Only the tabloids call two women playing cards a “grim spectacle”

‍ Lucy Letby's 'cushty' prison life gorging on sweets and 'playing chess with fellow child killer'

In this article, published on the Daily Mirror website, readers are supposed to be outraged that Lucy Letby is playing cards with a fellow inmate.

Apart from the fact that it is littered with errors and falsehoods – as most tabloid articles are – there is nothing of substance in this non-article.

The reason I am writing about it is here is that it is a good but infuriating example of how the tabloids are constantly influencing public opinion in a toxic manner.

As always, prison life is presented as “cushty”. I have yet to meet anyone who has been to prison and thought it was cushty...All the privileges that Letby apparently has - such as a TV in her cell, family visits, wearing her own clothes and buying food items - are in fact standard for most prisoners in the UK, as they should be.

The most grievous error is that what is presented as special favourable treatment is in fact protection given to her as highly vulnerable prisoner, at danger of being harmed by other inmates, due to the publicity of her case.
The assertion that this wouldn’t be the case were she a man is simply not true. Many male prisoners convicted ofsexual offences, for example, are given a similar kind of protection.

But let’s move to the juicy bit, the emotional core of the story, intended to incite indignation and moral outrage in the reader. Letby has struck up a friendship with a fellow child killer and, - now it comes - the two are playing cards and chess in their cell, sometimes for hours, “just like a family”.

The Sun reports that staff and prisoners have been left shuddering at the "grim spectacle". A source said: "They spend ages at the table playing and get really into it. People are angry, but staff have to do what they can to keep prisoners happy."

Without having been there, I can with 100% certainty assure you that absolutely nobody present  - whether  staff or fellow inmates – was in any way outraged at seeing two inmates play cards.
What else exactly are they supposed to be doing? Sit in silence and stare at the wall for the next 30 years? Being whipped and given lashes all day?  

The implication here is the following. Playing cards is something that normal people do. These two, however, are not normal people. There are evil monsters. And therefore, playing cards becomes a “grim spectacle”.

It’s this process of dehumanisation that we often see in debate around crime and prison.
When politicians make statements following terrible crimes, they often describe the perpetrators as “monsters”, and not as persons, using adjectives such as “evil, twisted, wicked”, etc. They are different from us, is the implication. We are humans, they are not. They are monsters.
But the fact is that regardless how heinous the crime, it was committed by a human being. Hitler was very much a human being.

It is an unpleasant and uncomforting thought which we’d rather not accept as true, but if we want to have informed opinions of how we can improve criminal justice and society, we will have to accept it.

The dehumanisation of offenders in the media and by politicians reinforces the idea that prisons are full of people that are so fundamentally different from us, they are not even humans.

As someone who has spent 3 years in four different prisons – having met hundreds of prisoners, amongst them many murderers– I can say with certainty that the people you’ll see in prison are not fundamentally different from the people you’ll see in an office, a pub, at the gym, or walking down Oxford Street.

‍Obstacles to improving the system

What frustrates me is that improving the prison system and making it better for everyone involved – victims and their families, offenders and their families, everyone who works in the prison service, society at large – is in theory straightforward as we know what works and where the problems lie. A better prison system would not just create less overall suffering; it would also cost significantly less and reduce crime by reducing reoffending.

In practice however, improving the system is near impossible due to the combination of a public that is misinformed, politicians that pander to that misinformation rather than challenging it, and constant false media representations.
And the tabloid press – with decades of publishing thousands of rubbish articles like this one – shares a significant part of the blame.