A Woman in custody & Audrey Peckham

There are not many books written by exprisoners on their prison experiences. Hitherto, I had always thought of Rod Caird's A Good and Useful Life as the best. It is joined by A Woman in Custody, written by a former deputy headmistress of a comprehensive school, convicted of 'incitement to murder' and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. The book describes her experiences in Pucklechurch Remand Centre and Styal Prison. Her account is vivid, poignant and shocking: the conditions of stress and squalor in the remand centre are particularly disturbing.
Peckham has written the book to attack the institution of remand. Here is one more voice in the campaign against the system. What emerges from the book most graphically is the contrast between the remand conditions of Pucklechurch and prison life in Styal. The latter is no bed of roses but the former is an affront to the principles of civilised society. She brings out forecefully the gap between the theory that remand prisoners are privileged and the reality of the existence of such prisoners. As it emerges from her account, the theory is merely a sham. What is the use of a 15-minute visit, even if there is no restriction on intervals between them? Why should the letters of the unconvicted, and therefore legally innocent, be censored? We are told that incoming letters had the stamps removed in case there were drugs concealed under them. And this was England in 1982. The work that women in Pucklechurch were forced to do is also a scandal and a potential infringement of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Those looking for an indictment of remand conditions will find excellent ammunition in Peckham's intelligently written, sensitive account. But it is more than this. It is a vivid, autobiographical description of a nightmare, of a journey through the legal and penal system. It is a moving book, almost Kafkaesque in its haunting intensity. It ought to be read by those whose daily concerns are courts and prisons. Fontana; 256 pp; £3.95 (paperback).