Bob Turney: from prisoner to probation officer
Bob Turney’s contribution to making the case for prison reform in this country was huge, writes our director Peter Stanford, after news of the death of this long-time friend and collaborator of, first, Frank Longford and subsequently in the establishment and growth of the Longford Trust. Drawing on his own time in prison, Bob was a powerful speaker, a brilliant probation officer and a force for good.
When the Longford Trust was founded in 2002, part of its ambition was to continue the work that Frank Longford had been doing for so many decades with so many prisoners. And so it made good sense from day one to include in our ranks one of his closest collaborators, Bob Turney, who has died in his eightieth year.
As a patron of the trust and as one of our very first mentors in 2006, working alongside the serving and former prisoners we support though our scholarship awards programme, Bob was front and centre of our work. And always a familiar and encouraging face in the front row of our annual lecture.
Bob had been brought up in south London. It was a tough start. Poverty, dyslexia and lack of engagement with education saw him living on the streets from an early age, drifting into alcohol and drug misuse, and crime. And then in and out of prison over a 20-year period.
As Bob later described in his 1997 memoir, I’m Still Standing, how education provided the key that opened the door on a different life. That and his own determination and resilience that saw him steadily climb the education ladder and complete a degree in forensic social work at Reading. It was during this university period that he met Frank Longford.
Positive influence spread widely
In the same year as he published the book, Bob began his training as a probation officer. He firmly believed that he was the first former prisoner to join the probation service, and never came across anyone who produced evidence to disprove his claim. In that sense, as in so many, Bob was a pioneer. We now have Longford Scholars working in probation, using their own experiences to guide others towards second chances.
His particular area of expertise was working with young people and he was a member of a Youth Justice Board. But Bob’s positive influence was spread much wider. In 1997 his story caught the eye of Esther Rantzen and he appeared on her BBC chat show, talking about how hard it can be when you have a criminal conviction to make a fresh start and get employers to take you on. A criminal record, he told her, was “like a millstone round your neck”.
After that appearance he joined forces with Mark Leech, editor of The Prisoners Handbook, and they came up with the idea of Unlock, a charity run by former prisoners to advise others on how, when and if you have to declare a criminal record. With Frank Longford signed up, as well as the actor Stephen Fry and Judge Stephen Tumin, a well-known and outspoken former Chief Inspector of Prisons, they launched Unlock at Pentonville Prison in 1999.
A blessed life
With a full-time job, and five children with his beloved wife Sue, Bob decided he couldn’t also run Unlock and so recruited Bobby Cummines as chief executive. Bobby went on to serve with distinction in the role until 2012. He dies earlier this year.
But Bob did find time for more books. In 1999, he produced Going Straight, co-authored with Angela Devlin, and with a foreword by jack Straw, then the Home Secretary. In it he told the stories of other former prisoners and how they have rebuilt their lives. And in 2006, Because I Have Been Given Much was an account of how his membership of the Mormon Church, alongside Sue, had brought them many blessings.
A fantastic and sought-out speaker, Bob never used used notes, whether it be visiting prisoners to share his thoughts, appearing at the Oxford Union, or addressing the pupils at Eton College. He was, Frank Longford wrote in his prison diary, “a remarkable speaker in the old-fashioned, open-air style”, hailing his “extraordinary capacity for comic entertainment which stands him in good stead in whatever lies ahead”.
And that remained the case these past 25 years. Bob’s wise counsel , regularly sought and generously given, has seen the Longford Trust navigate its way forward and grow its reach and influence in turning around lives. Meanwhile his one-to-one skills made him a brilliant mentor to our award-holders. We will miss him and send our sincere condolences to Sue and their children.
Rachel Billington writes: I first met Bob Turney through my father Frank Longford way back when Bob was still a probation officer. I knew very little about prisons at that time and could scarcely believe that such an obviously good man, so energetic in his determination to help others, could have spent so long in and out of prison. I admired him very much as one of the unusual people who rose out a troubled background and created a world – with Unlock as only one example – where others could be helped to find the same road to a positive future.