The devils gate

I didn't realise

I didn't know

That I had let the wrong one come home

That my shadow had cheated me

And set foot in my life

Come home to my wife

But it wasn't me

It was a shimmer

Slimmer

But distorted from the time away from home

Hidden behind the facade

Of prison

Emotionally resilient

And hyper vigilant, hard

Cruel really

Lost in the fear

Like my place wasn't mine to fill

So whoever came home

That wasn't me

Whoever was set free

Came home to liberty,

But lacking identity

Integrity and bravery

Still tied into the prison system slavery

It's too easy to say

"Prison made me,"

It didn't

It shamed me

You saved me

In the solitary of just me, myself and I,

It was easy to be caught in a lie

To survive

To feel something

To feel alive

But I didn't

It's like being dead inside

Because you shut down

So you don't drown

If you're in there,

Who you were before,

Doesn't make any sound

Doesn't want to be found,

And then you find yourself laughing,

You find yourself crying,

You find your people,

And they close ranks 

And you forge your barriers together

Locked in, 

Locked hands,

Locked lives,

To survive

Drive 

To the finish line

To hold eachother together

Your family on the inside

The one you take out with you

And hope that when you wake up from the nightmare

There's still that love

And if you're lucky, as I am,

They're them, and you're Fran

And you emerge from the cocoon of incareration

Of reintegration

And you laugh again,

And you find your friends,

And you build you lives,

And you share the reality

Without the hostility

The danger

The suffocation

And you love life fire

With loyalty that will last forever,

Because if you can ride into hell

With the people on the outside and the in,

Loving you,

Holding you together,

Then the devils gate becomes a breeze

And you zoom on by into the vortex

That is real life

And you don't just survive

You thrive

Because these people have kept you alive

And it will always be ride or die

Chapter One - senseless

One earring out, two now, in the palm of a strangers hand. My hands are sweaty and pale, shaking. 

"Rings," she growls.

"No," I reply, my first push back against the prison system has begun, and I've only just left the dock. She grips my poorly packed "might go to prison bag" in her bullish fist and slams it on the table in the small room in which we stand.

"Rings," with a tap on my left hand.

"You'll have to take that wedding ring off my cold dead body," I say with defiance that will be eroded with every step I take beneath the surface of this building. 

She rolls her eyes in exasperation, yanks open the packed bag and proceeds to list my dismal items packed so naively and in retrospect, arrogantly, on the words of my solicitor - who, plot twist, and a story for another day - turns out to a disbarred solicitor and as inept as his flailing representation behind an equally dubious barrister. The irony of my fraud conviction, is that I'm likely represented by two men abusing the legal aid system to line their pockets and have me empty mine - here in this room.

An assortment of boxers and knickers, I couldn't decide on what was prison appropriate underwear, my gender fluidity sprawled across the desk before me. French knickers assigned for the eyes of my wife and not the masses of HMP Styal and boxers that scream "lesbian," and I am now increasingly aware, that regardless of what cloth clads my derriere going forward, it will be seen by one and all in a women's prison in a variety of humiliating environments, this I know. This was indeed what came to pass.

From leather holdall, to perspex plastic, my worldly good are zip locked and labelled and banged in the van that waits at the bottom of the cold, stone staircase. They're not ready for me, so I'm taken to a holding cell.

How Victorian. Often one walks past Minshull Street Crown Court and marvels at the architecture and the history, the misery, the knowledge of who and what goes on behind the high stone walls and foreboding iron bars, and here I sit. I wonder, who has sat in this cell before me? Murderers? Monsters? Paeodofiles? And me, the barker baker, the barker faker. Considering my fate. Twisting my wedding ring on my finger.

It will be ok. We are going to appeal it. The solicitor promised me that much through the glass as they took me down. It's Thursday, which means by close of business tomorrow, we can have movement before the weekend. I'm sure I'm his priority. He promised. Suspended. "Get a bottle of wine in for dinner Fran," he said.

Silver light flickers in my eyes as the heavy metal door creaks open

"Barker-Mills," he drawls, like this is mundane work for him, and I'm just another body on the conveybelt now. It's true. I am.

I stand, legs buckle, and follow him, onto the prison van. No handcuffs, no chains, and I'm put in a box, like a horse on the motorway, shut behind a metal door with a bottle of water rolled underneath it. It's small, claustrophobic, I've never been caged like this, but the monster is penned, ready for the zoo, and the engine fires up with a jolt and the city lights blaze through the porthole of horror.

I see Manchester fade, my life disappear, in moments of street lamps, Christmas lights and it's gone. For a year at least, it's gone.

And no-one knows I'm here. Everyone is checking their phones, to see how it went, to cheer the grace of time, that 2015 was a different life, a different world, a different Fran and that 2020 is a married teacher lady, with friends and family and work, and hope, and babies and trust and integrity and and and and.....

I cry, an uncontrollable cry, so intense, I can hardly breathe, I'm caged in here, I can't escape. What the fuck is happening?

I'm sick, on my beautiful leather brogues. They didn't take my laces? Are they not supposed to take your laces when they take everything else?

Proper shoes for court, and a crisp black suit, I'm clad in my winter coat. Sarah calls it my teacher coat, because it swishes like The Matrix when I walk down Oxford Road to the office in the Manchester weather, with my laptop thrown over my shoulder, ready for a days teaching.

My students, my god. Tomorrow is Christmas jumper day at work and I promised a prize to the most ridiculous jumper. They will turn up, for 9, they will sit and wait and I won't be there.

They will ask, my boss won't understand what happened, this was going to be ok, work supported me, gave me references, they have my back, they will have to explain.

Oh god, the papers. The only way people will hear of my demise is the shitrag MEN, the world's most clickbait, fuckwit, crossed arms, Greggs sold me half a pasty drama filled faux journalism.

Will they believe that trash that was said in court? Is that how this will all play out? Does it even matter now? I'm on my way to HMP Styal. The irony.

Engine rumbles, radiator hisses, lock clanks, and I'm back outside in the cold December air.

Into reception to be processed.

"Could you stop crying and look at the camera so we can take your photograph please?"

I can't so I look up like a puffy ferret with red eyes and makeup stained beauty fading.

Flash - it's printed, A303*** prisoner number assigned.

