What shall we do with the Drunken Sailor?

Here in the Annexe, a small therapeutic community inside a top security prison, we are at the very soul of the human condition. Hate, violence and contempt mingle with extraordinary compassion and sympathy. Now in our thirteenth year, we exist to offer an alternative, especially for sexual offenders, to isolation and inevitable reinforcement of the perverse attitudes that pose such a threat to society.

I do not intend to offer a statistical assessment or even a conventional clinical description of this Unit. Instead, I will endeavour to convey some measure of the intrinsic meaning of our work and its relevance, not only for the inmates under our care, but also for the community at large. In an age when the terrorist and the Mafia loom large, we must concern ourselves with a search for a framework that will help us grapple with such evil forces, in all their guises.

However, the meaning of our work goes beyond ‘treating’ the criminal. At the same time as we explore ‘their perversions’, we meet our own. An essential ingredient of our work is to examine the social structure of the hierarchy, i.e., the Staff and Institution attitudes. Too often we see the veil of respectability being used as a cloak to perpetuate evil. The Headmaster, Child-care Worker, Scoutmaster or Father who beats the bottom of his charges, and while ostensibly rubbing in cream to ease the pain of the wounds, buggers the child. Many of these figures initially start from a mental attitude of saving the victim from wrongdoing. The Murderer who pours scalding water on the Sex Offender feels he is avenging wrongdoing, and can experience an elated sense of self-righteousness and the congratulations of his friends for his actions; surely enough to make those of us with experience in the field have strong reservations about the simplistic notion of the ‘short, sharp shock.’

In order to convey the understanding of what dominates the mind of a typical offender in our Unit, I will give a few