BANGED UP a mother's story
A lifetime ago, aged 19, I joined the police with, if I’m totally honest, a principal yearning to be looked after. As an employer, this respected profession gave me everything – job security, a decent wage, prospects, status, companionship, a roof over my head, and identity. My self-worth, for an insecure guy lacking in worldly wisdom, was immediate and all that was required of me was to do the bidding of the State. This, roughly speaking, was arresting villains, and imprisoning the more serious offenders. The latter, colloquially referred to as “banging them up,” appeared to me as a fairly robust mechanism complementing both justice and deterrent. After all, who the hell would ever want to return to one of the many dilapidated UK prisons? Not me!
I had visited several prisons when returning remand prisoners after a hearing. HMP Reading, built in 1844, and famous for incarnating Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde fifty-one years later, was the most local and it was grim the most inhospitable place imaginable, until, that is, I entered HMP Holloway erected shortly afterwards. In 1903 it became a female-only prison and was, without doubt, one of the most intimidating places that I had ever visited and I was supposedly on the side of the good guys. But perhaps the most frightening experience was at Haslar juvenile detention center. The manner in which the teen offender that my colleague and I dropped off – as I recall, a sociable guy who talked non-stop football on the journey down – was treated after being sentenced at Bracknell youth court will live with me forever. I get the “short, sharp, shock” treatment, but he was immediately stripped of his dignity and humanity by prison officers who had him standing face to the wall within moments of our arrival.
