I've served a prison sentence

[NCforAMA]

I've seen a few threads on here recently where the OPs have basically suggested prisoners are the scum of the earth and are all like the likes of Ian Huntley ect.

I've read the comments and seen a few prison officers defending the prisoners and most posters also defending them, but I thought maybe I would answer some questions so people can understand what it's really like to be inside a prison cell.

Ive name changed for obvious reasons.

Il list a few points that I think would be the first questions;

I'm female.

I'm 33 and I was in jail in 2012.

I received a 12 month custodial sentence. I served 13 weeks in jail, 13 weeks on a tag and the remaining 6 months were served on license at home.

I don't want to say exactly what I was in for as I don't want it to be outing. I will clarify though that it was not a violent offence, not a sexual one before I get abuse from posters. To summarise, I was with a boy who wasn't very well behaved and was basically guilty by association. I was young, stupid and naive. And I absolutely paid the price.

I wish I could change the perception of how people see prisoners.

Anyway, ask away.

Hey.

The prison I was in was quite open, you were outside when walking to work, and walking back, and you could have your association outside and I worked as a gardener so I was outside quite a lot of the time so it didn't make me ill but there is a distinct prison smell that I couldn't explain, it literally just smells of prison.

I didn't suffer with any constipation - I was the opposite 🙈

So when I was on the wing it was sooo sooo loud, people shout each other through the windows, there were a few women who would sleep all day and then cause havoc at night, kicking their doors non stop, one used to scream SOMEONES KNOCKING ON MY DOOR, SOMEBODIES RINGING MY BELL allllll bloody night.

And when you press your cell bell the whole wing can hear it, and on a wing of 70ish there's always someone pressing their cell bell.

When I moved onto the houses it was fine, unless you shared a room with someone snoring. But it was much more civilised on the houses than the wing.

Honestly I don't know, I'd like to think I would have still turned my life around but it must be so hard for someone with no family support. They're released with no where to live and your discharge money (it was about £48 can't remember exactly) and you're expected to sort your life out and be reformed. You used to see people that had served long sentences starting to cause mayhem close to their release date in the hope they'd earn themselves some extra days x

You can have contact lenses in prison but you can't take them in yourself. You have to have them sent direct (I'm sure it's from specsavers) and then you can have them. I'm not sure about the solution or if you have to get the disposables.

There is an optician in the jail which is free to visit and you get a free pair of glasses if you need them but the wait is so so long, so if you arrived with contacts and no glasses you'd probably have to beg them to see you sooner. The contacts have to be paid for by yourself. You can visit the dentist for free too but once again the wait is soooo long. You have to put your request on an application form and then just wait till you're sent an appointment x

Hey!

All my friends and family lived within a 45 minute drive but it's such a pain visiting someone in prison to be honest. You have to arrive like 2 hours before so if the visit starts at 2 you need to be there by 12 to check in, then you have to wait around for 2 hours, the visit lasts 2 hours and then you drive home so for a 2 hour visit it literally ends up taking them all day! Not that they ever complained. You get 3 a month and I always had the 3, even my friends who didn't know each other would just meet in the car park and come in together so that they could use up less visits (you can only have 3 people per visit).

My mum and family would usually come for one, then my friends for one and then either my family or friends again for the other.

The visits aren't too bad to be honest, you have to stay seated except when your visitors are arriving and leaving then you're allowed to stand up and hug them and for that 2 hours you kind of forget that you're in prison x

I was already in the process of selling mine when I was sentenced as I'd moved back in with family so it didn't really cause any additional problems (I'd already emptied the house and had saved enough to cover all the bills). My mum would just forward me any letters I needed to sign and then I would send them back to the solicitor.

There's a charity called shelter who work inside the prison too and help people sort out their houses whilst inside x

Hey! Sorry! I bet I've missed loads of questions 🙈

No there's no advice whatsoever about telling anyone either on a professional level or a personal level.

I genuinely worry about this myself and I've asked the same question to two girls who were in jail that have children, they've both said they aren't going to tell them unless it's absolutely necessary.

In all honesty I don't know what I will do. I wouldn't want to tell them and them think less of me, or not want anything to do with me because they were ashamed. But I wouldn't want to lie.