Prisoner number. 

Prisoner number.

I sit down, trying to steady my weight. The retrospective hilarity of understanding that the place I choose to sit is in fact the body scanning chair, that most people entering prison try to avoid, and here I sit, freely crying my heart out, with not a sheet of spice or bag of heroin stuffed up my hu-ha!

Some girls inside would say it's a missed opportunity. It's as beautiful and untainted as it went into prison thank you very much!

I get a phone call, I need to call Sarah and tell her what's happened, tell her where I am.

I call "this number cannot take your call right now," - she's turned her phone off, she doesn't want to know me, it's over, she hates me, she will never forgive me, she doesn't even want to know what happened.

I cry hysterically.

"It's off, can I call again please?" They let me as they can see my clear desperation. The same automated response. 

"Can I call my sister please? It's the second number down?"

I am clasping a crib card, I had written a few numbers down that very morning just in case - a crib card I have a stack off in my desk at home with digital marketing geek facts and quiz questions on for sessions, my Christmas jumper quiz... 

Again, they let me, my hysterical shaking and crying is persuasive and concerning in equal measure.

She answers "Donna, I'm in prison," - she laughs, she thinks I'm joking and asks how I really got on.

They have given me 1 minute for the call, I tell her I don't have time to explain what a shitshow it was but that I needed her to tell Sarah I was in HMP Styal, I got 27 months, and was going to be spending a year at least in jail.

(Turns out I had written Sarah's number down in my haste and she hadn't turned her phone off, I was calling a wrong number)

However, in my vunerable and disoriented state, I was convinced it was all over. End of days.

I clasped my bag of items once they had been sorted through by the prison - they took most of it, I still don't know why - the internet and my knowledge and lived experience now tells me, I was allowed them but to hell with my whitening toothpaste, proper toothbrush, and stamps. Instead, prison issue toothbrush and toothpaste, and a plastic bowl with mini soap and shampoo sachet and oddly enough, a washing powder tablet.

Confused, I carry them through the darkness, walking through the prison compound, following the prison officer who is taking me to the cell block.

She takes me to my cell, and it's everything I imagined and worse, Dickensian, metal, old school prison cellblock wing, like Bad Girls, but filled with real bad girls. A mixture of the lost, the loony and the fuck ups (I'm in good company)

"It's not as bad as it seems, and you're a first timer, you seem like a nice girl, you will probably get out on tag in 12 months," - this prison officer has kind eyes, she's young, clearly in this job for the right reasons and after a year in jail, I came to learn, prisoner officers like this are few and far between. The majority fall into two categories - disenchanted and frustrated and therefore disdainful, or, the worst, powermad, egotistical, small men and women who enjoy the hierarchy of prison to feel superior and revel in the misery of those "beneath them," - those kind of officers also fall into two categories, downright narcissists, or sexual predators.

And to think, the majority of women I meet here have been victims of men, abuse, violence, sexual exploitation and are now being herded, controlled and subdued by men of a similar temperament - remind me why prison DOESN'T work?

She shuts my cellblock door, heavy metal, loud. I knock on it from my side, she opens the little door flap.

"What's the bowl for?"

She opens my door and shows me an itinerary with my name on it. Covid isolation 14 days.

Shower day 8.

I read it again

Shower day 8.

The bowl is for washing. Washing oneself. Ones clothes, knickers in particular and even more dignified following those two things, ones plate, cup and cutlery.

So this is life now.

Like an animal in a zoo. Shower day 8. Exercise outside, day 5.

The strip lights flicker on the ceiling, I ask how to turn them off. 

She smiles and tells me, because I'm high risk and on an ACCT, the lights will stay on for the first few nights as the officers will need to observe me every hour.

I laugh.

A suicide risk, yeah I can see that. I have literally been surveiling my cell for options and opportunities since she opened the door, and they are LIMITED.

I have nothing to live for. No wife, no life, no job, no home, no family, no friends, no dignity, no integrity, no honesty, no hope.

So of course, I wonder, why waste a year? To maybe get tag? I can't do this. It has to end tonight.

Bedsheets. That's what they do in the films. But where can I tie it?

I deliberate as she leaves.

I make my bed, this isn't the Hilton, and bless my soul since coming home, the making of a prison bed has benefited my real life as I am now a superstar at bed changing at home.

It's bedsheets or nothing. The bars on the windows are clad with glass, the window doesn't shut and the cold winter air rattles it open and closed, clanging and banging. Combined with the lights on full, sleep is out of the question.

Besides, the woman in the cell next to me is screaming, and the rest of the cellblock are screaming back and telling her to shut the fuck up.

I concur but wouldn't dare join in the chorus.

I think the pipes are the best bet. Perhaps the telephone wire.

This is what prison does.

It sends women who have broken the law, who can and should be rehabilitated and supported in the community to maintain their employment, relationships, homes, and commitments to recover and do better, it sends them away, in the dead of night on a thursday in december, for a year, to deliberate how to kill themselves, because none of it makes sense.

Sending women to prison like this for short periods of time in the name of justice and punitive punishment is cruel, senseless and a waste of tax payers money.

Next story : How many days did HMP Styal let me stay banged up in my cell without my citalopram? 10? 20? 54?

What a difference a year makes

 Last night, I sat, outside, on a warm Manchester evening, the sun had set, and as I held my wifes hand, I looked up and saw the imposing skyline silouette of Manchester Minshull Crown Court looking back at me. The juxtaposition istion of that building sitting like a spectre of a past life, overshadowed by rainbows a-plenty and the competitive music barrage from every bar dotted down canal street.

That building will haunt the paths I walk through the city forever, and I often change my route if I find myself in close proximity to it. Just looking at it makes me lose my breath. The Victorian and draconian high walls, with the closing gates where the prison vans lurk. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick.

So you can imagine the confusion within me looking over at the building that saw me lose my freedom and disappear into the winters night, whilst sitting and laughing with the people who love me most.

And it occurred to me, I left my life, like a soul leaves a body. I left it. 

And it's only recently I came back to it, and fortunately for me, it was still here waiting for me, but it was only ever waiting for me. Not the shadow or spectre of who I was that came home from prison.

I caught a glimpse of myself a few days ago, on a microsoft teams call, the way we all do, we see our little faces in little boxes, and it was like the Fran I lost, and had been waiting for, came home.

