YouSaid · the spoken record

Charlie Taylor

lines on the record: 50
first: 2025-02-14
most recent: 2025-02-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yeah, the longer I sort of worked in this area, the more I have admiration for politicians, actually. And I think there are sort of lazy assumptions get made about politicians. And some of them are good, and some of them are less good. But I think there is a real sense of wanting to make the world a better place. So I have huge admiration for politicians, even the ones who I don't necessarily think are doing a good job because at least they have the guts that stick their head above the parapet.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funny enough, if I remember No, I do remember a teacher coming to me and saying, Charlie, I'm afraid we've got some bad news and some good news. And I said, okay, he said, I'm afraid there's been some graffiti done by X people in the boys' toilets. And I said, well, that's terrible. And they said, and I'm afraid even more bad news, the graffiti says, Mr. Taylor is something or other. And I said, well, this is awful. And she said, yeah, but the good news is he spelt it right.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they couldn't smash them, but you couldn't smash the Perspex windows. So this was a great triumph actually, over time they got scratched and various, I mean, it was a way of children being able to show off their new writing skills that so our literacy work was certainly paying off”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting. I mean, the most depressing thing prisoners say to me is you're the governor. And sometimes I ask prisoners, do you even know if the governor's a man or a woman? And they can't answer the question. But I have to say, I've been doing the job for four and a bit years now. There have been three prisoners that I've come across who haven't wanted to talk to me out of the many, many hundreds who I have spoken to. So the prisoners, I think CS as someone who's prepared to listen to them, someone who will sit down with them and give them the time. And therefore, the level of engagement we get from prisoners is terrific, but also actually from governors as well. Governors are an exceptional breed. They are the most dedicated, I think the most dedicated public servants out there. Some of them are travelling ridiculously long commutes to get to work. They work very long hours and incredibly difficult circumstances. You know, head teachers don't have to lie on the beach on their holidays and worry that they're going to get a phone call saying there's been a riot or someone's committed suicide. So they are really remarkable people. And even when we deliver bad news to them, we...”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things I say, and I say this to governors when we debrief at the end, is you do a tougher job than we do. And I think it's really important as an inspectorate that we have some humility about that. I absolutely love my job. I have the most fantastic, brilliant, dedicated team of inspectors who know far more about prisons than I will ever know. And I love my job. It's an enormous privilege to walk around prisons, to talk to the fascinating people that you meet, whether they live or work in the jail. So I feel incredibly lucky. There are some days where it's a hard inspection and that's really the worst thing. It's where we have to deliver bad news to people who are very dedicated, very hardworking. And that's tough. But ultimately, we have a job to do. And I'm lucky to have a brilliant team who helped me do it.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, certainly we know that from our point of view, anything that relieves the pressure on prisons, anything that means that people aren't banged up for 22 hours a day in grim conditions in prisons like Wandsworth, that has to be a good thing. But ultimately there are political decisions that politicians will need to take on off the back of this review.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, the least well funded prison in the country as well. So I don't entirely buy, as ever with education and any part of public services, of course money is important. And of course when you see the infrastructure that we see in many local prisons with broken boilers and temporary wires and kitchens everywhere, but actually it's also about the people running the place and the beliefs and the values that they bring”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm always a little bit careful about that as an argument because I would say the best prison in the country is HMP Oakwood just outside Wolverhampton. It's 2,000 prisoners. It's also the biggest jail in the country. And actually when it opened, people said these giant jails will never be a success. They can't work. Actually, it's a very successful prison. We inspected it last summer. Prisoners were falling over themselves to tell us what an effective prison it was. There is a real sense of prisoners making progress that if you behave well there, then the prison will invest in you. If you behave badly, we won't write you off. We'll support you and we'll help you to get you back on the straight and narrow again.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or even worse still, the debt has to be settled by family members outside the prison. And we've seen mothers being intimidated by organized crime gangs and saying, your son owes £15,000 and people having to pay off huge amounts of savings just to keep drug dealers off the backs of their children.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the reasons why drugs get into prisons is because prisons are bored. There's a jail called Lyndhame in South Yorkshire where 20% of prisoners in that jail told us they developed a drug habit since they'd been inside. Well, part of the problem at the jail was that they discovered asbestos in a lot of the workshops, so prisoners didn't have anything to do during the day. They were bored out of their mind. They're lying on their beds, watching daytime television. And then someone from an organized crime gang comes and offers you some drugs. And you can understand the temptation for why people fall for that.