What’s it like spending Christmas behind bars?

It’s customary these days for people to complain that Covid restrictions mean everyday life ‘is like living in a prison.’ Believe me: it isn’t. So let’s spare a charitable thought for those whose rooms have no handles to hang a stocking on and those whose job it is to make Christmas incarceration more bearable for them.

This morning, a prison population roughly the size of Scunthorpe spread across a crumbling penal archipelago of over 100 jails will wake up to a day difficult enough for most on their own outside. But for inmates, Christmas Day is made more so by pandemic restrictions, isolation from families and the municipal smell emanating from Big Dave in the bunk above. Those of you who are familiar with my thoughts on our prison system and how it is run will recognise that I’m not exactly a bleeding heart on criminal justice reform. Yet as a former prison governor, I can tell you from actual front-line experience as opposed to crime theory waffle that Christmas in prison is where our shared humanity is most apparent and most important.