INIT Book Reviews

'IN IT' REVIEWS

I sometimes think I know all there is to know about prisons. The delusion comes from spending some 16 years, on and off, behind bars, during a criminal career that spanned over four decades.

Since turning my back on crime, The Guardian newspaper has seen fit to employ me as their prisons correspondent, a post I have held for the last nine years so, although I last left prison some 12 years ago, prison has never really left me.

But of course, nobody knows everything about anything. And I am frequently surprised amazed even at a prison story/issue that lands on my desk. And so it was when the manuscript of “In It” came my way; the tale of one man’s sojourn as a guest of Her Majesty at HMP Bedford and Hollesley Bay. Jonathan Robinson was a “first timer”; nicked for stealing from his employer and sentenced to 15 months.

Given that prison sentences have become much longer since I first trod the penal path, 15 months is “short term”- hardly time for a “shit and a shave” (as us old lags used to opine when a newcomer grumbled about spending a few months with us.)

Not that Robinson moans of his plight, far from it; throughout the tome, he repeatedly shows remorse for his crime and declares he deserved a longer sentence. No wallowing in self-pity for this lad, he just got on with it. Now a free man, he is on a mission to change the system that incarcerated him.

Robinson landed in Bedford jail, a Victorian relic that takes the flotsam and jetsam from the courts of the county it serves. He feared the worst when the gates slammed behind him. Shades of Shawshank Redemption closed around him. Would he be assaulted, robbed, raped?

No such thing of course, as Robinson quickly realised. Far from terrorising him, his fellow travellers helped him traverse the minefield of pettifogging rules and rigmaroles and his only fight was against boredom and bureaucracy.

To deal with the former, he elected to start a diary and recorded his experiences with great perception - and not a little humour. Robinson surveyed that system through an eye that saw more in a few months, than many a prisoner I knew saw in many years. His account immediately drew me back to the wasted wings and landings I knew so well. Seeing them again through his fresh eyes, put me back in the early 1960s when, like Robinson, they were new and equally strange to me.

When I first entered the adult prison system, I was a “star”. No kidding; all first timers wore a red astral sign on their jackets, to denote their lowly stature in the prison pecking order. Don’t ask me why; prison service orders made as little sense then as they do now.

Robinson, the star prisoner, may just turn out to be a star writer. He paints a stunningly accurate picture of the chaos and confusion that exists in prisons like Bedford. These are “local” jails, where prisoners are dumped from courts, categorised and, eventually, shunted around the system. He ended up in Hollesley Bay, an open jail, where he expected to find more order. But the chaos followed him, albeit at a slightly less frenetic pace. I found the account of his travails highly readable; the narrative is colourful and goes at a good gallop. He could turn out to be the penal equivalent of Adrian Mole. Like that spotty kid, Robinson was different from his peers inside. Well educated - he was a helicopter pilot before landing inside - and, I suspect, fairly right wing in his attitude to offenders, before he became one. And though I disagree strongly with some of his views and ideas for reform, I cannot fault his passion for change, or his ability to capture the essence of doing time, in a bloated, failing prison system.

Apparently, a copy of “In It” has been sent to Justice Minister Chris Grayling. It should be required reading for him as he sets about his Transforming Rehabilitation programme.

I am already on record as saying that there are not enough books about the true British prison experience, and this book is a welcome addition to that small number already in print, writes Noel ‘Razor’ Smith. Jonathan Robinson is an engaging writer with an eye for the characters and absurdities you would meet serving a short prison sentence.

His journey from the giddy heights of piloting helicopters, to the ‘earth-with-a-bump’ reality of sharing a cell in a dirty local prison, before being shipped to open conditions, will be a revelation to some. He documents the frustration of trying to get prison staff to do anything in a professional manner, which is a problem faced by thousands of prisoners every single day. His writing style is easy on the eye and the book is written in the form of a diary, which makes it easy to follow his journey.

