When prisoners arrive on the assessment unit here at Grendon we are told that we will be on this wing for up to six months, though it can be longer. However, within hours of arriving here I was introduced to Shaun (all names are changed on this site), who had just been told he was ‘getting a wing’ (moving from the assessment wing to a therapy wing) after just eight weeks on assessment. Continue reading →

I have always been a shy person. Not many people who know me now realise that. When I tell them so, many struggle to believe it. The truth is, I compensate for that part of me with forced confidence. I spent too many years allowing my shyness to inhibit me and I missed out on many opportunities because of that. I won’t allow that to continue. So I am glad I compensate. I have occasionally taken that into the realms of overcompensating. However, I now feel that (most of the time) I manage to keep just about the right balance, including challenging myself when appropriate to do so. One such occasion came up recently. Here at Grendon one of the rep jobs you can apply for is Entertainment Rep. It puts you front and centre and demands that you get in amongst the crowd, putting on events and activities for the wing to enjoy. It is the last job I would ever feel confident putting myself forwards for. Which is exactly why I did. Continue reading →

When I was outside, aged sixteen, around the time I committed the offences that led me to prison, I had a bit of a drink problem. For years that was how I phrased it. I refused to call myself an alcoholic because I never hit a point where I felt that I had to drink every day. There were days I didn’t drink at all. Not many, but they existed. Having said that, I did drink most days, and the average amount that I drank was upwards of a litre of vodka or white rum every day. To say that I had a bit of a drink problem is more than a bit of an understatement. But then, a few years ago, it all changed. Continue reading →

For as long as I have been in prison, I have heard other prisoners describe work in jail as “slave labour”. I used to always disagree with this on the grounds that we are paid and, if we refuse, we are not thrown to the lions. However, it was pointed out to me that whilst we may not be thrown to the lions, we are frequently subjected to other, alternative punishments such as loss of privileges. In addition, we may be paid, but so were the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome, albeit a meagre sum – not too dissimilar from the amount we receive in prison. It strikes me that different prisons have varying attitudes towards work and I have experienced most of them. What I didn’t expect was the unique approach I experienced on arrival here at Grendon. Continue reading →

Here at Grendon there are no less than five different types of meeting that we are required to attend on a weekly basis, and that’s just on the assessment wing. I hear that when my assessment is complete and I move to a therapy wing there will be even more. One of these meetings is called a ‘minute meeting’ and this raised an interesting question for me: When is grassing, not grassing? Continue reading →

On my second day here at Grendon, sitting in my friend Ray’s cell (all names are changed on this site), I looked out of the window, across the small wing exercise yard and through the yard fence just ten metres away or so, to a large area of grass. There, for the first time in nearly two decades I saw a rabbit. Continue reading →