The head above the parapet

My friends are worried.

My family is on high alert.

Sarah's yo-yo-ing between trusting I know what I am doing, and being equally as haunted as I am by what is about to take place.

Tonight, I will appear on television, and as many of you who read this blog know full well, it won't be for the first time.

And therein lies the danger.

In another life, a different life, just 7 years ago, I was gearing up just the same, to grace the television for a few short minutes that in my distorted reality, would be the golden egg and the vehicle to reverse the bad business acumen I had unloaded and unfolded and laid out to rest.

It didn't. It was and still is, to this day, the most insincere I think I ever felt during that time period. Every fibre of my being was telling me "don't do this," but much like the catalogue and onslaught of poor decisions I made then, going on television was one of them.

So it was no surprise, to me, my friends, my family, and the people involved in my case, that once I had been sent down, and taken away, the press ran riot with "my story"

Once in the newspaper waxing lyrical about rehabilitation and bread, now plastered on the broadsheets and shit rags, branded, for life, it would seem and certainly, feels A LIAR.

I can take that on the chin, on both of them actually. I can, because I accept that to be true. I was, a liar. A cruel, thoughtless, thankless liar. I had my reasons, of course I did, but none that stand up to scrutiny or decency, not my own, not the courts, and not societies, and so a price was to be paid.

In blood and money, so it was. Never enough. Still, to this day, never enough, as pennies are snatched and scratched into my life now in 2024. The burden weighs heavy.

But it is the penance of misdeeds as drastic and detrimental as mine.

Prison, as you will see tonight on the television, was a punitive measure, even by today's standards. That so many years after the fact, the only real punishment left to impose, was, punishment. Cruel in it's definition and cruel in it's practice, and a poor reflection on our society as a whole that we deem cause and concequence to be met with impunity, inhumanity and inequity and certainly, lacking in proportionality. We are still biblical in our desire for justice, as humans, we are yet to evolve to a state of kindness and forgiveness and all too quick to action an eye for an eye justice.

Justice.

The journalist asked me when filming, did I think I deserved to go to prison. It such a powerful adjective. Deserve?

I don't think anyone I met in prison deserved to be there, we were all just... there? Removed from society, to protect it from us, the criminals, and I understand that, out of sight, out of mind, but also, out of action so that perpetual criminality is paused whilst women are locked behind bars - therein lies the madness of it. Locking women up is a bandage on a severed limb, it's a plaster on a floodgate of chaos and never stems the crime for long. Why?

Because prison doesn't serve any other purpose than removing women from society these days and as a concequence it creates a slow burning resentment reflected back onto the society that cast us out, leaving all us ladies of HMP wondering, why fucking bother? You don't want us out, you don't want us in, you don't want us back. What do you want?

An eye for an eye

Because everyone really knows, truly knows, that to be sent to prison, is a punishment and why?

Because it's depraved. Its undignified. Its dehumanising. Its death.

And it really is, death. That's why I spoke to the journalist. Because it's death.

Or at least for some of us, it is, it was, it will be, and that's not ok.

When I say its not proportionate justice sending women to prison, let me explain why.

We wither there. We lose ourselves, our homes, our family, our children, our jobs, our hope, our identity, our health, our minds, our everything.

For women who can and should be sentenced in the community for the proportionality of their crimes; they keep their home, their family, their children, their jobs, their hope, their identity. They don't break in the weeks, months, years behind bars to the point of no return.

Job prospects zero, housing nope, bank accounts never, kids back you're joking, safety not likely, addiction - familiar, crime - choice, and so it goes on.

Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - surely by now we've seen what we're doing isn't working?

I don't know how my piece tonight will come across. I don't know how it's been edited. I've put my trust in a journalist who I believe has the right ethics for this important message. 

I do know it will be met with outrage, hatred, dismay, disgust, that the boy who cried wolf barkebaker is harping on again about change and saving the world.

My friend told me not to put my head above the parapet because it will get shot off and no good comes from destroying myself for the sake of a message and a purpose and I got mad and said 

There are people from my past I'm sure who will watch it and rub their hands together thinking "we nearly got her, she nearly did it," 

It's not about me.

It's about the Annelise's.

It's about the Deborahs.

It's about the Imogen's.

And it's enough.

So if my white privileged excon diatribe offends you, just change the channel.

But if, as I hope it does, it rings alarm bells and sends up red flags and makes you second guess why we keep sending women to prison; hold that feeling, sit in it, on your sofa, at home, and consider, what life looks like for those that don't come home when they've done their time, and if you're really ok with that.

Because I'm not.