/ N Credits to Eric Allison Tuesday 11 June 2013 The Guardian

" Lessons have been learned and steps taken to ensure failings will not be repeated." Fine words, coined sincerely, no doubt, but, in practice, often meaning nothing," said Kristine Thorne, calling out in her clear voice and projecting it to the back of the hallowed hall of the debating chamber in a Oxford University College. She was wearing a long black formal dress which contrasted with her auburn hair and the lighting focussed on her to best advantage as she was on a stage with Jules besides her keeping her company.

"In March this year, I read the investigation the inquest into the death of 37 year old James Best, who collapsed and died in Wandsworth prison, south London, in August 2011 after a strenuous workout in the prison gym. He had been remanded in custody, following the theft of a gingerbread man, during the riots that swept the country that summer.

The inquest jury heard that Best had been medically assessed as fit for the gym by an inmate, after staff failed to follow proper induction procedures. He had medical conditions – Crohn's disease, arthritis, high blood pressure and asthma – that should have barred him from heavy exercise. Such assessments were routinely carried out by prisoners, a clear breach of prison rules.

Following the critical verdict, a prison service spokesman said: "We will consider the findings to see what lessons can be learned, in addition to those already learned."

Two weeks ago, I received a letter from Greg Smith, a remand prisoner at Wandsworth. He had read my account of the death of Best and wanted to update me on gym procedures at the jail. Smith says he had recently applied to attend the gym. Like Best, he has a medical condition, but says mild workouts do not represent a danger to him. The gym induction class Smith attended was run by officers (suggesting some lessons have been learned). He and the other prisoners were given a medical assessment form, asking whether they had any of a number of conditions. Smith says the officer, who he named, said: "If you want to come to the gym, tick all the 'No' boxes, otherwise forget it." He did as suggested and was subsequently passed fit for the gym.

Smith says he has a heart condition requiring medication – nitroglycerin spray – which he receives from the prison's pharmacy. A simple cross check would have shown this and barred Smith from the gym. It was not undertaken. So much for lessons learned.

Of course, the responsibility for declaring their medical conditions lay with Smith, Best (though he had mental health problems) and all the prisoners who apply to attend the gym. But that onus has to be weighed against the prevailing conditions at Wandsworth. The last inspection report, in 2009, recorded many prisoners locked up for 22 hours a day; association (mixing with other prisoners) often cancelled; and exercise in the fresh air limited to 30 minutes a day and called off in bad weather. Recent budget cuts mean the situation has worsened since that report. Small wonder, then, that, cooped up like battery hens, inmates will cover up ailments to get out of their cells for an "extra" three hours a week in the company of others. In Wandsworth, where a death occurred after prison rules were badly breached – and where 18 men have died since January 2010 – special care should be taken to ensure the mistakes are not repeated. Some of those deaths were unavoidable. Some were not.

I have travelled down this penal road before, many times, and could list dozens of instances where mistakes have been made over and over again – from children taking their own lives, in circumstances where all the danger signs had been repeatedly flagged up, to decent officers forced out of the service by bullying staff. It is a long, depressing and seemingly neverending thoroughfare.

I am not here to provide thoughts about the prison service that are cosy and comforting or to reinforce prejudices instilled by the gutter press but to say it like it is about a part of society that's hidden from view and that this is what prison life is like right now."

John sat in the audience on an old fashioned hard wooden seat at the side of the hall, enraptured. It was where she was destined to be, he decided to himself and he was proud to accompany her. As weeks of close association drew into months, John reminded himself that he liked Kristine as much as anything that kept him interested in her. Their relationship over the years had been problematic by conventional standards but hadn't every one of his past relationships been and Kristine's likewise so far as he could judge? It was her strength and individuality that held definite attractions for him.

"What's worrying you John? It's only a university college that's been around longer than most," she had said four hours earlier when they'd driven up from London and had arrived at midday. She had adopted a light-hearted manner when his obvious nerviousness had become apparent. They'd approached the ancient sandstone arch that gave access to the quadrangle and a deja vu feeling had crept up on him.

"You're right Kristine but I have old associations with this place, not all of them being pleasant," he had answered in his typically understated fashion that he knew that his companion read like a book. As the walls closed in on him, unpleasant ghosts arose from the unquiet grave of his memories to haunt him.

