Key changes are needed
WATCHING HER MAJESTY’S PRISON: NORWICH ( ITV) last night, one thing seemed very clear. If you want to create a class of people who continually commit crimes and end up living unproductive lives in prison then you can’t do better than the prison system.
Separated from support networks, locked up with little to do and lots of drugs, chances of future, honest employment crippled, it’s no wonder that so many of the people interviewed on last night’s show were in for second and third stretches.
The prison, to be fair, seemed to be doing its best to help break the cycle. Family visiting was encouraged, a brilliant scheme was getting locked- up dads to record bedtime stories for their children. The most trusted prisoners were working their way slowly towards being allowed regular home stays.
On another front the authorities were attacking the supply lines of drugs to help inmates kick their habits and avoid the inside feuds and violence that come with debts.
But in all that the great Catch 22 revealed itself. We caught up with two sympathetic but dutiful guards whose role was to open and read every incoming and outgoing letter. How many prisoners, wives and girlfriends said what they really meant when they knew every word was being read? How many didn’t bother staying in touch at all?
How many wives were like Nick Grady’s, prepared to bring her three young children past the sniffer dogs and the body searches for some time with their father? How many families just decided to drift apart?
As a look inside a prison ( no doubt a censored one), this programme had its upsides.
The guards seemed humane, the prisoners ( with one notable exception) seemed serious about getting their lives back on track. Contrary to the stories about Play Stations and pizza deliveries, HMP Norwich looked like a place where privileges had to be earned and could be swiftly lost. There were good things about the system. But it still seemed like a way of producing prisoners rather than preventing them.
Continuing a season of uniquely personal missions, HORIZON: ICE STATION ANTARCTICA ( BBC2) saw weatherman Peter Gibbs take a nostalgic trip to his first workplace. This wasn’t a TV studio or the Met Office though. It involved travelling 3,000 miles south of Cape Town on an icebreaker.
Fresh out of university, the young Gibbs had signed up for a two- year stint on Antarctica’s Halley Research Station. It made you wonder if jobs for bright science graduates had been so scarce in 1979 or if some weathergirl had broken Peter’s heart.
There was plenty of low- level science in his return trip to Halley, a look at the research that goes on there, an overview of how the ice caps drive the planet’s climate. Unusually, for any programme where the climate crops up, this one didn’t focus on doom.
The hole in the ozone layer was mending itself slowly. The giant crack forming right next to the station was presented as part of the cycle, rather than a disaster.
More to the point, by building the latest version of the station on skis, they’d prepared in advance to move it out of danger. Human ingenuity was plainly carrying on uninterrupted down at the South Pole. Perhaps one day it can save the planet.