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can understand the sentiment, but my view is ultimately if prisons are going to be more successful. Actually, if we're going to bear down on the prison population, then we need to reorientate our prisons towards purposeful activity, towards prisoners doing stuff that is going to make them less likely to re-offend when they come out. And that stuff includes coming off drugs, doing proper drug rehabilitation, transformative drug rehabilitation. It's about filling in the gaps in terms of their education, so teaching them to read gaps in terms of their working habits. So it's getting them to work every day where they get out of bed, they go to work, and they stay at work every day. And it's about giving them the sorts of skills, whether it's training, learning how to bricklay, learning how to drywall, the sort of skills that can get them into a decently paid job when they come out. And actually, if prisons don't get that bit right, if they only get the safety and security bit right, actually they're never going to be effective.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and to some extent, this is a new paradigm, and it's a new paradigm because of the payload of drones that come in, they can now, using things like what three words, they can get to an actual cell window, but also they're able to carry, I think the heaviest I think I've come across is something like four kilos worth of illicit material coming into a prison of contraband. And of course, at the moment, most of the time it's drugs and mobile phones because those are the ways that people make money. But we've come across cases where knives and knives that only have one sort of zombie style knives that only have one function have been getting into prisons. But the danger in something like Manchester, which has category A prisons, the riskiest prisoners in the system, or at Long Larton in Worcestershire, which is also category A prisoner prison with terrorist defenders, with organized crime bosses, the danger is that if someone gets a weapon into one of those jails, then all bets are off.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I irritated people in my first few years of this job by constantly comparing prisons with schools. And there are, as you say, many similarities about being clear about the purpose of the place, about setting clear boundaries, about supporting staff, about communicating with staff about what you're trying to do, about making the people who live and work there feel cared for. But it's not the same as a prison. But I guess every chief inspector who's done this job sees it through the prism of what they've done before. So, you know, someone like David Ramsbottom, who was my predecessor, I think he probably saw prisons as a recalcitant platoon or regiment or something like that. And I see them as a sort of recalcitrant or brilliant school that isn't functioning or is functioning well.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Eight, ten governors since the turn of the century. And again, when you get that churn of leadership, it's very hard to sustain any kind of progress.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the first thing is the governor. We go to jails all the time, which are, I mean, you take a prison like Pentonville. Pentonville is an incredibly difficult jail to run. It's double the population that it was built for. It's crumbling away. It's a Victorian prison amazingly built by the Victorians, but in no fit state these days. And yet for many years it had a brilliant governor, a guy called Ian Blakeman, who did an extraordinary job at the jail. Pencerville's never going to be perfect. He's never going to be the dream jail. It's never going to be HMP Utopia. But because he was such a great governor, because he galvanized his staff because he was able to hang on to good people, because prisoners bought into what he was trying to do, the prison was able to be reasonably successful. And that for Penton Bill is quite remarkable. But where leadership isn't up to scratch, what you find is prisons like Pentonville, like Wandsworth, these old Victorian overcrowded prisons kind of unrivaled incredibly quickly. And Wandsworth, I think, has had...”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just see that little boy who I knew when he was young, you know, and I know what he's been through. And that doesn't mean for a minute I excuse what he's done because it's awful. But, you know, show me the man and I'll walk with him.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some extent, yes, but it was still shocking. He's a bright, really able kid, but some of the things that had happened to him in his life had been really awful. And he was someone who could get pulled into stuff, was desperate for love, desperate for attention. And I think to some extent some of those needs were given to him by a gang that he got involved with. And I think that may explain why he got sucked into this sort of behavior.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's very sad when I look back at it and I still have this picture now, and it's a boy, and it's a photograph of the Leavers Assembly. And the guy next to him completely lost it on the day and was due to do a salo and couldn't do the salo. And this chap, this people of mine put his arm around him and he started doing the salo. And then as soon as the other guy got the confidence, he led him. They were actually bitter rivals. They were always having beef with each other. But it was an incredibly moving moment that someone had taken a phage girl off of. And very sadly this boy ended up doing quite a long stretch for grievous bodily harm and has actually just got out quite recently, been in touch. But it was...”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I appeared in front of a select committee, and I'm not sure to this day why I got invited to appear, but I got asked to appear in front of the Education Select Committee, whether there was something there about what I'd done that people or people around Michael Gove thought, actually, this is a person who might be able to do something useful when it comes to children's behaviour. I'm not really sure, but it was such an incredible opportunity.