Where was I? Oh yes, first night in jail. How uncouth. I really didn’t know what the score was with anything, and didn’t have a clue how to find out. Luckily for me some other “ladies” (as they like to call you in prison, unless you’re a man in a men’s prison I expect) came and talked to me and told me what was happening and showed me where to get things. It seemed I needed a flask, hot water, a bag of tea, coffee and sugar, milk and a small packet of biccies. Turns out they were right. Once that door’s locked there’s not a lot to do so a nice cup of tea goes down very well indeed. But not the coffee for that looked and tasted like gravy. Bleurgh. They showed me around a bit, told me what time we would be unlocked in the morning, just before breakfast, and that was pretty much it. It surprised me that all of the useful information was coming from other prisoners, not the staff, and in fact that’s just the way it is.

An officer came and introduced himself because I was new and that was about it, it was time for roll check and bang up. And bloody Children In Need. Rubbish. Now, there were a lot of things I was unsure about. Was there a time I had to turn my TV off? Was there a lights out time? No-one had said. And would I ever be able to go to the loo again as there was a chance, a very good chance, that I would be seen? Dignity, I came to accept, was a thing of the past.

So, Children In Need it was, while I tried not to think of my own children or wonder if they knew what had happened to me yet. I’d prepared them for the worst but still, I really hoped they were OK. At about 10pm I switched the TV off and wondered to myself if it was time for lights out. I was incredibly worried that I would get into trouble for staying up past the allowed time. I didn’t want to get into trouble at all, never mind on the first day. I cocked my ear towards the door. I could hear other televisions and the odd shout out. I put Children In Need back on. God, that really is a pretty woeful piece of television. Hey, I know live TV is hard but mistimed gags from earnest celebrities are awful and the films about the people they’re helping are upsetting. I know they have to be upsetting in order to make people feel guilty and donate but, jeez, didn’t they know I had more than enough problems of my own? And how was I supposed to donate anyway?

After a while I was sufficiently bored to turn the TV off and attempt sleep. I was also still very worried about watching TV too late. I turned the light off and got into bed. Only the light was still on! Well, a slightly dimmer one. How odd. I put the telly back on. It obviously wasn’t lights out yet. But I was really tired by now so thought I’d try and sleep even with the light on. And I did manage it, but not very well. Because the bastard light stayed on all night. I hadn’t expected 18 months of having to sleep with the light on, surely that’s a breach of my human rights or something? But I supposed I’d just have to get used to it.

In the morning I made sure I was up and dressed before they unlocked my door and once they had I joined the queue for breakfast. Oooooh, fry up! Bonus. Plastic cutlery though. Although not exactly a big surprise. And the people seemed…..nice. I was a bit puzzled. Which is an awful thing to say really. Despite my non-Bad Girls watching former life I’d still gone to prison expecting to see the stereotypes. You know the ones, scary tattooed women, butch lesbians, really hard-faced old boots. And OK, there were some, but most of the people were shockingly normal. I asked about the lights and was shown a light switch on the outside of the door. Duh! If only I’d known about that before I got locked in, maybe I’d have had a better night’s sleep. At least I wouldn’t have to spend 18 months sleeping with the light on and my human rights were intact. I couldn’t work out why the swines that check you haven’t hung yourself in the middle of the night hadn’t turned it off for me. Did they think I wanted to sleep with it on? Did I look as though I was scared of the dark? Bastards.

It turns out that going to prison on a Friday is not great, because the normal routine doesn’t happen over the weekend and there’s nothing to do. You can’t start on your induction programme (where you find out what jobs you can do, go to the library, get your levels of literacy and numeracy tested etc) because they only operate that on week days, you can’t ring anyone because they haven’t sorted out your money or phone PIN number and you can’t go to the pub. So I made friends. I got chatting with some of the people and that was that. They were really nice, and really friendly. I couldn’t believe it, I’d expected to come in and be intimidated the whole time and it was nothing like that at all. I felt so much better.

On the Saturday afternoon an officer came and told me I had a visitor. This was news to me. I’d had no communication with anyone apart from a very brief phone conversation on arrival to let my parents know I’d got there. I wondered who it was, how exciting! And then they told me it was my solicitor. Awwww maaaaaaaan. What could my solicitor possibly have to say to me? But it wasn’t my solicitor at all, it was my friend Mark, hurrah! Oh shit, he looked like he was going to cry. Luckily for him I didn’t feel like crying at all, so I told him I was absolutely fine, it was nowhere near as bad as I’d expected and that I was going to get through it and it seemed to make him feel better. I really believed it too. It made me realise, though, that although this was possibly the worst thing I could ever imagine happening to me, it was far worse for the people I’d left behind. I knew that they were really suffering, while I was feeling quite relaxed. Don’t forget, I’d been resigned to this for a long time, and it looked like it was going to be so much less shit than I’d dared hope.