I was chatting away in teacher mode, waxing lyrical about coding, exhilerating a new cohort of students, and I felt altogether myself, no missing pieces.

Bit by bit, prison eroded the person I had become, the strength, pride, resilience I had made my whole, the woman I had become to overcome the person who I was before. 

It was a short period of time, relative to the time I have no been home, but day by day, it took something. Not just freedom. Pieces of me. That pride, that strength, that resilience, evaporated, for every day I was outside of my life and I hadn't realised how little of me was left until I compared the person I was before and after.

When I came home from prison, I was selfish, I was souless, I was focused on all of the wrong things, building my new house on sand, with no foundations. With no depth. No purpose.

The echoes of who I was, lingered. And those around me tried to pull me back, wake me up, remind me I was home and home was all I ever needed - but in a very Fran obstinate way, I knew better.

Prison is a strange place, where you can be your purest self but daren't be, because it's a place where vunerablity is a dangerous thing. You open yourself up and don't realise the danger you've put yourself in and you create and forge bonds of foreverness in some misguided notion of solidarity and connectivity. It's nothing more than a survival mechanism. Prison creates an unhealthy codependence and erodes reality. It creates a selfish souless bubble where the person you were once, exists in a warped version and you feel like you have it all figured out, you know who you are now, who you need to be on the other side, because you go to prison feeling like you have to change, you have to be more, be better, because otherwise, what was it all for?

I spent days and nights lamenting my conscience, my choices, myself. My punishment has always been of my own making, but prison exacerbates our ability to destroy our sense of self. It dehumanises you and the relationships you build, the relationships you have.

And somehow, we are supposed to leave rehabilitated, reformatted, reinvigorated for life after?

The woman prison made me, and the woman I allowed myself to become, for the sake of punishment and penance, set me back a year.

I lost a year of my life to jail, I lost nearly as much trying to regain my sense of self, my purpose, my soul, my relationships.

But I spent a weekend with the people I love the most and who love me unconditionally, the people who wrote to me, called me, let me know I was in their thoughts and hearts every single day I was away, and I held their hands, danced like the sun wouldn't come up, drank more beer than any 35 year old woman should.

We celebrated pride, we celebrated love. We celebrated me being home. And I felt it.

I lost time, I lost myself, but thank god for patience, persistence and the wonder of friendship and real life.

Prison is a bad dream, and I woke up.

And I've never felt more free.

Roe vs Wade

What a sad day it is for women.

The ultimate silencing of a woman's voice, a woman's choice. 

When the discussion surrounding Roe v Wade being overturned came into the public forum, I found myself quite triggered, and I had a little downslide in terms of mental health. I couldn't quite explain, although I tried when my wife asked me what was weighing on my mind.

Abortion comes with the biggest "what if" you will ever face in your life.

For me, in 2007, it wasn't even a question in my mind, it was a must. When I found out I was pregnant, entirely by chance, having been admitting to hospital for other reasons, my only question for the nurse was "can you do an abortion here?"

And I remember the look on her face, like I was some silly student who had dropped her knickers and not thought through my life choices. It's that flippancy, it's that assumption that makes abortion such a taboo. Let's set aside the pro life, the religion, the bastardised religious zealousness that comes with the territory (forgive the pun) - if's not god's judgement that brings about the friction, it's other people's opinions on someone elses body, mind, circumstance, that has no place in society.

If I had not had the right to make my own choice, and take ownership of my own body, after somebody had taken ownership of it for me, and taken my choice from me, if I had had my voice silenced and my freedom of choice taken from me, I would have given birth in 2008 to a child I never asked for, a child I never wanted, a child I believed because of the horror of circumstance, I couldn't love. Those were my feelings and my rights to feel that way.

It would mean that the man who took my body, took my choice, also took my right to live my life on my own terms, in the way I wanted, in the way I planned.

As a second year politics student, I had no intention of having a child at 19, nor did I want one.

As a gay woman, I had no intention of having a child with a random man, not a rapist, not a one night stand, not a cock in sight.

As a woman, I had no intention of having a child at 19 because I had worked for my education and wanted to build my life in the way I had hoped and planned, to go to university, to get a good job, to build a life, find a wife, settle down and live happily ever after.

It is only these days whilst infertility runs rampant through our lives and has taken over our marriage and hopes of procreation that my mind occasionally allows the "what if" question to enter my head.

For every "what if" I have had since 2007, I never thought I would see the day, I would feel grateful for having those moments, for having the choice to have them. That 19 year old me had the freedom to make that informed choice. Backed by doctors, therapy and an operation.

I don't regret it. It was what was right for me at the time. It was right for my body, my mind, my hopes and it shaped who I am.

I don't have qualms over religion despite being brought a good catholic girl. I live my life firm of mind that my choices have concequences of my ownership. Thats true of all my decisions, good and bad.

But to lose the ability to have that choice? To be forced to live with such a penance?

I can hand on heart in 2022 say with all honesty and integrity. If in 2007 I could not have had an abortion to rid myself of the foetus imposed upon me by a rapist, a monster, to live with a constant reminder of the violence and horror of that night.

I would have killed myself. It would have been my life lost with whatever cells I was carrying with me.

Women NEED, DESERVE and MUST have the right to make decisions about their bodies.

Today's decision will lead to deaths, through unsolicited, underhand, opportunistic, dangerous abortions and loss of life of the women who can't live with the choice they've been left with, none.

What next America?

The LGBT+ community best prepare for the overturning of gay marriages, Trumps legacy of hate and ignorance lives on and Joe Biden is still trying to find his balls in Hilarys handbag.

God help us.

Morrisons Cafe

 

I am currently sat in a Morrisons café.

I bloody love a Morrisons café. But I love this Morrisons café more than most.

I sit on a Thursday afternoon in the Merrion Centre in Leeds. The first time I sat here, in this exact seat, was almost a year ago, on my first day of work. Hardly the most magical narrative you’ve ever heard from me, I’m sure, but this table, this coffee, hold particular nostalgia in my mind and heart.

A year ago, I was residing at her majesty’s pleasure, many miles from here, a long commute, but what a thing to be able to do. A commute.

