I met Julian Broadhead at the beginning of my time as writer-in-residence in HMP Maghaberry, Northern Ireland (1997 to 2015). At that time Julian was the co-editor with Laura Kerr of Prison Writing magazine, which became Prison Writing International. Both publications were remarkable. The standard of the content was uniformly high and all the published material was paid for. The fee was small – £10 as I recall – but that wasn’t the point. The point, as Julian told me, was that all prisoners who published work had be treated like professional writers and paid for their effort. Besides being the right thing to do – why should someone not be paid for their work? as he liked to say rhetorically – it also sent a signal to prisoners about the possibility that they might lead a productive life as a writer. In other words the payment was a rehabilitative as well as a moral act.
Prisoners aren’t much liked and paying them is not much approved of either (although prisoners do earn a small wage while in jail) but Julian wasn’t of that stripe. He wanted prisoners to flourish, to change, to grow, and with his publications and his payment policy he achieved these goals. Several prisoner writers who started publishing in Julian’s publications went on to make a life for themselves as writers after they left jail – the best known of these is probably Noel Smith, author of the brilliant memoir A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun, but there are others.
Finally, I can personally testify that those occasions when I informed men in Maghaberry who’d published something with Julian that £10 had been paid in to their prison bank account were some to the happiest times I had as writer-in-residence. These encounters invariably took place in the men’s cells (I was peripatetic and worked the wings unescorted) so I really was in a position to see exactly what those £10 postal orders from Julian did for morale and confidence. Julian was a wonderful friend, an exemplary writer and he left the world a far better place than he found it.
