by Bryan Gibson
There are of many films about prisons and prisoners, from Shawshank Redemption to Scum. Criminologist Professor David Wilson once wrote a book about this phenomenon for us, Images of Incarceration, which was launched at the British Film Theatre. But it is encouraging when the wider world takes an interest in work initially published for a completely specialist niche, when an unsung author suddenly finds himself or herself in the limelight.

This has happened several at Waterside Press. Most recently with Justin Rollins’ book The Lost Boyz: The Dark Side of Graffiti. First published in 2011, it has been optioned by No Dog Films who are now working with the author to put his life story on the big screen. This same book has also, quite remarkably, become required reading for students at both Birmingham City and Aberdeen universities. Justin grew up in south London as one of life’s "throwaways", his time spent on the streets, rarely going home. He ended up in Feltham Young Offender Institution. His book turned his life around and his graffiti that once adorned the London Underground is now sought after as free-standing artwork. His advice on gang culture has been published by various media organizations. 

Another Waterside Press film project, this time with Warner Brothers and associates is campaigning journalist Satish Sekar’s The Cardiff Five: Innocent Beyond Any Doubt (the second edition of which was published in 2018). It is the story of how five completely innocent men were arrested, tried and three convicted of a murder they did not commit: for which another man is now serving a life sentence, all five having been totally vindicated because his DNA was found at the crime scene using modern-day techniques. I remember a prison officer telling me that prisons don’t recognise claims of innocence if a court has convicted someone, "They’re all innocent," he told me! But some really are. The Cardiff Five is the same case in which a corruption trial of 15 police officers and others involved in the case ended in chaos in 2017 when prosecution documents were lost. Quite a drama.

A further miscarriage with which Waterside Press was closely connected together with author Angela Devlin was Anybody’s Nightmare (published under the Taverner imprint). Sheila Bowler spent four years in the former Holloway Prison before being released by the Court of Appeal. Readers may recall the case of the middle-class woman who went off to get petrol leaving her aged aunt in the car by the roadside. The aunt was later a found dead in a stream, having "wandered off" as an expert eventually told the Court of Appeal elderly people sometimes do. Sheila Bowler was one of those unfortunate people whose reactions did not fit the stereotype of someone who is innocent, who came over as uncaring when really in complete in shock, something brought out well in the ITV drama of the same title as the book. It could happen to you. Anybody’s nightmare indeed.

David Wilson’s Mary Ann Cotton was the basis of ITV’s Dark Angel starring Joanne Froggatt in 2017, one of a number that former prison governor and later professor of criminology and nowadays regular TV presenter Wilson has written for us on serial killers and how and why they exist. Mary Anne, a poisoner and perhaps Britain’s first female serial killer, was executed at Durham Gaol in 1888. Her memory is immortalised in a well-known nursery rhyme which begins: "Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten …. Sing, sing, oh what should I sing? Mary Ann Cotton, she's tied up with string." 

Readers may also have enjoyed a drama generated by Waterside Press, Fighting For Justice by John Hostettler and later Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times and Fight for Justice written by John with Richard Braby (a Garrow descendant), as reflected in Mark Pallis’ screenplay for the BBC’s Bafta-winning Garrow’s Law (three series from 2009 to 2011). Andrew Buchan played the upstart barrister who changed the law. He took on the judges and, virtually single-handed, "invented" the law of evidence and the presumption of innocence. Before Garrow intervened, you could not even speak in your own defence.                                                                                                                                    

Photo: Author Justin Rollins prepares to address a packed house at Birmingham City University. With Professor David Wilson in the background.

 See watersidepress.co.uk to see the full range of crime and punishment books.