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Good morning.

Headlines containing the word ‘prison’ or ‘jail’ very rarely signal good news – the temporary release of Nanazin Zagahri-Ratchliffe from an Iranian jail after two year’s imprisonment is a wonderful exception, especially if it is the first step, as she and her family hope, towards permanent freedom. As a parent of a four year old and a two year old myself, I, along with many others I am sure, was deeply touched at seeing pictures of her reunited with her four year old daughter.

This week’s other prison stories I’m afraid, are not so happy. On Monday the Government stepped in to take back the running of the previously privately managed Birmingham prison, concerned at the incidence of drug abuse, violence and suicide. On Wednesday, the Independent Monitoring Board of Pentonville prison reported that the prison is overcrowded, riddled with fleas, cockroaches and mice, and in part because of dilapidated windows, ‘porous to the trafficking of drugs, mobile phones and weapons’, endangering inmates and staff alike. Even the chapel is not a safe place – on one occasion chaplains had to flee for safety when a fight broke out, and on another occasion, an inmate was stabbed as he arrived for a service.

According to the Apostles’ creed, probably used in that prison chapel, Jesus ‘suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried’ and ‘descended to the dead’. Say the creed often enough, and those last few words about ‘descending to the dead’ can trip off the tongue but I rather suspect that they don’t mean much to most of us. Not so in the past, when the medieval mystery plays often devoted a whole scene to Jesus going down to the underworld to bring back lost souls - the harrowing of hell, as it was called. An ancient homily, even older than those plays, has him addressing the inhabitants of the underworld with stirring words and the rationale for his adventure – ‘I did not create you to be held a prisoner in Hell’.

Wednesday’s report on Pentonville declares that ‘Persistent overcrowding and the crumbling physical environment are incompatible with maintaining prisoners’ humanity and dignity.’ Of course, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe has always protested her innocence, whereas most prisoners in Pentonville are inside on account of committing some very serious offences, and can’t expect prisons to be an easy ride. But even allowing for that, we surely need to hold on to the powerful idea which caused the writers of the mystery plays to elaborate a few rather obscure biblical verses to produce long and moving scenes of Jesus going even beyond the ends of the earth in search of wayward souls – the idea that no one should be forgotten and left, without hope, to fester in gloom and darkness. And yet our prisons, judging by what we have heard this week and to put it bluntly, are becoming hellish.

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