In my bright pink shirt, my bright pink fleece, my shiny name badge bouncing upon my bosom chasing a bus down the A64 to make sure I got to work on time, and by on time, I mean early, early so I could grab a coffee. At this table. In this seat.

So much has changed since then.

 

It was my 34^th birthday. Day one at Max Spielmann, which meant day one out of the prison gates. Day one in society, community, reality. But a prisoner who went to work and returned home to not a homecooked meal or a Sarah or a cat called Gordon Ramsay, but to what had become my prison family. Where by pals would pick up my dinner at the 4pm role check, and keep hold of it for me so that I didn’t have to go and ask to be let into the kitchens to collect it after a 12 hour day out of the prison. I would leave at 6am, return at 8pm, eat my dinner on a picnic bench with the girls, drink coffee at a time of day I haven’t dared do since returning home, because in real life, who does indeed drink coffee for fun and conversation after 8pm? Unless out for dinner?

I realise how middle class and paradoxical that sounded.

My 34^th birthday, I hopped on the bright blue coastliner, having walked miles to get it, a level of fitness that grew with time, and many a bus chase. On that bus, I would sit, I would call my wife, bright and breezy, and she would wake or be at work, always making time to talk to me. Whether sleepy or with cancer specimen in hand – mornings fast became our time of day. No prison phones, no recorded intimacy, no “I love you’s” spoken to half the prison population listening to conversations between married couples.

I had a birthday cake on my birthday – despite being in prison. In this very café. And it was free! The lovely man who worked here was fascinated by my choice of mini Victoria sponge for breakfast at 8am on a random morning in May, I told him it was my birthday, he brought it to my table with a coffee and wished me happy birthday and the level of kindness, for a woman on day release from prison, warmed even my cold heart.

I ate that little cake in wonderment of my new found freedom. Hours out of the prison compound to work, like a regular person. To work. I had missed that sense of purpose, drive, dedication more than many of the other aspects of real life – now as a free-ish woman, it’s an exhausting narrative of hamster wheel behaviour we all exist to maintain and sustain until the government lets us while and wither away with the pennies our pensions allow.

Here I sit, typing on my laptop, with my smartphone plugged in, emailing clients, writing up proposals, checking social media, checking in on friends, taking calls from my wife.

What a bizarre 12 months.

If you had asked me this time last year where I saw my life in a years time, I would not have been able to give you this answer. I don’t know what my answer would have been. Many of the assumptions I had, that I would leave prison and work hard to regain my career for example, were naïve and idealistic and perhaps a little over reaching – and how depressing a realisation, that just 10 short months out of society and behind bars, whether nice bars or suffocating ones, the loss of liberty had come at a high cost to many, and to me. Crime doesn’t pay my friends. But I knew that in the moments after my misdeeds, as I do so many years later.

I love Leeds. It’s a city that makes me feel free. Because it’s a city where I was free. I was born here in a way. In my bright pink shirt, I was just Fran, day release prisoner, who worked minimum wage, in a photo shop, who had the opportunity to eat real food, talk to real people, live a real life, and then return to the penance I had to pay.

This city has part of my heart. In more ways than one. It was where I found myself, a new version of myself, a version I wanted to hold onto when coming home. So clear, calm and collected, without the people pleasing necessities I had spent 30 years trying to outrun. Prison is a place where judgement is for a the judge, as soon as you’re in that white van whizzing down the M6 to your nearest HMP, judgement evaporates, because you’re all in the same boat, in the same place, suffering for your disgrace.

Together.

I write, because it drives me, inspires me, and has always been my emotional exorcism. My necessary therapy and familiarity. To write today, in this place, this space, has made me feel so many things all at once.

New beginnings. That’s what this place was last year. And that is what it is today. The cathartic cleansing as past becomes present becomes future. Taking only the worthwhile into tomorrow.

Morrisons café, creating emotive epiphanies since 2021.

Disclosure Closure

Whilst in prison, the employment department within the jail asked to see my CV. I duly had my wife send me a copy so that I could show them, this is a CV that began back in the day of senior school years; the first ventures into Microsoft application in 2003 when preparing for my GCSE's.

The much maligned and tentative steps into "employability skills" before you even know what you want for breakfast, let alone what you want to do for the rest of your life. Where your maroon folder "Record of Achievement," is supposedly your life long bible, whereby your 25m swim in 1995 is an essential proof for any future prospective employer - whilst the maroon folder remains in the lofts of many parents, the fact that paper will dictate your life and career choices is a sad fact that remains. Alas, in 2022, the digital age has ensured that alongside your bits of paper collated over years of education and employment, you also have a remarkable and very accessible digital footprint, that if, like me, happens to cite your indiscretions, will speak louder than any undergraduate degree ever could, or ever will.

Now, I'm not shy to say, I'm a woman of immense privilege, correction, I had a very fortunate upbringing in a way that brought about excellent education, private schooling, grammar school sixth form for bright minds and then university and a job in London swiftly followed. I ticked every box of the ambitious and well-moulded middle class white girl.

Those who read this blog, those who know my story, the story of Francesca Barker, who was indeed once TheBarkerBaker will know that amongst the shine and pontification of privilege was a childhood marred with trauma, abuse, assault and every real life tick box that every single prisoner I met had also come a-cropper.

It is this chequered past, and this road of many missteps that lead to a chaotic and cataclysmic decade of hope, try, fail and steal to try and fail again. 

But equally, it is a decade of chaos that lead me to calm, a calm that brought about my getting back into education, to train, to learn, and to teach. To be the person I wanted to be and to live it with every waking moment.

I was reborn, through friendships, relationships, trust, hope, and hard work. But most of all, I found my integrity as a human being, my authenticity as a person, and what so many of us hope to find and often find it all too late and usually when the world has gone to shit - our identity.

I found myself, my true self, when all I had was eroded, erased, removed and lost as I disappeared into a life behind bars, I left my life on the outside and all of those who love me, holding it together by the seams.

One bang of a gavel, meant the job I had retrained for, relearned for, reclaimed myself for, gone in an instant. My reputation, rebuilt, now in ashes. My relationships, hurting and feeling like a death had occured and a mourning period had begun. It was like I had died, because one minute I was in my life, and then I was gone.