"Baker's boy, baker's boy..." the assured patrician chants rang in his ears from down the years. He'd been a day student at his local grammar school and been brought up by his hard working father who was a baker and proud of his craft. He had got to Oxford on a scholarship and he'd arrived complete with his brand new college scarf, feeling like a fish out of water. He'd been dropped into a shark tank full of self-assured Old Etonians while his slight Birmingham accent drew amused contempt straightaway. No matter how he'd later done his best to iron out his accent, it was never good enough. Was this what had made him pugnacious throughout his life, this early conflict to stand up for himself from when he was a student? His father had certainly helped him develop intellectual curiosity and got him to question everything while his college contemporaries were intellectually blinkered while their self assured manner purported to know everything.

"Yeah, I remember it as if it were yesterday," John had added stoically in this flash of mental journeyings while he had hunched up his shoulders.

"What's wrong John?" Kristine had added in real alarm. His forced attempt to cover his feelings had raised alarm bells as she felt the degree of hurt he concealed.

"Oh it's nothing. It's a long time ago since I came by these parts. I'm looking at it all as if I'm a detached spectator," John had said in his elaborate way of phrasing and articulation.

"That's crap John and you know it," Kristine had added quietly and softly. The next second, John had thrown up his hands and had laughed, a little at himself.

"I'm so sorry Kristine. You're right. Old wounds take a lot of healing."

"So this is where you can do it. There'll be a debate after my lecture and you'll have the advantage of them so easily. What have they to offer compared with a lifetime experienced and considered so incisively? I know as I've been teaching students for years and Oxford students aren't that different," Kristine said softly and clearly, stopping to face John.

Impulsively, John had squeezed Kristine's spare hand. Jules had proudly trotted along leading his pack by his lead and bow resumed his journey.

"Let's walk on down the high street since the scouts will have dropped off our cases," John said carelessly. He was confident that the porters will have negotiated their cases up the ancient narrow staircase to their rooms over the quad. By coincidence, his room was the one he'd spent his first year at Oxford and he wasn't ready to face the memories he'd locked away for years.

As Kristine finished her lecture, she was certain that the applause wasn't convincing in its sincerity. To John as he sat on the side in the audience, she was the focus of light centring down on her from above while he was relatively placed in the darkness or was this a psychological contrast in these procedings that reflected his mood?

Kristine suspected that there was something up that caused him to put off his full reentry into his past but sooner or later, he would do it in his own good time. She anticipated that he'd give her a guided tour of his college experiences which she would compare with her own experience of campus trotted faithfully along.

"Of course, you have to beware of low flying cyclists round Oxford," joked John.

"You're expecting me to be the guide? I rely on you and Jules for that," she retorted with her sense of irony.

This made John laugh lightly and soon he drew them close to an ancient pub. he remembered this all right as his whole body stiffened. This used to be the Bullingdon Club's hangout and hostile territory.

"In case you haven't heard, the Bullingdon Club is Oxford University's more detestable traditions. Future rulers of this country move on up from the playing fields of Eton to the exclusive drinking, dining and hooligan public school club. I encountered them first at this pub years ago," John declaimed with a dramatic gesture of his outstretched arm.

"I'll hear no slanderous accusations, you old man and that disabled woman with you. Do you know who I am?" declaimed an arrogant voice right behind him.

John turned around with just the right theatrical pause with a hard glitter in his eyes while Jules, the leader of the pack uttered a sustained low throaty growl that sounded dangerous. Kristine was dumbfounded by such cheek but reckone that Jules was speaking for her. This combination stopped the lank-haired youth in his tracks, dressed as he was in a particularly tweedy jacket, white short and club tie that spoke of his connections.

"I'm John Deed, a high court judge and the last young thug I took on was in court. I won. Go on, get away with you," he said contemptuously and fists raised. The youth slunk off in embarrassment. This trick usually worked.

"You really know how to mix it," Kristine exclaimed, partly concealing her admiration of the natural man talking, not his rank and the novelty of a man taking up arms for her.

"I had to learn to punch my way through university and get over my shameful feelings of wishing my father wasn't a baker even though I changed my accent. I survived quite a few scrapes to get to be top scholar of my year, take part in a sit in and sleep with quite a few women who'd got bored with the usual Hooray Henry's," John said in a jaunty fashion.

