Why were they in the same building?It’s not as if people are unaware of the reputation

Why were they in the same building?It’s not as if people are unaware of the reputation of this institution. Days ago the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, described young offenders institutions generally as “corrosive”. Weeks ago Ian Thomas, Feltham’s deputy governor, resigned from the institution because of its “Dickensian conditions”. Months ago the chief inspector of prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, described Feltham as “rotten to the core”. Years ago his predecessor, Sir Stephen Tumin, made similar criticisms. One government response has been to propose the abolition of the post of chief inspector of prisons. What might the next Labour manifesto promise? “Experienced messengers will be shot”?At Zahid Mubarek’s age I was convicted of shoplifting, but of a more expensive item, and got a £20 fine A visit to court alone convinced me never to reoffend Zahid also seemed genuinely to regret his crimes.

So what was the difference here? That I was a university student while Zahid was not? That I was a female and Zahid was not? That I was white and Zahid was not? That my crime occurred under Thatcher, while Zahid’s occurred under Blair? All of these are factors.While my own background was not middle-class, the fact that I was at university counted hugely in my favour Young lives full of promise cannot be blighted. Young lives whose promise is considerably less obvious can be. Working-class children are far more likely to receive custodial sentences for the same offences as middle or upper-class people. The same goes for boys versus girls – although sadly the corrective here is going the wrong way. More and more girls are receiving custodial sentences, even though the prison service is even less well-equipped to accommodate girls than it is boys.As for racism – well of course racism has played more than one part here.

The director general of the prison service, Martin Narey, admits that the prison service is “institutionally racist” and that among the prison service staff there are “pockets of blatant and malicious racism”.A recent report from the National Association for the Care and Rehabilitation of Offenders found that 49 per cent of Asian prisoners had been racially abused, and 12 per cent racially attacked. No one in the judicial system or the prison system could be competent at their job and at the same time unaware of the kind of punishment for his small crimes against property that Zahid Mubarek would have been subjected to in Feltham. All they were unaware of was quite how far it would go.As for the changes that have occurred in the judicial and prison systems in the 20 years since my own lenient and effective conviction, well, the recent history of these institutions beggars belief. As in all public services, we have been hearing for two decades now that the root of all problems is “bleeding-heart liberalism” or “softly, softly do-gooding”.