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.
