One-time career armed robber Noel "Razor" Smith is, in many ways, the perfect advert for the prison system. When first incarcerated, he was completely illiterate. But while inside, he taught himself to read and write and has now released three books, one of which – his autobiography – was published by Penguin. Whereas once he could only make a living from violent crime, he has, with the help of prison service courses, carved himself out a career as a writer and journalist to rival anyone on the outside. He has written articles for the Guardian and the New Statesman and his first book, A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun, was favourably reviewed by several national newspapers. Intriguingly, he even has a celebrity agent: fellow author, Will Self.
Razor says he has been rehabilitated through his writing and he credits the prison system with helping him turn a corner in his life – a staggering 27 years of which have been spent behind bars. Given this heart-warming transformation, you would be forgiven for expecting the prison service to celebrate the change they have helped to inspire. Sadly, though, this would be misplaced. Instead of encouraging Razor with his writing so that, when he finally gets out, he can stand on his own two feet, they have done everything in their power to undermine him.
Recently, his writing has been made the subject of an investigation. His temporary release on licence has been cancelled, his phone calls have been placed under "special scrutiny", his incoming and outgoing mail has been held up and examined, and his publisher has been bombarded with interrogatory phone calls. The reason the prison service give for this behaviour is that they don't want Smith to profit from his offending. Fair enough, you may think, but are other, more famous, convicts have endured no such fetters on their creative freedom. Jonathan Aitken penned and published Pride and Perjury about his crimes, while Jeffrey Archer gave us three volumes of his prison diaries. It seems Razor is being unfairly singled out, but perhaps a more pertinent question is: why now?
His first book was published in 2004 and reviewed in the national media. Similarly, that book, like his subsequent two, were sent to the publisher in the normal mail and therefore available for scrutiny like all his other correspondence. The prison service could have intervened years ago, yet they left it until now to act. But there is another explanation for this sudden, arbitrary and retrospective attempt to curtail his writing.
This year, Razor's third book, Warrior Kings: The South London Gang Wars, was published. As crime correspondent on the Daily Star Sunday, I took the opportunity to visit him at HMP Grendon in Buckinghamshire to talk about the book, as well as life on the inside. Because I was seeing him as a normal visitor, I could not record the interview. When I got back to the office, I wrote to him to get more details about the things we had talked about. One of the things we discussed was the situation at maximum security prison HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire. Razor had received correspondence from a friend there relating serious problems at the jail. When I wrote to him, I asked for more information about this. I waited patiently for his reply but it never arrived. I eventually found out from his girlfriend that the prison service had seen his letter was addressed to a journalist, read it and stopped it going out. It was then that the investigation began.
Can it really be a coincidence that after operating a laissez faire approach to Razor's writing career for four years, they only start to crack down on it when he writes to a journalist about serious failings in the prison system? Far from the prison service's explicit reason for the suppression of Razor's writing – not wanting him to profit from his crimes – it seems what they really do not want is for Razor's betterment to lead to their detriment.
Enforcing the end of Razor's contact with publishers and the media is little more than a particularly draconian PR exercise. Furthermore, as Razor says: "Through my writing, I have found the rehabilitation many seek. I have made a lot of contacts in the world of publishing and journalism, which will aid me in finding employment on my release from prison. Yet the hypocritical way prison system is behaving, it seems they would prefer me to go back to robbing banks for a living."
In these days of rampant recidivism, genuine success stories such as Razor's should be encouraged. It is more than just a shame that the prison service appears to be putting its image before the needs of prisoners and – more importantly – before the interest of the wider public.