Jonathan Robinson has discovered what many of us have known for decades, and that is the fact that the British prison system is not fit for purpose (unless that purpose is turning out more and more poorly prepared, bitter, recidivists) and is run, on the whole, by the kind of disinterested incompetent staff who wouldn’t be able to hold down a job stacking shelves in a supermarket.

And far from being filled to the rafters with criminal masterminds thumbing their noses at society whilst being spoon-fed fine cuisine by servile warders (as most of the tabloid press would have you believe), the real prison system is full of mentally ill, poorly educated inadequates who are being warehoused at the average cost to the taxpayer of £38,000 per year each.

Robinson captures the futility and mind-numbing frustration of trying to get anything done in our closed prison estate.

Despite the lip-service and endless rhetoric from self-serving career politicians, the recycling of unworkable ideas and the almost endless talk of ‘rehabilitation’, the British prison system does next to nothing to try and train prisoners, get them working and to turn out decent hardworking members of society. There is no rehabilitation in British prisons. And you are lucky if you can get hold of a toilet roll.

One thing you have to take on board whilst reading this book is that Jonathan Robinson was sentenced to 15 months and served only half of that sentence. He spent time in two of the 133 prisons in the UK, and one of them was an open prison.

"By rights his account of imprisonment should be compared to someone trying to write a travel guide for the continent of Africa whilst sitting in a shack in Gambia, but he has captured the essence of all local prisons and the attitude of those running these places."

There is one jarring note, certainly for me, in this eminently readable book and this is the almost non-stop self-flagellation that appears in every chapter. Yes, we get that you are sorry for what you did to end up in prison, there is no need to insult and degrade yourself at every opportunity.

All in all, Jonathan Robinson has written a book that helps to shine a spotlight on an otherwise murky and secretive world, and for this I applaud him.

This is one book that definitely needed to be written. In It is one man’s journey through the prison system and it gives a very clear view of what works and doesn’t work within that system. What works is the opportunity for prisoners to reflect on what brought them into prison. What doesn’t work is just about everything else except security – and even that was imperfect.

Robinson, a trained pilot and flying instructor who robbed his employer to impress his wife with money, struggles from day one with the uncoordinated and, at times, crazy bureaucracy that prevails throughout the system. The core message of the book is that prison simply does not work as a method for civilising the uncivilised and educating the uneducated. But there’s the rub: that is not what the majority of the British population at large want it to be. Most people simply expect the prison service to lock people up and punish them for their crimes, and that is exactly what it does. However, the very high re-offending rate that results from this approach is something that both policy makers and the author himself try to address.

Through his experience and his writing Robinson spends his entire sentence struggling to come to terms with the difference between what he thinks prison ought to be, “a thriving, self-sufficient, enthusiastic [place] whose occupants … put back in what they’ve been given,” a place run by “enthusiastic staff who give praise [and] good leadership” thus making it an “Efficient, happy ship,” and what it actually is: a place with “Prisoners prevailing in bed, the odious repulsive food littered around the battleground dining room set-dressed by huge slovenly quantities of unwashed plates making up the scenery.”

The book is structured as a day-by-day diary recorded in as-it-happened notes, and this is both a revealing insight into the everyday life of a prisoner but also the book’s biggest weakness. Although he says in the epilogue that a lot of material has been edited out the book still suffers from being at least fifty percent longer than it needs to be to make the point – just as many prison sentences are. What comes through well is the way in which minor snags and an unresponsive system give rise to unnecessary frustrations and routine basic injustices, such not having clothes that fit or food that is edible. All of his very valid observations could have been made without much of the irrelevant details that fill the book and it would have benefitted hugely form being better edited. Although, as Robinson points out, when you have no control or influence over your life, minor issue take on a huge significance and “These life shattering events are important in prison.”

