Alan Smith writes a nice piece on teaching philosophy in prison. He tells of a cynicism amongst his students that is ‘hard to bear’; and of this episode:
Then O interrupted. He smiled and waved the words down. He told us about his offence. It involved large sums of money and his extended family somewhere in eastern Europe.
“When I was arrested, I telephoned my wife. She said, ‘OK, no problem. Just give the cops some money and come home.’ I told her I’d tried that and they wouldn’t accept it. She just didn’t believe me, gave me a really bad time, thought I was off on some scam. They wouldn’t touch it and I got into more trouble for trying. The wife was scandalised; she thinks the police here are completely unreasonable.”