Gay Life, Straight Work

by Donald West

  Streetwise was the brainchild of a formidable gay priest, Father Bill Kirkpatrick, whose personal theology was far removed from that of the condemnatory Christian right. He worked tirelessly for the organisation and for any young gays in trouble. He ran a virtual drop-in service at his home and made himself available to conduct funeral services for gay men who had died of AIDS, comforting surviving partners, who were often rejected and sometimes driven from their homes by homophobic blood relatives of the deceased. (This was before the advent of civil partnerships or the effective cocktail of medication for AIDS). Bill was also adept at attracting to his causes the interest of wealthy and influential persons. I remember the official visit he arranged to Streetwise by HRH the Duchess of Kent. As Chairman I was the first to welcome her, but she quickly spotted Father Bill and went up to deliver him a conspicuously affectionate greeting, before sitting down to chat with the boys. It was good that the retired worker that I had forced to resign, now dying of AIDS, was able to be present and receive afterwards a bouquet from the Duchess. If some of my recollections of Streetwise seem dismissive, that is not my intention. Undoubtedly, the young clients were getting support they would not find elsewhere, which enabled at least some to relinquish unwanted dependence upon prostitution.

  Obtaining for interview a sample of off-street sex workers guaranteed to be representative being impossible, we had to rely on selected introductions by gay men with relevant contacts, and also on volunteers prepared to book sessions with masseurs or escorts. We found that men working in massage parlours or on call to escort agencies were rarely in such desperate circumstances as the Streetwise sample. Of those operating from their own private accommodation, some were self-satisfied and affluent, John for example. He was visited by a volunteer, who answered his advertisement in Gay Times, and was also interviewed at length by Buz de Villiers, who had obtained an introduction from another masseur who had been interviewed previously. John’s advertisement began: “Harness your fantasies – top leather guy supplies all you need …”. His flat was expensively situated and lavishly decorated and his speech and smart, informal attire were in keeping. He was running a professional style business with a declared tax-paying income of £50,000 per annum. He had an accountant, credit card and debt collecting facilities and several ’phone lines and was paying a mortgage, private health insurance and private pension. He was advertising in the Advocate, which brought overseas custom. His flat included a nicely furnished sitting-room, a separate massage room with proper table and all the extras, and a dimly lit, black-painted loft with leather restraints and other equipment for S & M play.

  John had had what he described as a happy and financially comfortable upbringing and a private education. He had been exclusively gay since boyhood and had had some long term relationships with older lovers, including a seven-year association with a millionaire from whom he separated without receiving any parting gift. After a short spell working for a male escort agency he saved up sufficient money to start his independent masseur service. The business had been going nearly four years. He was now in his thirties.

  John explained that he very rarely had any trouble handling his clients, virtually all of whom expected some kind of sex. Clients were often quite attractive and occasionally he would invite one to his bedroom afterwards so he could fuck him. He had been offered free holidays with clients, but he always politely declined, unless they understood clearly he needed to be paid for his time. He enjoyed the freedom to work when he wanted to, but having to spend long hours at home waiting for clients was lonely. His social life outside work was spent largely with fellow gays who did not frown upon his job, but there were occasions when he could not be open about his work. Although he had sufficient sex he would have preferred to have a steady lover, but he thought it unlikely he would be able to find one to tolerate his business. Even so, he was not thinking of giving up in favour of some new enterprise any time soon. He had a good physique and could expect some more years before losing his ability to pull clients.

  The independent masseurs were by no means all as well set up as John, but they were much better placed than street workers, whom they were inclined to pity. One or two of the less established independent masseurs we saw were students working to support themselves at university, a phenomenon likely to become more common with the burgeoning system of student loans and debts.