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extraordinarily, they sort of bought into it quite quickly, and the staff did as well. I think it was one of those things that was so sort of, as soon as you started doing it, it was so obvious that there was a gap there. I remember going to my chair of governors and a brilliant guy called Jim Edgecombe, and I said. There's all this stuff out there about whether you're allowed to hug children or not, and whether this is illegal. And teachers didn't know. And I said, look, how about if the governing bodies say that actually if a child needs a hug done appropriately, safeguarding concerns and all these things, that the child has absolutely endorse and see it as part of people's job in order to give that child a hug? And he said absolutely right, this is absolutely part of your job.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How to check in with people that you were doing it in the right way with them. But also at the same time it was bringing the temperature down in the classroom. Because if you've just been beaten by someone and humiliated on the football pitch, if that person is then giving you a massage afterwards and they're doing it in a very tender and sensitive way, then after a bit your rage dissipates.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I realised was that the kids at the school, one of the problems they have is kind of regulation. If their pulse rate goes up, their anxiety levels go up and if their anxiety levels go up or their adrenaline levels go up, then it doesn't take much for them to turn around and whack someone. And that was often the reason why they'd ended up in the school in the first place. And what we would find at the end of break time every day is that we'd have football and we wanted them to learn to play football because they had to learn to cope with winning and losing. But what we found when I started was that the winners would goad the losers and the losers would attack the winners or they would run off and disappear off onto the playing field. So rather than ban football, which to some extent would have been the obvious thing to do, what we thought is we've got to teach these kids to self-regulate. So what they would do is they would come in from the playground. Their pulses were pumping. They weren't in a position to be able to learn and they would just spend five or ten minutes doing peer massage on each other. But it also was teaching them things like how to touch each other. It was all done through clothing, how to touch each other.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So someone would say you pinched my scissors without asking. And I was looking for them all day yesterday and you could feel the tension in the room rise because the kids thought, oh God, a couple of parents, you know, what's going to happen here? There's going to be a fight. And then it would get resolved. And they said, I'm terribly sorry. And that sort of modeling was really important, was really important as well.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, one of the things that we realized quite early on was that the children, A, they didn't have breakfast, so they were quite undernourished a lot of the time. Many of them weren't fed properly. But also, they didn't know how to do the social stuff. And it was the social stuff ultimately that was going to get them in trouble. So we wanted to raise their standards. We wanted to teach them to read, get them good at maths and stuff. But we also had to teach them how to be less impulsive, how to be able to sit and make eye contact with someone. And, you know, if he thought they were sending you some unpleasant vibes that you weren't just going to get up and hit them. So we used to sit for 20 minutes every day and it was incredibly English. We would have a teapot and we would have a tablecloth and we would have butter. And one of the teaching assistants, Mary, more insisted that we had butter knives. So standards were being kept up. But it was a chance for the children to sit around a table and for us to talk. But also it was a chance for adults to practice having disagreements in front of the children and see them being resolved amicably.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always hard to know with these things. I think when I'm into the Department for Education, what you realize is the farther you are away from the front line, the less you're able to pull the levers directly and to be able to affect change. But certainly a friend of mine's daughter just started teaching and the checklist was being used in some of the teacher training. So that was quite gratifying.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredibly chaotic combs, and we needed to be really clear about what the expectations were for them. So if you did the right thing, you got a reward, and if you did the wrong thing, you got a consequence. Now, these weren't huge rewards and they weren't huge consequences, but they were absolutely certain. And then the final thing was that we had to create a context in which the children felt cared for. And those were the three main principles of the place.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I think there are a few principles, really. The first one was outstanding teaching and about a real focus on standards. One of the reasons that our kids really struggled was because they couldn't read. And what's really interesting, we introduced a reading scheme, a really fantastic reading scheme, and it began to make a real difference in children who'd never read suddenly began to read. And occasionally they used to go on the rampage around the school, storm out and posters down off the walls and chuck things about. They never touch the reading books. They were in as pristine nick when I left school after five and a half years as when I arrived at the school. So there was something about the children seeing the value of learning to read. And it's something that I've tried to push within prisons as well because I think the frustration I have that someone comes into jail unable to read as a five-year stretch and then leaves at the end unable to read is just simply unacceptable. So it was about standards, about really high standards. It was also about having really clear boundaries in place. Often these children had been in”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there's two things. First of all, it was about the people I worked with. We had a fantastic team there. There is a real, if you're working in those circumstances and people have this as well in prisons, if you're working in those sorts of circumstances, there is a level of comradeness and of a kind of deep friendship that you build with people. I mean, I'm having a drink with one of my old teachers on Monday next week, actually, that you will always have together. And I guess it's similar to the Esperita Corps that soldiers have as well. So there is something about being in the front line together that's incredibly powerful. But also that sense that if we keep doing this, and to some extent it was a leap of faith for me, because I was putting into practice stuff that I'd only talked about in theory, but as you began to see bits of progress and you'd suddenly have a day when you think we didn't have an incident today and you would hold your breath and fingers crossed and the next two days would be absolutely hell. But then suddenly you'd have two days in a row and then three days in a row and you could just feel the momentum.