A Miracle!

How is it that all murder victims are apparently incredibly wonderful human beings?

I find it a tad odd, a statistical anomaly, that no assholes ever seem to get murdered.

Let's Get Personal Week cont...

2. Murder is often a deeply selfish crime. I know that mine was. Through no fault of his own, my victim found himself as the focus of my despair and fear. He was utterly blameless, and in my overwhelming emotion I killed him. Did I intend to? Consciously, I would say not, because "thought" wasn't present, only emotion.

Does this make any difference? In a narrowly technical and legal sense, some people may try to argue the difference between murder and manslaughter. Personally, that's not something I've ever been concerned with. I killed him. Because of me, he is dead. The bureaucratic, legal paperwork that litters my life is irrelevant in the face of that permanent and overwhelming fact. He is dead, I killed him.

"Lets Get Personal" Week

It is rare for me to talk about my crime and never do I mention my victim. This isn't out of any desire to conceal my guilt, or to spin myself in your estimation. Rather, it is because it is incredibly difficult to talk about these things. Telling you about my daily life or commenting upon the collective stupidities that comprise the edifice of "criminal justice" is far, far easier.

I never talk about my victim, or his family and friends. That would be grossly insensitive as well as being stupendously arrogant. How could I ever presume to speak about what they may feel? How could I even think that there is anything of meaning that I could ever say to them? And the Editors both here, and at Facebook, have taken the policy of deleting any comments that name my victim. That I may be happy to bare myself to the public eye doesn't mean that my victim’s family want the same. It is not for me to drag them into the public, and add even more distress to their situation.

Meandering through the Past

I'm faffing around with some autobiographical writing, and interested parties insist that I start at the beginning. They mean, of course, my childhood. For me, though, it is as if my life began at the moment that I ended another’s.

Having to look further back than that event is a strange journey and one I have probably been avoiding for thirty years. Not that I believe my childhood to be particularly awful, it was far from it. Up until my mother’s death when I was nine, I think my life was pretty good. At the least, normal!

And yet...that early part of my life pales into insignificance, has been overshadowed by the murder. Life began, in my mind, with death. This is a strange feeling, a disconnect that I have never had to examine before.

Answers cont...

Q5: To what degree do you genuinely feel as a middle aged man that you are responsible for the actions of a 14 year old boy in a fit of anger? I mean, sure, that collection of cells eventually became the collection of cells that now constitute "you", but aren't you essentially different organisms: your brains do/did different things, you believe different things, and the current you probably dislikes the person "you" were in that moment enormously. Given that, does the State reeeallly have the right to imprison you now on account of the immoral actions of a different you? (Andrew F)

A: Hmmm, I see what you are saying,..but! Even though there is not a single cell in my body that is the same as the one that committed murder, there is that indefinable essence of "I" that is a constant. And I'm as responsible for what I did today as at the time.

Judgement Call

Let's say you're arrested for murder. Not that any of you would be of course...but it does happen!

Quite rightly, you intend to plead "not guilty" and prove your innocence. On the day of the trial the prosecution, unsure of their case, offers to accept a plea of guilty to manslaughter instead, and a sentence of 7 years.

What do you do? Do you spit in their eye and go to trial in the knowledge that you are innocent? Or do you accept their offer of 7 years rather than risk being found guilty of murder and a life sentence?

A surprising number of innocent people refuse to accept a plea. They are innocent, why should they go to prison at all? Quite a few of them then find they judged badly and are now serving life.

An even more surprising number take the deal. Despite being completely innocent, they don't want to risk being saddled with a life sentence and so serve 7 years for a crime they did not commit.

If you were in that situation, what would you do? Risk standing on your innocence? Or go to prison in a calculated move to limit the damage?

Degrees of Badness

One of the main problems surrounding the current legal schema of murder and life sentences is that they are so broad in conception. This confuses people, both over the definition of murder and the nature of the life sentence.

Rather than having a mere two homicide offences - murder and manslaughter - would it not be more sensible, just and clear if we adopted a more graded system?
The Americans, for instance, have three Degrees of murder and several different types of manslaughter charge. Each of these reflects the degree of intent, the brutality of the act, and the context in which it takes place.

