I first met Bob Turney, who has sadly died, around 2001. He arrived on the doorstep clutching a ‘well-thumbed’ manuscript. As he stepped inside the telephone rang. It was Lord Longford the UK’s best-known and ever controversial prison reformer: ‘Has Bob arrived safely,’ he continued, as if by way of some welfare enquiry. But the implications were clear, here was an author with friends where it mattered. ‘And I’ve written the Foreword,’ Longford added (for good measure saying that I could call him “Frank”).
What became the first prisoner autobiography under the Waterside Press imprint, I’m Still Standing, was published a year later, ‘A truly remarkable book’ according to Prison Writing. In it Bob described how he survived an upbringing that encompassed poverty, dyslexia, lack of formal education, alcoholism, prison, life on the streets and on the fringes of organised crime. Though he was a minor if regular offender at best, it was here that by comparison with life in ‘normal society’ he felt welcome, protected, valued.
By the 1990s Bob had given up crime altogether, was studying for a degree at Reading University and rehabilitating himself doing voluntary work. Remarkably, he later became a probation officer (the first ex-offender to do so I believe), member of a Youth Justice Team (another first), and a bishop within his own religious community.
Within weeks of the launch of his book at Waterstones in Reading, he was in high demand. Such progress from down-and-out to respected citizen did not escape the attention of the media and he was soon on TV, speaking at conferences on crime and punishment, and working with others to help create a fairer and more effective justice system.
This is how UNLOCK, the National Association of ex-offenders came about and which thrives to this day. Through our joint involvement in the beginnings of that organization, I was introduced to many ex-offenders, famous or not, some of whom wrote books or contributions for us. Of many memorable such occasions I recall lunch at London’s Groucho Club with Bruce Reynold’s, leader of The Great Train Robbery. Fuelled no doubt by a pleasant wine, Bob (who drank lemonade) and teased Bruce about whether there was a so far uncaptured Mr Big. Whether true or not it seems that I am now the only person in the world to carry the burden of Bruce’s muted reply.
Bob Turney’s other books include that with Angela Devlin, a remarkable set of recollections by ex-offenders about how they too turned their lives around, Going Straight: After Crime and Punishment. Throughout his life, Bob remained fascinated (as I do) by the phenomenon of why, when and how at a certain point in their lives some people decide to give up crime.
It is hard to put memories of Bob on paper without recalling his many public appearances – from those in prisons and at criminal justice conferences to addressing the Oxford Union, the students of Eton College and similar high profile engagements. Serious as he could be about his past and his views on solutions to crime he could also bring the house down with demonstrations of the ‘prisoner bowl’, talking sideways out his mouth and using slang only the initiated might understand. These he would compare, misty eyed with the cops of his youth whom he portrayed as mere plods, out of breath from the inevitable chase, which the younger, fitter, absconder always won (before of course seeing the error of his ways!).
Bob’s wife Sue, I know, played an immense part in his success, as have the entire family. Bob himself played a similarly immense part in improving the lives of many others.