prison life

Tell us something new Mr Grayling

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Seeing the headline on the BBC News website, I had to take a peak to see what Mr Grayling, our Justice Secretary, had to say when interviewed for The Mail Online:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272572/Criminals-face-new-spartan-prisons-Justice-Secretary-s-tough-regime-uniforms-Sky-TV-pocket-money.html#ixzz2JqjvQurU

With headline grabbing gusto, Mr G says “Criminals face new ‘spartan prisons’……plans tough regime with uniforms, no Sky TV and less pocket money”.  Oh.  Is that all?  What about the new mentoring scheme that was being discussed a couple of weeks ago in order to stop reoffending, where’s that policy gone?  Instead, The Daily Mail is happy to air it’s old chestnuts again describing Britain’s prisons as “holiday camp jails” and banging on about banning Sky TV.   Mr Grayling, unlike the vast majority of us, believes that “prisoners do not deserve the kind of lifestyle and “frills” that are beyond the reach of families on low wages”.  Sorry, just refresh my memory, you did say that Mr Grayling was Justice Secretary – is this England’s Justice Secretary or some other planet?

Prisoners are in prison, and just to enlighten anyone who does not realise it, in prison you have your freedom removed (yes, you deserve it, but that’s not what’s being discussed here).  I have been to a holiday camp and I have a husband who has been to prison.  When discussing both outings, we could not find a single thing that was the same, except the poor quality food.  I tend to find holiday camps allow you to come and go as you please, to allow you to bring whatever you want in with you and to leave with whatever you want.  You can stay in and use the amenities, or go out.  You’re only there for a brief time.  If you’ve been to a holiday camp that is like a prison, it is highly likely to be shut down as no one else would go on holiday there.

We do allow our prisoners to have television whilst inside – given that a lot of offenders can spend the majority of their time in their shared cells with nothing else to do, how about, rather than banning TV, we ensure prisoners are otherwise occupied.  How about, and this is a radical thought, instead of locking them up most of the day, we make them embark upon rehabilitating educational schemes, or maybe as part of their sentence, we make them train for work so that when they leave, rather than complain that they can’t keep up with their much loved Sky TV programmes, they can go and get jobs.

The Daily Mail describes “….. the biggest prison regime shake up for 60 years” as stopping Sky TV, enforcing the wearing of drab grey prison overalls, the use of “pocket money” to buy toiletries and sweets to be curbed and not allowing gay prisoners to share cells.  Oh please, is that all you can come up with.  Do you really think your average criminal is going to be quaking in his/her boots at the thought of having to do time wearing an overall?  And how exactly is that going to dissuade someone who has done time from reoffending?  Isn’t it better to rehabilitate?  To concentrate on why they leave and reoffend?  Prisons don’t work, but they don’t not work because of the outfit you wear or the tv programme you watch.  These people, and, I might say, the long term unemployed, need jobs.  They need to be out grafting, providing for their families.  They need a better training scheme that currently exists inside.  Don’t keep piffling away at the edges Mr Grayling, get in there and do something to make a difference – making Daily Mail readers red faced and angry at the thought of a prisoner watching Sky TV whilst floating on a lilo in the prison spa is not going to stop an ex-prisoner from committing another crime because they need money.

To err is human; to forgive, divine

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Here’s some more prison inside info for you.  When an offender is sentenced, s/he only serves a proportion of their time inside.  In husband’s case, he was sentenced to three years, will serve one year, one and a half months (who’s counting – me!) inside before being eligible for parole.  He will then (finger’s crossed, he hasn’t had his Parole Board Hearing yet, be allowed to be released back into society “on a tag”, which means he will have to wear a “tag” a monitoring device which will ensure he abides by his curfew times.

I met my friend at the cinema the other day and she was talking about films we could go and see when husband gets out and I had to stop her.  “You do realise he’ll be tagged don’t you?”  My lovely friend thought he could still go to the cinema, hadn’t he attended when on weekend release?  I had to explain that when husband comes out for town visits and home leaves, he is trusted.  He can stay out all night (albeit avoiding licensed premises) and generally come and go as he likes.  We can go to the cinema and not get home until 10.30pm.  But once tagged, that trust is gone.  He will have to adhere to a curfew.

I spoke to his probation officer the other day to find out if it was ok for him to return to a local church whilst on a tag so he could play in the band there.  That was fine, I was actually told he’s of no risk to the public, so him meeting with fellow inmates to play in a brass band is ok.  But to stay out late to go, occasionally, to the cinema – no.  To embark upon an Alpha Course (religion alert) – no.  To attend any evening networking events in order to promote his business – no.  For us to go for a walk around the block after I get home from work – no.  He has to be in and to stay in by 7pm.  No going into the garden, I mean right inside the house.  His study, where he will work, is at the back of our house, to access it you have to step outside for about 10 steps – that’ll be out of bounds too probably.  And this will go on until February 2013.

