My delicious dinner — behind bars

ONE of the highlights of my husband’s tenure at the Department of Justice was a lunch at The Clink restaurant in Brixton Prison.

It’s not the swishest of venues and, if I remember rightly the cutlery was plastic. But once past the security bars and buzzers, the place felt much like any other trendy restaurant — with one exception: all the staff were inmates.

I was hugely impressed by the quality of the cooking. And now three out of the four Clink restaurants — in Cheshire, Cardiff and Surrey — have been rated top in their area on TripAdvisor, while the one at Brixton Prison now ranks third out of 18,162 in London.

In some ways, the food isn’t the point of The Clink. The point is providing a programme of rehabilitation that gives prisoners real skills with real value in the outside world. Prison should be about more than just porridge: The Clink is proof it’s possible.