Television is a regular prison visitor. You can’t keep Louis Theroux out of the grimmest Stateside penitentiaries, the drama departments drop in now and then for a stretch inside – most recently in Prisoner’s Wives. And then there’s ITV. A couple of years ago it reported from Wormwood Scrubs to find out how the prison system was coping in Brown’s Britain. It wasn’t the prettiest sight. The channel turns its attention to Aylesbury, a young offender institution heaving with the sort of hoodies the Prime Minister may not after watching this first episode feel quite so inclined to hug.
Aylesbury has a fearsome reputation on the prison circuit. Drugs, violence, killing – you name it, the screws allegedly club inmates over the head for it. The prison governor allowed that they get “some quite difficult people” whom society, in the shape of parents and teachers, has not introduced to the concept of rules and regs. People like Liam Brennan, a drug dealer from Liverpool who with two accomplices took a prisoner hostage in his cell and threatened to rape him. A negotiator stood at the door, making sure he didn’t make good his threat to “cut his fucking neck”. That’s the captive’s neck, not Liam Brennan’s. The plan was to get back to the north. “I want to be in one of my own jails,” Brennan explained after it was all over and he faced a stretch in segregation. “If you keep doing stuff they’ll ship you out.”
It takes a remarkably measured person to work in such an environment
You could see why he’d want to be among his own kind. Picking a fight, suggested a southern prisoner, “makes your day go quicker”. Devon Johnson, in for armed robbery, tended to believe that retaliation is best meted out before as opposed to after. Like a gambler sizing up the odds he had taken the precaution of siring a child when young. “You never know when someone gonna take your life,” he said. “Best to have it early.”
Another prisoner went to see Liz the mental health worker. “I bit a woman’s chest open,” he said, recalling an incident from his innocent youth. She wondered if the prospect of life inside bothered him. “Depends, miss.” Always nice to observe the formalities. Afterwards Liz confided that “his behaviour may well lead to someone’s death”.
It takes a remarkably measured person to work in such an environment, and that includes the cameramen who stood at the shoulder of some extremely disturbing scenes. The noisy atmosphere of testosterone-fuelled menace would try the patience of saint. “We use force necessary to the circumstances,” explained a warden. “But it does hurt.” The female staff get stuck in and have the bruises to show for it. And it can’t be much fun frisking a visiting toddler in a Batman suit for drugs.
It’s possible that, with the help of editor Paul Dosaj, series director and producer Lee Phillips has selected only the most high-octane moments for broadcast. Among the interviewees, the psychotic hardnuts outnumbered the docile pussycats six to one. A bit like some of the fights caught on CCTV. But this feels like urgent, honest, apolitical filmmaking.
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