What prison taught me

00:00 05:45

Peter Hitchens has narrated this article for you to listen to.

I confess I never expected to see myself going to the lavatory on prime-time national TV. In fact, the expedition was a failure. Sharing a cell, especially with a young man with a record for GBH, is a very constipating experience. But when I accepted Shine TV’s proposal that I should submit to living alongside a large number of former prisoners, in a real but decommissioned jail, I had agreed to almost anything that might happen. Including that.

Dozens of cameras covered us the whole time from every angle. We wore microphones around our necks. It is impossible to guard your tongue the whole time, and so my exclamation of ‘at last!’ slipped out. And I can see why they used it. I wondered, during the whole four days I was inside Shrewsbury Prison, just how genuine the experience was. Sometimes it felt very genuine indeed.

I confess here that I was truly afraid of what might happen. The building itself, with its low arched doorways and narrow tunnel-like cells, oppresses the spirit and encourages miserable, lonely thoughts. Cunningly, the film-makers refused – to begin with – to let me have the novel and the history book I had brought with me, though they allowed me my Prayer Book and Bible. The First Book of Kings has much to recommend it, as do the 39 Articles and the Forms of Prayer to Be Used at Sea, but they’re no substitute for history or popular fiction, and I was left to draw on my imagination quite a bit. It did not always take me where I wished to go.

It was all very well to know that the ex-prisoners were reformed, but I am an annoying person at the best of times. My plummy voice alone is nowadays close to a provocation, and I learned long ago to keep my mouth shut on public transport late at night. As for my opinions, these are just as unpopular among the criminal classes as they are in Blairite salons. And there were dark corners where the cameras could not see and where I might easily have ‘fallen downstairs’. Some of the retired criminals were genuinely frightening, as those who watch Banged Up will notice, and I was subjected, on entry, to a sort of outburst of mob fury in which all those involved gave a very good imitation of being hostile to me.

When I decided it would be weedy to keep my views on drugs to myself at a session on rehabilitation, the explosion of temper which followed was unwelcome but not surprising. I have since rather enjoyed the way many drug liberals have rejoiced in this scene – as if being shouted at by convicted criminals invalidates the opinions of the person being shouted at. How does that work? And yet I am very glad I did it.

Many of the ex-prisoners, when offstage, showed me much generosity and kindness. Whatever my opinions and background, and however posh my voice, they appreciated that I had volunteered for an unpleasant experience in the hope of finding out more than I knew – and perhaps helping others to do so. The same, I think, went for the former prison officers whose role in our jails is so absurdly undervalued.

When it was all over, I saw those who had taken part as blood brothers, bound together by an experience nobody else had ever had. One, the fearsome, multi-tattooed Chet (with whom I had rowed over drugs), later softened towards me and admitted it was a good thing that I, who would normally have crossed the street to avoid him, had now met him face to face and listened to what he had to say. And so it was. Some people have also said nice things about my encounter with Tom, my cellmate. The programme showed a brief moment during which I read the Bible to him. In fact we read to each other for long periods. And we talked, very personally, far into the night – I only realised later that, in exchange for some profound and moving confidences from him, I had told him some things I would not normally tell a living soul, which of course ended up in the programme. Well, again, why not?

My even more profound interactions with Akhi, a very devout Muslim, who still bears the gruesome consequences of a horrible stab wound, do not seem to have attracted the editors’ attention. So I will say here, because it will always matter to me, that very late one night we ended up, after many hours of quiet conversation, praying side by side, one Christian and one Muslim. You see, it was almost real.

We were actually banged up for hours. When we were not locked in small rooms, we were powerless and fretful. Not since boarding school have I spent so much time in the compulsory company of so many male persons, heard so many filthy jokes, or gone to a gym. It was squalid, dreary and lonely and I could not wait for it to end. It was also funny, moving and, like so many grim experiences, pretty strongly religious.

The TV people, when they approached me, were a bit puzzled when I said ‘yes’. I suspect that several others had turned them down (this is how I get all my TV gigs). So I tried to explain. I said that I would be ashamed of myself for the rest of my life if I did not do it. I had many times expressed trenchant opinions on prisons and what was wrong with them. What would they be worth if, when asked to get as close as reasonably possible to actual prison, I refused? In which case, you may ask if I have now changed those opinions. To which I reply: ‘Not in the slightest.’ But perhaps I love my fellow men a little better.