My partner knows but even now if he mentions anything to do with prison (not about me, he'll say something like 'this rolls tiny it looks like a prison cell') and il cringe inside. Or if a tv programme comes on about prisons I feel like I can't talk openly about my experience, not because he will judge just because I'm ashamed of it. So I honestly don't know what I would do in regards to telling children. It was hard enough declaring it for a job interview! But there's no help at all for that type of thing (not that I know of anyway). Xx

You wear your own clothes! You can get prison issue clothes though if you don't have any which is literally grey joggers, grey jumper and a grey T-shirt. Or if you've been really bad and they've taken you to the segregation unit they'll take your clothes off you and give you 'prison issues' x

This is one of the most interesting and informative threads I've seen!

Someone suggested earlier that you write a book about your experiences. What I feel would be more valuable would be the opportunity for you to give input to the relevant bodies about the criminal justice system and prison reform because it's pretty clear that many aspects of if aren't working effectively.

One of the things that jumped out at me most was how prisoners who face a rubbish life outside of prison and who don't have family support have very little incentive to stop engaging in criminal behaviour. And it sounds like some people who get custodial sentences shouldn't be in prison at all. Though I'm very aware that there's often strong public feeling that those who commit really brutal crimes aren't sufficiently punished.

It's such a complex area. I don't believe any crime is victimless; there's always a victim somewhere along the line even if it's an organisation or collective victim rather than an individual, or an indirect victim of the criminal act. So it's essential that justice is seen to be done. But it's clear the system needs quite radical reform.

I wish you all the best and I really do hope there is a channel for you to use your experience to help improve things

@NCforAMA I would like to ask whether you told your previous employer prior to being sentenced and whether there had been the option for them to keep your job open for you at all?

I'm curious about your comment about their being no direct victims to your crime. Was it a crime against society? Like benefit fraud? Did you ex partner benefit financially from it even if you didn't?

Hi. I’m finding this quite interesting and I have a few questions.

Were you allow to receive handmade food or gifts from your visits?

If you had an online, self employed or working from home job before going to prison, could you keep it and still earning a salary or just allowed to work inside prison? How about keep attending online university?

Would you allowed to suggest more products at the canteen? Specific brands of shampoo or vitamins for example? How about medication?

Could you keep the money you were earning during those weeks?

Was your bedroom locked from other inmates?

I would love to do something like that, it's always say it's something il look into but I'm actually going to.

We had a talk one day from someone who was near the end of their life sentence for murder. They'd had a fight and the other person had died. She'd worked so hard to reform herself, did every course possible (they do sometimes do courses I can't remember the names of them but they're few and far between), and had written to the parents of the victim.

The victims parents had responded saying that they forgave her, that their daughters life was wasted but they didn't want hers to be wasted too and they had set up a charity (I can't remember the name of that either). They were at the talk. Everyone in the room was crying. Anyway, I'd love to be able to do talks, even if it was to teenagers at youth centres ect just to make them aware how much a bad decision can really fuck your life up. Even if one person made a better decision because of it then I'd be so so happy.

I know in a previous comment I've said it was a victimless crime but I completely understand and appreciate that no crime is completely victimless. I really did not engage in any 'actual' criminal behaviour, I didn't hurt anyone, didn't steal from anyone ect and no one was directly affected by my actions but I appreciate that down the line there's always someone affected. Even if it's just the tax payer who has contributed towards the cost it kept me to keep me in prison. It's difficult to explain what I mean without it sounding like I'm trying to justify that it was fine what I did. It wasn't. I should have left my ex bf and reported him for what he was doing.

For example, if you sell cocaine to people on a Saturday night, no one dies and they have no fatalities from the drug, you can argue that there were no victims. But then you can look at the wider picture and see that children might have been used to run drugs, the NHS is more stretched because they treat people who have used drugs that wouldn't need that treatment if they hadn't. I fully understand this. But the actions from myself really didn't have any victims, I didn't encourage anything he did, I didn't have anything to do with it, I just knew about it. But it was still wrong and I know better now. I can't explain very well without it sounding like I'm defending my actions and I'm not. I'd do anything to go back in time and be able to make better choices x

Hey.

I've just addressed this in a different comment so il copy the relevant bit and then add to it at the end!

'I know in a previous comment I've said it was a victimless crime but I completely understand and appreciate that no crime is completely victimless. I really did not engage in any 'actual' criminal behaviour, I didn't hurt anyone, didn't steal from anyone ect and no one was directly affected by my actions but I appreciate that down the line there's always someone affected. Even if it's just the tax payer who has contributed towards the cost it kept me to keep me in prison. It's difficult to explain what I mean without it sounding like I'm trying to justify that it was fine what I did. It wasn't. I should have left my ex bf and reported him for what he was doing.

