Prison

Gripped by his habitual despair, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote to a friend in 1872, ‘I am appalled at the state of society. I’m filled with the sadness that must have affected the Romans of the 4th century. I feel irredeemable barbarism rising from the bowels of the earth.’ Warming to his bleak scatological theme, he continued, ‘I have always tried to live in an ivory tower, but a tide of shit is beating at its walls, threatening to undermine it.’ Many commentators would feel that exactly the same words could be applied to modern Britain. According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in the effluence of moral collapse. We inhabit a country supposedly awash with vice and decadence.

The departure of Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce from prison yesterday has its lessons for us all, on how to make the most of adverse circumstances. Certainly that’s the happiest view of the news that Vicky Pryce is to publish a book about her experiences, called Prisonomics… yep, usefully echoing the title of her previous book, Greekonomics. That one had the merit that Ms Pryce knew quite a bit about the subject, as a Greek and an economist; but her two months at the soft end of the penal system in East Sutton Park prison in Kent may not give her much of an insight into the condition of women in, say, Holloway, where she spent remarkably little time before being moved.

The Justice Secretary Ken Clarke – who was away during the disturbances last month – has signalled his return with an uncharacteristically tough piece in today’s Guardian. The reference to the rioters as a “feral underclass” is not language that the penal reform lobby will welcome from their favourite Minister, but it does signal a firmer line from the Justice Secretary: “In my view, the riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes – individuals and families familiar with the justice system, who haven't been changed by their past punishments.

The decisions of Crispin Blunt, the prisons’ minister, are hard to fathom. One wonders why-as the Daily Mail reports today — he allowed a man convicted of killing five people to give an unapologetic interview to a magazine. Blunt’s defence is that it wouldn’t have been right for him to stop it. That may be the case but that doesn’t explain his decision to send a press officer to assist with the whole procedure. Rehabilitating prisoners is vital if we are going to tackle crime in this country. But it is hard to see how this kind of thing — or parties in prison — help that noble aim. Rather they are actions that do nothing but upset the families of victims and undermine public confidence in the judicial system.

The government is determined not to seem like the aggressor in the coming dispute with the unions. It wants to stress that it is being reasonable and David Cameron’s speech today to the Local Government Association will be a classic example of this strategy. At the same time, it is trying to put in place contingency plans so the country can carry on regardless of industrial action. Those close to the coalition’s negotiating team point to how a well developed plan to use the army in place of striking prison officers deterred the Prison Officers Association from taking industrial action over the ‘privatisation’ of a prison.

David Cameron made a great show on Tuesday of pledging to be tough on crime. He bowdlerised the most contentious and liberal elements of Ken Clarke’s proposals and vowed that "the right thing to do is to reform prison and make it work better, not cut sentences."  He insisted that his change of heart was a sign of strength, but even the least cynical observer could detect a sop to the mutinous Tory right. Well, it seems that the withdrawal has not gone far enough. The Sunday Times reports (£) that several backbenchers object to the redrafted Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, on grounds that manifesto pledges have been broken. For example, bail while awaiting trial or sentence will count towards the total jail term for the first time.

When I asked one Tory how things were going the other day, he replied "we’re living by that Silicon Valley phrase: ‘fail fast and fail often’." His argument was that for all that we in the press work ourselves into a frenzy over u-turns, the public don’t much care about them and it is much better to get these things out of the way quickly.   When I challenged him that all these shifts made Cameron look weak, his rejoinder was that as long as the coalition stuck to its deficit reduction programme voters would know that it could hang tough when it needed to.   I suspect that this argument is half-right.

David Cameron hasn’t wasted much time since his return from holiday in dealing with the government’s two biggest political vulnerabilities: its policies on the NHS and criminals. The u-turns have got Cameron into a better place politically but they come at a cost. On the NHS, Cameron has had to water down the Lansley reforms and accept the temporary creation of a two-tier NHS and a highly bureaucratic structure. While on sentencing, Cameron has removed one of the ways that Ken Clarke was trying to save money. But, perhaps, the biggest problem with these u-turns is that they add to the impression that he’s not prepared to stand and fight, that when the going gets tough he gets going.