And so a person who deliberately goes out carrying a gun, intending to commit a crime, and who then shoots someone dead in the commission of his crime receives the highest charge and the longest sentence. A person who, in a fit of overwhelming emotional torment, strikes out at a spouse and kills them receives a lesser charge and penalty.

Translated into Britain, this would clarify the most obvious misunderstanding around murder, that is, intent. Intent to kill is not necessary for a charge of murder in the UK, leaving the pub brawler and the serial killer ostensibly facing the same charge if another dies due to their actions.

Would it not be more just to save the charge of murder for those who intended to kill? With gradations of charge, and sentence, down the scale from that point? And save Life sentences for the most serious of cases?

Life Means Life 2

Should Life literally mean lifelong imprisonment for murderers? The campaigners whose brains retreat into parroting "life should mean life" undoubtedly think so. So let us look at the type of offences and people they want banged up for ever...

It is a common (and seemingly permanent) belief that Murder must be a deliberate and intended act. This is wrong. The definition of Murder is only that the killer intended to commit 'serious harm1. If death follows, even if it was explicitly not intended, then it is still murder.

For example, if a Bad Man surgically removed your arms and legs, intending to cause you lifelong suffering, but you then died from the injury, that would be Murder. The Bad Man explicitly did not want you to die, but through his acts of serious harm you did.

The majority of murderers actually had no intention to kill at all. They were lashing out in the face of anger, jealously, rage, despair, hatred, love - a temporary 'brain storm’ that swiftly ended. Sometimes the victim lives, sometimes they die. If they die, it is murder.

Do we want to lock up, forever, people who had no actual intention of killing? Is this what the Life Means Life sloganeers actually advocate?

Crude 'Life Mean Life' reasoning also encompasses mercy-killings. The people who, with the most elevated intention of ending suffering, kill another person. This is murder. Even if the suffering individual asks to be killed, it remains murder. Do we really want to lock these people up forever?

Given these examples, I suspect that the 'Life Means Life' advocates will retreat from their broad position and narrow it down to a more specific set of murderers one that excludes the 'nice’ ones.

Perhaps endless imprisonment should only apply to those who deliberately kill, with premeditation? That is, the common murderer of myth.

But if Life Means Life for deliberately killing one person, what then is the punishment for someone who deliberately kills several people? You can only serve one Life sentence. Is it justice to give the same sentence to a person who kills once as to a person who kills several times?

'Life should mean life’ is a wonderful slogan. It is short, easily remembered, and fits nicely onto a banner. And it is a wonderful way of avoiding having to actually think. It is only when you pick away at it, give it closer scrutiny, that it is revealed as a very shaky and arguably unjust sentence to levy at most people convicted of murder.

Risk to life or limb

This is the crux of a lifer's detention once the tariff has expired. On the face of it, it is not unreasonable to keep in prison a person who has killed another until it can be shown that he does not pose a risk to life and limb.

But that bare statement conceals a morass of complexity. In my own case, for example, it is not actually claimed that I pose a positive risk to life and limb. It never has been, in that my crime took place in unique, unrepeatable circumstances.

Rather, it was the view of the Parole Board at the last hearing that I could only demonstrate that I did not pose a risk by being in an Open prison without incident. In essence, the claim is that I will find it so difficult to move back into society that I will blow some mental fuse and go running through the streets wielding am axe.

Note that this argument is not rooted in my original crime, nor does it rest upon any claim that 1 am inherently prone to violence. Rather, it is an assertion that society is so difficult to deal with that I will need to be "tested" - in the twisted way that Open prisons function - to see if society and myself are on a course for a violent collision.

You will appreciate that I feel that this is an utterly pathetic, incoherent reason for keeping me detained. It also reveals a truly frightening lack of understanding of the nature of murder on the part of the Parole Board.

Murderers can be viewed in one of two ways. Either they are individuals who are inherently prone to violence, bearers of a profound psychological flaw that erupts sporadically; Or, they are individuals who are overwhelmed in very specific emotionally or psychologically charged situations.