For example, if you sell cocaine to people on a Saturday night, no one dies and they have no fatalities from the drug, you can argue that there were no victims. But then you can look at the wider picture and see that children might have been used to run drugs, the NHS is more stretched because they treat people who have used drugs that wouldn't need that treatment if they hadn't. I fully understand this. But the actions from myself really didn't have any victims, I didn't encourage anything he did, I didn't have anything to do with it, I just knew about it. But it was still wrong and I know better now. I can't explain very well without it sounding like I'm defending my actions and I'm not. I'd do anything to go back in time and be able to make better choices x'

Also, no it wasn't benefit fraud.

And yes, he had made money from his actions but I didn't benefit from that, that's what he lived off (he didn't have a job). I had a good job and paid for everything myself, didn't live a lavish lifestyle of any kind, didn't wear designer clothes, only went on holidays with my friends (he was already on license from a previous sentence so he couldn't leave the country). I paid for everything of my own by myself. Thank god, otherwise I'd have probably ended up on a money laundering charge or something. I had to give the police access to my bank accounts and they went through every single transaction over something like a 3 year period.

The only money he actually ever offered me was for my solicitor fees but I paid them myself.

Hey.

No I didn't tell them, I should have but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I just went to work one day, had annual leave the next day for sentencing and then never turned up again. I wrote to them apologising and they were very nice, I've spoke to my old line manager since as he messaged after I was released to see how I was but I didn't go back.

There were a couple of girls who did have their jobs kept open for them for when they returned home but only very few. Some girls were self employed as hair dressers ect and had their clients waiting for them xx

Hello, OP. I really admire you for making a good life for yourself since your release. I think that must be the hardest thing to for people on their release from prison, as I understand there is often very little support. Maybe if we had better services and opportunities, re-offending rates could be reduced?

My husband works with people who have got into trouble with the law, released prisoners etc. I was always very much of the opinion that the debt to society has been repaid by loss of liberty and never agreed that inmates should be locked up 23 hours a day, no TV, pool table and so on. Since my husband has been in this job, I've come to believe that even more strongly; once a sentence has been served, we can't go on punishing the person for the rest of their lives. We must give people help and a chance to build a 'normal' life. Not stigmatise.

I'm pleased to see that most of the responses on this thread have been positive and supportive. And thank you for starting the thread.

I'm only up to page 12 of the thread just now, so apologies if my question has already been asked. How did you do your laundry? Did you have access to washing machines and do it yourself? Or did you bag it up and it was done for you?

Hey!

No you aren't allowed to receive any gifts from your visitors! You can receive a clothes parcel within your first 28 days and you can receive new underwear at any point but your visitor gives it to the prison staff, they take it to reception, search it, and then you get it a week or so later. They can buy you crisps / chocolate ect on the visit but you have to eat them on the visit, you can't take them back into the prison with you. It's to try reduce drugs / phones been smuggled in.

You wouldn't be able to carry on working your usual job from inside the prison as you can't have any internet or electronic device that can have internet. Once you've been there a while you can be granted home leave so you could potentially work on your days out. Also, once you've got your Cat D status (which would be an open jail if you were male) they sometimes let you go out to work. But for 99% you can only do the prison jobs and earn about £15 a week.

You can apply to do courses through the open university but it's quite difficult to arrange due to the no internet issue x

Hi!

You could probably put in an application to request something new on the canteen sheet but I'd be surprised if the officers didn't just bin it haha. I've put a link at the bottom to show what they look like, that's from a mens prison though so the womens also had makeup / tampax on ect. You would hand it to the officers on a Sunday and then get your canteen the following Friday.

It's supplied by DHL, they have warehouses in some jails (I think Wymott, I'm not sure where else) so the prisoners in Wymott will receive your canteen sheet, pick it in the warehouse, put it into clear sealed bags and then it comes back to you.

The money from your job is what you can spend on your canteen sheet. You can also spend £15.50 of your own money from money you have had sent in by friends / family, or £5.50 if you're on basic regime or £25.50 if you're on enhanced regime. If you're on remand you can spend unlimited amounts of your own money. So quite often people would get their family / friends to send someone on remand who didn't have much money an amount, say £20, so that they could spend £10 on their canteen, and they would get £10 for themselves as payment.

