Jails are in crisis – and the man in charge of scrutinising them believes giving inmates education, responsibility and purpose is the answer
It is a photograph that Charlie Taylor shows everyone who works in jails: a 10-year-old boy, his arms wide open on stage and singing at the top of his voice at an end-of-term school concert. “He liked to perform,” says the country’s chief inspector of prisons.
The boy is now a man, serving 10 years for serious assault. Taylor, who was his head teacher at Willows, a special school for troubled children before he became the nation’s prisons watchdog, has kept in contact with him.
Like a guardian angel, Taylor, 58, has some head-teacherly advice. Seated in a whitewashed conference room in the basement of the Ministry of Justice, he says: “Get your head down, do your time and try to take advantage of everything that’s on offer. If you’re a prisoner who’s quite savvy, you can do that. You can manoeuvre or you can find work that is meaningful.”
The story tells you something about Taylor, a quietly spoken Old Etonian who has devoted his life to rebuilding the lives of those on the fringes of society, at risk of being lost to drugs, drink, criminality or family turmoil.