The view from (recently) inside:
Grauniad again
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The war against freedom
New police powers to stop and question individuals threaten our greatest national asset.
Erwin James
You get an interesting view of outside society from the inside of a prison cell. Nearly all your information comes via the media. In my case it was mostly newspapers and radio, at least for the first 15 years of the 20 I eventually served. The newspapers were usually out of date but the radio gave us the immediacy many of us craved. (It's true that many long term prisoners give up on the "out", preferring to adopt the "I don't want to know" stance and denying the existence of the real world until a release date looms. But many others, of which I was one, stay determined to keep in touch with current events.)
In all our cases the view of "the out" was distorted. I remember the big deal made about speed cameras. At the time I agreed with their introduction. Safety driven traffic control seemed eminently sensible to me. (Been caught speeding twice since my release, now not so sure how good an idea they are, but that's another point.)
Then came cameras in shopping centres. I heard members of the public say, "We'll if we've got nothing to hide what's the problem?" I wasn't sure I agreed with that perspective. I was in jail, but I understood that we lived in a free country. It was a free country that hadn't been good for me -had allowed me to roam from one disaster to another gradually increasing in disasterousness. I roamed the highways and byways looking for a direction, a purpose, a place where I might feel that I belonged. It never came, until justifiably I went to prison for life.
Then I got an education. That was liberating. When I looked back I looked with wonder at how freedom-privileged I'd been. In spite of my disfunction I was allowed to live unaccosted and unmolested by the authorities until I brought myself to their attention. As my prison years rolled by reports on the news about the spread of monitoring mechanisms - more speed cameras, more cctv - appeared to increase, then came the proposed introduction of identity cards. Somebody said, "it's getting like a police state out there." I grew nervous about the extent of the freedom that would be available to me if I ever was released.
One day some time after liberation came I found myself outside the court where I'd been sentenced. I looked up at the big gates of no return through which I'd been ferried in a prisoner transport wagon all those years earlier and Christ did I appreciate my freedom. Nobody asked me who I was. What was I doing there? Where was I going? A policeman walked by. We nodded at each other and smiled.
Another time I spoke to a group of parliamentarians about prison life. "Prison fails for a variety of reasons," I said and expounded on just a few. "But one of the measures of its potential for success," I added, "is the fact that I am able to come here today to talk to you all." I'd driven 250 miles for the meeting. "This visit is also a measure of the extent of the freedoms we enjoy, and which so many of take for granted," I said. I told them how far I'd come "and nobody stopped me to ask me who I was, where I'd been, or where I was going." The learned gentlemen liked that. I could tell by the rousing applause. I knew they weren't applauding me - but the freedoms I'd brought graphically to their attention.
How disappointed those same gentlemen must be by the government's plans to give the police new powers to stop and question people about who they are, where they're been and where they are going. At least I hope they are, and I hope they are going to do all they can to stymie the plans. The police did not ask for the new powers. Apparently one senior officer called the proposal "bizarre." The freedom not to have to explain to the authorities who we are, where we've been or where we're going is too precious to be taken away in such a facile way. The explanation is that it is meant to be another weapon in the police armoury for use in the war on terror. But another war is in danger of emerging it seems to me - a war against freedom.
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