And now it’s over 30 years on from those Parkhurst days and I am sitting in a café in Manchester. Opposite me is a large self-contained man, an observer cautiously protective of himself. His quietly spoken words reveal a perceptive intelligence. Y is a life sentenced prisoner recently released on licence after many, many years. He has met some of Bob’s [my prison psychiatrist husband’s] men and has a granular experience of different prisons, psychologists, governors, psychiatrists, lawyers, parole boards.
He has read my book, The Prison Psychiatrist’s Wife, and I want to know what he thinks. I know it’s truthful to my experience but is it truthful to his?
‘It’s a really good book Sue,’ he says, ‘we had it hard but Bob’s treatment was even worse. You had no friends. Bob comes home and say “it’s going to be alright don’t worry”, but you knew it wasn’t.’
A sudden hurt hits me. I had thought the pain was all rinsed out but this sudden total understanding penetrated. Turning away I stared through the café window and holding back the unbidden prickling in my eyes mumbled ‘… Ohh.’
‘I know,’ he said.
What empathy to recognise the extremity of the pain … no one ever had. The peculiar pain of toiling, wanting to find an answer in an area of hostile bleakness; finding it, rejoicing in it, making progress only to have his patients, the men, forcibly removed, job stopped, career destroyed and then attacks and prosecution for daring to talk about it.
Y bends down to pat a dog from the next door table who is nosing around his ankles. It’s an elegant dog warmly encased in a fashionable padded coat.
‘Sorry,’ says the owner as she gets up to leave.
‘No problem,’ Y says, ‘I like dogs.’
We continue our conversation.
‘They say that was all a long time ago and it’s all different now.’
‘No,’ Y says, ‘it’s got worse. Anyone who thinks like Bob soon leaves …’
And he goes on to describe the construction of the cage. I knew about the cage, it was specially constructed at enormous expense for one of Bob’s special prisoners after Bob had gone. But hearing the matter of fact way in which Y was describing its location, its construction and its use was more than troubling. This was a conversation too real to bear.
What he was describing was the total and brutal opposite to Bob’s work with the prisoner who was trying to slowly understand and change himself. It was clear too that this had a chilling resonance through the long-term prisoner network. The end of hope as Charlie [Charles Bronson] had written in his letter to Bob.
I learnt that while In prison Y had read about Bob’s work through the articles he wrote for Inside Time, the newspaper for prisoners. He said it had given him some understanding and encouragement. Maybe we had more influence than we ever realised, I thought.
But then Y goes on ‘You can’t even do Open University now,’ he says flatly. The nihilistic enormity of this remark hovers between us. I can only faintly sigh.
‘What helped you most when you were released,’ I asked, hoping, wanting to move on to more positive thoughts.
‘There was nothing! Just interviews with psychologists, with probation officers. All they concentrate on is what you did, not what you are like now.’
It was V, a social worker and Quaker prison chaplain, who met him in prison and against all regulations had kept in constant touch. She was a lifeline to his trust in others and himself.
Outside the café now, we paused to say goodbye. He was going one way, I another. It was then I found myself saying with a quiet throw away bitterness, ‘Ah well … It was an impossible project … doomed from the start, me and Bob were ludicrous.’
‘No,’ he says, ‘they could have just let him carry on and train others and it would have spread to other prisons. It would have been a beacon.’
My thoughts flashed back to the vision Bob and I had shared and now this man was sharing it too. And by sharing he was showing that the truth of what was begun all those years ago still remains.
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘You are right.’
Such ordinary words to close a sad yet life affirming conversation.
© Sue Johnson 2024
The Prison Psychiatrist’s Wife by Sue Johnson is a gripping true story of a Herculean project as Sue Johnson’s husband Bob, recruited to work with notorious offenders at Parkhurst Prison, sets out to discover whether he can change dangerous and violent men.