As the rate for murderers committing second homicides in around 1 to 2%, then I contend that the latter is the correct view. Murderers are not inherently violently flawed people, but rather individuals who react homicidally to specific circumstances - and these circumstances rarely occur more than once in their lives.

If this is indeed correct - and I see no evidence otherwise - then to suggest that I may react violently to the stresses of daily social life is absurd. Do you react violently to daily frustrations? No. Neither do I. And whilst the particular stresses of life out there are not precisely replicated in prison life, prison life is incredibly stressful. This is why, for example, our suicide rate is so high. And yet, in the face of institutionalised degradations and provocations, I have shown no inclination to violent behaviour.

Why, then, should I not deal with the issues posed by daily life in precisely the same way as you? I didn't "fail" life, I "failed" a specific, unrepeatable situation. To keep me in prison longer is to reveal an incoherence at the heart of the release process.

Depression

It is 11am; I have been up and out of bed since before 9. Hardly slept last night. All I can do is sit here, flicking through all of my posts to date. I'm listening to Leonard Cohen loudly through earphones, endlessly repeating 'Hallelujah' from his Live in London concert. Time after time.

Some desperado has just encroached and been sent on his way, disgruntled. He wanted to scrounge a cigarette. "Mate", I told him, "I'm trying to get by on £1.50 a week and have done for the last year. Of the 80 people on this wing, 79 are a better prospect to scrounge off than me." And he still stood there, looking sad. He finally got the hint. Today is pay day, and I will have to juggle like a clown on LSD to square everything by the end of the night.

The world looks bleak today. Last night, in the early un-sleeping hours, I had a terrible portent that I am destined to remain in this limbo forever. Near to release, never quite making it, sitting here as the years grind away and having to watch people drift away, all that is built up being eroded by perpetual disappointment. Do I deserve to be released? Not a legal or bureaucratic question, but a moral one? I have never been able to answer the simple question of "what should be the penalty for murder?"

There is not a single positive thing in my head. Looking back at previous posts, from the very beginning, I'm persuading myself that my writing is deteriorating, that it's hardly worth the trip down to the office to mail it out.

Christ knows what's for lunch. Whatever, is it worth the endless blasted queue?
Depression has afflicted me for decades. Of late it has become sharper and more frequent. It can hit me within minutes. I can literally sense the serotonin being sucked from my brain, the skin on my face tightening and my patience and calm being swamped by a profound sense of loss and anxiety.

Nothing settles me. If I have the energy I will shut my door and pace, four steps forward, four back. The steel door and ancient stone wall at either turn reinforces my perception of my endless existence. Without energy, I just sit here, smoking, drenched in misery that seeps from my very bones.

The energy to deal with people vanishes. Even the easiest person in the world to deal with becomes hard work, having to listen to their concerns and formulate responses takes vital effort best spent on balancing on some mental pinnacle, trying not to fall off.

It will pass in a day or so, it always does, leaving me feeling completely wrung out, physically weak. Until next time.

PS. It was sandwiches. Still listening to Hallelujah.

My DNA

It was, I recall, over a decade ago that policemen turned up at the prison to take everyone's DNA. It was made clear that this would be done "one way or another", including by force. And so there is a little bag in a fridge somewhere, full of my hair.

Government being as it is, "mission creep" has the potential to cause some problems as a result. Keeping my DNA as a crime detection tool is one thing (and one set of arguments). But what about when it is used for basic research?

The Government is quite happy to have various boffins prodding these genomes, seeking answers to questions that are laden with potential dilemmas.

For example, what if it is asserted that a particular set of genetic markers correlates, on the database, with an increased disposition to violence?

The popular media will, undoubtedly, scream that science can predict future murderers. The political pressure to make use of such information will be immense.

Already people who have committed crimes are detained longer solely on the basis of what they may do in future. A society willing to endorse that is only a short step away from detaining those who have yet to commit a crime, but who seem to have an increased disposition to do so.

Of course, as some wag long ago mooted, the way to slash the crime rate is to imprison everybody with an XY chromosome...

