The slippery pole
Nick Emley
From Dartmoor to Cambridge: The Autobiography of a Prison Graduate Douglas , Curtis (Hodder and Stoughton £2,40)
This book is almost a virtuoso performance, the culmination of a remarkably well-played role by an (ex) Lon-man. Featuring the fall and rise of the irrepressible Douglas Curtis, the book charts his path in a racy and readable manner from an RAF discharge, a ludicrous prison sentence for debt in Bristol, through to skilful and determined theft by pretending to be someone he isn't and ending up on the losing side in Dartmoor. Realising the bankruptcy of his former ways, he makes the 'real' escape and heads off via a series of successful examinations for his BA in Cambridge.
The criminal activities in this first half of the book often make exciting and humorous reading. His first confrontation with the law, when poverty is his crime and he is packed off to prison for failing to provide his wife with maintenance, breeds a contempt for society and its rules. Genet, another much publicised figurd similarly given to making capital by describing his criminal activities, would doubtless approve of Curtis's determination to show that "a successful con-man could climb to the top of the tree," Too right Douglas, you prove it with a vengeance later on. Curtis directs the movie of his past with no little panache, as he is driven on by his boundless 'needs and ambitions' which are fostered not prevented by imprisonment. These don't include his first wife and family whom he deserts but they do include numerous sexual encounters, notable mainly for their tone of being able to make it with almost any woman . he chooses, be it Ros or Liz or Shirley to name but three. Above all, one is struck by a constant and insatiable desire for acclaim and approval, from prisoners when in jail and when out of it, from anyone else who succumbs to his charms.
Prison curtails the achievement of ambition and our hero is not one to stay among the crowd. Despite initial and characteristic lack ,,,, of help, he manages to get books into Dartmoor; and gains a place at Cambridge. The tap of the tree comes a bit closer. I do not mean to trivialise his reniarkable efforts in this sphere. Education in prison is still all too often
• seen, by the screws especially, as being out of md,place, an excuse for not sewing up those . mailbags. It isn't that they think the latter is .. useful, but it does make prison numbers easier to .control and manipulate. The glimmerings — of erudition in the .prisoner present the guard with something he can't control. Next to be., ing black, you can't do much worse than be a student. Curtis's perseverance and deter
, mination to instil the utter emptiness of his Dartmoor existence with some purpose is striking.
In the second stage of the book, from I Cambridge to the television screen and platform of penal reform, Curtis plays his part so ': well that he moves to a new prominence; another child of the media is born. He --recounts wave after wave of his performances and achievements. His best campaigns are on his own behalf, not on that of those still behind the walls. The time spent with PROP is a case in point. This important pressure group which tries to ensure that prisons are not forgotten about and that necessary radical reforms are effected, was started by Curtis and Dick Pooley whom he had met in jail. At a time when he was needed to continue working in such a group and just after "we had pulled off the largest concerted prison action in the world" (which he admits it wasn't) he leaves, muttering unconvincing excuses about the heed for non-violent action.
If he had really cared about this struggle, would it not have been wiser to have exerted his moderating influence by staying in PROP? Needs and ambitions obviously pointed in a different direction.
What is distressing is the author's high degree of self-inflation; there is only room for one under the spotlight and Curtis is the man.
Heroes, if we must have them, turn away from themselves and their own needs, in con tradistinction to the way Curtis operates. He is his own hero. I believe very few prisoners will continue to have much sympathy for or derive much hope from him; for he is no longer their representative. His books draw attention not to the plight of those who remain inside but solely to himself. The more I read, the more strained the author's credibility became. At the end, he has become too good to be true; he is going to be everyone's favourite reformed criminal.
Furthermore, he has the modesty to proclaim that he knows he "can contribute something of vital importance to the development of a new philosophy in that field," the sociology of crime in which he will soon be knocking off his doctorate. There is precious little sign of any new ideas in this book. The respectable BA, glossy cover pho tograph and all, I'm not convinced the author deserves the applause some will give and have given him for a total performance which overreaches and undoes itself. He latterly becomes so mahy things to so many men and I'm not sure a real Douglas Curtis exists. As a case-study in self-interest, it takes some beating.
Nick Emley was sent to Borstal in 1970, while still a student at Cambridge University.
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