Ex-con sheds light on filth, fraud, inequality

A Bit of a Stretch: The Diaries of a Prisoner by Chris Atkins (Atlantic, 327pp). Reviewed by Libby Purves.

In my naive youth I thought it a waste to lock up white-collar criminals, rather than imposing arduous penalties and a tag. If they’re not going to mug people, why waste so much money a year jailing them? However, posh inmates have their uses in the ever-frustrating cause of prison reform.

A Jonathan Aitken, Jeffrey Archer, Chris Huhne or Vicky Pryce emerges having grasped at last what inspectors of prisons and charities have said for years: that the system urgently needs resources, imagination and humanity.

The latest ex-con on a mission is Atkins, a documentary maker who, in

2016, got five years for fraud after his involvement in a tax scam to finance his film Starsuckers. He served seven months in Wandsworth before emerging into open prisons and freedom. Most of this lively book, ABitofa Stretch, is about Wandsworth, the filthiest prison by far.

There are descriptions of weary officers good and bad, and troubled inmates who should be in psychiatric hospitals. Cellmates include a Romanian pickpocket and the ‘‘white collar club’’ company of a Deutsche Bank insider trader who becomes his greatest friend. They listen to

Classic FM together and share treats in a more pleasant cell.

That’s the trouble, and I have rarely seen it more baldly admitted. Mirroring outside society, the more educated and affluent simply ‘‘carved out the best jobs and places to live. This was actively enabled by the prison being so understaffed . . . exbankers and accountants were unlikely to abuse these roles by dealing drugs, so were instinctively favoured for trusted jobs’’. This means the rest – disproportionately young black men – have less to do and less time out of their cells. This bubble of white privilege bothered Atkins, as it should.