Demeaning the Meaning of "Life"

As the most serious sentence available to the State, the Life sentence should carry some weight. It should, at least, be a signal that the crime committed is one of such repugnance to society that only the heaviest sentence will suffice.

And yet... a Life sentence is mandatory for murder. It can be -and often is - argued that murder is the most serious offence and so should properly attract the most serious sentence. Well, yes and no.

Not all murders are the same. There is the wife who kills her husband after years of being degraded. There is the householder who hits a burglar one too hard as he tries to flee. There is the parent who, with the best intention, ends the suffering of a severely disabled child.

There is the drunken bloke who has a scrap outside the pub, his victim falling to hit his head. There are the jealous people who, tormented by their perceptions of their spouse, lose all control.

There are also the child killers who stalk, kidnap, rape and kill. The serial killers who repeatedly inflict horror. There are the terrorists who place bombs on buses and trains and kill dozens.

All of these fall under the heading of "murder" and all, on the face of it, receive the sentence of Life. I argue that this demeans the very idea of a Life sentence, devalues it in the popular imagination and, in part, fosters a feeling that "sentences ought to be tougher".

In the popular imagination, Life sentences can mean a mere handful of years. To this day, it is widely believed that Lifers are released around 9 years. This hasn't been the case for decades.

The confusion and misperception lies in the "tariff". This is the minimum term the Court sets when issuing a Life sentence and leads to misleading headlines. Where the tabloids scream that some deviant 'only' received say, 5 years it takes careful reading to discern that the sentence was actually Life. The 5 years is the minimum; the convict may actually serve 10, 20, 40 years.

As things stand, bog-standard domestic murderers may receive a tariff of 16 years. Kill with a knife and you are up to 20 or 25. Terrorists attract tariffs of 40 or more years. Serial killers will never be released.

This is all perfectly clear to Lifers; tariff is everything and differentiates between the different types of murderer. Tariffs have only been around for the best part of 30 years and so that there remains such widespread public ignorance only highlights the malevolent, lazy and plain incompetent role of the media in failing to educate.

The question that has troubled some for many years - the House of Lords perpetually returns to the subject - is whether Life should be the mandatory sentence for murder?

If 'murder' covers such a broad range of crimes, from the bad to the truly horrific, then shouldn't the headline sentence also reflect this range? Would this not clarify the popular understanding?

A mercy killing might receive, say, 10 years. Domestic murders 15, murders in the course of a robbery 25... and so on (these numbers are merely illustrative of scale). Reserve the Life sentence for those whose crime may merit confinement for the whole of their lives and nothing less.

There are those who argue that "life should mean life" and under the present scope of "murder" then the mercy-killer would bear the same punishment as the deliberate mass murderer. This would be a great injustice, extending the number of those who have a whole-life tariff from 30 people to several thousand.

The Life sentence is a mess. Legally tortuous, broad in its application and misunderstood by many. Rather than slowly grinding out minor changes and clarifications, would it not be better to abandon it and begin again?

My Crime

One of the criticisms I have of many prison writers is that they avoid any mention of their crime.

One day they are bumbling along through normal existence, the next they are sentenced to life. A few decades pass and a book deal later, and we can still be no wiser as to what they did.

It may be harsh, but I've viewed this as a mixture of cowardice and deceit. Parading oneself out in public and becoming accepted, whilst keeping the crime secret, always makes me uncomfortable, although I do realise that it may be sensible. This is not to say that these prison writers do not make a very valuable contribution to public debate.

I am attempting to avoid that, in that I'm not trying to persuade anyone that I'm a reasonable, fluffy sort of bloke. My aim was to present a murderer as a three dimensional, rounded, person in the hope of challenging stereotypes. You either accept me for who I am, crime included, or you don't. Time will tell how that goes.
And yet, so far, I have avoided sharing the details of my offence. You know that I killed a friend when I was a kid, so the astute reader would have worked out that he was also a kid. Apart from that, what exactly happened remains a mystery. Avid Googlers will have come up empty handed. Because of my age newspapers couldn't mention my name in their reports and so I was relegated to a short piece in a regional paper, after the sheep prices.