You got a key for your room so you could lock it! And you could lock it from inside too but the officers have a key that overrides your key, so they could still enter even if it was locked.

@FormerAupair

Sorry, I missed the link off;

adammac.co.uk/canteen-sheet/

Another big question here!

What do you think might work for the prisoners you described who had no incentive to reform and deliberately kept themselves in prison because it was a preferable option to being released?

I find this such a complex issue! Prison has done what it's intended for you, and it seems was the right decision in giving you the incentive to break away from your former life and turn things around. But what about someone convicted of the same crime as you were but without the backdrop of a supportive family/education/skills? I'm assuming your conviction was for something fairly serious because a 12 month prison sentence isn't handed out lightly for a first offence, so what would improve things, in cases where a custodial sentence is appropriate? It sounds like earlier interventions wouldn't have worked for you because it took the harsh reality of conviction and prison for you to turn things around, so I suspect it would be similar for others too. If a young person is heavily under the influence of someone a bit older it can be impossible to persuade them to make better choices.
What could be done while someone is actually serving their sentence to make better outcomes more likely?

Hey!

Exactly! I've read a lot about Norways prison system and it's so different to ours and they have really low rates of reoffending. I think in the UK they just have no staff, there isn't time to focusing on reforming people, they only have time for the bare minimum. The would cancel gym sessions, library, work & education on regular occasions because they didn't have enough staff to run the regime for the day.

Your view on prisoners and their punishment is exactly what I think and would love everyone else to think haha! Some officers would also say what you said, your punishments been here, I'm not going to treat you badly but others clearly hated their job and treated prisoners like they were the scum of the earth. It was a much smaller % that were horrible though.

You genuinely sound lovely.

So when you are on the wing there is a room with 2 washing machines and 2 tumble dryers and some one is employed as the 'laundry girl'. You have set days where you can give her your laundry depending on which cell you are in, so cells 1-20 on the lower level have washing on a Monday, cells 1-20 on the higher level on a Tuesday ect. You give it to her on your way to work at 8.30 and it will be hanging on your cell door when you get back at 4. You can't give her any underwear though 😭😭 you have to wash your knickers in the sink but the cells are freezing and they take days to dry. I used to sneak my dirty knickers out once a week on the way to work and give them to my friend, she'd take them back to her house (in prison) and put them in the washer! You do anything to get by in prison including smuggling your dirty knickers off the wing in your bra 🤣 you'd get a pat down search on the way off the wing but they wouldn't check your bra.

Then when you move to a house there's a washing machine and tumble dryer on each house. You get 2 x washing tablets a week and you can buy washing powder and fabric softener on your canteen if you need more. And you're allowed to wash your knickers 😀 I used to share with my cell mate as you're limited to what you can spend so I'd buy the washing powder and she'd buy the conditioner 🤣 I'd also do her washing otherwise she'd leave it weeks and then moan she had no clean underwear. But she'd stick up for me if I ever needed it so it was worth it haha.

They also have a massive laundry room where a few of the girls work where they wash bedding, towels and prison issue clothing. You could take your bedding and towel and exchange it for new bedding and a new towel. Most people had their own towels though, the prison ones are like a facecloth and really thin. And no one would take their towels home with them, so you're nice towels would be passed onto someone else when you left xx

Thank you so much for answering all these questions.

That canteen list doesn’t include cigs other than roll your own. Was it possible to buy a pack of cigs?
Could visitors being in anything else you wanted? Was there a limit to the quantity they could bring?
Re the veg and meat, could people cook for themselves. If you ordered something and it was unavailable did they substitute items like the supermarkets do? I’m guessing some items were never available and if you were new and kept ordering them hopefully, you’d end up with nothing.
Did people take other people’s canteen?
What were the batteries for?

And a particular fear of mine would be headlice. Did people have nits and how were they treated? I didn’t see headlice treatment on the shopping sheet.

Four quick questions ( sorry if you've already answered them ... I did check but couldn't see them)

Did you do anything illegal as a teen such as shoplifting?

Did you know your ex was involved in criminal activities when you met him?

Did any of your friend or family warn you off him?

Was your ex involved in any organized crime or did he act completely alone?

Good evening.

