'Podmore displays a humane intelligence throughout'
Check out this brilliant review of John Podmore's Out of Sight, Out of Mind, from Stephen Poole over at The Guardian:
'Prison doesn't work, argues this author, and he should know since he used to run three of them. Latterly governor of HMP Brixton, Podmore has written a rather racily engaging account of prisons policy. Hooking the reader with stories of daring escapes or meetings with notorious criminals (Charles Bronson, apparently, was indignant about other prisoners' littering), he argues that there is too much focus on security and not enough on helping curb drug use, increasing family contact, finding meaningful work, education and support on release. We are, instead, a nation of "incarcerholics". Podmore displays a humane intelligence throughout, and has entertainingly little time for politicians, whom at one point he derides as brief-hopping "amateurs"; previous home secs John Reid and David Blunkett are the targets of especial scorn, while there is wistful admiration for "the Kenneth Clarke 'spring'" at the beginning of the current government. He can't help admiring the abuse prisoners hurled at Michael Howard on a facility tour: "It was sustained and highly imaginative in a very perverted way." There must be ways to harness that creativity, perhaps by inviting the most scatologically adept prisoners to PMQs.'
The failure of the prison system is a problem that is not going to disappear. Reo ffending, overcrowding and corruption must all be addressed. Hard-won experience and remarkable compassion make Out of Sight, Out of Mind a much needed insight into the disa ffected society growing in the shadows of our own – it is a call to arms that we ignore at our peril.