Jim Dawkins

Jim Dawkins sets out to expose systematic bullying of inmates by prison officers within British prisons, driven by a culture of cowardly men who know that they can get away with anything, and back each other up with false statements. In the end, though he doesn't fully succeed at proving the big picture about a rotten system, it remains a readable personal account that will be of interest to anyone who cares about what goes on inside our prisons.

The book hasn't been ghost written, and I suspect not professionally edited, but only a very small number of errors are really jarring. In fact, it is a surprisingly well-written book given that the author admits he was never very successful at school.

It covers perhaps a tad too much autobiographical detail, with several early chapters given over to Dawkins' early life and career as a soldier before joining the prison service. While some of this will be irrelevant to most readers' interests, it does succeed in building a personal connection between the reader and Dawkins, and adds verisimilitude to his claims of acting as a principled defender of bullied people wherever they may be.… (meer)