Well, what did they expect?

There’s a newspaper called ‘Inside Time‘, published in the UK and distributed free to prisons in that nation. According to their Web site:

Inside Time Limited is a ‘not for profit’ publishing company producing Inside Time – the monthly newspaper for prisoners.

. . .

Each month over 46,000 copies of each issue are distributed free of charge to all prisons and special hospitals plus many secure units and hostels throughout the UK. There is also an extensive mailing list of individuals and organisations involved in penal affairs.

So far, so good. However, it seems that Inside Time started a competition for poetry from prisoners – and ran into a snag. Ananova reports:

A prisoners’ newspaper says it may have to axe its poetry page if inmates don’t stop plagiarising poems in a bid to win a £25 prize.

Inside Time has introduced strict checks on its poetry page after some contributors copied out well-known poems and submitted them under their own names.

In one case an inmate stole work by Robert Frost, the American poet, and another lifted song lyrics from James Brown.

. . .

… a poem sent in by an inmate at Foston Hall women’s prison in Derbyshire, had been found to be “an exact copy of a poem we found on a number of websites” and which also used lyrics from the song King Heroin by James Brown.

Another inmate had contributed a poem which was found to be a well-known anonymous verse entitled Take Me In Your Arms, which is also about heroin addiction.

There’s more at the link.

Pardon me for sniggering rudely, but what the hell did they expect? Prisoners are behind bars for one or more forms of dishonesty, right? So wouldn’t you expect them to continue their dishonest ways by cheating to win a prize in a poetry competition?

*Sigh*

Human nature. It doesn’t change much, does it?

Peter