Although repeatedly remorseful about his crime, Robinson still comes across as expecting the National Offender Management Service to be a super-efficient customer service department whose purpose is to improve his opportunities and those of his fellow inmates. This it clearly is not. But, as he points out, there seems to be no justification for the appalling waste of energy, both human and material, that results from prisoners not working during their time inside and the huge amount of money being wasted on unnecessary heating bills and dozens of other inefficiencies.

Despite the strange use of punctuation and speech marks throughout the book, and the lack of thorough editing, Robinson writes well. His metaphor of prison as a film set and each event as a scene played out by characters who he often names after film stars gives a vivid sense of the personalities involved and brings great humour to a tragic set of circumstances. Highly recommended reading for anyone involved in criminal justice policy.

This is the first time Helicopter Life has done a review on an eBook, which reflects the slow but steady change of publishing and even the helicopter industry. It is also, as far as I know, the first time we have reviewed a book which is not strictly speaking about helicopters but it is by a helicopter pilot about his time in gaol.

What surprises me about the latter is that more helicopter instructors are not tempted to steal from their employers. But perhaps they are, and simply resist the temptation. What I mean (in advance of a deluge of letters suggesting I am advocating criminal behaviour) is that very often helicopter pilots are well educated but poorly paid. When travelling with their employer they live a good life, yachts, jets, good hotels, lovely destinations and so forth. But the money they earn is relatively low, consequently when they stop earning they have no safety net, a small, if any, pension (unless they are ex-military which many are not). As they get towards the end of their career (Jonathan Robinson was 48) they, presumably, become more aware of their incipient decrease in living standards.

IN IT is Robinson’s book about someone, himself, who did not resist the temptation and who consequently suffered very greatly. It is in many respects a cautionary tale. He loses his wife, his friends, his job (obviously) and he suffers a lifestyle quite the opposite end of the spectrum from the one he was hoping to achieve when he stole £80,000 (over four years) from his employer. While £80,000 would not actually change his lifestyle very much (he incidentally meets men in gaol who have tax evasion for over £100 million) it might well have been simply a stepping stone to higher amounts.

I liked the book. There are moments when I think he is determined we shall see just how boring it is being in prison as he tells us yet again the food was disgusting, or they are ‘Locked up’ at 17.30. But he writes wittily, the text is full of puns such as “our goal was gaol,” and he clearly wants to deter anyone (not just helicopter pilots) from committing any crime that could land them where he is and often berates himself for his behaviour.

The book is also rather sad, not only because he is clearly devastated by the loss of his wife, but also because of the state of the two prisons, Bedford and Hollesley Bay, in which he is placed. Both the inmates and the staff appear to be totally demoralised by the system in which they work and the staff appear to spend more time playing unkind tricks on the prisoners than trying to regulate the service.

In Hollesley Bay, which is an open prison, he tries to help in the education department and is not only discouraged from doing so but actively reprimanded. He makes it clear that showing any initiative in prisons only makes your own situation and those of other prisoners worse.

Robinson is now out of prison and is trying to interest Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, in his plea for reform. However, we are told the reply from the ministry was: “The government remains committed to making prisons place of hard work and activity giving offenders the opportunity to turn away from crime and live purposeful lives.”

In other words: MYOB.
Illustrations in the book show prison paperwork and I noticed from one that his date of birth is April Fool’s Day. “Where Angels fear to Tread?” Innit.

There's no shortage of prison memoirs these days. It seems that pretty much every literate prisoner is inspired to put pen to paper, whether they be Jeffrey Archer or Denis MacShane. Perhaps the idea of writing a book about your life in the slammer seems like a good way of fighting the deadly boredom of prison, or perhaps it’s a means of recording what, in so many ways, can be a surreal experience.

I must admit that having served what is now regarded as a longer sentence (i.e. four years or over) whenever I’ve been asked to read and review another book about having done time in an English prison, my heart sinks. Too many of these slim reads, often written by ex-cons who have only been in for a few months, are little more than indignant, self-righteous whines about the unfairness of being sent down in the first place. I’m delighted to be able to write that Jonathan Robinson’s first book about prison – IN IT – doesn’t fit the usual stereotype, but then he wasn’t a stereotypical con.