Why have I hesitated? It's not because my crime was particularly horrible or deviant, it was a fairly dull murder. I have hesitated partly because murder is, in a strange way, a very private and personal event. There is also my victims' family to consider. As far as I know, they are no longer in the country but the Net means that I must be cautious about throwing the last moments of their brother and son in their face.

There is also a voyeurism afoot. I call this "murder porn", a revelling in the grossest details of crimes and it permeates our culture. TV franchises, novels, true crime revelations, all feed into this base aspect of our collective consciousness. It reaches a peak with films such as Cannibal Holocaust and Hostel - the essence of the plot is the slow, shocking, brutality inflicted on
the participants. The idea of adding to this cannon makes me very uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, some people want to know. For the moment, though, they will have to make do with what I have already said. You know enough to make a broad judgement about me and so I hope you can exercise a little patience on this.

Bad Memories

It sounds weird but I have always believed that a fair number of murderers suffer from aspects of post-traumatic stress. I say weird, because of course it is we ourselves who caused the awful event that now haunts us. But then, if you chop your own fingers off, the fact it is self inflicted doesn't reduce the pain and suffering.

There are now drugs that are able to erase painful memories. Should these be available to murderers as well as the families of their victims?

The proposition raises a range of questions, foremost amongst them being, what is the nature and purpose of punishment? Perhaps it is interesting that the first murderer, Cain, was left unmolested by God, possibly because the lifelong weight of his conscience was punishment enough.

Is it intrinsically part of a murderer's punishment that he carry the memory of what he has done? Or is the legal and moral debt to society expunged at the end of the punitive portion (tariff) of the sentence and so memories, as well as "the slate", could be wiped clean?

Not a Fluffy Blogger

I do appreciate that I cause some consternation and a little discomfort. Even those who support prison bloggers and prisoners’ rights in general would rather that a different man was leading the charge from the landings into the blogosphere.

The only really acceptable prisoner is one who prefaces every utterance with “I’m sorry I’m a scumbag, but I humbly beg you to stop kicking me in the face - which I deserve - so that I may utter a few quiet words for your consideration? Although you should feel free just to piss on me instead, because I am such a scumbag. . .”

Bad news, I'm afraid. I'm not naturally humble, nor reticent. Some see this as a reflection of some lack of remorse or a facet of my dangerousness, which is profoundly strange. That I have the sheer nerve to speak in public whilst not simultaneously whipping myself is, to some, a portent of future wickedness.

Explaining remorse is profoundly difficult, but I have tried elsewhere to do so. It may or may not satisfy anyone. But to connect my verbosity with dangerousness is to fall into the same conceptual trap that the Prison Service has used to detain me 20 years longer than necessary.

That I may wonder out loud about the nature of punishment or the equity of life sentences needn't imply that I believe I don't deserve punishment for my crime. That I wonder about the hypocrisy of the sanctity of life doesn't detract from my appreciation of my crime.

The broad thrust of my verbiage is to encourage the idea that these are matters that do deserve to be thought about; all the more so in a period of populist punitiveness.

Being disgruntled isn't to detract from being guilty. Wanting a change in our penal policies and practices doesn't detract from my acceptance of punishment. As a reasonably bright man, it would be strange if I did not begin to wonder about the morality and practicalities of imprisonment.

Whilst my mind is fairly sharp, for the sake of those around me I have tended to blunt my tongue. But in person, I'm really not a bad bloke and you shouldn't try to read into my character from my moral and intellectual musings - tempting though that is.