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you work in primary And I went, there was a Tesco's just up the road from our school, and at the time they were selling machine washable suits for 29.99, and I bought two of those. And actually they were a godsend because you keep one hanging behind the door and you strip off stick it in a black plastic bag, take it home and it's pristine the next morning.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it was a boy who'd just gone into the care system. He was incredibly distressed, was having an unbelievably difficult time. I remember the description of the family fridge, the social worker opened it, and it was so completely green with mold that the fridge just had to be removed from the house and thrown away. It was absolutely shocking. And he was removed from his parents and he was with foster carers and was incredibly unsettled. And he tried to jump out of the window, a ground floor window, but he was trying to jump out of the window. And if he jumped out, we knew that he might run off and we might not see him again or he may go back to riskier relative. So I remember grabbing him and trying to stop him escape. And then I'd done something to my... Yeah, indeed.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd been going around talking about children's behaviours, and I developed a certain level of expertise about it, but much of the job I had before I went to the Willows was about telling people how to do things better with these sorts of children. And I went and visited this school called the Willows, and I thought, what a fantastic place on a training day. And then one day I opened the Times Educational Supplement, and it fell open on a page. And there at the bottom of the page was an advert for head teacher of this school that I'd visited once and I'd really liked. And I thought, well, come on, put your money where your mouth is, give it a go. And after that sort of extraordinary good luck, I put in an application and was lucky enough to get the job.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd like to think they were envious of the fact that I heard such a fascinating and interesting job, even if it was slightly less well paid than them. And certainly when it came to the school holidays in August, they probably had zero sympathy at all anyway.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, just that sense that we have to muck in, we have to do things together that we're up against a common threat and we need to find ways to deal with it.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there was definitely a sense that you had to do your bit. I mean, I think to some extent it's that generation who were brought up in the war, where it was almost taken as read that you had to mark it in.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I went to a state primary school till I was eight years old, but it was really just, I think, an interest. I just found it incredibly interesting. As my career continued, I became more and more interested in the children who were the most difficult, the most challenges. What was it that could we do for those children in order to keep them back on the straight and narrow? What was it about them that made them say irksome to the school, to teachers, to everybody else? And how could we help?”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“By the kids, yeah, absolutely taken apart. Surprise you should coming in, fresh meat, they can see the fear in my eyes, and I didn't have a hope. But it did sort of light the spark. And I did really enjoy it. And I also really wanted the challenge of it. And I thought, well, I'm not having that. And the great thing about supply teaching is that you get to try things out in different schools. So I didn't go back, well, I did go back to that school for a bit. But I then went to other schools around Camden and I got a chance to kind of try stuff out and I got a bit better at it.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed, indeed. And I was very lucky, I had a terrific education. And I went on to train as a teacher, not that I ever necessarily thought I was going to be a teacher, but it was something to do and it seemed interesting. And it was extraordinary. I went and did a, I didn't have anything to do. So I went and did a day's supply teaching for Camden local. It was a school called Beckford School in Camden. And I turned up for a day and I got absolutely slaughtered, in fact. It was awful.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, at the moment, what we're seeing is that the building of prisons can't keep pace with the amount of prisoners who are coming in. So I think even with the best will in the world at the moment, we're still seeing pressures building up over the course of next year. And we know that David Gork's review is due to report. But numbers of prisoners coming into the system continue to go up, that we've got remand prisoners, prisoners who are unconvicted or unsentenced, who are at a far higher proportion than they were in the past. And until some of those more congenital problems get sorted out, we won't see change.