The Siena Society got off to a riveting start to the year with a sizeable audience being treated to a rare and uncompromising talk by a former convicted robber, Mr John Bowers. Mr Bowers reminded us that 86,000 people are locked up in our prisons today and much of his talk was an attempt to answer the question: Why?
Using his own background as testimony (a father whom he never knew and a mother whom he ‘hated’) it became increasingly clear that as much as Mr Bowers did not want to blame his own fall into crime on upbringing, he clearly felt that poor parenting is a big reason why so many teenagers become criminals. Lack of opportunities, or what he called ‘alternatives’ give further explanation as to why he and others just like him, spend most of their lives in and out of various penitentiaries. Mr Bowers himself was incarcerated in Winchester , Maidstone and Dartmoor prisons and some of the descriptions he gave of the conditions in such places defy belief. Indeed, he himself could find no words to describe his spell of solitary confinement in Dartmoor , so inhumane was his treatment.
This said, at no time did Mr Bowers suggest that certain criminals should not be locked up; rather you were left amazed at how newly-released prisoners are so poorly prepared to face the day to day stresses of life back in society. Mr Bowers said that he was lucky: towards the end of his final spell in prison, ‘it was as if someone had hit some sense into my head’ and he realized that he had to go on and make a life for himself. For those still languishing in prison, who have had no such flash of insight, you were left worrying for their future.