Life Imprisonment an unofficial guide
Review by Noel SmithThis book should be issued to all life and indeterminately sentenced prisoners straight after sentence. It seems surprising, perhaps even shocking, that the prison system does not readily supply the information contained in this book to life sentence prisoners as a matter of course. Having served a life sentence myself I would have found this book invaluable. The prison system is notorious amongst prisoners for doing its best to keep any helpful information (helpful to prisoners, that is) to itself. In order to gain the simplest piece of information the prisoner will have to jump through many hoops – written applications for which you rarely see a reply, constant changing of PSIs (Prison Service Instructions) and PSOs (Prison Service Orders), and the fact that you can only view the information for a limited time frame during one of the infrequent visits to the prison library. So this book will be a boon to the lifer/ indeterminate community in our prisons. Set up in 40 easy to read sections the book covers everything from tariffs to parole in all the detail you would need. The author has served 20 years of his own life sentence and the experience and information he has gathered over this time has been hard won. The only fly in the ointment here is that the book was written before Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s unneeded and spiteful interventions into the British prison system that are presently causing mayhem all over the system. So the sections on ROTL (Release On Temporary Licence) for lifers, recategorisation and parole may have to be rewritten in any future editions of the book. With a Foreword by former prison governor Tim Newell and a glossary of prison slang words and phrases this book ticked all the right boxes for me. An essential and useful tool for anyone serving a life or indeterminate sentence.
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