“I could speak forever on this subject... Everyone should worry about it.”

Nicky Padfield frowned at the audience. Out of the thirty people gathered to hear Fitzwilliam Debating Society discuss the motion “This House Believes Britain Should Build More Prisons”, only four had ever visited a prison. “One of the saddest things in our society is that most people have never visited,” she later tells me. “It stops us from breaking down the walls in a sense.” 

To members of Fitzwilliam College, where she has been a fellow since 1991, Padfield is more or less part of the furniture. But the audience in Fitzwilliam’s Gordon Cameron Lecture Theatre are reminded of her status as one of the foremost minds on the subject of prisons. Her performance clearly demonstrates why she has had success across the spectrum of legal careers – as a part-time judge (recorder), a barrister and an academic.

She goes on to lament “the scary power of the red top newspapers in our society”. According to Padfield, the media’s systemic demonisation of prisoners undermines the truth: “prisons are really sad places, full of sad people who did not think before they acted. I encourage all of you to spend a week’s work experience in your local prison... You’ll walk through and look at the prisoners and you’ll see that the line between the ‘mad’ ’bad’ and ‘sad’ is difficult to draw.”

What about the argument that holds prison as a deterrent for prospective criminals? “Unconvincing,” says Padfield, “for those who don’t believe they’ll be caught....  and as for you [students] it’s your moral values that stop you, as much as deterrence.” She questions the idea of prisons protecting vulnerable individuals, describing how many criminals – such as Steve Barker and Peter Sutcliffe – face retributive attacks from their fellow prisoners. Padfield is also concerned with the impact political policy has had on prisoners, leaving arguments based on rehabilitation threadbare. In the last five years, budget reductions at the National Offender Management Service has led to educational courses in prisons being cut. Over the same period, there have been major increases in the numbers of assaults and small increases in the number of suicides. 

“This has further compromised attempts at rehabilitation... after all, it is incredibly difficult to teach people who dropped out of school aged 10 to read and write aged 25 even with high-quality teachers and provisions.”

In light of the recent controversies of trans-gender prisoners, I enquire into the possibility of gender-free prisons. Here, Padfield treads more carefully. “If the world were a different place, we wouldn’t say you have to go to that prison because you’re a man, or that prison because you’re a woman."

“If the world were a different place, we wouldn’t say you have to go to that prison because you’re a man, or that prison because you’re a woman. But in Britain today, there is no way we could have mixed prison: many, many, many women in prison have suffered from abuse, largely at the hands of men outside prison, and prison is in some sense a haven from abuse.”

She launches into a lucid and powerful analysis of the prison system’s treatment of women, who are “often held... miles away from their local communities, which leads to the breaking of social bonds, particularly with children.” She recalls a harrowing encounter with a grandmother waiting outside a prison, ready to pick up her new grandchild as it was taken away from her incarcerated daughter. Sighing, Padfield repeats the grandmother’s words: “I don’t have any other option but to quit my job and to take this baby home with me...”

She catches sight of my expression and nods. “It is shocking how many people come out with no fixed abode, no prospects, no hope. Nothing. One of my sadnesses, as a criminal lawyer, is that law students don’t look at the situations in prisons and developments in mental health law in parallel.” 

But she is implacable when I ask if her experience of prisons, and their impact upon prisoners, and on their families, may have swayed her decisions when acting as judge. “I hope I did what the law required me to do. And that is that."

Still, with Padfield making contributions to the Parliamentary Justice Committee, perhaps progress can be made. After all, this is a woman who has the knowledge, the experience and sheer persuasiveness to not only positively reform the UK’s prison system, but also to dissipate much of the hostility towards prisoners inherent within the psyche of the British public. 

She just needs more people to start listening.