The visitors’ centre was nothing like how they’re portrayed on TV either. There were comfortable chairs around a table, a calm and relaxed atmosphere and a shop run by volunteers selling drinks and sweets. I had a very nice visit with Mark and after a couple of hours I had to go back to my room to pass the rest of the weekend. Slowly. I watched a lot of telly and read the book I’d very sensibly taken with me. It was a very funny one too, Round Ireland With A Fridge by Tony Hawks. It really helped get me through that first weekend because how can you be miserable when you’re laughing uncontrollably?

And so, dear reader, I shall leave it there for today. I apologise if I’m going into too much detail but there’s so much to say. Rest assured, however, that from now on I won’t be writing about every single day, we’d be here forever.

I dropped a smallish bombshell in my last post so it’s only fair to do a bit of follow up.  I apologise if it’s reaaaaaaaaaaally long and spread over a few posts.  For me prison was a very positive experience, but I was determined that it would be and made sure it was.  I was on bail for the 5 or 6 months after my arrest so apart from one night in the cells I’d had no time at all in custody.  Despite being endlessly told throughout the whole criminal justice process that I would be fine and that they’d never send anyone like me to prison, at the back of my mind I had doubts and expected a custodial sentence, even before I’d been found guilty.  Perhaps it was just a survival technique but I felt like I needed to prepare for the absolute worst.  In this case I thought that if I did that at least I wouldn’t be disappointed.  And so I wasn’t!  To this day though I’m incredibly glad I’d never watched an episode of Bad Girls.  I think I’d have been a gibbering wreck if that was what I was expecting.

The night before sentencing I went on a bit of a bender with some friends.  As you do.  I was really rather drunk and a good night was had by all.  Unfortunately I had a terrible hangover the next day so wasn’t perhaps at my best when I went to court.  But I didn’t see how that really mattered when I wouldn’t be drinking again for quite some time.  I’d hoped to maybe catch up on some sleep in the cells or the prison van. Ha!

So, sentence was passed.  My friend Mel gasped audibly and my mother’s mobile phone started ringing REALLY loudly.  Scotland the Brave, how embarrassing.  I went down to the cells and waited.  Then I waited a bit more.  Then some more.  Portsmouth Crown Court is an unpleasant looking brown carbuncle and couldn’t be more 70s if it tried.  I had hoped for a little comfort in the cells.  Wrong!  I had a wooden slatted bench.  No mattress, no cushioning whatsoever.  I was freezing cold and my arse was numb.  I very much regretted wearing a suit for sentencing and wished instead I’d had the foresight to wear a sleeping bag.  Still, the nice custody bloke who’d been present at my trial was very sympathetic and got me a nice scratchy blanket and a copy of the Daily Mail.  My favourite.  To add insult to injury the lead story was some pro Tory political bullshit written by someone I was at primary school with.  Well, actually it was a prep school, I’m frightfully middle class, me.  I remember when I was about 10 there was a general election (or some kind of election) on and he came in to school with Tory leaflets sellotaped all over his brief case.  Good times.

Eventually after much waiting some transport turned up from Southampton to take me and some other prisoners to our new home.  I still had a hangover.  They were a bit cack handed getting me in to the van; I was handcuffed and made to get into this teeny little space with one seat and a window and an inch thick steel door which a woman then stuck her foot into while she took the cuffs off, presumably blocking my way so I didn’t leg it down the road waving my arms about.  Didn’t she know I wasn’t even slightly tempted to do that?  My hangover really was pretty bad.  And off we went.  I felt a bit teary as we drove out of Portsmouth, you know what it’s like when you’re not going to see a place for a while, your brain invents false memories of how wonderful it is.  “Oh look,” thought I, “the university, I went there for about 5 minutes.”  And “Oh look, Commercial Road, I love shopping there, such wonderful shops and there’s never 50 million people getting in my way.”  And “Oh look, the lovely flats as you drive out of the city, so attractive, the architect deserves a medal.”  The Tricorn might still have been standing then too.  Another carbuncle yet on that day I’d have looked at it fondly.  Ridiculous.