  Men working for escort agencies or massage parlours were a mixed group, their situations varying with the type of business employing them. Some agencies interviewed prospective workers carefully, asking about what sexual services they were willing to offer, and allocating them to appropriate clients. Others would dispatch whatever boy was readily available regardless of the client’s wishes as to age or anything else. The better run and more expensive agencies chose well-spoken and better educated workers and paid better. Likewise, massage parlours with glossy fronts, providing genuine massage and offering legal employment, were more selective in engaging workers, whereas those using low cost foreign workers, perhaps illegal immigrants, were vulnerable to police raids. One such, situated in an apartment in a fashionable Chelsea street, was under surveillance for some time by police who were occupying a flat opposite. The expensive operation secured a conviction, but following a derisory fine the place soon re-opened.

  A noticeable feature of off-street workers was that some were already doing other jobs simultaneously, and some mentioned realistic opportunities to transfer from sex work altogether. Mark came from a normal family background but had been gay from early boyhood. He had got the idea that sex was a “nice way to make money” when a man gave him some after playing around with him when he was hitch-hiking at age fourteen. He had advertised himself as a masseur while a polytechnic student and had briefly worked for a ‘health club’ that was well known as a cover for commercial sex, but had never worked on the streets. Being a sex worker did not worry him – “it was part of my life style”, but he was currently giving it up, except for a few old customers, in order to devote full time to commissioned video production.

  So much for success stories, but to see some failures I interviewed a few former street workers found hanging around West End bars and streets. One of these, a middle-aged unemployed alcoholic, said he had met up with numbers of men who had been boys on the scene with him in the Sixties and Seventies, none of whom had made anything of life. Some do not wish to work or know how to work. Punters who give temporary support to hustlers just prolong their problems. Typical of a sad decline was X, another middle-aged gay man of dissolute appearance who was interviewed in a gay bar, where he was a regular and often inebriated customer. He had been a street prostitute from age seventeen to thirty and never had a regular job then or since. His childhood had been spent in children’s homes and he was supposedly of low IQ. He had a room and a small income from welfare authorities and he could occasionally pay a homeless young ‘chicken’ to come to bed with him. One cannot know from these opportunistic interviews how many of the youths seen at Streetwise will end up like this.

  My conclusion is that for some gay men prostitution can be a rational choice, but more typically it is sought as a temporary solution to social problems and all too often it means postponing until too late any prospect of a permanent career or successful social integration. The demand for prostitution services is eternal and suppression by the application of criminal laws has never worked. Mitigation of the evils that are linked to street prostitution in particular is more likely to be achieved by attention to the social pressures that propel damaged and vulnerable young persons into the game. Pimping of children, or their exploitation in the production of pornography, are separate issues that our limited inquiry did not encounter.

  QUANGOS

  Parole

  My first experience of a QUANGO (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) was becoming a member of the Parole Board of England, when it first began to work in 1968. It is now officially called an independent Executive Non-Depart
mental Public Body. Various members of the Institute of Criminology staff have served on the Board, but I told Radzinowicz that I did not want my name put forward if it meant having a security check. He well understood my unspoken reason. Although their behaviour had been recently decriminalised, homosexuals were still not acceptable for many official positions. For example, when a vacancy for the directorship of the Home Office Research Unit was impending, a senior official – as it happened himself a ‘closet’ gay – was asked to sound me out over a lunch at his club (The Reform) as to my availability. Having reacted positively, I expected some response, but heard nothing until, months later, a Home Office researcher whom I knew told me that my gay reputation was the impediment. Since I had never received a written invitation there was no formal rejection. After being told no vetting was required for Parole Board members, I took my place among a mixed but rather distinguished group that included judges, other criminal justice workers and researchers, a psychiatrist and persons representing the general public. Initially there were sixteen of us, but many more were recruited as the work expanded.

  Prisoners on fixed sentences of over eighteen months became eligible for release on parole at any time after completion of one third of their sentence. Their post-release supervision lasted up to the two-thirds point of their sentence, the time they would have expected release under the existing system of time off for satisfactory behaviour during imprisonment. Prisoners serving ‘life’ sentences might also be paroled, but with supervision lasting indefinitely.

