The departure of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce from prison yesterday has its lessons for us all, on how to make the most of adverse circumstances. Certainly that’s the happiest view of the news that Vicky Pryce is to publish a book about her experiences, called Prisonomics… yep, usefully echoing the title of her previous book, Greekonomics. That one had the merit that Ms Pryce knew quite a bit about the subject, as a Greek and an economist; but her two months at the soft end of the penal system in East Sutton Park prison in Kent may not give her much of an insight into the condition of women in, say, Holloway, where she spent remarkably little time before being moved.
But I think we know what to make of the book on the basis of her remarks through the publisher, Biteback:
‘I kept a diary while in prison and I have some strong views on how the prison system works, especially with regard to how it treats women. I will use personal experience to back up my arguments but I must be clear that this book is more than a memoir — it will analyse how prison works, and should work, very much from an economic perspective.’
That, I expect, will amount to an argument for not incarcerating women at all, on the basis of their role in the home. We’ve heard this sort of thing before, the argument that women, God love them, aren’t much of a risk to society and they should, where possible, be let off with a little community service instead of prison; it’s the kind of approach favoured by Harriet Harman. I’d say myself this amounts to sex discrimination of the most invidious sort but you can see how it works: absent mothers make for errant children, lost earnings and more social disintegration. I may be doing her an injustice, but I doubt it, somehow.
It would be wrong, though, to begrudge Vicky Pryce the chance of putting her disagreeable experiences to good use and of beginning her rehabilitation as a working economist. Already both she and her former husband have done an unambiguous public service: few members of the middle classes will now consider passing their penalty points onto their spouse without thinking nervously of Mr Huhne and his former wife. Community service wouldn’t have had quite the same effect.
But besides the deterrent effect on the rest of us, the great merit of public figures, or their spouses, going to prison is they shed useful light on the penal system when they emerge. Indeed, it’s an awful pity that they can’t bring the lessons learned back into the House of Commons. Chris Huhne has said that he would like to work with the rehabilitation and re-employment of prisoners, and there is no reason to doubt his sincerity when he says that prison was a ‘humbling and sobering experience’. Jonathan Aiken has done genuinely sterling work with prisoners and former prisoners since serving his own sentence; he’s been in touch with Chris Huhne.
But while Ms Pryce’s Prisonomics will be ‘more than’ a memoir, that doesn’t mean it won’t also serve as an account of the Huhnes’ marriage. It would make quite fascinating reading, obviously, but as an exercise in revenge it really wouldn’t serve her well. We have already been treated to her riveting email exchanges with Sunday Times journalist, Isabel Oakeshott, including her disobliging references to the bisexuality of Carina Trimingham, Chris Huhne’s girlfriend (she was wonderfully un-Lib Dem about it). And if she’s going to make much of her marital history, she should at least go into some detail about the circumstances that led her to leave her first husband, an LSE economist, for Chris Huhne, bringing with her two small daughters and a usefully English surname. It rather compromises her position as a wronged spouse if she’s got form herself.
But honestly, we should wish the two of them well. Their misfortunes have been meat and drink to the rest of us, certainly to the columnist community, and if they seek rehabilitation, it’s no more than we would wish for ourselves.
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