The journey was…uncomfortable.  I was wearing a thick anorak as it was the middle of winter.  Unfortunately the temperature inside the transport van was hotter than the sun.  I didn’t know it at the time but those things are known to all inmates everywhere as sweatboxes.  I somehow managed to remove my coat, no mean feat in such a tiny space, but I had to employ a degree of contortion and possibly dislocated my shoulder as well.  Stupid sweatbox.  Radio 1 was playing at 200 decibels and while on this journey I heard that bloody JCB song for the first time.  And the second.  And the third.  The other prisoners were chatting to each other too.  Some little scrote who was on his way to Feltham and two other women.  Unsurprisingly I stayed quiet as a quiet thing while the radio made my ears bleed.

And then we arrived at HMP Bronzefield.  By this time it was getting fairly late, about 5 or 6 and it seemed we couldn’t come in because of some mysterious ritual called “roll check”.  They mentioned it about 112 times.  So after a long day’s sitting we sat some more.  Little scrote was getting quite above himself by this time and was trying to get the other girls’ names so he could write to them.  Bless.  Only I’ve seen what male prisoners write now so I think I’ll take that back, actually.

After some time “roll check” was declared a success or something, all prisoners were accounted for, none were hiding in bins or on the bottom of laundry trucks and we were allowed in.  Woohoo!  Bronzefield is a modern privately run prison, bright, clean and shiny and not remotely what I had expected.  I was met by another inmate who told me stuff about the prison including times of locking up, unlocking, meals, etc, none of which I took in.  I was given a microwave meal as I’d missed dinner and then I was shown to my room.  That wasn’t what I had expected either.  In each section of the prison there was a central hub where all the officers hung out, jangled their keys and barked at people and it was surrounded by 4 “spurs”. In each spur was a large communal area with tables, chairs, and a pool table.  Cells were situated either side on 2 levels and there was a servery, laundry room, shower room and a telephone box, or possibly 2.  There were quite a few women around and about and I tried not to look at them as I went into my room clutching my stuff in a big plastic HM Prison Service bag.  I sat on the bed and surveyed my new home.  There was a single bed, a basin, a toilet partly behind a screen, some open shelving and hanging rail and a big thick steel door.  And a TV.  A TV?  I hadn’t expected that!  I put it on.  Bugger it.  Children In Need.

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 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 difficult relationship, had a fight with my then boyfriend and in a moment of abject stupidity/unthinking madness, call it what you will, I grabbed the nearest thing to hand and hit him with it. Unfortunately the nearest thing was a long-bladed Sabatier knife covered in cheese from the pizza my sons had eaten for dinner and the action was more stabbing than hitting.  In his upper back. Thankfully there was no damage to his internal organs or threat to his life and the resultant cut was small in size and only needed  a few stitches. There were also 2 other small puncture wounds that didn’t need stitches. The fact that it could have been so much worse doesn’t bear thinking about.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to play down what I did, far from it.  I know I overreacted badly and did the wrong thing, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.  999 was called, and, 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.

With one ridiculously imbecilic action my whole life turned upside down. I wasn’t allowed to my home, I had to move in with my parents and sister. I didn’t get to see my children for two weeks, two incredibly long and miserable weeks and when I did finally see them, I wasn’t allowed near their house or school. Contact agreements were made through a solicitor and, given the circumstances, I think I was actually lucky that we didn’t have to endure supervised visits. Over the six months until my trial I did get to see them more, and pick them up from school, but the initial blow of going from living with them and being a “normal” mother to being a part-time parent was very hard to take. I think I’ve blocked out a lot of what I was feeling as I tried to come to terms with what was hanging over me and trying to stay positive for the kids, while at the same time preparing them for the inevitable.  My trial has to be the single worst experience of my life, even compared to the unfortunate cycling accident I had while on holiday in France once (and the operation I had to have as a result) and a c-section under general anaesthetic (I really don’t like operations). It was beyond hideous, I felt on the verge of tears the whole time but managed to keep my composure, something I think made the jury feel unsympathetic towards me.  And they found me guilty of Section 18, wounding with intent to cause GBH (I had never been charged with attempted murder but that was what I was initially arrested for).  This was my first experience of the criminal justice system and it will certainly be my last.  My God but it was awful and I still relive it occasionally and all the feelings come rushing back.  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 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.