I admit, this did upset me.  I had to sit down and give it some thought.  And then I remembered, I have to be grateful for small mercies.  The mere fact that he is coming home is supposed to be enough.  The trouble is, we think husband’s paid for his crime already – the fact that all the money was repaid, he’s jobless with a criminal record to boot, everything else chucked at him/us just seems pointless.

We’re desperately trying to move on – but society does not move at our pace, it does not forgive so quickly.

Smuggling Your Own Accountancy Books OUT of Prison (it’s wrong apparently)

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A little glimpse into prison life.  Husband due out on a Town Leave today.  I don’t know how many of these he’s had, 10, 15, more?  I dutifully waited in the designated car park for him and tried not to get annoyed that 5 minutes passed, then 10, then 15, oh look we’re heading towards a 25 minute wait, when he strode over.

Apparently he was stopped by an officer when booking out – it’s a prison, you book in, you book out, you book up and hey, you book down.  Says prison officer to husband “what have you got in the bag” (see through HMP issue plastic).  “Books” says husband.  “You can’t take books out” says prison officer. “But I’ve taken them out before, why can’t I take a book out with me”.  “It’s the rules, you can’t take books out.  I’ll have to check them”.  I think there were a massive amount of three books, all on the subject of accounting, which husband is gradually bringing home.  “I’ll have to check them all” says prison officer “and that’ll delay everyone getting out”.  So husband looks behind him, his fellow prisoner looks sympathetic and in no hurry, so husband leans up against the wall and says “go on then, check them”.

All the prison officer did was to flick through each book to check for…… well, that’s what we were discussing on the way home.  What exactly was he hoping to find?  A gun perhaps, that husband had somehow managed to smuggle in and kept well hidden ready for his next town visit when, suddenly lacking imagination, he decides to just check it out past a prison officer?  Or maybe it was drugs that he had dropped in by carrier pigeon and had sat on them waiting for the price of “sniffy wiffy” to rise and make a killing on his next town leave?   Or maybe it was the dreaded SIM cards that are the fear of every prison officer…. maybe husband had managed to stock pile the entire prison illegal supply and was going to ship them out en mass in order to top them all up at Car Phone Warehouse, and then try to smuggle them back in for major profits or extra sachets of porridge oats.

What exactly would you try to smuggle OUT.  In I can understand.  But out?  It’s just another example of the pettiness of prison life, in what is, after all, supposed to be an “open” environment.   Roll on August and we can say with a smile on our faces “he’s out next month”.

What’s life like on the way out of prison?

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So I think you get the picture of what life is like in prison – boring.  Plain, simple and boring – and you can get terrible contact dermatitis from the excessively strong chemicals used to clean everything.  But what’s life like as you come towards the end of your sentence, specifically what’s life like for both parties (if your other half has stuck by you).

I think I might have said it before – it doesn’t get easier – and it doesn’t, after 11 months, we still had tears today as I slammed the back door, railing at my husband for incorrectly shutting it.  We got over that one quickly, but it’s an example of the tension going on.  The tables have turned.  My husband was never off the bl**ding Blackberry, always being called by his very forgetful colleague who would go over the same story several times a day. Time off and weekends were regularly interrupted because “I’ve just got to make this call…”, “I’ve just got to respond to this email” and now I find myself collecting my husband and saying the same thing back to him.  On Friday, my head was spinning after a particularly stressful event where I got blamed for the ruination of someone’s overseas holiday because something had gone wrong with her i-Phone – this was ALL MY FAULT!   I’m not the sort of person to walk out one day saying “sorry, I’m on holiday for the next three days”.  I stew over work, it’s important that I do a good job – like my husband – we find it difficult to switch off.  So the first day I couldn’t take anything in, couldn’t relax.  Saturday was good, I officially don’t work at the weekend, so no-one could contact me, Sunday lovely. Monday, well, he’s going Tuesday so mentally I was already saying goodbye.

It’s the same when you work and take a well earned week off.  You spend the first couple of days getting there, stressing over little stuff, the next couple of days are lovely, then you start getting anxious about going home, then you’re back at work!   4.5 days at home with your loved one goes in a nano-second, especially when one of you blows it by being in a strop because the other one is about to go again.  Grrr, I could kick myself.

But seriously, rant over, it is strained mentally, difficult emotionally.  Husband has made that transition now from “doing time” to “coming towards the end”.  He returns after his home leave not willingly, to continue his sentence, but because he has to and wonders what he’s still doing there.  Enough time has passed for him to have contemplated his misdemeanours and to want to start helping me build for our future.  The point is now lost, enough has been repaid to the victim in terms of both time and money. This is when many a prisoner thinks “enough is enough” and absconds.  I seriously wanted to hold on to husband today and tell him not to go back.  I need him home with me helping to sort out our life, I’m fed up with carrying the can on my own.  When you think about it, a lot of women in my situation may well have not been working when their husbands went away, they may have children.  Suddenly they have to take control, they are the decision makers, they have to get jobs and keep everything together.  Husband comes home from a life of enforced indolence (yes, we’ve already discussed that) and the wife is none too pleased by the change in attitude.  I have a different routine and it takes a strong couple to work through that.  I’m in such a privileged position where I have an understanding boss who is allowing my 20 days a year to be taken piecemeal so I am at home when husband is on home leave – I can’t imagine what it would be like otherwise.  Some prisoners do not bother with the home leave feeling it is too much of a disruption (to both parties) to be worthwhile.