Perhaps what disconcerts people is that murderers are actually real, three dimensional people rather than stereotypes from the telly? And that may make me more of a challenge to some. Just a thought…

Murder as an Almighty Fuck-up

Many people believe that the legal definition of murder includes a deliberate intent to kill. This is wrong. All that is required is an intent to cause serious harm, with death resulting. Contrary to the portrayal of murder in the popular culture and media as being a Machiavellian act, deliberate and instrumental, the reality is far different. The overwhelming majority of murders result from emotional and psychological 'blown fuses' - outbursts of anger, jealousy, rage, hate, love, fear or panic. They are 'moments of madness1 and conscious deliberate thought doesn't enter into it. They tend to be an almighty fuck-up and not intended events. These, though, are dull murders. No TV series could be based on the reality of most murders. And so our culture highlights the tiny minority, the serial killers and the conscious plotters. But in doing so, people are led to believe that these people comprise the bulk of the murdering-classes. And this distortion of the reality in the name of entertainment may go a long way to explain why the criminal justice debate is so warped, so out of touch with reality. Sound debate and sound policy flow from an appreciation of things as they really are, rather than the reality offered by the mass media.

How to Serve 30 Years

A few people have wondered how it is I have served thirty years; and why I am 20 years past my tariff.

Let's put aside the obvious concern - that I am some rabid, unstable creature that has to be fed at the end of a long stick. I'm remarkably normal, given the givens. My dossier is remarkably free of violence, considering the violent environment I have grown up in.

The explanation for my continued detention is far more subtle and complicated. It would help at this point to understand that there is a legal test for releasing Lifers, the 'Benson - Bradley test'. The Parole Board has to be satisfied that I pose 'no more than a minimal risk to life or limb^’. However, how that assessment is made is a process of alchemy.

But back to the beginning. It was a given that I would serve 10 years, regardless of anything I did. That period was my tariff -the period to be served for retribution and deterrence. It is the next 20 years that need some explaining - and I can only give you my version.

In my eighth year I had a strange conversation with the Lifer Governor. Strange, because he told me things and this was a period where we were told nothing. Until the early 1990's, we were not allowed to read staff reports on us, and we were not shown the content of Parole answers. We couldn't challenge anything said about us, and we were never told what we needed to do in order to gain release. Serving a life sentence then was an exercise in navigating a maze in the dark.

This Governor shed some light on my situation, reading out my 'career plan'. Yup, life sentences are regarded as being a career. Who knew? My career plan projected that I would serve some 16 years. Such was the secrecy and arrogance of the Home Office in those days that adding a few years to my sentence was neither here nor there.

By coincidence, it was at my 15 year mark that the Parole Board began recommending that I be moved to open prison, prior to being released. And that was the point when Home Secretaries began ignoring those recommendations. That first time was a strange moment, having a real prospect of release within sight. The Home Office refused to send me to open, citing my occasional bouts of depression as their reason.

I reacted badly. Five years over tariff, having done enough to please the Parole Board, and some politician was keeping me in prison on a pathetic reason. So I attempted what we call ^‘self-release’ - an escape. It was more to signal my discontent that a genuine run for Rio, and saw me embedded in a compost heap. A story for another day.

Four times the Parole Board recommended I be moved to open prison. Four times a politician refused, on the flimsiest of excuses - a spliff here, an argument there. That was 10 years accounted for and wasted. Whilst it is widely acknowledged that I am a 'difficult prisoner^’, it is equally accepted that I am not a violent one. My "issues' relate to resisting abuses of authority and having a big mouth. It is not for me, then, to explain away that wasted decade, it is for the Minister.

On their fifth attempt, the Parole Board did get me to open. I'd served 25 years at this point. If their first recommendation hadn't been nobbled by the Minister, I would have been released around the 17 year mark. Ho-hum.

My time in open lasted a year, and then I was returned to closed (this prison). Having skipped over the details of the first 26 years, it is from this point on that detail would help you to understand the web that enmeshes Lifers.

I arrived at Open full of positive hopes, determined to put in place the bedrock for my future on release. I had a Plan. Not just a plan, but one with a capital P. My university was waiting to accept me to begin my PhD; another university was willing to accept me to undertake voluntary work in their library; my home leave address was a sitting MP; and I was making contacts with the aim of gaining training in mediation.

Not a bad plan, considering that 50% of Lifers in the community are unemployed. It covered at least two prospective avenues for employment, social support and housing - all the key elements in a stable life. When I presented this to the relevant manager at open, he looked down the boardroom table and dismissed it: "we don't care." That's when I knew I was in trouble.