  Initial screening of candidates was by Local Review Committees, appointed by the Home Office. Their reports, based on scrutiny of records, comments from prison staff and an interview with the prisoner by one of their members, were sent to the Home Office before being forwarded to the Parole Board. A panel of about six members would be convened to discuss a batch of applicants whose criminal records, family circumstances and conduct in prison had been circulated to them in a bulky collection of dossiers. The Chairman of the Board, the Everest mountaineer Lord Hunt, or a judicial member, chaired these meetings and a recommendation, if and when to grant parole was agreed for each applicant. The panel also had to decide if additional conditions, over and above conformity to the law, should be added to the conditions of the parole licence in particular cases. At that time, the Board’s decision was only a recommendation to the Home Secretary, who retained final responsibility for agreeing release. The Board were also involved in ordering or confirming recall to prison when offenders on parole were being prosecuted or arrested for a further offence or reported by their probation officer for a breach of parole conditions.

  The political expectation at the outset was that parole would be a privilege awarded to a minority of particularly deserving and safe cases. In the three-tier screening, Home Office officials, whose instincts would be towards caution, had a key role. They could decide which of the cases favourably recommended by Local Review Committees to refer to the Board. This did not appeal to Lord Hunt. Soon it was agreed that all positively recommended cases would be referred, together with some rejected cases that officials thought the Board might consider. These included, for example, accomplices of recommended prisoners who had not themselves been recommended. At the outset only 8.5% of eligible prisoners received parole, but two years later this figure had tripled, and the upward trend continued. Since sentences of between eighteen months and three years imprisonment are very common, periods of release on parole licence were often short, up to six months, but usually much less. In theory, parole is a contract with the prisoner, who must agree to abide by the conditions imposed by the parole licence. Prisoners sometimes declined to apply, probably considering the expected licence restrictions too intrusive and the risk of further deprivations of liberty for failure to conform too great, all for the sake of a relatively short curtailment of time in prison.

  The Home Office attached to each case a risk of reconviction statistic, based on customary criminological criteria, such as age, number of previous convictions and nature of latest offence. This was clearly an important consideration, but otherwise decisions were common-sense judgements unaided by clearly defined criteria. Prospect of employment and a home to return to were favourable factors, but important causes for refusal, such as age and criminal history or rejection by his family, were things the offender could not alter. Except for vague generalities, reasons for refusal could be difficult to explain to prisoners. The absence of clear rules meant a degree of apparent inconsistency, an inevitable consequence of allowing discretion to take into account unique circumstances. An amusing statistic, based on a small sample collected as a joke, revealed one embarrassing inconsistency. When panel meetings took place at the Inner Temple, by courtesy of one of the judges, food and wine were more lavish than at the alternative venue in the Home Office, and decisions to grant parole were more frequent after lunch than before.

  The Home Secretary rarely declined parole for prisoners given a positive recommendation by the Board. It seemed to me that this was in large measure because the Board avoided putting forward cases that might cause political embarrassment. It was a foregone conclusion that the child killer Myra Hindley, who suffered unremitting public notoriety and repeated murderous threats from her victims’ families, would never be paroled. Others guilty of heinous crimes might be paroled at some stage even though they were objectively at greater risk of reoffending. For myself, I had doubts about the justification for detaining Hindley indefinitely. Her supporter, Lord Longford, who had links with the Institute of Criminology, had tackled me over lunch about her, and my former chief, the psychiatrist Peter Scott, who had interviewed her in prison, had told me he was impressed with her intelligence and personality. Although her cunning attempts at escape or her ability to arouse sympathy were readily understandable, I came to realise that, given her situation, release was impractical.

  Of two murderers who were paroled following panel meetings in which I participated, one proved catastrophic. He had murdered in a fit of jealousy and had been severely depressed. A psychiatrist on the Board agreed to see him in prison and reported back that he was recovered and fit for release. No sooner did he come out of prison than he committed a further murder in revenge for his wife’s infidelity. After this, the Board resolved not to conduct further interviews with applicants! The second memorable case concerned a tragic mercy killing. A life sentence was automatic for any murder, but the sentence seemed against natural justice. Taking advantage of the power to release a ‘lifer’ at any time, they ordered release after a month or two. This could not happen on today’s rules when long periods of imprisonment are fixed before a lifer can be considered for parole.

