Breaking Out

by Janice Nix

  I was too surprised to speak.

  ‘The – ah – issues in your past are very serious indeed. You are suspended with immediate effect.’

  His words felt like a punch in the stomach – so sudden and so shocking it was hard to take them in.

  ‘But you knew about my record!’ I protested.

  ‘Janice,’ said Delia uneasily, ‘we offered you the job without being aware of your criminal history. Your past is not compatible with a position of trust. We must withdraw the offer.’

  ‘I disclosed it on the application form! And I told you at the interview!’

  They glanced at one another.

  ‘That’s not the case, I’m afraid,’ said the Director.

  I stared at Delia. Delia looked down at the floor.

  ‘Yes, it is!’ I insisted. I was too dumbfounded to know what else to say. ‘It is the case. I put it all on the form. And when you interviewed me, Delia, remember –’

  The Director cut in.

  ‘We were never made aware that you have drug dealing convictions.’

  ‘But I worked at a hospital for five and a half years!’ I cried. ‘I started there while I was still in prison. Working with patients, with doctors! That was a position of trust!’

  He was shaking his head.

  ‘You’re sacking me?’ I asked. It didn’t seem real. ‘But I gave up my job at the hospital to come here! I wanted to get something better! And when I filled out the form –’

  The Director rose to his feet. Clearly the discussion was over.

  ‘Collect your possessions. You are suspended with immediate effect. You have seven days to appeal.’

  I did appeal against the hospital’s decision. My appeal was turned down. But one thing was certain: whatever they were saying now – they knew. When I applied for the job, I set out my entire criminal record on the confidential disclosure form. My interviewers questioned me about it. We talked it through in quite a lot of detail.

  But when it came to my word against theirs – I was a criminal and nobody believed me. Just like that, my new job was gone and my life had been turned upside down.

  Even in the dark days at Morton Hall, when I’d faced up to my crimes – I’d managed to find hope. I believed that I could change, and the people around me had believed in me too.

  And just four weeks earlier, I’d felt a new chapter was beginning. Now I was unemployed and my future was scarily uncertain. I’d tried so hard, and come so far. But in many people’s eyes, I was still the lowest of the low. It turned out that my past still defined me after all. It was crushing.

  I called a friend, a wonderful community activist who had helped a lot of people, including me, prepare for release from prison. I’d always valued her advice. Now she suggested that the best thing to do was to apply for work as a carer, using her as my referee. When I did, I quickly found a post through an agency. She came to see me, and kindly took me out for a curry. As we dipped our poppadoms, she helped me make decisions and get back some control of my life.

  ‘Janice,’ she said, ‘I honestly think you have a vocation.’

  ‘What do you mean, a vocation?’

  ‘Almost like a mission. It’s something I felt from the time when I first met you. Your mission is to connect with people in bad trouble, and to help them.’

  I wanted very much to make a difference. But in the face of this huge setback, what could I do?

  ‘A person who has a vocation should always try to follow it,’ she went on determinedly. ‘And I think I know a way. Have you ever heard of St Giles Trust?’

  To begin with, I worked for St Giles as a volunteer. The charity helps ex-offenders who are trying to overcome serious past issues and move forward in their lives, away from crime or gang violence. But many of its clients don’t accept help easily, and assume – often from very bad experience – that no one understands or even cares. To get past this, some of the trust’s employees have what’s known as ‘lived experience’. That means they’ve been through something criminal themselves and come out the other side. They use what they’ve learned to help others – which was exactly what I wanted to do.

  My first role was to support women coming out of prison. I met them, took them home if they had a home to go to, or to temporary accommodation the charity had arranged. If no home could be found, I went with them to local council housing departments, to help begin the process of looking. I encouraged them to visit a GP, and above all to attend their appointments with the probation services. If they missed those meetings, they were in danger of going back inside.

  My heart went out to these first clients. I knew at first hand the struggles they were facing – except that they were up against far worse than I had ever confronted. Some of them were homeless. Others were returning to chaos and crisis – poverty, violence, addictions of their own or of the people around them. Some had lost their children, or the children were severely affected by their mother’s imprisonment. These fragile lives on the edges of society were far away from what most think of as ‘normal’. Then being told that they had to go to meetings, fill in forms and make arrangements could all just seem too much. But if they didn’t, they would end up back in prison.

  I remembered my friend’s words: ‘I honestly think you have a vocation.’ I realised it was true. I knew what it was like to have no solid ground at all beneath your feet. More than I had ever wanted anything before, I wanted to help these women rebuild their lives.

  OCTOBER 2013

  I was at home with a cold. The phone rang. It was Neil from the Human Resources department at St Giles. He told me he’d come across a job I might be interested in – a role supporting ex-offenders.

  ‘Janice,’ he said, ‘they’re looking for people with lived experience. This really does sound perfect for you.’

  ‘Who’s they?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘The London Probation Trust.’

  ‘You have to be kidding me.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Honestly, I’m not.’

  ‘Me? Working for probation?’

  ‘Why not? Stranger things have happened.’

  ‘Not recently!’ I joked, and we both laughed. ‘But seriously, Neil – you know that I have sixteen convictions?’

  ‘I know all about it,’ Neil assured me. ‘But that’s your lived experience. You are exactly what they’re looking for.’

  Still, I remembered the terrible day when I was ordered out of my Patient Services job. It left a scar in my mind. Now it made me scared to take the risk.

  ‘Um …’ I said to him. ‘Let me have a think.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Neil. ‘You do that.’ He’d always been respectful and kind. ‘But please,’ he went on quickly, ‘just get the form and have a look anyway. You’d make a great engagement worker – I’m absolutely sure of it.’

  ‘Jan? Oh my God, Jan!’

  Izzie’s voice on the phone was full of terror. My stomach gave a lurch.

