Letters to the Editor | 1 July 2006

Prison doesn’t work

From Peter J.M. Wayne
Sir: That not one but two highly indignant letters to the editor (24 June) should have been occasioned by my humanitarian concerns about children in prison (Books, 17 June) is a sad and disturbing reflection of the cruel and punitive mood that dominates the whole stagnant debate about crime and punishment. Of course Mrs Jettubreck should expect to be able to walk the streets near her home unmolested. But merely to throw these troubled youngsters into jail — a temporary respite at best — at such a critical and impressionable age will only serve to heighten their sense of alienation.
Yes, they need taking in hand, but not by the older, already contaminated prisoners they will meet inside. These wayward boys (and girls) need to be given real and demanding challenges — projects that will benefit them and the community where, let us not forget, they also live. Such schemes need imaginative and vocationally motivated leaders (I would relish such an opportunity were it offered to me) who can connect with the children, make them feel wanted, valued and (dare I say it?) loved for what they are.

The young have always been quick to pick up on what they see around them, good or bad. Send them to prison and they’ll be out in a trice. But next time it won’t be sticks and stones with which Mrs Jettubreck has to contend. Take it from me. I’ve done nearly 25 years in prison. It will be stiletto blades and automatic pistols.
Peter J.M. Wayne
H.M. Prison Wandsworth, London SW18

From M.J. Willington
Sir: I sympathise wholeheartedly with Mrs Jettubreck. Regrettably, the state has in recent years taken draconian steps to strip parents of their right to discipline their children effectively. These ‘feral youths’ now hold the whip hand in our communities and have assumed the status of a protected minority.

Sixteen years ago, at the age of 14, I stole an ice pole en route to school. My father duly administered six of the best across my bare buttocks: lesson learnt! It already seems like a different age.
M.J. Willington
Gillingham, Kent

Cheap heroin, less crime

From Dr Robert Johnston
Sir: Police chiefs do not deserve as much credit as they claim for the fall in crime in New York in the 1990s (‘You can do something about crime’, 24 June). We residents of New York saw Reagan’s ‘war on drugs’ and the 1980 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan push up the price of heroin, allowing Colombian entrepreneurs to flood the US with crack cocaine — after alcohol, the most violence-promoting agent known to man. A popular predictor of felony rates was the number of discarded tiny glass vials (in which crack was sold) at street corners. As the number of these vials exploded, so did violent crime.

Afghanistan’s return as the world’s largest poppy cultivator in the 1990s meant that Mexican and Southeast Asian growers no longer had to satisfy the worldwide demand and were free to supply the US market with very cheap and very pure heroin. Heroin is more widely available than at any time in history — probably more than if it were legal. Addicts simply do not have to commit so much crime to feed their habit.
‘Broken window’ and ‘high visibility’ policing certainly made us feel safer, but the quasi-legalisation of heroin is what did the trick. A similar fall in violence followed the end of Prohibition in 1933.
Robert Johnston
Northampton

Prejudiced

From Mary Kenny
Sir: A further historical point should be added to Olivia Glazebrook’s review of The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Arts, 24 June). The film is indeed anti-British, which may be expected when dealing with the Black and Tans. But it is also odiously prejudiced against the Irish Free State, which was supported by the emphatic majority of Irish people in 1921–22 and upheld by the Catholic Church as the legitimate authority of the nation, and is here characterised as little better than the Black and Tans.

The Free State was an infant democracy in 1922 and the IRA minority set out to sabotage it (before joining it, for the most part, in 1927). Mr Loach is entitled to his perspective on Irish history, which by his own admission is more coloured by his views on Iraq than by any other factor; but it is very far from being the full or fair story about the building of the the Irish state, which is today a successful entity thanks to its Free State foundation.
Mary Kenny
Deal, Kent

Hate crime

From Rod Morris
Sir: Rod Liddle is right on the button (‘Killing a gay man is no worse than killing a disc jockey’, 24 June). Some years ago I arranged to meet a colleague in a Newcastle city centre bar for lunchtime drinks and a snack. I arrived five minutes early and asked the barman for ‘half a lager’, which drew immediate hoots of derision from two lads in Newcastle United shirts, who took exception to my lack of accent. ‘Oooh! A horf of lorger,’ they intoned. ‘How very posh.’ The barman surreptitiously indicated that they had quaffed a few, at which stage I made like a News of the World reporter, muttered an excuse and left. It was a mistake. They caught me up outside and after head-butting me in the face proceeded to kick me around on the pavement to gleeful shouts of ‘Posh southern bastard!’ It was broad daylight and nobody paid any attention.

This sort of thing happens day in, day out and doesn’t even register on the radar of police concern. It was, in my mind, a ‘hate crime’, but unfortunately, even if it were committed today, it wouldn’t qualify as one. Hating someone because they are white, middle-class and speak without a regional accent is perfectly acceptable.
Rod Morris
Cheddar, Somerset

A night at the Cabaret

From Peter Joucla
Sir: As manager of Cabaret Cloche, I was very pleased to read of Jeremy Clarke’s experience at our recent event (Low life, 24 June). However, I would like to correct some minor inaccuracies.

The waitress who Jeremy Clarke claimed was pretending to be French is in fact French. The singer Abigail Hercules, who he implied was a man, is a woman, and the female comedy act he suggested were ‘possibly lesbian’ are probably not, but this speculation is meaningless at Cabaret Cloche. We welcome all warm-hearted persons.
Peter Joucla
Director, Cabaret Cloche
Tring, Hertfordshire

Show-off?

From Patrick Marnham
Sir: Charles Moore is wrong to say (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 June) that Mary Wesley’s valediction for her sister was quoted in my biography Wild Mary as ‘evidence of Wesley’s “subversive” brilliance’. It was quoted as evidence of the breakdown in her relationship with her sister. Perhaps Mary Wesley was a ‘wicked show-off’ as Charles Moore asserts — though I do not agree. She certainly never tried to show off by commenting on books she had not read.
Patrick Marnham
Church Enstone, Oxfordshire