  Although flattered to be one of a QUANGO I soon came to feel that the task did not justify the amount of time and money expended upon it. Research that might have resolved doubts as to what effect parole decisions were having on offenders’ reconviction rates was not being pursued. Objections on ethical grounds prevented such simple tests of effectiveness as granting or refusing parole at random, then comparing the frequency of reconvictions over a span of five years following release among those paroled and those who had to wait for the standard release process. The papers we received in advance of panel meetings were voluminous and required hours of perusal if they were to be taken seriously. Many of the decisions we were called upon to make concerned just a few weeks of early release and certainly did not seem to warrant the labour and cost of the many supposed experts involved. The Parole Board has long since been reformed, and these observations are of no more than historic interest. Under pressure of escalating volume of work, the Board now deals only with the more serious cases, namely prisoners under fixed sentences of more than four years, ‘lifers’ and others with indeterminate sentences lasting over four years.

  As a personal experience, working for the Parole Board was interesting and enjoyable. Parking the car at the Royal Courts of Justice and having police hold up the traffic as one exited was memor
able. Contact with senior judges was fascinating. The late Lord Justice James, for example, was exceptionally friendly, did not spurn to visit us at our humble cottage and joked about my over-eagerness to find features in favour of release. Lord Justice Roskill seemed not quite appreciative of different spheres of existence. On responding to his polite inquiry as to where I had been on holiday, he proceeded to ask if I had met “our ambassador” there.

  When an offender guilty of living on the immoral earnings of his wife was discussed, Lord Hunt unguardedly confessed that he did not know this was against the law. One unforgettable occasion was the visit of the then Labour Home Secretary, James Callaghan, to see how we worked. After listening to our measured debate pro and con the merits of the application under consideration, when asked his opinion, he said he wouldn’t have thought release of such a criminal merited discussion.

  Being sensitive to reactions to homosexuality, I felt it curious that a judge, chairing a session at which the activities of a homosexual offender were at issue, found it necessary to apologise to the ladies present. C.H. Rolf, a one-time police officer, remarked to me that it was unfortunate that Prime Minister Heath chose accommodation in the Albany, a place traditionally favoured by homosexuals. (Maybe he was remembering Oscar Wilde.) It was a little awkward meeting again, when he joined the Board, the psychiatrist who had included me in his statistical paper on the permanence of homosexual orientation.

  Parole systems remain controversial and subject to public and political pressures. They are sometimes used as a convenient means of alleviating burgeoning prison costs and prison overcrowding. An inherent conflict about the decision to parole individuals is whether to parole difficult offenders early so as to protect the public by giving them long periods of supervision, or whether to keep them in as long as possible because they are so dangerous. As Lord Hunt pointed out, parole was added on to an existing release system, and necessarily embedded in wider criminal justice processes. Paroled offenders are the end product of sentencing policy, prison policy and prison conditions. Parole outcomes are subject to the economic conditions and behavioural standards prevailing in the community at large. The value of parole supervision depends upon the amount of resources and attention allocated, the balance between rehabilitative effort and disciplinary control, flexibility in catering for offenders’ differing needs, and community support for the system. If sentences avoided incarceration whenever possible and prison regimes were truly rehabilitative, with generous education, training and psychological treatments available as needed, if release dates were reviewed periodically according to progress, if aftercare and supervision as needed were open to all on release, then independent parole systems would be redundant. There will always be a small minority of incurable offenders, many of them mentally deranged, who are unsafe out in the community, for whom humane confinement is the best solution. The criminal justice system has come a long way since petty thieves were hanged and prisoners were kept in solitary confinement or on treadmills, but it has a very long way to go. The truth is that imprisonment as applied today is immensely costly and does little or nothing to control reoffending. More could be done with offenders outside prison by way of both aid and discipline, especially in relation to substance abuse and criminal associations. When imprisonment is necessary, transition to community living should be in stages. Firmness and kindness are equally necessary. With more discriminating and flexible approaches offending may be decreased, but exaggerated expectations of improvement can cause disillusionment with measures that are nevertheless worthwhile.