Innocent until proven guilty – but for now, you can stay in the slammer

Main Image : 

Published: 24 June, 2010

At 83,000 the UK’s prison population is the largest in Europe… so something’s clearly not working, argues Illtyd Harrington (above)

SOME years back, several cronies gathered around John Mortimer QC, Rumpole of the Bailey’s alter ego.

Over a nightcap they got around to discussing prison reform and John’s mischievous suggestion was “to make all judges and magistrates serve six  months in jail”.

It all came back to me when I read a New Journal report from the Old Bailey concerning a man aged 23 from Camden who was found not guilty on a murder charge but it went on to say he had been on remand for 13 months in Belmarsh Prison.

Belmarsh is “a hard nick” in an inaccessible part of south-east London, yet the man’s mother payed regular visits and experienced the very stringent regulation systems that apply there.

No provision is made for such visitors who very often have to travel long distances.

Contrary to what is said constantly in the red-top papers about prison life, it is a grim existence inside, with inmates banged up for 23 hours a day.

This sad blot on British prisons requires constant repetition.

The basis of British criminal law is “the assumption of innocence, not the presumption of guilt” but society seems to be putting the emphasis on guilt.

Views framed in ignorance and advanced in recklessness seem to hold sway.

Eminent lawyers and judges are alarmed that the number of prisoners on remand is constantly increasing, waiting for judgment before a judge and jury.

The New Journal article reminded me that our society is based on the rule of law, not upon revenge but justice. 

When he was Conservative home secretary, Michael Howard, screeched at  the Tory party conference, “prison works”.

He forgot to say that the United Kingdom’s prison system has to work overtime to cope with its ballooning population. At 83,000 it is the largest in Europe, so something’s not working.

No one doubts that wrongdoing, intimidation and violence have to be dealt with, but a fly-on-the-wall television programme on everyday life in Wormwood Scrubs caused the liberal-minded governor to talk about “weak and broken people”.

Suicides are not rare. Self-harm or mutilation should not be part of the redeeming process and chronic depression is widespread.

A recent report talked alarmingly about drug abuse fuelled by a few corrupt officers waxing well on human misery.

As the cynical hack says, “it was buried on a news day”.

Inspectors of prisons – I’ve known three – have often been the victims of Home Office obstruction, indifference and intrigue.

This is how they answer charges of appalling neglect in long-stay and overcrowded jails.

If this were applied to the National Health Service, heads would roll and politicians would go red in the face.

Ironically, HM Prison Belmarsh is not far from where the hulks waited to transport convicts to distant Australia, often for petty crimes like stealing bed-linen.

The Penal Code was relentless, unremitting and viciously cruel.

Children were hanged as late as the second part of the 19th century.

Public opinion was chastened by the awful scenes in Abu Ghraib in Iraq and similar conditions of pain in Afghanistan.

Rightly British and American service personnel have been punished for this abuse.

So I come back to the individual story of one man’s acquittal after a very long remand.

I know this will not accelerate prison reform, but it ought to find its way to somebody’s political agenda.

Prisons and prisoners are not vote-winners. Sympathy is a rare commodity inside those walls.

It was Elizabeth Fry, the 19th-century Quaker prison reformer, a stupendous woman, who challenged a corrupt system. The job is vacant.

• Illtyd Harrington is a former deputy leader of the Greater London Council, and a former magistrate