Winston Churchill said that “the mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country”.
I was put in mind of this when the annual report of the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in west London dropped into my inbox earlier this month. Out of curiosity I printed it out, stapled together its 21 pages and read it on the bus home. It made for both compelling and horrifying reading.
Our first married home was directly behind another massive Victorian prison. Occasionally a quiet Saturday afternoon relaxing in the garden would be pierced by the screeching tyres of high-performance police BMWs, in pursuit (we assumed) of villains attempting to lob contraband over the wall into the exercise yard.