"So not much has really changed. Come on, let's carry on with your trip down memory lane," Kristine said with mixed amusement and tenderness. She hugged his arm with her free hand with more of a display of public affection than was her habit but she was content to break a few of her own rules on emotional relationships.

"An interesting talk. The floor is open to anyone to ask questions or to express a point of view," the young woman said who was chairing the meeting. She was dressed in her best party dress and Kristine suspected cynically that she was a token concession to feminism or was else mere decoration, judging by the preponderence of men in the audience. Now was the moment of decision.

The small. old fashioned bedroom cum study was encrusted with memories of years of former occupants over the centuries and it shouldn't have witnessed anything new under the sun. This was the room John had once occupied as a fresh-faced student all these years ago. However, the middle aged man with greying hair had been openly weeping and Kristine had tried to comfort him as best as she could while Jules had trotted in circles, uttering anxious doggy sounds.

They'd had a quiet drink at another pub along the way and only when they'd passed a gent's outfitters for the exclusive clubs did John's mood start to they'd come back to the stone archway, John had held into Kristine's hand with a tight grip as they'd headed for the far diagonal corner of the quad. Ancient instincts, long dormant, had taken him with leaden feet to his inevitable deestiny. Once inside, his hand had slid along the oak banister rail upwards with familiar ease and had driven him to enter his bedroom where he'd half expected his possessions to reappear where he's once left them. Certainly, they had been scanty, the product of his father's hard earned wages which could never provide more than essentials. Oh yes, he knew what was coming, John hadd thought in anguish to himself. It was at this moment when the dam on his emotions which he'd pushed the back of his mind broke had suddenly broken and Kristine had come to his assistance.

"I betrayed my father," John had said at last fighting to get his words through the emotional block."My Birmingham accent marked me out from the others from the start and once I let slip that my father was a baker, that was it. I got called 'baker's boy' wherever I went and the Old Boy's Network pursued me with it even when I first became a judge. I wished that my father wasn't a baker as it made me feel ashamed. I changed my accent and dressed like them so I could blend in."

Kristine's heart had gone out to this man whose reckless defiance of authority had its seeds in this earlier trauma. She'd tell him later that she had something in common in dropping a Liverpool accent when she first went to boarding school.

"Did you love your father as a human being and wasn't he proud of your achievements?" she had asked him gently.

"Of course. He taught me everything I know, including questioning everything. He was proud of everything I did up till the day he died. My daughter Charlie thinks that I'm Spiderman."

"I haven't not got on with my father ever since my mother died and the less we see of each other the better so we can tolerate each other. He has never been remotely proud of any of my achievements, so I have given up trying to please him," Kristine had said in a slow and even pace, making sure every syllable sunk in.

Both of them had known that their mothers had died young but this had been totally new to him. This had made John look up and away from himself for the first time ever since he'd broken down. The initial shock and amazement had given way to a dawning swense of amazement at this woman's stoical strength. He had mouthed an apology but Kristine had given him a quick kiss on his lips and they had a long comforting hug together.

"I've heard a bit of student sit ins and demonstrations in the sixties. Were you involved?" Kristine asked him as the atmosphere in this room had become intimate and human.

"But of course. I found my feet after the first two terms, started growing my hair and dressing in jeans and fell in with a radical set of outcasts like myself and public school rebels. I remember the sit in well. It was exciting times, living on the edge, passionate debate about rights and wrongs and making up our own rules. I slept with quite a few women during that week. Perhaps those times never really left me and made my mark," John had said in tones of dreamy reminiscence in his faraway gaze.

"Well, there you are then. we'll go out and face this audience," Kristine had said softly. She had not been afraid to admit that perhaps she was falling in love with this complicated man and perhaps he was feeling the same. This had set her up very nicely to be at her most intellectually combative when the lights came on her mind to deliver her speech from the platform.

A patrician woman who had caught the chairwoman's eye rose languidly to her feet to be first to speak.

"Excuse me but isn't this all rather melodramatic? Everyone knows that prison reformers have been at it for decades and are entrenched in the Home Office. Prisoners have wide screen televisions and the regime is sucvh that prison officers dare not act robustly for fear of being condemned as politically incorrect."

