Opening Closed Doors - Find that thrown away key

A Book Review of - Behind These Doors by Alex South

ID: This image shows the inside of a wing of a British Prison with cell doors on either side of a long straight corridor. Copyright owned by Unsplash, 2024.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - ‘A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.’ (www.goodreads.com, 2016).

Thomas Jefferson - “the measure of society is how it treats the weakest members” (www.goodreads.com, 2016).

Mahatma Gandhi - "The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members" (Elevate, 2024).

Do you subscribe to the notion that those who go to prison should have the key thrown away and forgotten about? Is it soft to believe in what these learned individuals believed? One such person who truly believed in rehabilitation of offenders like Jefferson and Dostoyevsky is a person who you may not expect to hear such sentiments from - a senior prison officer within His Majesties Prison and Probation Service or HMPPS - Alex South. Alex was a Custody Manager (one level behind the wing governor) who work for just over 10 years in high and medium risk prisons in England. In 2023 she published a book entitled Behind Closed Doors - Stories of strength , suffering and survival in prison which was awarded the BBC Radio 4 Book of The Week. This book is jam packed from cover to cover with compassion, understanding, anger, hate, love and heart break. Spending more time with men who are hooked on Spice, Crack or Hooch, some who have committed violent or sexual crimes, suffer from extreme personality or mental health disorders has a profound effect on your own wellbeing. Carrying the suffering of others is a heavy burden to bare. As a mental health professional specialising in Forensics, I can vouch for how Alex and other prison officers feel. The difference between them and me is that I am trained to deal with that burden - prison officers are not! Alex rightly draws to our attention to the fact that apart from a one off call helpline (a more recent thing) staff mental wellbeing, including training staff to handle things in a psychological way, is nowhere to be seen.

Alex tries to help us see into the working life of her former colleagues. Former I hear you say? Yes - due to total burn out. Alex informs us of the fact that burn our or mental exhaustion is increasingly common within the prison service. A good friend of mine once said that "an empty sack can not stand up". In other words, you can keep on taking without replenishing because it will not be long before you collapse. The Ministry of Justice has had its budgets cut in ways that other public services have not seen before for over 10 years now. Sadly, this seems to have carried on under the new regime in the United Kingdom (UK). This will mean that education, rehabilitation, staffing, housing and employment initiatives that have shown to reduce crime and pressure on existing staff will continue to be non-existant unless a charity provides them and even then management say no. The prison service will continue to haemorrhage good staff like Alex South until things change or collapse and it is on the brink of doing just that.

This book also helps us understand the world of "lifers" another words individuals who have been given long sentences for serious crimes like Rape and Homicide whole life sentences such as serial killers etc. Alex explains that due to the length of their sentence and the fact that many will not ever be released or may be an OAP if ever released by the Parole Board (a judicial tribunal like a court of law with extensive powers in criminal cases), lifers are given some minor concessions. She emphasises that these people have very little to live for and a high proportion would kill themselves by suicide if not for these slight concessions. This would cause so many problems for the staff looking after them and their families. Other areas of prison life Alex covers in her insightful work is exercise time, education, internal politics of prisoners, life in a cell, solitary confinement to name but a few. Her book shines a bright light on this hidden and forgotten world - one which many in society do not give a second thought to. Alex explains that many who live near HMP Wormwood Scrubs (it is also referred to as Scrubs) and 'local' prison's and Young Offenders Institutions (YOI's or secure children's homes) like it that handle the local Crown and Magistrates Courts recently detained men, women and children - will walk right passed its extremely high perimeter walls covered in barbed wire and metal netting not giving it another thought as they go about their every day actives. Some may not even know its is there at all!

Maybe it is time we ALL opened our eyes and paid attention to them. The book rightly reminds us that we are all affected by crime in some shape or form and that it is in our interest and the interests of our loved ones that prisons rehabilitate those whom they hold locked away from society. At present this is not the case - as keeping men, women and children locked in a tiny box room near on 24 hours a day 7 days a week with no access to education, healthy food, health care, exercise and even basis human rights such as adequate sanitation, washing facilities and ventilation is most certainly not an incentive to change ones ways. Alex highlights that rather it just makes those vulnerable, damaged and victimised individuals more angry and frustrated at a system that has consistently let them down long before they started committing crime. Over 95% of offenders were victims as children and young adults. They were exposed to domestic violence, being raped, sold for sex, starved, violently assaulted by family including parents, tortured and the list goes on and on. And these are not the few but are the many. The majority of prisoners have chronic mental ill health and are neurodivergent (also known as learning difficulties and disabilities).

Just like the many professionals who are littered across the covers of this book telling us how brilliant and insightful this book is, I have to join their ranks. Reading this magnificent publication is a must. If you did not think that our prisons warrant our attention - you will after reading this book. We have to thank Alex for being brave enough to shed spot light that many a politician would rather us forget about.

Behind These Doors - Stories of Strength, Suffering and Survival in Prison. Author - Alex South. Hard Back Edition. (2023). ISBN: 978-1-399-70755-8. RRP £16.99 Published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, UK. Printed and bound in the UK. Available internationally from all good book stores, major supermarkets, online stores and Libraries. Non-Fiction. True Crime.