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the bath was about to overflow and ministers simply had a choice. They could either turn the taps off or they could let the water out. And turning the taps off would have been not sending people to prison who'd been sentenced by the courts and that would be completely unpalatable. And therefore they had to be some sort of early release scheme because if you looked at the numbers week by week, it was getting so close to the limits that we were even seeing prisoners being kept in police cells overnight, which is a huge distraction for the police. But also it adds enormous complications and risk to prisoners as well.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard to say, I mean, I think, as always, our thinking at the inspectorate is let's wait and see. Let's wait and see what happens to treatment and conditions on the ground. Will we continue to see people in prisons like Wandsworth be kept in incredibly overcrowded and unsanitary conditions? Will we go to a prison like Leeds where nearly 80% of prisoners in that jail are kept in Victorian cells that were originally designed for only one person? So ultimately the proof of the pudding is in what we see on inspection rather than ideas, thoughts, thinking that may come from this or any other government.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, certainly. Prisoners will tell you very often they'll tell you if they're a lifer, so if they're doing a life sentence, they'll tell you often if they're in prison for public protection. And actually, you can see those prisoners coming a mile off because these are people who are just caught up within the system for long periods of time. So some prisoners do volunteer what they're in for. They're not always truthful about what they might have done. But certainly when you come to things like sex offender prisons, there is a level of denial that sits at around 50% that people just wait for whatever reason accept their offense.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you have to. I think if you get pulled into thinking about offenses all the time, and that isn't to say offenses aren't important, particularly when it comes to managing people's risks, but if you just get pulled into only thinking about offenses and not thinking about the person and what the system can do for that person in order to make them less likely to re-offend, ultimately to create fewer victims of crime, then you have to hang on to that.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you have to, in this job, and I think people who work in prisons have to as well. Because if you spent your time getting bogged down by some of the shocking offences that people have committed, then your sympathy or empathy would run up very quickly. So it's about what can we do in order that this person is less likely to do this again when they come out?”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it depends how you phrase the question. If you talk about the offense and you talk about what you want to happen to people who committed terrible offences, then you can absolutely understand the way the public feel. But I really struck there's a brilliant governor who's now retired, a guy called John McLaughlin, who was an incredibly inspiring man, and he once said to me, I was walking around his jail, and he once said to me, show me the crime and I'll be as shocked as anybody else. Show me the man and I'll walk with him. And that's always struck me as a way of being able to marry that revulsion that all of us would have about the offences that people have committed and the possibility of them being able to go on and lead a decent life when they come out.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. There were very few surprises. There were very few children who came from a background that didn't fit in some shape or form within those sort of five or six criteria.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, in many cases, you can see the pattern that people's lives have got into often from a very young age. And when I look at the life stories of people, when I first did my review of the youth justice system in 2015, there were no surprises. They were very similar children to those who were ending up in my school that I ran in the early part of the century.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, certainly, and we're all frightened of crime and no one likes criminals very much, and I completely understand that. But I think the point I was making those circumstances is, look, these people are coming out, apart from a very small number of prisoners, these people are coming out one day. And the question to ask then is, what do you want them to be like when they come out? Do you want them to carry on offending? Do you want them sitting around on benefits? Do you want them causing mayhem in their local community? Or do you want them working hard? Do you want them taking care of their children? Do you want them paying their taxes? And if you want the latter, then the prison has to fill in some of the gaps that are missing in those people's lives.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the most important thing as Chief Inspector of Prisons is that we are independent. We're independent of government and therefore we report without fear or favour on treatment and conditions of prisoners in our jails and what are the outcomes. So ultimately the exam question for us at every jail that we go to is what's it like to be a prisoner in HMPX?”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think in every prison we go to, we come across people who are inspiring. So even in prisons that are in real difficulty, even when you go to a jail like Wandsworth, I remember talking to one specific officer in there who was absolutely had a fire in the belly, really wanted the prison to go well. So despite the chaos around her, this was someone who wanted to make the prison work. And I think everywhere we go, despite the many challenges that we see in prisons, actually it's about the people. It's about prisoners who want to come out and not re-offend. And it's about people who work in prisons who want to make a difference”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they said there's been some graffiti done by X people in the boys' toilets. And I'm afraid the graffiti says Mr. Taylor is something or other. And she said, yeah, but the good news is he spelt it right.”
2025-02-14 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · The Charlie Taylor One · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source