Finally, finally, the news is exposing what an appalling mess our prison service is in. For the first time ever the Queen, a Tory Prime Minister, the Justice Secretary, the BBC, both  prisoners and staff alike are all singing the same tune the pesky Inspectors of Prisons and irritating campaigners – once dismissed as idealistic, bleeding heart liberals and ‘soft’ on crime – have been singing for decades. There’s no going back now and I am in my element!

Prisons filled the headlines of last week’s media. We saw the rusty bars of our Criminal Justice System being rattled by the Prison Reform Bill announced in the Queen’s Speech and hailed as the “biggest shake-up of the prison system since Victorian times”. There was the BBC’s inside coverage of HMP Wandsworth, truly shocking footage of a lawless human jungle of drugs, violence, squalor and terror, right in the midst of our consumer-, digital- and sugar-fuelled society. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36327325?SThisFB) That the BBC was reporting on the state of our prisons as if it were breaking news, would be amusing if it weren’t so tragic to those of us who have been working or living in these environments for years and saying as much. Never the less, many of us welcome the exposure and the steps being taken, such as giving more autonomy to governors in six Reform Prisons to create their own regimes. But the scale of the problems that desperately need addressing – like sentencing laws, over-crowding, under-funding, under-staffing, the increase in violence through the widespread availability of legal highs like Spice – dwarf the measures outlined in the bill making it look hopelessly inadequate and above all desperately slow.

You can read the main proposals of the Prison Reform Bill included in the Queen’s Speech  here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/biggest-shake-up-of-prison-system-announced-as-part-of-queens-speech. But what I find makes more exciting reading (!) is Dame Sally Coates’s Prison Education Review, which was commissioned by Michael Gove, Justice Secretary, and also released on Wednesday 18^th May:  https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/524013/education-review-report.pdf

I was fortunate enough to have had an opportunity earlier this year to meet her and contribute my ideas on the vital role of the arts within prison education (You can read some of them here: http://www.angelafindlaytalks.com/the-case-for-the-arts/ or come to one of my Talks on the subject http://www.angelafindlaytalks.com/speaker-3/prison-public/ ) So, it was with huge joy that I saw these ideas included in the foreword and dotted throughout the excellent report.

• “Many prisoners will have previously had unsatisfactory experiences of the classroom. They will need encouragement and support to take their first learning steps. This should include greater provision of high quality creative arts provision, and Personal and Social Development courses. Both improve self-knowledge, develop self-confidence and therefore help tackle reoffending.”
• “The provision of art, drama and music courses is not a core part of current OLASS arrangements. Where they do operate, and where there have been one-off projects or performances with visiting arts companies, they are often the first thing that prisoners, staff and Governors tell me. The arts are one route towards engaging prisoners when they have had negative experience of traditional classroom subjects, or struggle with self-esteem and communication. They can be the first step towards building confidence for more formal learning…
• “There should be no restriction on the use of education funding to support the creative arts, Personal and Social Development opportunities. These can be used to engage prisoners in education and support them to make progress against their Personal Learning Plan.”

Dame Sally Coates really listened to all those with whom she consulted. Her recommendations for education – if implemented – would genuinely be the “biggest shake up since Victorian times” and would bring about real and lasting change for everybody: the prisoners, the staff, the government, the taxpayer, and society in general. I just pray they are now taken on without further delay  because as one audience member said after one of my recent talks on the subject: “What you are saying is so bloody logical, such common sense. So why on earth isn’t it just being done?” I had no answer for him.

PRISON Part 3 will follow next week after I have taken part in The Forgiveness Project’s 3-day RESTORE programme in HMP Parc.