Camp Hill Prison. More expensive than Eton and, with its garden, possibly more attractive.
THE VIEW FROM HERELET joy be unconfined. At last, a Conservative politician talking sense about our prison system. The excellent Kenneth Clarke has spoken out against our obsession with locking people up, frequently to no effect at all, sometimes to exacerbate criminal tendencies, and always at vast expense.
I hope Mr Clarke, as Justice Secretary, will be able to put into practice what he outlined in his splendid speech and that those who commit crimes will one day be given punishments that reform rather than roughen them.
It will, however, be an occasion of great nostalgia when we are no longer able to say it costs more to keep a prisoner in jail than it does to send a boy to Eton. This is trotted out every time the subject of prisons comes up. Mr Clarke duly mentioned it in his speech. It has become a sort of national dictum.
Nobody ever seems to explain exactly why prison costs more than Eton. One can hardly imagine that the food is better, or the classrooms better equipped, or that the prisoners have more staff clucking around them. They have posh matrons at Eton, called "Dames", who go round tucking each boy up at night with a kindly pat on the head and a bedtime biccie. The prisoners have a screw who shouts, "Lock up!" down the grim galleries before clanging the doors on those spartan cells.
Still, they keep saying it, so I suppose it’s true. Either the prison budget staff must be rubbish, or Eton is tremendously good value. "Send your boy to us! It’s cheaper than Parkhurst and he’ll get a top hat and Latin verbs thrown in!"
Anyway, it’s time for lateral thinking. Some people have to go to prison. It would cost less to send them to Eton. So let’s send them to Eton. The school could establish a special prisoners’ house called "Lags". The inmates would fit in perfectly. They wouldn’t get bored, they’d soon pick up the school slang, and they’d be a great asset in Eton’s famous Wall Game, which closely resembles the nastier sort of jail riot. They could even rise to become Prime Minister one day.
Eton may not quite be ready for this proposal so in the meantime, I suggest a pilot scheme. We have three prisons on the Island, all of them much more expensive to run than Ryde School, which is in itself a snip compared to Eton.
Ryde School has the builders in at the moment, creating some fancy car park and causing a huge nuisance for passing traffic. Let it do its social duty and get the builders to erect a prisoners’ house in a section of this car park. They could call it "Car Parkhurst", have it opened by some bloke off the telly who’s readily available (Geoff Hughes, we’ll let you know the date nearer the time) and then welcome the new intake this September.
The Island will lead the way in penal reform, the nation will save a fortune, and the prisoners will get lovely blazer adorned with the school’s motto "Ut Prosim". That means "That I may Serve".
Couldn’t be more appropriate when the judge has just handed you a 20-year sentence.
Common call to stand up and be counted
I HARDLY know what to make of the Speaker’s admonition to our MP, telling him "not to shriek from a sedentary position".
The last time I saw Mr Turner in a sedentary position, he was watching a black-and-white film about Colditz. No shrieking. On the contrary, he offered me a cup of tea in a most mild-mannered way.
Perhaps some alter ego enters Mr Turner’s soul when he’s in the Commons, causing him to arrange himself in a sedentary position and then shriek?
I can’t help thinking that "shrieking in a sedentary position" sounds uncomfortably like what all too frequently happens in a gynaecological clinic. Or the labour ward. Or a sadomasochist magazine.
I’m with the Speaker. Mr Turner must stop it at once.