Robinson, a former helicopter pilot – who readily admits that he deserved to get a stretch after having pinched £80,000 from his employer following a meltdown in his own personal life – doesn’t write from the point of view of a fallen celebrity or politician. However, he does observe much of what went on around him with a blend of astonishment, wry humour and insightful analysis.

Like many prison memoirs, IN IT is written in the form of a daily diary, originally penned, as Robinson observes, on HMP paper “invariably two feet or so from a lavatory”. He relates in detail his entire journey into the underworld of our prison system from sentencing – he got 15 months for theft – through a month or so in a Cat-B local (HMP Bedford) to the time he spent at a Cat-D (HMP Hollesley Bay).

This rapid progress to open conditions will be a familiar to pretty much every white collar first-timer in for theft or fraud: a few weeks in a grim Cat-B, followed by a swift transfer for the rest of the custodial part of the sentence. In all, Robinson served four months inside back in 2011.

However, although for most seasoned prisoners this would be seen as little more than the proverbial ‘shit and a shave’, Robinson's time in jail did provide him an opportunity to get a feeling for some of the day to day pointlessness and insanity of imprisonment, as well as a clear sense of the many wasted opportunities that characterise the way in which our prison system fails to achieve one of its own stated objectives: rehabilitating those committed to its custody.

He writes with wit and humour, although much of his subject matter is pretty grim and unpromising. Like many prisoners who aren’t in the grip of dependencies or severe mental illness he manages to see the funny side of some of the absurdities that make up a short custodial sentence.

Robinson also has something of the caricaturist’s ability to paint pictures with his words. Many of the characters he meets along the way, whether prisoners or members of staff, are likened to famous people that they resemble in some way or other. Like Marmite, these descriptive methods will either be loved or hated.

Although his darkest fears about going to prison – being raped or murdered – are, as most cons will confirm, very unlikely occurrences our diarist experienced all the usual 'joys' of adjusting to sharing a tiny pad with a difficult pad mate. He also documents the sheer levels of ineptitude, incompetence and laziness he witnessed around him. And that was just among some of the members of staff he encountered along the way.

In common with other articulate cons from similarly well-educated backgrounds, Robinson sought out useful things that he might be able to do to inside in order to make a difference while banged up. He followed a well-trodden path and trained as a Toe by Toe peer literacy mentor although his account of his struggles to find a meaningful job in the education department will be familiar to any prisoner who has ever tried to make a positive contribution during his or her time inside.

Having served nearly a year in an open nick myself at the end of my own stretch, I found Robinson’s descriptions of life in a different Cat-D fascinating. If anyone who has no personal experience of an open jail has ever wondered just how these strange institutions differ from prisons within the closed estate, then this is definitely the book to read. In many ways I found his observations much more informative – and entertaining – than I did the third volume of Archer’s prison memoirs.

Above all, Robinson’s diary entries provide an insight into the mind-numbing monotony of everyday life inside. He offers readers, most of whom will have little or no experience of prison – other than having watched Porridge on TV – a guided tour of what is essentially expensive human warehousing on an industrial scale. In fact, the importance of a book like IN IT lies in the revelation that little or nothing is actually done inside to help cons change their lives around or to prepare them for release – and this is an issue about which Robinson feels very strongly.

Unlike many white collar ex-prisoners who just want to put the whole sorry saga behind them, he genuinely believes that something needs to be done to make prison work – or at least produce much more positive outcomes, both for inmates and for society as a whole. And he has ideas, which as we all know, can be very dangerous things to have in prison.

Having ruffled a few feathers with his first book, Robinson has since followed it up with a sequel – ON IT – in which he focuses on the failure of politicians, bureaucrats and those running our prisons to address the central question of why prison often fails to work. Some of his ideas may be controversial, but he’s obviously not a man to give up easily.