Reform? What reform?
Jenkins says
I have read Inside Time for years but never had the inclination
to write in before. Now though I am just sick and tired of hearing
people in power saying a lot of things but basically, doing nothing.
Liz Truss recently made a great show of telling everyone that ‘Great’ prison reform was coming. Well, I have been in and out of prison since I was 16, I’m now 38 and serving a 30-year rec, and I have yet to see any reform, ‘great’ or otherwise. We don’t need another sticking plaster on the open and festering wound of prison.
It is no good just locking people up, you need to work on helping them from ‘day one’ to make the change they need, instead of sending people back into society with a bullshit Maths and English certificate which isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.
I think we all know by now that whatever reforms do happen, they will not be that ‘great’ and the people who need help will not get it. This will affect younger prisoners more than people my age. Wake up and do something worthwhile or what is the point of any of it?
Broken
Liz Truss recently made a great show of telling everyone that ‘Great’ prison reform was coming. Well, I have been in and out of prison since I was 16, I’m now 38 and serving a 30-year rec, and I have yet to see any reform, ‘great’ or otherwise. We don’t need another sticking plaster on the open and festering wound of prison.
It is no good just locking people up, you need to work on helping them from ‘day one’ to make the change they need, instead of sending people back into society with a bullshit Maths and English certificate which isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.
I think we all know by now that whatever reforms do happen, they will not be that ‘great’ and the people who need help will not get it. This will affect younger prisoners more than people my age. Wake up and do something worthwhile or what is the point of any of it?
Broken
I have been in out of the jail
system now for the past 5 years. Out of a 5-year sentence I have served 4
years, an extra year-and-a-half behind the door and I’ve not committed
another offence to get that. How sick is this system?
My whole experience of the jail system has been an
eye-opener, to say the least. I have seen people who should be in mental
hospitals receiving treatment who are instead left in the general
prison population to be bullied by inmates and staff alike. I have seen
people get ‘kettled’ (have boiling water from a kettle thrown in their
face) over minor arguments in the meal queue. I’ve seen people carved up
for two quid’s worth of canteen. The point I am making is that the
system as it stands – low staffing levels, overcrowding, mixing young
offenders with adult prisoners, the lack of work, education and regimes,
is just not working.
“My whole experience of the jail system has been an
eye-opener, to say the least. I have seen people who should be in mental
hospitals receiving treatment who are instead left in the general
prison population to be bullied by inmates and staff alike”
Surely we, as prisoners, should be able to have faith in
the so-called system to at least try to rehabilitate us? But how can we
have faith in a broken system run by organic robots that are too
stretched to help even if they wanted to?
I have done loads of courses
in prison, a lot with Milton Keynes College, all of which look good on
paper but if I show them to prospective employers they tell me the
courses are already outdated.
So, what are we supposed to do upon release with £46 in
our pocket, no home, no job, no help? Prison does not help; it just
silences the issues until a later date.
I feel failed by the system,
years wasted and I still have a list of problems. Even when we are out
on license, we get no help from the system. It’s just thanks for
labouring for private companies for £2 per day slave wages and try not
to get run over on the way back to your shop doorway.