I think the main thing that would give people the incentive to stay out of prison is a job. It's so difficult to secure work once you've been released from prison. You're automatically not a good candidate, many will be unskilled, uneducated ect. In some mens prisons they do a railway course and you can get a job on the railways afterwards. But there's not much like that in the womens prisons.

I'm sure it costs £1000 a week to keep a prisoner in prison, in an ideal world more money would be spent educating and training prisoners instead of just locking them up (obviously some need to be locked up because they're dangerous).

I'm not sure if it's just out of boredom but there are loads of prisoners who are really good at art. They spend their whole sentences producing amazing portraits ect and then go out into the real world and come back to jail a week later for committing another crime. They have a talent but they don't use it. I think half of it is down to self esteem and they just think that they're never going to succeed. So many would say 'I've got no chance on the out il be back in a month', and if you've got that mindset before you've even tried then you're bound to fail.

Some big companies do employ ex-offenders and advertise that they do, from memory Virgin Trains, Timpsons and a few others. But it would be so helpful if they had more involvement within the prisons, or more information available in the prisons. I know virgin trains and Timpsons can't employ every ex-offender but it would be nice to see more big companies do the same.

Also, some people genuinely don't want to change and you could hand them everything on a plate and they wouldn't change, but most do, they just think it's impossible x

No problem!

I dont smoke, I only ever bought tobacco to exchange it for other stuff (fruit ect) but I'm pretty sure it was only tobacco and those paper things you use to make a roll up that you could buy. But there always seemed to be a massive shortage of the papers in the prison and people would be making roll ups with pages ripped out of books (first choice was always the bible as apparently the pages are thinner).

So you're allowed 9 tops / jumpers, 9 jeans / leggings, 1 coat, unlimited pajamas, , 3 pairs of footwear, dressing gown slippers & unlimited underwear & socks. Then I also took, paper, envolopes, stamps, nail file, hair bobbles, hair brush, tuppaware tubs, plastic plate & bowl and towels. I took mine with me to sentencing so I didn't need a clothes parcel bringing in on a visit but my mum still brought a couple of things that I'd forgotten, like my dressing gown, and she bought me some new pajamas and a few other bits. The reception staff fill in a property card for you so they know what you have and how much you have. They can search your cell at any time and if you have stuff that's not on your property card you get in trouble because they would say you've stolen it.

In the jail I was in one of the houses were self catering so they didn't get meals made for them they just got ingedients and cooked for themselves and had a proper kitchen. I lived on one of the other houses so we only had a microwave and a toaster as well got our meals already made. But people cook full on meals out of the kettle. If you leave the lid open the kettle will never ping like it does when it's boiled it just continues to produce heat, so people would cook curries, rice, pasta ect all from a tiny kettle. You wouldn't get a substitution if something you'd ordered wasn't available but 99% of the time you did get what you order, it was always the fresh stuff that was missing though so I gave up ordering it after a couple of weeks and instead ordered tobacco which I would then swap for fruit and veg that the kitchen staff had stolen from the kitchens.

The batteries were for your TV remote controls.

People would take others canteen but people would owe it out. They'd borrow tobacco or buy drugs and then owe their canteen.

I actually didn't ever hear anyone talk about headlice but I presume healthcare would have been able to give you some treatment if you needed it!

No problem! I think only one of these has been asked before anyway.

I once stole a lipsil from bodycare when I was about 12. I don't even know why I did it. I had the money in my purse 🙈 and when I was at uni I once didn't scan some constipation tablets at the self checkout because I was broke and they were expensive and I was in desperate need.

I didn't immediately but it soon became obvious that he was. If only I'd of been wise enough to recognise that it was a terrible idea.

Only one friend warned me off him but I kept him pretty quiet. I knew a few wouldn't approve so I didn't tell them much about him. And if anyone at work asked about my bf I used to say he was a plumber. So when I got arrested everyone was shocked! I didn't actually tell many that I'd been arrested so some of my friends didn't find out until I'd been sentenced. It's just so shameful saying it out loud 🤦🏼‍♀️

He's spent more of his adult life in prison than out of prison and he's got quite a long list of convictions, from driving offences to pretty serious ones, so some he acted alone and then he has got one conviction for organised crime. The crime in question was one he acted alone in. His ex girlfriend also has a criminal record thanks to him. I've never spoke to her though, he made out like she was crazy ect but I have once looked at her social media and she posts a lot about abusive relationships. X