Inside story

One of the most depressing environments to find oneself in is the prison visitors' waiting room. Every so often we go off 'inside' to have a conference with a client who is just too serious an alleged villain to have it safely on the 'outside'. We arrive in good time, either in central London or god knows where in the middle of the countryside, and we queue up at the gate and eventually begin that peculiar process of being locked up.

After all the checks and the searches and the locking away of your mobile phone we all assemble and then wait. Look around: here we see in real terms one of the true and profound costs of prison. Here are the families who are waiting to visit. What gets me most is the children. There are wives and girlfriends chatting, or looking anxious, or bored. I wonder what news is being imparted. Is it good, banal or bad? Will it just be chit chat about the fence and a problem with the car, or will it be about divorce, or illness or other grave concerns? There is an hour to get it out and talk about it. I never know what is worse '“ the families and the people who are or seem totally at home and at ease, as if they are visiting a relative's house or the doctor's surgery, or the anxious and embarrassed and distressed? It seems singularly depressing that children can find the concept and environment of prison visiting 'normal'.

There is then the escorted walk across a compound or within a wing of a building, and then the expectant room full of orange bibbed men who are eagerly awaiting the visit. And then it is all normal, it is chatter and maybe cups of tea and normal. There are warders walking around but the room is brightly lit. And then I wonder what news is being prized out of the loved one who is the prisoner? Is it bad '“ the appeal failed? Bullying? Drugs? Or is it good '“ an earlier release on a tag, a reduction in sentence, a good move within the wing and so on?

We dish out prison in the UK far more than many other countries. It isn't really clear why, in some ways. Perhaps we are a very tolerant society until someone crosses a line and then they drop off a cliff; perhaps we have a strong retributive streak '“ the worst of public opinion and tabloid attitudes. Or maybe our society is just more violent and dishonest than others? Recently there was a newspaper poll that said that we as a society are less honest than we used to be. Various categories of honesty/dishonesty were put to people and a lot of plain lies '“ like lying on a CV, keeping money found in the street '“ seemed to be no big deal to many people today. Do we now just value getting 'stuff' and having it all to think that morality is something that we can opt into or out of as we see fit?

Recently there have been several newspaper stories of lawyers who have been convicted of dishonesty and they too are off serving sentences. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have been within the system and then find yourself the subject of the system. Do we all have that terror? Obviously we have had MPs and police officers convicted and imprisoned. I wonder what the prison visiting experience is like for those families.

Harrowing experiences

On television at the moment is a drama called Prisoners' Wives. I was rather sniffy about the idea without having watched it or read anything about it, thinking it was going to be a bit Footballers' Wives but with bars instead of goalposts, but I was wrong. This week was harrowing '“ the middle class mum of a bullied son tries to buy drugs for her son to give his tormentors, and then '“ ironically having bought drugs from the nice boy next door '“ goes through the humiliation of concealing the drugs, then later a strip search after her son chokes trying to swallow the stash. She is brilliantly played by the actress '“ a totally shredded, despairing, bewildered woman who nearly gets caught. Some quick thinking and neighbourly love from another girl and then her friend saves the situation, and also guarantees the boy protection from his bullies '“ again, an irony that decency flourishes in the oddest places.

Rather like real time footage of drunks in A&E, I wonder what the effect of showing that episode of Prisoners' Wives in schools would be. Deterrence is always the best form of crime prevention, and perhaps if we all saw what we would be doing to our mothers and our sisters if we get sentenced and realise that they have to live a prison sentence of sorts too, then perhaps some might think twice. And perhaps we should show the same clip at law school and Bar school and police training college and on induction as an MP '“ because what prison visiting shows is that nobody is above the law, and we all hurt in the same way, some more than others, whoever we are.