The Blantyre House Prison Affair: Lessons From a Modern-day Witch Hunt - Tapa blanda

'[Murtagh is] convincing in his assertion that the blame for the situation at Blantyre House was misdirected and presents sound evidence to show that the ideas behind the prison are sound, if applied correctly to the appropriate people.'Reference & Research Book News (USA).'What this book does very effectively is make you think about all that goes on in prison in spite of the intended regime. It raises a number of issues: human rights versus enforcement; should career criminals be offered resettlement; how rich criminals can potentially corrupt staff; and whether politicians contribute light or heat to any debate about prisons. Blantyre House is a good place to start thinking about prisons.'The Magistrate.'A strikingly interesting and well written book'Justice of the Peace'I recognize some of the scenarios only too clearly. This is a story that needs a public airing, no matter which side the reader finally comes down on. Blantyre House is a prison that borders on my own constituency, one with a high reputation and long history of success. Then it suddenly found itself at the centre of a scandal. Because of the role of the prison many people assumed that there had been an over-reaction by HM Prison Service. What follows is a story of nothing less than the institutionalising of public emotions.'The Rt. Hon Ann Widdecombe MP, former Prisons MinisterTom Murtagh's actions in managing Blantyre House 'not only preserved all that was good about the Blantyre regime ... but may have saved my job and perhaps that of the Home Secretary.'Martin Narey, Director of Barnardo's and former Director-General of HM Prison Service - from the Foreword'Progress needs people like Tom Murtagh who never shied away from anything if he believed he was doing right ... It is worrying that MPs, singly or collectively, can be so easily manipulated by what seems to have been lobbying and use of the media ... That's democracy for you! This book is important: not simply for putting the record straight'.David Cottle, Then-chair, Blantyre House Board of Visitors

In this autobiographical account of life as a prison governor and administrator, Tom Murtagh deals with life in charge of the Maze Prison, Northern Ireland (when he narrowly avoided being killed by a terrorist bomb) and his move to England that saw him in charge of prisons in Kent and elsewhere. This is when he was faced with a remarkable series of events at Blantyre House where a modern, liberal ground-breaking and in many respects successful regime was beginning to attract the attention of reformers, academics and others. But that regime also masked more sinister developments - events that should ultimately have received serious attention from a House of Commons select Committee set up to look into 'The Blantyre House Affair'.Only now - and after much reflection - does Tom Murtagh feel able to tell publicly his side of the affair: of how that committee chose to concentrate on selective and misleading information and 'got it wrong'. Despite all the accolades for Blantyre House, behind the scenes and in reality, the regime was being taken advantage of by a number of very serious offenders who had managed to get themselves transferred there such that the establishment was at risk of being overtaken by organized crime and corruption, leading to covert police and other criminal investigations.The book tells how the author acted to pre-empt this - only to be vilified by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, some penal reform groups and ultimately the committee. As Martin Narey the then Director General of HM Prison Service writes in his foreword, had the author not acted as he did to contain the regime's excesses it is likely that before long Parliament would have been calling for the resignations of Murtagh as Area Director, Narey as Area Director General and also the Home Secretary himself. "The Blantyre House Affair" is a telling example of how people can sometimes be swept along by events that may cause them to ignore those things that are counter or inconvenient to their own aims or interpretation; of how reality can sometimes be ignored.