governor for three months pending the appointment of a new ‘number one’. In January 2005, it was time for a stint at what was then Surrey and Sussex Area Office in Woking for what was euphemistically called development. Nevertheless in the same year I finally passed the Assessment Centre and was now eligible for promotion to in-charge Governor as a fully accredited Senior Operational Manager, to use the terminology employed by the Prison service. I would never be promoted substantively to in-charge Governor and had to content myself with a stint as Temporary ‘Number One’ at HMP Coldingley for three months in the summer of 2006. The following year I moved to Lewes for my third Deputy Governor post and remained there until May 2010. My final posting was to Headquarters in May of 2010, regarded by many of us as the equivalent of exile to a Siberian Power Station, the fate suffered by former Soviet Premier Georgy Malenkov (1902–88), for a low key role as a functionary in Population Management Unit. Five months later it was all over. I departed at the conclusion of the Annual Conference of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), of which I was a National Executive Committee member. I shall say more about the PGA in chapters 5, 9 and 10.
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) is reputed to have said that all political careers end in failure. It may explain why so many former senior politicians feel a need to write their memoirs. Powell himself was a notable exception although he does have an admiring biographer in Simon Heffer. It is fair to say that the overriding purpose of most memoirs is to set the record straight and justify the author’s actions at critical points in their career. Politicians believe that their reputations are unfairly traduced by the media, and by supposedly loyal colleagues who frequently provide the media with the stories that determine their reputation. The desire to set the record straight is therefore an u