No Joy-ride in Jail

Philip Bray published an autobiography this year of his working life as an Irish Prison Officer called "Inside Man". It is plainly and sympathetically told, as illustrated by these few paragraphs taken from it:

"Prisoners spent a lot of time inside those miserable, weeping cells. A lot of them told me that time didn't start for them until they were locked away at night. That was the roughest time for them. In the late 1970s, they were on their own. It wasn't good long ago, especially if you were on remand. The cells were very bare, and remand prisoners didn't get the cleanest cell as there was a constant turnover of prisoners. There was no radio, no television. You might have a book, but once the lights went out at 10pm, that was gone too.

In any case, a lot of the prisoners couldn't read or had limited literary skills. They had been let down by every one. Often, the parents didn't have the skills or support to guide them. Judges had the power to send young children away for years into the Church gulags, many for offences that, today, look very minor indeed, like skipping school. And they sent plenty of them off. When these children complained about the abuse they suffered, they were not believed. The schools were unable to teach them to read and write which limited their chances of getting any kind of proper work. Anyway their addresses alone could bar them from even an interview. They didn't trust the gardai, the clergy, politicians - nobody in authority was seen as a help. They were treated like second-class citizens and they knew it. There were battered and had no support of any kind, no jobs and no influence. Ireland had a culture of pulling strings - I had to pull strings to get a phone because there was a two-year waiting list. These guys had no strings to pull. They were ground down by poverty and ignorance. Ignorance is not stupidity. As a rule, the prisoners had limited education, but that didn't make them thick, so we tried to treat them with dignity..."

More details at: Inside Man by Philip Bray (9780717144815) - Books at Borders

When singer Morrissey was asked in an interview by Q magazine's Stuart Maconie in 1992, could he survive in prison, his answer was both flippant and insightful:
"Only as a stand-up comedian. No, prison would probably be the making of me. It would be the beginning of life. Freedom doesn't always mean freedom. I'd probably prosper. We all need a bit of restriction."