Tagged: Life on Lockdown: In this raw, touching story, it’s not just the tags that trap petty criminals

Documentary: Jordan is one of three tagged convicts to feature on the show
BBC/Rare TV

Tommy spends every morning scrubbing his little flat until it’s spotless.

“Get everything done in the morning and you don’t have to do nothing, do ya?” he says, playfully spraying water over his curious dog as he does the ironing. “Not hard to be clean, is it?”

Tommy doesn’t have much choice. He’s been wearing an electronic ankle tag for four months which will notify the police if he steps out after dark, or too early in the morning. Cleaning — and the tiny flat really is squeaky clean, with washing-up bottles neatly regimented on the windowsill — helps Tommy kill time until his curfew ends.

Some 60,000 tag orders are given out every year in the UK. Tagged: Life on Lockdown is the second series of a fly-on-the-wall documentary inserting itself into the lives of three offenders on remand.

Raw: The documentary is surprisingly touching
BBC/Rare TV

There’s Kian, 17, from St Helens, serving 12 weeks on tag for being caught carrying a machete (a present from a friend, he says). Jordan, 18, from Warrington, with his “24-carat gold ankle bracelet”, serving the last 12 weeks of a sentence for stealing a car. Tommy is older (we’re not told how old), and has been tagged for selling fake tobacco. “There’s more money in tobacco than drugs,” he says to camera.

None are particularly repentant. Not, you might think, the easiest trio to feel sympathy for.

But this is BBC Three at its best: a straight-shooting, unrelenting documentary pursuit, prising open the lid of three untold stories and spilling surprisingly touching contents. Often the camera and the dogged camera crew seem to be the only company — and indeed counsel — for three boys who can’t stop making bad choices.

Bad decisions: The documentary shows the men breaking their curfews
BBC/Rare TV

“How did you pay for that?” the crew ask Jordan, as he eats a packet of digestive biscuits on a drab, suburban street corner. “Five-finger discount,” he says, meaning he copped it.

Evidence shows rehabilitation in a community is more effective than being rehabilitated in overcrowded prisons. But bad decision making is a recurring theme of the series.

Kian skips out on a meeting with his attendant Young Offending Team (YOT) to go swimming. He knows he’ll probably end up with a spell in prison. Two men turn up at Jordan’s flat with a hammer, accusing him of stealing a bike. He tells the camera crew to stop filming while he picks up a metal bar. Later, he blows his monthly universal credit allowance of £261 on clothes and rum, then breaks curfew to race a shopping trolley with a friend (30 per cent of curfews are broken every day, we’re told).

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Saddest of all is Tommy, who says he suffers from PTSD after serving in the armed forces. He gets by picking up food every day from the food bank, then stares out to sea. Isolation, loneliness and, yes, cluelessness are constants in a country of haves and have-YOTs

There’s no overt moral message or political grandstand from this excellent three-parter. But in a week in which prisoner rehabilitation is a long-overdue, tragic talking point, here is a snapshot of who and how we’re failing.

Tagged: Life on Lockdown is on BBC Three

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