Management vacillated back and forth as I shuttled between offices, attempting to negotiate a sensible way forward. All I wanted was a chance. Out of sheer frustration, I began to refuse to undertake some 'voluntary' activities, hoping to persuade managers to note my distress.

It partly worked. Eleven months after arriving, a lifer manager finally agreed to 'consider' my proposals, particularly the PhD. This positive move was instantly undermined by his insistence that I “jot the research proposal on the back of an envelope”. I tried to explain that research proposals are a tad more complex than that, but he just couldn't appreciate my point. Stalemate.

Two weeks later I was 'kidnapped' and dumped in my current location. The official reason was that I 'failed to comply with the regime'. It wasn't suggested I posed a risk, or was intending to abscond; merely attempting to fight my own corner to build a life on release was a sufficient crime. I'm far from alone - about half this prison are rejects from that open prison.

As is the procedure, I was then referred back to the Parole Board to consider whether I should return to open. It took a year to arrange this. None of the reports from staff suggested I posed a risk or that I was unsuitable to return to open prison. In the normal course of events, I would have been given an earful for being 'difficult^’ and sent on my way. Alas, this hearing before the Parole Board took place just after the Anthony Rice scandal. Rice was a lifer who had been released, only to commit further very serious offences. The report into these events condemned all involved, including the Parole Board, for their poor decision making. I walked into a hearing just as the Board had adopted their most conservative outlook in a generation.

Bear in mind that the Board had consistently recommended I move to open for a decade; and that all that had changed was my falling out with managers. I was stunned, then, to receive a 6 page parole answer that verged on the abusive, and which concluded that I may be a psychopath. Either this Board was more perceptive than anybody else who had dealt with me in the previous 27 years, or they were paralysed by the Rice case and were desperate not to take any chance that may backfire. In the 18 months following Rice, the percentage of lifers sent to open collapsed. The Lifers hadn't changed; all that was different was the attitude of the Board.

Nonetheless, I was stuffed, stranded back in closed conditions for a raft of psychological assessments. The date for my next Parole Board hearing was set at 18 months ahead. This prison assured me that it had the resources to conduct the assessments needed to address the psychopath issue.

They lied. They had no money for the assessments and I had to arrange them through my solicitor. My parole hearing date slid back another year because of this.

Last May, my Parole Board sat again. They accepted that, whilst being a generally arrogant git, I wasn't a psychopath nor was it claimed that I pose a risk of reoffending. That I'm a pain in the arse is a given, always ready to argue the toss. But no one argues this makes me a risk, a point this Board made in their latest answer - They slapped down the opinion of the Ministry of Justice to that effect: "The panel did not lightly disregard the opinion of the Secretary of State. However, they concluded that [his] view persisted in the same error of equating an uncooperative and challenging attitude with the future risk of violent offending..."

To return to where I began, then, with the legal test for release: that I pose no more than a minimal risk to life or limb. Being irritating doesn't - shouldn't - come into the mix. Why, then, didn't that Parole Board order my release instead of recommending I return to Open? In their own words:

"In summary, having balanced your interests in sentence progression against the interests of public protection, the panel was satisfied that sufficient evidence exists that your risk of violent offending has been reduced to a level such it is safely manageable in open prison conditions. The panel did not consider that sufficient evidence of risk reduction exists to enable them to make a direction that you be released; there is a necessity, in the panel's view (in the interests of public protection), for there to be a period of testing and gradual reintegration into the community before release."

Untangle that tortured English and jargon and it boils down to the fact that they want me to spend a period in Open prison in order to see if I've been cabbaged by all the years they have kept me inside. We agree to disagree on that one.

The Ministry of Justice accepted this recommendation and set the date for my next Parole Board hearing as next summer, after 12 months in Open. That would have seen me released...

Alas, my life never goes that easily. No sooner had the Ministry spoken than I was confronted with fresh misdemeanours - they allege that two years ago, I had a relationship with one of the civilian staff, and that repossessed a mobile phone for a brief period. And so the Ministry have suspended my move to Open, and referred me back to the Parole Board for their advice as to whether I should still be progressed.

What do you think?