This evening I watched a new BBC drama (?), comedy (?), comedy drama (?) called Hope Springs. It starred Alex Kingston (posh curly haired bird) and…erm…some other people as ex-cons who rip off Kingston’s husband to the tune of several million quid, go on the run and end up in deepest Scotland. There are a few reasons why this was less than a televisual feast, not least Alex Kingston’s dodgy cock-er-nee accent, presumably to make her more convincing as a con. It seems these women made friends in the big house and hatched their plan in the dining room, over a batch of illicitly brewed hooch or while mopping the landing floors or something.
What a load of old bollocks. Naturally such a premise will appeal to the Daily Mail readers out there whose expectation of offenders is such that the second they leave prison they’re at it again. Although this is a supposedly light-hearted comedy/drama/whatever it is I find this “criminals reverting to type” malarkey to be incredibly damaging. In fact, it plays right into the hands of said Daily Mail readers who wake up every morning mumbling “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” so unless Hope Springs make their characters ones that the public can sympathise with it will just add more fuel to that mentality.
Why, you may ask, am I so incensed by this? Well I guess that makes this confession time. My name is Fiona Flaherty and I’m an ex-offender. I’ve been to prison and everything. Now, before you go closing the window in horror and rush back to the sofa congratulating yourself on your lucky escape, just take a minute to allow me to explain. I’m not a burglar, nor a drug addict, neither am I a prostitute, how rude of you to have thought so. Some might say I was a victim of circumstance but, in a nutshell, I was an unhappy mother of 2 in a miserable, emotionally abusive relationship, had a fight with my then boyfriend who I believed was cheating; he tried to strangle me and I stabbed him in the back as he was leaning over me. I thought he was going to kill me. The word “stabbed” conjures up the wrong image, really. The resultant cut was 2cm in size, he didn’t feel it at the time and he needed 3 stitches. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to justify what I did. I know I overreacted and did the wrong thing, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. But he called the police, dialled 999 in fact, so, while my sons slept upstairs 8 of Hampshire Constabulary’s finest came into my house, handcuffed me, arrested me for attempted murder and carted me off in their meat wagon. I was wearing a pink strapless party dress, a favourite among the criminal fraternity I believe.
Self-defence I hear you all cry. Yes indeed. And that was how I pleaded in my trial some 6 months later. What a shame the jury disagreed. In my naivety I was certain that if I just told the truth about what happened I would be fine. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that they would be unsympathetic to me, that outright lies would be told in court or that even though the testimony of what actually happened differed on both sides, rather than being unable to decide what the truth of the matter was and so acquitting me, the jury just decided I must be lying. This was my first experience of the criminal justice system. My God but it stinks. But anyway. Bygones.
On November 18th 2005, a mere 10 days before my 30th birthday, I found myself in the unenviable position of being carted off to prison for 3 years for wounding with intent to cause GBH. With a stonking hangover.
So quite frankly I think this gives me licence to be annoyed about the depiction of prisons and prisoners in fictional and some non-fiction programmes. I had mentally prepared myself for prison and was determined to only get good things out of it. I did just that but will leave the details for a later post. Suffice it to say I was a model prisoner and worked hard to be. So am I a stereotypical ex-offender? Of course not. I wasn’t a stereotypical offender either with my private education and clear diction. But in truth there’s no such thing because all sorts of people are there for all sorts of reasons. One thing I can state categorically is that it’s nothing like Bad Girls. Neither did I notice any heists being organised while I was there… I will persevere with Hope Springs, if only so that I can complain to the BBC and demand immediate repayment of my licence fee for the negative publicity they’ve given people like me.
