This documentary changed my life, encouraging me to train to become a Prison Governor and, in due course, and to a more modest extent than I would have liked, improve some of the indecency exposed by this documentary. Quietly and without any sense of sensationalism it portrays the poverty of our then treatment of prisoners, exposes the extent to which we incarcerate the mentally ill, the casual contempt of staff toward those in their care, the insanitary conditions, the humiliation of slopping out, the lack of moral leadership by the Governor and the ineptitude of those charged with protecting the rights of prisoners. Some of those things have improved, not least the last one. But one covered prominently in this fascinating insight is as relevant today as it was in the 80s. And that is the portrayal of overcrowding: eroding if not destroying any hope of rehabilitation on any serious scale. Martin Narey, Director General of the Prison Service and CEO NOMS (1998 -2005)