In a pandemic prison era, I landed in the justice system at possibly the worst time, when everything was shut down and the exploitation of the degradation of womens rights, dignities and liberties behind bars were decimated all under the guise of covid. Humiliation, degradation, all designed to break the hopes and dreams, and quiet the voices of those in cages waiting to get out.

I almost lost myself. I spent my first night in a prison cell in HMP Styal evaluating the different ways I could commit suicide, bedsheets on barred windows, tied to a bunk bed up high. A sad affair and motivated by one thing - what will people think of me?

My first morning in prison I pressed my cell call bell and asked the prison officer who appeared at the metal grate in my cell door "Am I in the paper?" 

Oh yes.

The easier question would have been : which one?

All of them.

The mug shot from when I was a drug addict 11 years ago rolled out in 2020 like that's who I was despite a decade of recovery and clean living - drug free, but not issue free.

The pap shot long lense of me walking into court, in my favourite "teacher coat" carrying a bag I didn't think I would need because my legal team had assured me it was an open and shut suspended situation.

I even made the New York Post, a compliment, I laughed after it all fell apart at the irony of always wanting my writing to reach print press like that, and it turns out, my story hit their pages, but not my words. Oh no, none of this has ever been my words. It's always been theirs.

My words were in court, in apologies and reparations and they fell silent. The only noise that came from that room was that of the media, who perpetuated their version of events to maximise the exposure and clicks of the once great Barker Baker. The paper that made me, enjoyed their time to shame me. It got more coverage, so well done to that reporter - your writing was poor, your facts were weak, and I write with more grace and poise than your shit rag could dare to dream - even with a phrase such a shit rag my friends, I carry more power in truth than you grasp with your click bait misery.

This is who we are in 2022, a society that revels in the sorrows and shame of others because we live in a world where we are so obsessed with mirroring the success stories and the shining lights, that to rise above our own sadnesses, sometimes its easier to revel in others. It's a sign of the times and not necessarily the misguided morality of who we have become.

I digress.

Today, I sat at my little laptop, at my kitchen table, a change of scenery on a Monday morning, not at my quaint home office desk setup during lockdown, pre-prison, you could never knock me for my work ethic, I graft and I always have, no pun intended readers.

Coffee, sign into outlook, see what monday brings, locked out. Odd. But familiar. Sign into teams. Locked. I know how this story ends, for just 6 months ago, I had a similar state of affairs and the tingling in my throat knows how this is going to play out.

I email my boss to let him know I can't access the systems. No reply. I email HR, no reply. My phone rings at 10:30, I sat down to work at 8:30.

The recruiter who sourced me for the role, setup the initial interviews and introductions and laid the breadcrumbs that lead here, to this - Francesca Barker-Mills, Marketing Manager.

"Fran I've been asked to give you a call and let you know that your employment has been terminated with immediate effect. It has come to light over the weekend that you have a criminal history that wasn't made fully aware,"

- Interesting. Throughout my recruitment process, through the recruitment agency, the employer, the employers partners, I was never asked about any criminal convictions, never asked about any criminal disclosure or necessity. Never made aware of any potential issues regarding criminal history as it was a post that required no vetting or DBS.

The law in this country is : Unless an employer asks you to disclose, you don't have to. As it happens, in the second line on my CV - the CV that made its way through the hands of the recruiter, the CEO, the marketing director, HR and partnerships person, cited intrinsically under the section I have aptly named CORE SKILLS because as far as I'm concerned, my lived experience of the justice system is a huge part of the my work ethic, my morals, my drive, and my skill set and I am proud to own it and stand by it - more than anything, because of the way the world works, it's best to air your dirty laundry in a positive way before it's waved from someone elses garden.

The exact wording on my CV is "Lived experience - exoffender custodial sentence, lead by example of empowerment, education and hard work,"

I had assumed having been offered this job, taken up this job, worked my ass off for this job, that one of the key attributes of them hiring me was my excellent CV, more than that, my impeccable interview skills - interviewed several times, by several tiers of management, and then reference checked to the hilt. Previous employers, previous freelance contracts, personal refereee alongside this.

All wonderful endorsements of the one absolute fact that negates any bullshit press coverage : I am damn good at my job, because I have worked hard for it, I have educated myself to know what I am doing, I have worked for companies that have empowered me to build a fierce reputation and skill set than make me formidable at what I do.

Imagine then, as an empowered young woman, fresh out of jail but finally feeling more like me than I have since coming home, on the cusp of regaining some proper financial stability and regularity for my wife and I - now more important than ever, we had the joy of our first IVF appointment just 3 days ago. Imagine, on a Monday morning feeling grateful for the life you live and the path you walk now, to have the rug pulled so ungraciously from under you.

And why?

Because I have a criminal conviction. Yes, and if you had dared to ask me, I would have told you, actually, I have two.

Neither of which define me as a person, and certainly not as a marketing manager.

The law denotes I didn't have to - you didn't ask, and I had assumed you knew, having poked around in my Linkedin profile which cites its very very blatantly, and indeed references this very blog. The fact I talked prolifically in my interviews about my passion for criminal justice and my political lobbying and work in the womens charity sector.

Discrimination? Perhaps.

But let's be honest. 

I don't have it in me to fight for the injustice of it. I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall. I strive, I work, I succeed but it's always with the almighty taste of "gratitude" that any opportunity that comes my way is one born out of risk - I'm not a risk - if we are getting pedantic, statistically according to my probation and OASY risk assessment, I'm 0.02% likely to reoffend again.

I'd bet on that horse.

I'd bet on me.

I do every day.

And more fool you for not doing the same.

Shame on you for making me feel anything less than fucking brilliant.

Because I know who I am and I know my worth, and I am not A3039EP of HMP.

I Francesca Barker-Mills, and I am more than you know.

International Women's Day 2022

It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to write on International Women's Day and for the thousands of you that still collectively read my blog so many years on (thank you!) - you will know all to well it is quite the mark on my calendar each year for a variety of reasons.

International Women's Day is always a moment I sit and take stock, take pause and thought of the way to the world works and I find it a day of mixed emotion; usually thankful in small measure of the progressive micro-steps that are taken each year in the name and hope of equality, safety, stability and justice for all women, but alongside that, the abject frustration at the pace of change and the quieted voices of women around the world, quashed by men, politics, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, misogyny, inequality, injustice and engrossed, ingrained in such historic and societal fuck wittery. But still, the march goes on, the days roll by and the voices grow louder, unified in the knowledge that brighter days will come, the power of togetherness is something no gag can bound or quiet.