"Everyone knows?" challenged Kristine with icy self control."I think you must be a closet Sun reader. Just because there are popular prejudices around doesn't make it accurace especially when my speciality, prison education is squeezed to the limit, something that's worth its weight in gold in stopping discharged prisoners reoffending. You add prison overcrowding into the mix and we have a premanent crisis on our hands,"

Watching Kristine's first strike with intense pleasure, John immediately recognised the second lad to speak as the obnoxious moron who he'd crossed swords with earlier on. Kristine immediately placed the voice when he started speaking.

"How on earth can you know what the inside of a prison is like? You're obviously working from a political agenda but all you're doing is working from books written by others with the same outlook," he said with scathing anger that drew a ripple of applause .

"That's a fair question," Kristine answered with misleading reasonableness."My answer is that when I studied for my MA a number of years ago, I conducted a series of interviews with a number of prisoners at HMP Nottingham and also at HMP Wandsworth. More crucially, I took part in an undercover operation at HMP Larkhall where I posed as a prisoner, just as you see me, for two weeks unknown to the prison during which I was assaulted on the last day I was there. I also keep in contact with a close friend of mine, Nikki Wade of the Howard League of Penal Reform who is the real deal ex-prisoner, having successfully won her appeal against a life sentence for taking out the policeman who would have raped her partner. This isn't just the stuff of academic dissertations but involves real people like any other in society, good bad and indifferent," Kristine responded in ringing tones which reduced the audience to silence in a shocked gasp. Some of the more sensitive souls started to question their outlook on life and especially those who were out top make sport with this blind woman.

"I suppose you think that all criminals are misunderstood victims of society," a third speaker said spitefully when John intervened. He couldn't resist it and Kristine smiled ruefully at George and Jo describing how interfering he was in court.

"I suppose there are those who are guilty of what society regards of as crimes and those who are ennobled in this 'what can we get away with' society. I think of MPs who have cheated the taxpayer and are let off with a caution and, at best, repayment of the sum obtained fraudulently," John said in languid, forceful tones. This caused a ripple of discomfort to run round the audience. This came too close to home for their liking.

"The gentleman has got it exactly right," Kristine exclaimed with great satisfaction before enlarging enthusiastically on this point. The debate was going in the direction she wanted it to go.

"Wow, that was some meeting," laughed John as he and Kristine clattered their way back up the staircase, Jules bounding excitedly against the strain of the lead that his mistress kept firmly gripped.

"I feel so good," said Kristine, affectionately rubbing the back of Jules' head and his ears and going on to squeeze John's hand. She'd got into the cut and thrust of debate and found it intensely enjoyable. She'd had the time of her life today and was on a natural high.

Once inside John's room, Kristine flopped onto the narrow single bed. John hospitably offered her a glass of dry martini which she knocked back with great satisfaction with a graceful swirl of her right arm. It looked stylish to Johgn's heightened sensibilities.

"These beds are designed to preserve one's virtue,"Kristine said with a flash of annoyance. John wasn't sure how to take this remark so he preserved a diplomatic silence.

"It's not really practical tro sleep together John but when we're back in London, I will sleep with you," she said in her direct fashion.

"Se we can have a pleasant chat and a nightcap? I'm happy to postpone our enjoyment till another night and have the pleasure of your company in different ways," John replied equably enough. Strangely enough, the evening was such that sex was only a free-floating thought amongst the closeness they'd enjoyed this day.

She kissed John. She was glad he understood.

"So what have you been doing recently, John Deed?" she asked with genuine interest.

"You might be surprised to know," he started to say in self-deprecating tones about the first thing that came to mind."I'm a volunteer maths coach to Nikki and Helen's daughter Rose. They asked me for help as she'd been got at by her maths teacher."

"That must be a new experience for you," smiled Kristine, a little taken by surprise.

"I'm really enjoying it," replied John enthusiastically."She's such an extraordinary child. She's really endearing, a great conversationalist and she has such an enquiring mind. She's her own person already. Some people spend a lifetime and never get that far."

Kristione smiled tenderly. She suspected that John was Rose's biological father yet he was graciously and unselfishly giving her a helping hand in life. Though her eyes were starting to close as exhaustion started to take over as a natural reaction to her concentrated preparation for this lecture, this knowledge was a clinching factor that prompted her to consider making an unprecedented move forward in her life.