So as he comes towards the final two months of his imprisonment, has our tax payer’s pennies been well spent – I’m afraid to say I think neither of us believe this.  You’ve not been safer in your beds because my white collar criminal husband has been locked up.  And the gross employment of prison officers to guard him and his ilk is a total waste of money.  He should have received a suspended sentence, should have been tagged from the word go. We almost succeeded in turning a workaholic into a lounging, swearing, smoking bum – but not quite.  Husband is desperate to get out and to get working.  I am desperate for him to get out so I don’t have to keep taking odd day’s off!

Life on the way out of prison for your “average” white collar criminal is just as difficult as it is going in to prison.  But maybe I’m a hard taskmaster!

It’s raining, it’s a Bank Holiday…. I’m thinking Windolene

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So it’s the Jubilee Holidays and in typical Bank Holiday form, you sweat your pits out in a stifling office for weeks, longing for a break and when it comes along – it rains.  Solidly.  For the duration.

I know I should get out of bed and do something constructive, on my lonesome, but I just don’t have the heart and compunction to do so.  Kind of reminds me when I was single (I married later in life) and I would go places on my own.  It’s amazing how fast you can get around a stately home when you are only looking at things you want to look at.  I eventually decided it was a complete waste of money.  Almost I came, I saw, I buggered off double quick and didn’t get my money’s worth.  You can’t linger on your own – well, I didn’t think I could.  There’s safety in numbers sitting on a bench licking an ice cream.  On your own you just look…. suspicious, weird, plotting?

So I find myself on a soaking went Bank Holiday Monday wondering what to do.  And that’s how I got to thinking about Windolene.  You just don’t see it these days.  In the olden days (I’m talking about 5-10 years back) pre-DIY shows times, you didn’t WANT people to see the complete hash you were making transforming your front room into a state of the art lounging area.  So whilst slopping distemper and whitewash everywhere, you’d wipe a layer of Windolene over the windows and it would dry out, thus making it gloomy and difficult to paint on the inside and suspicious looking on the outside.  Then you had the fun of being able to scratch little messages or smiley faces in the layer of dried Windolene (that was pre-computer game fun for the kiddies).  You could even carve out a man with a big nose looking over a wall and write “what no Watney’s”…… that was adult pleasure.

Why did they do that?  The Windolene, not the “man with the big nose”.   I think it must have been so that when you did slop paint all over the place, the paint would not stick to the glass, you could just wipe it off, plus have the added bonus of gleaming shiny windows to set off your new decor.   But a flick through the interweb and I have seen comments like “to stop people seeing the mess you make when decorating”.  Eh?  Who gives a monkeys!  You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.  Do DIY SOS cover up their windows?  No, I don’t think so.

So, that’s Windolene for you.  I wonder what they put in the stuff to make something so basic (water and possibly vinegar) so complex.  I can’t even begin to think of the manufacturing process involved in making Windolene – what exactly is in the stuff!  No wonder it’s not as popular.  I remember using it once, stopped half way through the cleaning to have a chat, or do something more compelling and returning to the windows to find the wretched pink stuff had dried out and would only come off with a scraper.  Horrible stuff.  And then mum insisted we clean our windows with scrunched up newspapers and a bit of spit (no, the spit is poetic licence, she would say a splash of water).  Apparently it was something in the newsprint that brought them up shiny.   Life’s too short.  Nowadays, for those who might possibly be interested in how I clean my windows (no not of interest to the majority of readers of my blog who are spammers) I use water, sometimes if I have any left, with a splash of window cleaning washing up liquid type stuff.

I’m really bored now.  Not as bored as husband will be because access to the gym is restricted today due to “sports day”.  Apparently three people had signed up to compete in the sports day.  Coming on the back of an arbitrary pay cut, I’m not surprised at the lack of community spirit.  The Sheppey Cluster has decided to revisit the pay structure of those working within the prisons and husband, who assists in the teaching of a Business Skills class (not allowed to teach, that’s down to the professionals) has had his pay drastically reduced.  Contrary to popular belief, prisoner’s wages are not huge.  Husband will drop down from something along the lines of £7.00 a day to £3.00 a day (I can’t remember the exact figure).  I’ve never sent a penny into husband since he went inside.  And he doesn’t want me to start.  He’ll just have to make compromises like I do on the outside.   He has decided that although he enjoys and finds it worthwhile teaching fellow inmates how to run their own businesses after leaving prison, and let’s face it, when you’ve got a criminal record, sometimes it is the only way you will be able to find work, to work for yourself, he’d be better off doing voluntary work on the outside.   So rather than do voluntary work with inmates on the inside, he’ll do it for those on the outside.  No, it doesn’t make sense, but that’s what being in prison is all about.