This time last year, I was on my last day of Covid isolation, having arrived at HMP Askham Grange at the end of February 2021 and was going through my third rotation of "reverse cohorting," which in prison lingo is essentially, penning in any new inmates from other prisons to minimise the spread of Covid, sensible, but arbitrary all the same.

In my final weeks at HMP Styal, my offender manager appeared one day and slid a brochure under my cell door - advertising the wonders of HMP Askham Grange, I didn't understand why at the time, having spent 23 hours a day banged up, like some sort of sadistic "the grass is greener," if you behave yourself incentive, it was like giving an advert for the Hilton Manchester to someone sleeping rough. Be that as it may, I read and reread that folded print out a thousand times, and made it my absolute goal. Soon out of the cell block wing and into the houses, I got a job as the house cleaner, then as the admin assistant in the kitchens and I worked my socks off morning, noon and night in Styal so that I could 1) support myself financially to some extent whilst incarcerated for the purpose of buying phone credit, vapes and fizzy drinks on canteen and 2) to give myself some purpose and routine - old habits die hard, if I'm not working and I'm not busy, I'm dying!

A few weeks of ball busting and crawling into my top bunk with the worlds LOUDEST most grotesque of pad mates, surviving on 2 hours sleep per night and rocking into the kitchens in some sort of catatonic survival mode, still unmedicated with no access to my anti-depressants through the prison, I again was met with my offender manager, appearing at a window.

I lifted the sash window and we spoke through the iron barred space in the glass. "I put a request to the governors to grant you a recat to get you out of here," - I had been in HMP Styal just 8 weeks but to me it felt like a life sentence having been ripped from my actual life.

"But I'm not due for recat until July?" I replied not understanding what she meant 

"I know that Fran but you don't need to be here, we're sending you to Askham Grange,"

Cue motion picture photo reel running through my mind - the brochure, the place from the brochure.

And lo' this time last year, there I was, prison van from A to B, and arriving in a Cat D prion. Prison officers carried my perspex plastic bags to "the annex," showed me to my room - not my cell. It was on the ground floor, it has a massive window looking out onto landscaped gardens, no bars, no locks, and I was handed a key. A room key.

A little single bed, clean carpets on the floor, a wooden armchair, IKEA's finest, a little bedside table with the prison rules and regulations and a welcome pack and induction program. My own little sink and storage cupboards and a wardrobe.

It really was the Hilton Manchester in all it's glory. 

I was handed a small mobile phone - to call home, call whoever, to let them know I had arrived. HMP Askham Grange had a few forward thinking protocols, and the use of the prison mobile phones was one - to alleivate the frustrations of the blue prison phones and the masses of women who used them on a daily basis, those who were in isolation or had enhanced status, could use the mobile phones with their prisoner pin numbers to make calls. All monitored of course, it is not the Butlins lifestyle the Daily Mail would have you believe - security, safety and the constant knowledge that you are in prison are to be expected as part and parcel of the punishment and loss of liberty. Regardless, I sat on that little bed in awe. 

A prison officer came down on International Women's Day and informed us that there was an event going on in the "ballroom" but of course we couldn't attend as still in covid isolation but asked if we wanted anything from the coffee shop - another wonderment of a Cat D prison, that if you earn your right to be in open prison, that comes with a certain sense of normality - because of course, Cat D prisons exist as the final port of call to normalise prison life, as the stepping stone back into society.

What's more normal than understanding a budget, a perk, a pleasure, a reward and something to be grateful and shared, than a coffee shop. The prison officer reeled off what was on offer, a list of cakes and bakes and fizzy drinks. FUCK MY LIFE - diet coke; I could have cried. Those who know me will know rarely a day goes by in my life where I don't have a diet coke, and in HMP Styal, it was easier to get hold of real coke, not a fucking diet coke and I know which I would rather have (thanks to rehab!)

This piece of writing is turning into an ode to Askham but it's purpose as always is to shine a light on the positives. Believe me, spending International Women's Day incarcerated, even in a nicer jail, was a brutal affair. To lose your liberty, to lose your right to vote, to lose your dignity, your equality, your humanity. It was like no International Women's Day I've ever felt or lived.

Today, I sit, on a Tuesday evening, typing sat at my dining table, candles lit, flowers in a jug that I painted myself (on a ROTL might I add! That's a story for another day) not just any flowers, gypsophila. Again, those of you who follow my social media will know that back in 2020, when Sarah and I got married, we had a wedding that was in essence handmade, and couldn't have been more "us" if we tried - including the flowers. The day before we got married, I was at the wedding venue, surrounded by rafts and rafts of fresh flowers, and with the help of my best bridesmaid and her husband (yay mike) we created all of the boutinierres for the guests, the table setting flowers, the venue flowers, and of course, the bridal and bridesmaid bouquets - the star of the show was beautiful babys breath. 

For my birthday and for our wedding anniversary last year, Sarah sent me a gigantic bouquet of flowers almost identical to the bridal bouquet I made her to HMP Askham Grange and they lived on my window sill until they literally dried out and died. I sit now, on a chilly springtime evening and the dried flowers from HMP Askham Grange May 2021, sit before me said handpainted jug in 2022.

The flowers feel like symbolism. In harder times, I could have binned them. They could be the synonymy of a love dying but they didn't die. They changed and they held on. And their beauty before me, paired with fresh, white, new flowers, show me the evolution of emotion.

I spent some of 2020 and 2021 caged (lovely MEN word) with women. All of us put in prison by a system that tried (and fails) to find justice and retribution for a world that doesn't understand the why, only the how and when. A system that fails to acknowledge that women who commit crime, are often victims of crime and the self perpetuating failings and outcomes are so better remedied with intervention and prevention as opposed to incarceration. I have never felt less than the empowered woman I have always been, than in those moments and yet, in the dark, depraved no mans land prison is, the solidarity of women was never more apparent.

I met women in prison who changed my life and certainly changed my outlook on life. To have strength and sense of self in a place that is designed to defile your soul and strip you of yourself, your self worth, identity and humanity in order to control, reshape and remake and churn out, job done, box ticked. To find women who hold onto their heart and their core, or indeed find it in that place, is a beauty like no other.

