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Whose Blogging Now?
The header of my being the first, or only, prison blogger was always a stretch. I believe that Jonathan King was the first blogger – though on a website rather than a blog as such – and there have been other prisoners who have popped up in a sporadic fashion for brief periods. Perhaps a more precise description would have been that I was the only regular prison blogger who examined the broader experience of imprisonment and not just ran a personal campaign or diary.
I those terms, I stood alone. As to the quality of these various insertions to the blogosphere, I leave that to others to judge. What concerns me now is that there is no longer a prison blogger. I am now a blogger about prison, not from it, and our polity demands that the debate is enlivened and enriched by a prisoner-blogger.
This isn’t to say that it is easy, there are personal and environmental barriers to overcome. Some of these are ones that all bloggers face, such as being able to both write and then write interesting material. Still, I seem to have got away with it!
Ben Gunn is “one of Britain’s best known
prisoners…he constantly questions authority and exposes the futility
of the system” The Times. Pleading guilty to the murder of a friend when
he was 14 years old, Ben has since renounced violence and consistently
fought for the recognition of the inherent dignity of all human beings.
As a result of speaking truth to power, Ben has served far longer than
the recommended 10 years, leading Education Secretary Michael Gove to
argue that Ben “has been punished excessively for a crime committed as a
child”, and Lord Ramsbotham to state that “It is expensive and
unnecessary to keep Ben Gunn in prison”.
2012-09-04 17:59:46
Source: http://prisonerben.blogspot.com/2012/09/whose-blogging-now.html
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