Within 24 hours of being released from prison, Vicky Pryce has announced she has signed a publishing deal to release a book called Prisonomics, which won't, she says, be a straight memoir, but will instead interweave her own experiences with the economic impact of the prison system and, in particular, how it treats women.
Pryce was incarcerated for 62 days. I have had under-the-skin spots that lasted longer than 62 days. It's hardly the stuff of Crime and Punishment. Somehow I doubt Pryce's experience was the typical experience of a female inmate – she spent just four nights in Holloway, before transferring to East Sutton Park, a grade II listed manor house set in 84 acres of Kent.
There's a lot to be said on the issue of female prisoners. There's the perfectly relevant debate as to whether women should be locked up at all. Arguments include financial inefficiency (it costs £56,000 per prisoner, as opposed to about £10,000 to impose custodial sentences); women's low rate of violent crime (80% of female prisoners committed non-violent offences); and 40% of the female prison population are mothers (sources: Women's Justice Taskforce). But I do not think, given her brief, atypical experience, that Pryce is best placed to write this book. Perhaps Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton should have a crack at it?
It's also interesting that Pryce wants to write about gender differences in the prison system when she pleaded not guilty with the archaic defence of "marital coercion", a chauvinistic defence only available to married women, which essentially says women are too vulnerable to defend themselves or be in possession of their own decision making. A justification for this might be the only interesting thing she has to say.
Because let's face it, the term "prison memoirs" doesn't exactly fill any prospective reader with joy. There is nothing worse than some Z-list celeb coming out of prison clutching a Pukka pad, convinced they've written a masterpiece. I can still remember (or rather, I can't) the riveting extract from Pete Doherty's diaries: "Can't believe there's a telly in me room cell. Compensates a bit for the cold I 'spose. Can't complain at all really." It's scintillating stuff.
Then there was John Darwin, better known as canoe man, who wrote what I assume to have been A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Foolishness about his faked death. Jeffrey Archer went down the route of grandiosity, by basing his triptych of books on Dante's The Divine Comedy; Jonathan Aitken's Pride and Perjury (nice) was essentially an essay on why he hated the Guardian and was pissed off he got caught. But perhaps the worst prison memoir of all time was by an obscure Austrian author, who wrote a nasty little treatise called Mein Kampf. Apologies for invoking Godwin's law but it does illustrate how rarely anything good can come from prison memoirs.
The truth of the matter is it's pretty disingenuous of Pryce and her publishers Backbite to suggest that this will be a serious political book. I'd bet money on it largely being a tell-all on the disintegration of her marriage, and another chance to "nail" Chris Huhne. I imagine Pryce and Constance Briscoe sitting round the kitchen table, spitting feathers and then dipping them in green ink to use as quills.
And really, haven't we heard enough of the Huhne-Pryce divorce? Haven't we been through it all – her bitterness, his running off with a bisexual woman (emphasis on the bisexual bit, of course). Wasn't it enough that their son had the breakdown of his relationship with his father literally transcribed word for word in the national press? Are we still going in for this voyeurism, this Big Brother for the political class?
Before being "maritally coerced", Pryce was a successful economist, one of the best in her field. While it's unfathomable that Huhne could go back to a political career – as he rightly pointed out, lawmakers cannot be lawbreakers – it is feasible that Pryce could return to doing what she does best. Her book will probably bomb, and I sure as hell don't want to read a drip-by-drip account of jewellery receipts found in coat pockets, perfume on the collar and smashed crockery, right up to the struggle to find a pair of socks that will fit over an electronic tag. And all this quite aside from the fact there is a 2009 Coroners and Justice Act forbidding profiteering from criminal past.
Huhne, on the other hand, released a statement saying only that he will take time out to focus on his family and continuing home life, and reiterated his apology. If he does write a book, it will most likely be a diary of his time as a cabinet minister. It's a book I'd much rather read over Pryce's.
