Prison acts on Herald letters

By Beth Webb THE AUTHORITIES at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London are stopping mail sent to Mr Shane O'Doherty in response to two letters that he wrote to the Herald.
In his letters Mr O'Doherty appealed. for a realistic and Christian understanding of prisoners as people. He is currently serving a life sentence for his involvement in an IRA letter bomb campaign. The letters caused him to lose two weeks' privileges.
According to Home Office rules, prisoners may only correspond with relatives and friends who they knew prior to their imprisonment as well as MPs and members of the House of Lords. Since the Herald published the letters readers' replies have been returned with a printed letter from the assistant prison governor saying: "S. O'Doherty's letter .. . was unauthorised and he is therefore not allowed to receive any correspondence referring to it."
A Home Office spokesperson said that all letters are a "privilege": "In prison, everything apart from eating, sleeping and exercise is a privilege: even the possession of a pen or radio is a privilege because they are not essential to health," she said.
She would not comment on the findings of the Howard League for Penal Reform that the receipt and writing of letters is vital for the rehabilitation of the offender.
Despite the Home Office rules about who may write to a prisoner, a member of the Social Welfare Commission's Penal Affairs Committee, Professor Terence Morris. managed to persuade the Home Office to allow him to correspond with Mr O'Doherty.
When asked why Professor Morris was allowed to correspond with Mr O'Doherty, while others w,ho were neither cranks nor criminal contacts were not allowed to communicate with the prisoner at all, the spokesperson said: "I really don't know, we can't discuss individual prisoners, I've told you the rules.'