- \n
- Books<\/a><\/li>\n
- Prisons<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
25 November, 2013<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/files_u28_books-levin.jpg\" "\\"Feature")
<\/p>\nI\u00a0first met Vicky Pryce at a dinner party in May 2010, a couple of weeks after her husband, Chris Huhne, left her for his former aide Carina Trimingham. She wept throughout, telling me one minute how much they loved each other, the next how vile he was for leaving her. She asked if we could meet for coffee and I agreed. It was a routine we kept up for months. She wept while I listened. \u00a0<\/p>\n
A year later, a Sunday newspaper revealed that Vicky had taken her now ex-husband\u2019s penalty points for speeding so he didn\u2019t lose his driving licence. She was charged with perverting the course of justice and served two months of an eight-month prison sentence. This comprised four days in Holloway and just over eight weeks in East Sutton Park open prison for women in Kent. \u00a0<\/p>\n
I have a particular interest in prisons as I spend much of my spare time as a lay monitor at a London men\u2019s prison trying to ensure that prisoners are treated fairly, so I was particularly interested in Vicky\u2019s book. I was disappointed that it contained nothing about her guilt or remorse. \u201cThis book will not dwell on the case or what went before it,\u201d she states firmly. Nor are there any personal revelations or signs of self-awareness. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The book doesn\u2019t work as a narrative or an analysis of women in prison. The chapter on her first day at Holloway, which could be a real eye-opener for a smart, respected economist like herself, offers little about the prison except that she learnt how to use \u201cfreely provided tampons to block draughts on the grilles\u201d before we are whisked away to her speciality, the world of economics, her work on the financial crisis in Cyprus and an \u201cinordinate amount of time in the Overseas Development Administration providing an economic recovery plan\u2026for Zanzibar\u201d.\u00a0 This information is included, she tells us, because it is evidence of how she knew she would cope in jail. She lost me there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On her second day, she received 20 letters. \u201cAn officer said that in all his time at Holloway he had never seen anyone receive so much post in one day\u2026the girls (prisoners) all came to my cell to marvel at the number of letters on my bed.\u201d At East Sutton Park, she is given the job of cleaning the dining room after breakfast and lunch, which she tackles efficiently and well. In one or other prison she meets a \u201clovely South American girl\u201d, \u201ca lovely Caribbean girl\u201d, \u201ca lovely South African girl\u201d, \u201ca lovely Italian girl\u201d and a \u201cconvert Muslim vegetarian with a heart of gold who was in prison for the fourth time\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She relates how the prisoners were all \u201clovely, kind and helpful\u201d and rushed around getting her \u201ca soft pillow, a duvet, a duvet cover\u201d. She makes them sound more like girls from an Enid Blyton jolly-hockey-sticks boarding school with Vicky the most popular girl in the class rather than the mentally unwell, addicts and damaged individuals I\u2019ve come across in ten years of volunteering in a prison.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
She sees probation officers in \u201creally sweet\u201d offices within the prison building. The prison holds a family day which some of her children and grandchildren attend. It is the only day visitors can bring food into the prison and Vicky requests prawns, smoked salmon, Parma ham, Gruy\u00e8re cheese, strawberries and cream. \u201cTo this day I do not understand the policy that does not allow visitors to bring treats.\u201d I can tell her that it is because it is the ideal way to smuggle drugs, SIM cards or other illicit material into the prison. \u00a0<\/p>\n
She is released, given the standard \u00a349 and is tagged at home that evening. The tag came off two months later.<\/p>\n
The book is wholly self-serving, with not a jot of introspection. We learn that \u201cno one seemed to think I should be in prison at all\u201d, whether they were a fellow guest at a chattering classes dinner party in Islington or a fellow convict.\u00a0 Vicky is also surprisingly naive. She writes that most of the women in prison were there because they were \u201cforced\u201d to do something wrong by their husbands, boyfriends, brothers or fathers. Not once, however, does it occur to her that most prisoners, whether male or female, insist they \u201cdidn\u2019t do it\u201d or blame others for their situation. They are also adept at telling you what they think you want to hear.<\/p>\n
In the final section of the book she explores issues such as the cost of keeping people in prison and the alternatives to prison for women. But again she shows her naivety by complaining about the lack of access to the internet, which would, of course, be a godsend to drug barons and other criminals who want to continue their activities while still inside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She gave ten big prison rubbish bags full of \u201cbooks and papers and lots of letters\u201d to relatives and friends to take away before she was released. It\u2019s a pity she didn\u2019t put the notes for her book in one of them and leave it out for the binmen.<\/p>\n
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\n YARPP Thumbnails <\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
\n![\"\"](\"\/standpoint\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Volgograd_and_the_Motherland_statue.jpg\"\/)
Monuments and men<\/a>
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\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/standpointmag.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/standpoint1.jpg\"\/)
An ark in the deluge<\/a><\/p>\nWhat to read next<\/h6>\n
YARPP Thumbnails <\/p>\n
<\/h3>\n
\nMonuments and men<\/a>
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\nAn ark in the deluge<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bland, self-serving and naive, Vicky Price\u2019s ‘prison memoir’ contains not a jot of insight or introspection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6860,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ondrocks2000.com\/standpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
- Prisons<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n