A Life Inside: A Prisoner's Notebook (Paperback)

We all think we know something about prison life you know the common presceptions. They use phonecards, they have so many visits a week and so on. But on reading this book you learn what it is really like to be inside and it takes it one more step by introducing us to that unknown group of people called "lifers". It tells us of the closed conditions of the maximum security prisons where you eat, drink and even think when they tell you to. It introduces us to men who for one reason or another have been sent away for the rest of their life. And each one deals with the tarif set in very different ways some surrive, more don't. James wants no sorrow from you, he is grateful for what prison has given him. He has been educated by the prison system. He is thankful for the kind prison officers and others who have advanced him a kind gesture. He agrees with the ideals of the prison system but as only someone who has used the system and knows it he points out its failings. And indeed the failings of the Home Office and authority. He is grateful for the Home Sec. who showed his human side by putting his trust in a lifer and rewarding him with £5.00.

I am glad to say Erwin James surrvied the dispersal prisons, the spurs and the strips to write. Long may he do so.

James, in his first couple of years writing for the Guardian, was not paid; a note at the bottom of each column read: 'Erwin James is serving a life sentence. He has not been paid for this column'. At that point, the fee went to charity, but once James was moved to open conditions and permitted to engage in paid employment, the fee was held in trust for him. Surprisingly, in 2003 the Press Complaints Commission criticised the newspaper for running the column and for paying a serving prisoner for writing; given the plaudits the newspaper has received, and which have been lavished on this book, by people such as Martin Narey, Director of the Prison Service, that decision by the PCC was astounding.

In his columns, James shows the reality of life inside high- and medium-security prisons in a way other, more high-profile, prison memoirs fail to do. We meet fellow prisoners - all pseudonymised - and experience their hopes and disappointments through the clarity of James' writing. He doesn't look for sympathy, and it's clear that he supports the aims of the prison system, but at the same time his accounts leave the reader understanding that it is possible to believe both in the merits of prison as a rehabilitative function and in the need for comprehensive reform. The book is entirely devoid of self-pity; instead we find often harsh accounts of prison life, but interspersed by humour and 'human interest' stories.

We meet Cody, who for the duration of the 20 years he spent 'inside' has protested his innocence; we learn that he has just been released on licence and given leave to appeal. But James also ensures that we understand the unpredictability of the appeal system - it seems as if Cody has little chance of success. (In fact, a recent Guardian column revealed that Cody was successful after all, though given his state of health he may not have much opportunity left to enjoy his freedom).

The effects of the iniquitous tariff system are shown when, in 1994, lifers were finally told the tariffs which had been set by the Home Secretary in their cases: prisoners who had been making progress towards rehabilitation suddenly learned that they faced twice as long remaining on their sentence than they'd anticipated, or in some cases that they would never be released. Some of those receiving bad news on that occasion then committed suicide. Similarly, highlighting another area ripe for reform, James tells us of lifers released on licence who had been recalled to prison for a minor misdemeanour - or, in one case, having been prosecuted for something for which the jury took eight minutes to acquit! - and then faced many more years in prison.

Occasionally, James gives advice to other prisoners as to how to survive a long stretch inside. One thing he doesn't say, but which comes across very clearly from this account, is that without hope it's simply not possible to survive. His preferred piece of advice, however, is: 'Learn to live where you are, and not where you think you want to be.'

James is now, as he was at the date of the final column in this book, in an open prison, in paid employment. In due course, therefore, he should be released on licence and, as Ian Katz, the editor of the Guardian supplement which publishes James' columns and who writes a foreword to this book, notes, he now as a 'well-established career as a writer and journalist'. I hope to read much more of James' work in future, once he is released - and I hope that the Guardian also recognises its responsibility towards the man who has written for the newspaper for the past three years and enhanced its reputation in the process.

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