I'm sure some will be mortified at the shoutout upon this blog, which has been a part of my life for many years before prison and will continue to be for many years to come, and all who are mentioned hence forth know me to be the writer, the orator, the challenger, the fighter. We share the commonality of strength of self, even if we share it for eachother. We rise up, we hold up, we drive, together. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the strength of the women in the weakest moments of our lives.

Prepare yourselves - Umi, you found me broken in the pits of hell, unmedicated, unbalanced and trying to understand what prison was. You taught me to be strong, to show no fear, to stop crying but to cry with trust, usually upon your shoulder. You taught me how to do prison and to hold only my monkey and no-one elses. We stayed up for hours talking about religion, politics, people, purpose, crime, hate, hurt, love, family. You my friend, showed me beauty in a place where there was none and I will carry you with me always, for chicken dinners at home or road trips across the world. 

Patsy, a mirror image of strength and vulnerability, a brutal honesty and integrity that not many feel is possible from women who go to prison in the way that we did. But you defy the preconceptions in your kindness and your decency. You wear your heart on your sleeve even in a place like prison, and guard it with sensibility and despite it being taken for granted, you never lose sight of the greater good - that it is better to be good, to be kind, to be true, than to turn away and never try. To drive forward for yourself and for those you love even when you're running on empty, and there are days I want to shake you and say stop - but I know the fire in you is the fire in me and it burns for as long as breathe, to be the best we can be, because we don't know any other way to be. And that we are ok with that. To fill a void, that was created by the past, is to build a bridge of hope across it and know that the cavern is there, the depths remain, the danger of the slip is apparent, but the bridge is solid and shows the strength of who we are and how we build, rebuild, reshape, and put one step in front of the other, brick by brick. You saved me a few weeks ago, when the traffic was fast and the whip of the wind was on my face, one step infront of the other would have been my last. I stayed on the bridge, as I stayed on the pavement. And I decided to rebuild my bridge, knowing people like you are on the other side of it.

There is love in dark places, that attaches itself to your soul and sometimes you don't grasp it or understand it, but you take solace and peace in knowing it is there. For however long it is there. The love I found on my journey, shaped the way I walk it now, and I wouldn't change it.

My friends, my lord. My friends.

Every single day in jail, every single day. At HMP Askham Grange there was a daily post list, and if you had post your name was highlighted, women would queue up to see if there name was highlighted, after a few weeks at Askham, I didn't even need to look, as the prison officers handing out post would already know to have mine ready. Every single day. "Email a Prisoner," 

Sometimes, letters of love, but mostly, letters of absolute normality and "here's what I did today,"

But a special shoutout to my zoe, this time last year, I sat cross legged on my little single bed and I read an email she sent to me a hundred times or more in the weeks and months that followed.

Zoe you beautiful friend, you knew me well enough to know the geeky feminist politico in me would be suffering behind bars with no access to social media, google or my blog on International Women's Day so you sent me a 3 page email with a list of inspiring women for international womens day and more than that, you told me all about what was going on in your life so I could be part of it. I will love you forever for that email, to know me well enough that you sent me exactly what I needed when I needed it. You defrosted yorkshire lass, I've never appreciated your love more.

And of course Mills, I have talked about love and it's evolution. And regardless of our relationship and it's process, and the turmoil of prison and thereafter, you, you will always be the most inspirational women on International Women's Day.

We knew the day may come where my fuck wittery as the worlds most wonderful radiator bread baker (fuck off) would have to pay the price - and it was a heavy price to pay, mostly at your cost.

People tell me all the time, it's harder for the one's left on the outside and I agree. We began 2020 in a pandemic, which had you redeployed in the NHS covid testing and being a superwoman and being on the front line as you always would be - because you always want to do the best and the right thing. By the end of 2020, you had lost your wife to prison and we didn't realise that could be the outcome. I was ripped from you, our life, our baby plans, our careers, our marriage. In an instant.

You powered on. You think all you did was survive, but you didn't you thrived.

I came home to a woman who drove her career forward, surrounded by wonderful work colleagues who supported you - good attracts good and you have done good Mills, real good. You smashed out your postgrad journey, and sit here now, across from me, on the sofa with the cat, writing a legal ethics essay - because that is who you are, even when it's hard. You just got a fucking promotion!! Of course you did, because what you see as existing, is evolving and is growth and is inspiring to me everyday.

I haven't made it easy.

In our wedding vows, which we wrote together, I promised to empower you.

It's International Women's Day - you don't a woman or a man to empower you my darling, you're doing it just fine by yourself, but for days when you feel like you need a boost, I'm right here.

With Sports Direct mug cups of tea and cheerleading <3

International Women's Day 2022 - I have life full of women, it's the gay girls dream. I have life full of women who I will be proud to help shape the next generation of Barker-Mills - with IVF around the corner, I couldn't be happier to have the people in my life who are what today is all about.

The Women's Prison Estate

 With many newspapers reporting over the weekend that the government is progressing it's plans to ensure 4000 new prison places become available to ensure the courts can filter through and reprimand those who have been caught up in the Covid backlog of sentencing and punishment - it begs the question - why?

Like some sort of shining beacon of success, the continually misguided vision of a Conservative government and a justice strategy headed by Dominic Raab, doesn't inspire confidence in a world where justice should be restorative and rehabilitative - not punitive.

A laughable quote from HMP Foston Hall's latest inspection, which caused short lived shock waves amongst the tabloids and society, but such disdain and disappointment vanished as quickly as it appeared. As a society often lead by the hand, heart and head by our favourite broadsheets and their social media managers, the horror of HMP Foston Hall falling short, even by HMP standards, was sad to read, but not at all surprising for anyone who has head the pleasure of custodial sentencing in the women's estate.

This direct quote from the inspectors report does indeed cause a belly laugh at the sheer degradation and invisbility of women in prison "The response to women in crisis was too reactive, uncaring and often punitive,"

Punitive responses to women in crisis? It is this punitive approach that sends women by the prison van loads miles and miles across the country to find themselves in the custody, and supposed duty of care of her majesty's prisons, be it HMP Foston Hall, HMP Newhall or indeed, my nemesis and local landmark of justice - HMP Styal.

