Second opinion

I ARRIVED at the prison last week to find a car — a battered BMW of the no-tax-and-insurance model — parked outside. In it sat two young male AfroSaxons of the gold-front-tooth persuasion playing the car wireless so loudly that the tarmac juddered to the beat of what I suppose I must call the music. The lyrics were simple, repetitious and easily memorised, even by those with the attention span of a British government minister: FOK DA SIS-TEM, FOK DA SIS-TEM, FOK DA S1S-TEM. Compared with this music, of course, the compositions of Webern were positively tuneful.

I must admit that I have myself sometimes entertained doubts about the system. Any system, after all, capable of producing such a loathsome racket must be pretty rotten, as must any system in which people can tolerate it for longer than the very briefest of moments; but any system that actually permits it so to pollute the environment is — well, near to final collapse.

Once in the prison, I came across further compelling evidence of the thorough rottenness of the system. I saw several prisoners, all in their early twenties, who were addicted to heroin, and all of them malnourished, with the purple tongues and cracked angles of the mouth that bespeak prolonged vitamin deficiency. One of them was so emaciated and rachitic that I could not refrain from saying something.

'If a press photographer took a picture of you in that condition when you left prison, everyone would conclude that we were running a concentration camp and demand its closure.'

The prisoner, who was far from stupid, told me I was right.

'Then why are there no calls to close British society down? It is a crime against humanity.'

`I can't argue with that,' said the prisoner.

The next patient had just tried to hang himself. There were red ligature marks around his neck.

'Why did you try to kill yourself?' I asked.

He handed me a letter he had just received. It was one to his girlfriend and baby-mother, and it had been returned with 'Unknown at this address' written on the envelope.

'But she opened it and read it,' he said. 'How do you know?' I asked.

'Because she took out the photograph I sent her. I don't know why she's doing this to me.'

`Why are you in prison?' I asked.

'Assault.'

'Her, by any chance?'

'Yes.'

`What did you do?'

'I strangled her. I know I shouldn't of, but she provoked me.'

`How?'

'I'd just come out after doing a 12 month. She told me this bloke she was living with while I was inside had broke the babby's arm in three places, and now it was in care and I couldn't see it. It's nearly three years old, and I only seen it once. Today is the babby's birthday.'

The next prisoner looked very angry.

`I shouldn't even be here,' he said.

'Why not?'

`I'm innocent.'

`What of?' I asked.

'Harassment. My ex says I'm harassing her. She's a liar, that's what she is, she's a liar.'

'You've split up?'

'Yeah, two months ago.'

`And did you harass her?'

'Don't be f—ing stupid. How could I harass her when she's carrying my bleedin' baby?'

Theodore Dalrymple