Word reaches me from my friends inside Scotland’s prison estate that they are soon to become the beneficiaries of a new, collaborative approach to improving the incarceration experience. And not before time, say I. 

This, it seems, will include the opportunity to complete user-experience forms which may be used to show the lags and lagettes that Scotland is world-leading in having the friendliest and most welcoming jails in the world.

My sources inside the higher echelons of the civil service tell me (on an attributable basis, of course) that there had been a drive to deliver deliverable deliveries in Scotland’s troubled punishment sector.

This included some of our leading policymakers breaking into small groups where each of them was encouraged to bring an ordinary household item that made them think of jail. 

There was an eye-watering assortment of products such as razor blades, packets of talcum powder and family bibles which had been hollowed out to form secret compartments. 

There had also been role-playing modules in which each member of the group would take turns to play a prisoner who has been caught with a mobile phone up his fundament, thus breaking strict prison health and safety rules.

I’m sure this idea to be more compassionate and humane by actually listening to prisoners’ concerns is well meant. Yet, I hae ma doots.

Prior to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the Scottish Government considered the notion of allowing some categories of prisoners the right to vote on September 18. 

This notion made sense. Engaging prisoners in the national debate could have provided them with a fresh focus on their lives and how they got there. It would have told them that they were valued and that they still had something to offer society.

The SNP, however, reverted to reactionary, populist type and excluded them from this opportunity to introduce a civilising aspect to their prison experience.  

Bars ire brews
Sadly (I’m told), a handful of cynical civil servants had made it their business to ruin this exercise in seeking a more empathetic approach to penal servitude by coming the Jeremy Hunt. 

They insisted that handing out questionnaires about the lived experience of life inside our jails just won’t butter the parsnips. And that there should be a detailed survey among civil servants soliciting their opinions as to why serving politicians are never brought to justice for their crimes and misdemeanours while in public office. 

Happily, these curmudgeons were removed and are now, I believe, being questioned under the Official Secrets Act. One high-ranking civic panjandrum suggested that the best solution for improving life inside Scotland’s jails was to shorten jail times or, better still, provide them with the means of avoiding jail no matter what crimes they may have committed.

This could be done in a variety of ways: provide them with honorary membership of Edinburgh’s New Club; furnish them with access to Masonic Lodges known to be frequented by our top judges; provide them with access to black-market specialists in making fake GRR certificates. 

Tory tearaways
I SUGGESTED to my sources that among the UK’s top politicians there lurked several sinister characters from whom the honest common criminal classes might themselves require protection.

Indeed, the UK Tories’ most dangerous people would – in the interests of prison safety – be required to spend their sentence in a prison block away from decent criminals. 

If you didn’t isolate them from the law-abiding prison population you ran the risk of the politicians becoming a corrupting influence on their straightforward and accountable criminality. 

Before you knew it the lower criminal classes would be getting lessons in how to avoid jail sentences for even the most egregious of financial misconduct.

The honest cohort of traditional prisoners would be given access to shady networks of contacts across the City of London where a nod and a wink and an esoteric handshake can maintain one’s freedom in the face of overwhelming evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

The political criminals in a desperate attempt to soften the jail experience would be exchanging God knows what type of top-secret information for in-prison favours. 

“Here, Arfur, I hear you might be in the market for a little earner in the illegal weapons sector. 

“Well, when you get out of here just call this number in Kiev from a public call box. Say no more, say no more: a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse, old chap.”

Lock mess
STILL, I’m not entirely sure Scotland’s prisons strategists have entirely thought through this well-meant scheme to make life in the pokey a little more bearable for those who don’t have access to the right connections.

Have they considered the full consequences of their drive for a more open and caring attitude towards those who have strayed beyond the confines of the law? 

I’m only asking because some of the returned user-experience questionnaires from those currently residing in the female prison estate could prove problematic. 

“Please provide a short personal statement on how you think we can provide a more rewarding and uplifting outcome to your spell at His Majesty’s pleasure. 

“All replies will be treated with the strictest of confidence in accordance with the Scottish Government’s Solving Solvable Solvables Inside Scotland’s Prisons.”

“Well, it’s just that I’m having doubts that my cellmate may not be the woman she purports to be and this has become patently obvious during her morning ablutions and in the communal shower spaces. 

“I’ve previously brought this to the attention of the prison governor who told me that failure to respect pronouns may result in a period of solitary confinement, or worse: being sent on Stonewall’s intensive two-week course, Including Inclusive Inclusions in your Deliverable Solutions.”