What Do Prisoners Think About the New Sugar Tax?

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I'm a teacher in a prison. I'm currently covering a two-week parenting class where the required written work was completed by the third session. My class is made up of 15 men between the ages of 18 and 56, half of whom don't have children. No one, myself included, wants to watch the "how to change a nappy" video again, so I decide to ask what people think about Chancellor Osbourne's latest budget, and specifically his innovative sugar tax idea.

(Names and identifying details have been changed to protect privacy)

Callum, 20, pleaded guilty to head-butting his girlfriend during sex and is waiting for sentencing. He's never been in trouble with the police before and blames the incident on the fact that he and his girlfriend were off their faces on miaow, and later that his girlfriend's father marched her down to the police station after she turned up at the house with a black eye and broken nose. It's probably fair to say that Callum isn't the smartest person I've taught (he wasn't able to name the Prime Minister) but I know that he places a lot of importance on his weekly canteen order (each prisoner gets a weekly shopping budget they can spend on extra food, toiletries, stationary etc) and specifically how many bottles of fizzy drinks he can accumulate.

I ask Callum what he makes of the idea that thanks to Osborne sugar rich drinks will suddenly become more expensive, and he could be then faced with the prospect of his canteen budget not stretching as far as it does now. "Who the fuck voted this cunt in?" he replies, earnestly furious. It's a pretty funny response, but the general consensus it prompts amongst most of the class is that this is a measure that punishes "ordinary" people, both banged up and on the outside, for whom buying a can of Fanta is a small moment of affordable enjoyment in what is at times a pretty difficult slog.

Rhys, 26, is Callum's cellmate. He's in the last couple of weeks of a six-month sentence for assault and is adamant that the sugar tax won't affect his ability to buy sugary products on release. "Fuck it, just pay a bit more isn't it, stop complaining about everything," he says. While he is almost certainly dangling a hook for Callum to bite on, Rhys genuinely does believe this. He's a Tory supporter, albeit one who has recently been voting UKIP, and talks a lot about the "lazy fatties" on his estate.

I'm a little bit surprised, given his Tory leanings, that even though he thinks the sugar tax is a good idea, he also feels like taxes should be increased for big businesses. "The money from that could be spent on proper sports facilities at schools and community gyms and playgrounds," he argues. "Politicians just look after their rich mates though, so I don't see that happening any time in the foreseeable future."

Rhys is more politically engaged than a lot of the other guys in the room (a quick straw poll reveals that about one third of them vote at general elections) and I ask him what he thinks of George Osborne. "He's had a complete nightmare with all this [the budget, the proposed welfare reforms], but I'd still vote for him over Corbyn." He's trying to wind me up this time (wrongly assuming I'm a tribal Labour voter), but he still clearly does mean what he says regarding any future Osborne vs Corbyn choice. Bleak.

Amir, 52, has been in prison for 12 years after being convicted of murdering his girlfriend. He has regular visits from his two teenage children by his ex-wife, and says that he is glad that their mother has brought them up eating healthily. I ask him if he sees the sugar tax as being a genuinely beneficial measure as opposed to the diversionary gimmick it's been labelled in some quarters. "I'm all up for taxing fizzy drinks, but kids will still want it so it's up to the parents to educate them and take some responsibility," he says. "Whether Osborne and Cameron really give a shit about my kids is beside the point really."

Adam, 30, is waiting to be sentenced having pleaded guilty to a series of driving offences. While on remand he's also been informed that the police are pursuing an additional charge for burglary. Adam is not especially popular with the other men in the group; he has a tendency to try and hog the teacher's attention, often with (very) long explanations of his case. This is probably in part down to his nervousness over the impending sentencing, but it also seems clear that having been sent to a prison a long way away from his family and friends, he's pretty lonely.

Like a lot of the prisoners I teach, Adam is most comfortable adopting libertarian stances on most topics. He says that people should have freedom to drink as much Pepsi as they want, and the sugar tax a sign of the government sticking their noses in where they don't belong. A little surprisingly, to me at least, he then says that it's a "smokescreen" to let the government carry making welfare and spending cuts on public services. I try and get him to talk more about this, I'm interested in his view on how the NHS, for example, could be better funded and whether it would be more effective hitting the obesity problem from another angle. Adam is now distracted, and talking in incredibly vivid and precise detail about the burglary he definitely did not commit.

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Aside from making everyone in the room desperate for a fizzy drink – one prisoner offers to transfer one hundred quid into my bank account if I bring back a six pack of Sprite after lunch (an offer I politely decline) – there is definitely a collective agreement in the room that irrespective of the motivation behind the sugar tax, it's probably a good thing on the whole. But there's also a sense of frustration that it's clearly a pretty cheap stunt rather than a credible solution to obesity in this country. There is also scepticism as to where the money raised from the tax will end up: "Probably in their pockets when it could be going to keeping open community centres and other places that get kids off their arses."

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