My friend Bob Turney, who has died aged 82, was a founder of Unlock, the national association for ex-offenders, which offers practical support to those seeking to escape “the long shadow” of their criminal record as well as campaigning for institutional and legislative reform.
I first met Bob when he arrived at Waterside Press, the criminal justice publishing house where I was publisher. He was clutching a well-thumbed manuscript. As he stepped inside, the phone rang: “Lord Longford here. Has Bob arrived safely? I’ve written a foreword.”
I’m Still Standing, his memoir, was published in 1997. In it Bob described how he had survived poverty, dyslexia, lack of education, drug abuse, alcoholism, street life, rehab and the fringes of organised crime. A prolific offender who spent 18 years in prison for offences including burglary and petty theft, he told of how he had felt welcome, protected and valued only in that dark world.
Bob was born in Carshalton, Surrey, and grew up around the St Helier estate in nearby Morden. His mother, Violet (nee Page), and father, Thomas Turney, were first cousins. Both had medical issues: his father, whom Bob described as a tyrant, had bipolar disorder and took his own life when Bob was 10; his mother was partially deaf.
He struggled at school – he learned that he had dyslexia only in adulthood – and was first sent to a young offenders’ institution at 17. He left prison for the last time in 1979 and his addiction issues, with which he had struggled for 20 years, intensified, but he met his wife Sue (nee Haisell), in rehab, in 1981.
By the 1990s Bob had given up drink and crime for good, was studying for a degree in forensic social work at Reading University – during which time he was befriended by the prison reformer Longford – and doing voluntary work. He also embraced religious faith as Sue was brought up in the Mormon church, in which he was later ordained a bishop. He became a probation officer in 1997 (one of the first ex-offenders to enter the profession) and a member of a youth justice team.
His transformation did not escape the attention of the media and he was soon captivating conference goers. In 1997 he met Mark Leech, ex-offender and editor of the Prisons Handbook, and together they co-founded Unlock, with a launch at Pentonville prison in 1999 and Sir Stephen Tumim becoming the charity’s first president. With Angela Devlin, Bob also edited the book Going Straight: After Crime and Punishment (1999), which comprised recollections by more than 20 ex-offenders, including Stephen Fry, the Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds and the murderer turned sculptor Hugh Collins.
Bob made many public appearances: in prisons and at criminal justice events, winning a debate at the Oxford Union, addressing students at Eton, arguing on air with Esther Rantzen, and attending 10 Downing Street. Serious as he was about his work and the importance of rehabilitating prisoners, he could bring down the house talking in villainous whispers, using prison speak (“a shit and a shave”: a short sentence) and telling youthful tales of outrunning less agile coppers.
Sue was a great support to Bob. The two of them settled in Shinfield, outside Reading, and had five children, Charlotte, Sarah, Roo, Libby and Joe. They all survive him, along with 11 grandchildren.
