‘GENIUS’ is not a word you expect to see in a book about prisons. Yet there it is, as plain as day, on page 124, of this timely, though heart-wrenching book. Prison policy makers, from government officials through news managers, should be mandated to read at least chapter eight of this book (all 10 pages of it), every year, and then put in writing the three key points they then learn from doing so, with a clear commitment as to how they intend to put them into practice. Following this, the rest of us should then hold them to account, to ensure that they do. Every year.
Jimmy Boyle aptly deploys this astonishing word – ‘genius’ – in his vivid description of the BSU – not, as you might have supposed, to emphasise the introduction of art and creativity into a dank dungeon, but, surprise, surprise, to highlight the Special Unit’s main innovation – ‘a weekly forum where all of us sat to discuss whatever was the issue of the moment.’ His chapter is exceptional – unlike much on forensics, this is really from the horse’s mouth – what our prison legislation results in, from the inside.
What’s unusual about this remarkable book, is that it repeatedly poses the perennial question which confronts each and every one of us, almost daily – just how humane are humans? You don’t have to have come anywhere near a prisoner, or a prison, to benefit from addressing this fundamental challenge.
And in sum, that’s what this book does. It veers to and fro. Some are clearly inspired by the revelation that inside every human being, there’s a lovable person trying to get out. Others are just as adamant that people will never change – once a criminal, always violent – don’t even bother talking to them, let alone trusting them. Yet, as Jimmy Boyle makes as clear as a pike staff – this forum was the essential ingredient that made the Unit what it was, and remains — it’s a beacon and a challenge to all thinking people about what to do with antisocial individuals. A painful challenge, and a costly one – especially in terms of our own prejudices – because, for those who can see it, the message is stark – every wing in every prison should be ‘Special’, in precisely the way outlined here. And why not?
Reading through this book awoke some especially painful personal memories for me. It almost made me weep. In 1994, I actually visited Barlinnie when the Special Unit there, was already dying. I did so, because at that time, I was the consultant psychiatrist to its equivalent in England – the like-named Special Unit in Parkhurst Prison, C-Wing. Again, as in Scotland, I was working with dangerous offenders – here they were judged to be too violent for Broadmoor. While on that visit, I commiserated with Dr David Cooke, the BSU psychological lead at the time. He showed me a paper proving its worth – though not enough to save it. He describes the difficulties he faced in drawing this up, in his detailed contribution to this excellent, and oh-so-necessary book.
I little knew that my own innovative C-Wing was destined to follow the same fate, for the same dastardly reasons, political fears and manoeuvrings, a few years down the line – Grrrrrr! We professionals all knew that C-Wing (and the few other English Special Units of that era) had all been based on Barlinnie, which had started 10 years before – though the mantra at the time was that they hadn’t! We benefited in C-Wing from promoting the same socialising that even today, still seems so needlessly foreign to the prison estate in general.
More, I was especially concerned to unpack childhood trauma – a point that conspicuously failed to transfer to the subsequent English Dangerous and Severe Personality Units (DSPDUs) – a political non-medical disease, the UK Government had invented. Paul (now Lord) Boateng, then Minister of State at the Home Office was later reported to me as saying – “We know who they are – there are about 800 of them – and we’ll collect them all up”. The savage irony is that when, later, the Sainsbury Mental Health Centre reviewed those DSPD units, the blunt conclusion was that HM Prison Service had wasted half a billion pounds, to no effect. A consultant from Broadmoor on hearing of the scheme as it was first announced, said at a conference I attended, that they might as well pay him an additional £70 million, if that’s what they wanted to do, but it wouldn’t make any difference – and it didn’t.
Just to practice what I preach – I’ll conclude with three key points from the specified chapter, as challenged in the opening paragraph. (1) I would start with Jimmy Boyle’s terse yet vivid account of prisoner violence, and how it was handled in the BSU. “Suddenly Larry had a prison officer pinned to the wall with a pair of scissors pressed to his throat. Everyone froze except me and Ben who instinctively grabbed Larry, taking the scissors from him.” (Page 127). Jimmy Boyle comments that he and Ben had to break unwritten prisoners’ rules to do this – and that he and Ben needed time out to recover – but just look how prisoners can help, once you empower them to do so. (2) The strenuous opposition to this more benign approach comes from many quarters – but I would never have guessed that the fact that the BSU was led by a psychologist, Dr Cooke, was an advantage. Being a psychiatrist exposed me to debilitating blasts from my own psychiatric colleagues who adamantly clung (and cling) to their shibboleths. And finally, (3), Jimmy Boyle almost casually mentions that his two immediate comrades had suffered severe childhood abuse. Not so in his case, though his own father had died when he was 4.
After I’d resigned from C-Wing, the Home Office issued a press release, reportedly along the lines of – ‘It’s quite wrong for Dr Johnson to claim he did any good’. What a dismal view of us human beings, mired in prejudice. To begin the slow trek back to civilisation, we need books like this one – read it, heed it, and then act.
Professor Bob Johnson, Consultant Psychiatrist (Retd).
DSc(hon), MRCPsych, MRCGP, PhD(med computing), MA (Psychol), MBCS, DPM, MRCS, School of Psychology, University of Bolton. GMC num. 0400150 https://drbobjohnson.substack.com/
29 September 2024