Now, HMP Styal also had a delightful prison inspectorate report, released a few short months ago, which reads almost and incredibly alarmingly, similar to that of HMP Foston Hall, which was found to be the lowest scoring prison in a decade - why then did Styal come off better when the issues that are rife run rampant just the same there as they further south?

Avid self harm, lack of duty of care, ACCT's masquerading as appropriate safeguards which last as long as prison officers can be bothered monitoring and filling in the paperwork. The hourly flashlight to the face is not enough to ensure the mental and physical wellbeing of women behind bars and I should know.

I was assigned to an ACCT on my arrival at HMP Styal, having been more than hysterical during my processing thinking my world had ended, my life, my wife, my job, my friendships, all torn from me in the bang of a judges gavel and compounded by press reporting that would go on for weeks thereafter.

I was taken to my cell on the wing, and informed, as many of you know having read my writing prior to this; informed that shower was day 8 - yes you read that right. Day 8. This was apparently due to the prisons inability to ensure covid safe showering facilities which required cleaning and therefore the women were rota'd to all intents and purposes as to an allocated day of hot water!

My plastic bowl, now laden with shampoo sachets, a bar of soap and some detergent tablets became my solace of selfcare; bathing my bits and bobs, washing my hair, and indeed, washing my underwear, warmed then by the prison pipes to get dry.

I digress. Sanitary and sanity aside, my ACCT consisted of being made to sleep with my cell ceiling light on for 4 nights, have a flashlight and a bang on the iron door once an hour, so no real sleep could take place, and at day 4, have a more senior wing officer, ask me if I was well enough to be taken off what was essentially suicide watch, and before having chance to process, consider and question, had my file closed off.

Let's just consider my circumstances for a moment; arriving at HMP Styal on a dark December evening, suited and booted with a bag of naively packed prison items, 50% of which were not allowed to come with me, processed, urine tested, hep tested, covid tested and then slammed on the wing with a plastic bowl for 14 nights of quarantine. 

No sleep for 4 nights but most of all? No medication. Due to what was and is still being referred to by HMP Styal as an "administration error," I spent 54 days in closed prison conditions, in the middle of a pandemic, having come from a well medicated, supported life, with no anti-depressants. I went cold turkey like the rest of the drug dependent women in there.

54 days with no citalopram. Every day I used the 5 minute reprieve outside of my cell to go to the medication hatch and every day I was told it was still not sorted.

I can't begin to explain my hysteria but more than that, the total lack of care from the healthcare provider within HMP Styal and the prison officers alike. I submitted apps, I asked officers, I attended healthcare, nothing. 54 days of an emotionally unstable personality disorder, bi-polar, depressive in the most extreme, isolated, debilitating circumstances I have ever found myself in.

So - does that prison estate care for the mental and physical wellbeing of the women is cares for whilst incarcerated under their care, and at great cost to the taxpayer? Circa 53k per inmate?

No.

The women's prison estate operates as nothing more than a holding pen for women who are required by law to lose their liberty and ability to be amongst the law abiding citizens. To protect people from our criminality until either our time is up, or we have worked through the issues that lead us to break the law in the first place.

It becomes tiresome to read these inspectors reports which cite Covid as the primary downfall in prison regime, in the stalling of progress and rehabilitation, education and reintegration into society. That is not good enough.

Whilst the rest of the world slowed down and protected itself from a global pandemic, the women behind bars were maligned, abandoned and failed on so many levels and no inspectorate will report the reality of what that failing really is.

Yes, it's increased levels of self harm - it's women leaving blades behind on cell window sills to make sure if you're a self harmer, you've got access to your desire. It's women bleeding, it's women crying, it's women fighting, it's women turning on other women instead of finding solidarity in the dark.

It's girls, GIRLS like Annalise Sanderson so close to release but feeling like she had nothing to live for, and being in a position of absolute vunerability, feeling the only way out of the hell of HMP was to be found hanging.

What have we become? Where the logic of retribution rises above restoration? Where empathy is replaced with disenchantment and disengagement, the ability to distance onself from "criminals" and find your own moral standing and sensiblity trumps that of someone who broke the law?

Where is the humanity? The reality? The hope?

4000 new prison places seems to be a shining accolade for a failing government that has no gold stars for honouring any of their broken promises and party lines, who have themselves broken the law on repeat and partied like it's 1999 whilst women were barred from seeing their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children. Support networks severed, abandoned in damp, dark, distopia of the justice system. The Daily Mail and their Tory esque ilk will report on women falling between the cracks, what a funny sentiment. Every single woman who is sentenced to prison, to a life behind bars, whether 6 weeks or 6 years, falls between the cracks, becauses there are relentless chasms of failings within the womens prison estate that ensure restriction and rehabilitation. Humiliation and not restoration. Degradation and no equality, dignity or humanity.

But by all means, Dominic you well educated, absolutely in tune with the margins of society and the mental health crisis, drugs crisis, dometic violence fuelled flaws of women who needs support and can't cope with the pressures of an increasingly cruel and stacked world, build your prisons, but for the love of god, save some places for half of the cabinet, because you deserve a place there much more - it may actually teach you what prison is. Cruel.

Fuck your apprenticeship schemes, apprenticeships inherently require a functional skills level 2 of maths and english and with restricted regimes and no education taking place in the closed womens estate, the ability for women to obtain such qualification and eligibility by the time they reach the open estate is unlikely. Your nice ideas that make for good sound bites and sooth the conscience of the masses who inherently feel the injustice but console themselves with the fact that we get our playstations and don't pay for our tv license and some of us even get to contribute to society in a meanginful way by having paid work - which in itself is a joy and curse and comes at 40% levy cost to the prisoner; meaning only 60% of what is a full time working week, in prison conditions, juggling mental health recovery, drug worker engagement and sending money home for ones family, is crowned as some sort of priviledge, working for the likes of James Timpson who purveys and masquerades as the saviour of all exoffenderes, no questions asked, which means ask no questions, whilst pocketed excellent government lump sums for taking on those undesirables no-one else dare, because unsuprisngly, the law ensures disclosure inhibits even those who serve their time.

It's all wrong. And I won't settle until it starts to feel right.