Despite this salutary record, recent and future cutbacks are strangling the regime. As the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales, Anne Owers, noted in August, financial efficiency savings take little account of Grendon’s role, reducing time out of cell and canceling groups, while limiting the informal interaction with staff that supports the therapeutic process.
Grendon doesn’t work for everyone, but for those who survive it, the results are astonishing. So it’s equally astonishing that, nearly 50 years on, it remains an experiment, viewed by the rest of the prison service as at best a fig leaf, at worst a major pain in the neck.
As for my own time inside, it’s not that enlightening, as it lasted only a day and a night. But I did notice some things. First, how easy it was to cede responsibility. I was without a timepiece, so had to rely on barked commands telling me when to eat, mingle and sleep. I did not feel like Libby any more, carrying standard issue towels and plastic cutlery back to my cell. The unequivocal slam of the wing gate was horrible, even knowing it would be open again at 7am and that I’d done nothing wrong.
I was clearly never going to be an advocate for the prisons-as-holiday-camps school. But even I was shocked by how utterly erasing the most considerate of regimes can be. It is a choice we have, whether to meet man’s inhumanity to man with hope or derision. Grendon is the one place in the country to practice this most dangerous and magical of beliefs — that bad and broken men can redeem themselves.
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