  It was late in the evening. An hour earlier, I’d decided that I’d taken my last phone call of the day. But I hadn’t switched the work mobile off. I found it difficult, knowing that however much I did for service users, there was always still so much more that I could do. When Izzie’s number appeared, it worried me. I hadn’t been expecting a call.

  Please, I thought, please – don’t let this be some relapse. Don’t let her fall back down. Not after all the work she’s done. I picked up the call.

  ‘What is it? What happened?’

  ‘Oh my God, Jan. Something terrible.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah – I’m okay. But I just found out – someone told me – oh my God.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s B! He’s dead!’

  Mr B was the dealer who told her that he loved her. But all he really wanted was for her to throw away her life smuggling drugs through Heathrow airport. He was nothing but a predator.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was murdered!�
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  ‘Who murdered him?’

  ‘He’d been sleeping with Angelo’s girlfriend. So Angelo ordered it. Somebody shot him in the face. And now Leroy says he’s going to sort out the guy who did it.’

  ‘He’ll kill him?’

  ‘Yeah. He’ll definitely kill him. B and Leroy were close.’

  ‘Are you okay, Izzie?’

  ‘I’m just – really shocked.’

  There was a long, long silence.

  ‘B was a bad person, Jan, wasn’t he?’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Yes, baby. He was.’

  ‘Sometimes he was kind to me. But really, he was scary. I just didn’t realise. I should have been more afraid of him – of all of them.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They’re scary. They were never really kind. All they cared about was getting what they wanted. Money and power.’

  Izzie had glamorised these men. They’d seemed like bad boys, edgy and daring and cool. But all they were was brutish and cruel. She’d been lucky to escape from their clutches with her life.

  ‘Jan,’ she whispered. ‘I get it now. I get how dangerous it is – that whole world. I didn’t want to see it before.’

  By the time we’d finished talking, it was very close to midnight. So much for professional boundaries. For me, that was still a work in progress. But even though I knew I’d be tired in the morning, I felt a sense of peace. I was truly starting to believe that Izzie would make it.

  15

  Nine to five to nine

  IT WAS EARLY IN the morning, and I was on my way down to Westminster. In my bag I had my passport to show as my ID. I knew I’d be going through security checks to get inside the House of Commons. I was running slightly late, and when I showed the guard on the door of Portcullis House the invitation letter I had with me, he told me that I didn’t have to join the queue inside. Instead, another guard took me quickly through the corridors and up in the lift to one of the committee rooms.

  The room was crowded, with a large central table and rows of spectators seated all around. One of the seats at the table was mine, with my name tag in front of it. I’d been asked to give evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee of Parliament. They wanted to hear the real-life experience of ex-offenders when they go to seek employment, and about the support they receive both inside and outside of prison.

  I was representing Revolving Doors, another voluntary agency that works with ex-offenders. Through St Giles Trust, I’d come to be involved in their work. A member of the Revolving Doors team spotted me when I came in. She smiled and came across to say hello. Everyone around me looked so confident and smart, while I felt like a bag of nerves. But however intimidating the committee room might be, I was determined to speak.

  Tentatively at first, but then with growing confidence, I answered questions from members of the committee, all of whom were MPs. Along with other witnesses, I told them how ex-offenders struggle in the workplace. It’s extremely hard to get a job in the first place, and then we face grave discrimination. People who want to earn a living, to make a fresh start in society, are therefore denied the chance to do so.

  ‘Even when ex-offenders show that we’ve changed our offending behaviours for years,’ I said, ‘the past is used against us. That’s what happened to me.’

  The committee asked me to explain. I told them how I’d been sacked without warning, even though I had disclosed my entire criminal record and worked successfully for five years in another role. I saw shock on the faces round the table. What had happened wasn’t right – and they knew it. I wanted them to know how many more times this must have happened, and been swept under the carpet. The fear of it can make ex-offenders feel there’s no point even trying.

  At the end of the meeting, I went back to the Revolving Doors office. We talked about how the day had gone, and how nervous I had been. I was assured that I had done well.

  ‘Today,’ I told them, ‘I felt like the giraffes bowed down their necks and listened to the turtles.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at the giraffe,’ I said. ‘He only eats the top of the tree. That’s the only place he sees. Why would he look down? The only way to make him look is if the little turtle comes along and bites his foot. Well – that’s what I did today. I took a bite.’

  That day in the committee room was scary, but it gave me a deep sense of fulfilment. I spoke truth to power. I represented those who are dismissed and denied a second chance because of their criminal record. And I tried to ensure that what happened to me should not happen to anyone else with a criminal history in the future.

  In 2014, I began my new career, working for the London Probation Trust, then later for the Community Rehabilitation Company. They were years of personal change, and also of political upheaval.

  In 2015, a very senior manager shadowed me for a day in court. He didn’t say too much, but I knew that he was watching me closely as I engaged with service users. He followed up by email, and told me he admired what I was doing.

  A few months later on, I got a letter. It told me I had won the service’s Diversity and Engagement Award. There had been 134 nominations from across the service. In February 2016, I received my award at Draper’s Hall in central London. It was hard to be elated at success when I knew how much more there was to do. But that day, I was so proud. I felt as though my journey was worthwhile.

  JUNE 2016

  ‘Well now, look at you!’ I cried.

  Izzie was standing on the pavement outside the coffee shop where I’d arranged to meet her. I’d been away on holiday, and hadn’t seen her for longer than usual. But the moment I set eyes on her, I saw how much she’d changed. She wasn’t quite so scraggy. Her cheekbones were losing their sharp angles. She’d brushed her hair, and it was thicker and shinier.

  She gave me a nervous little smile.

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘Look at that! You got bumper, girl!’

  ‘I got what?’

  ‘You got an arse!’

  I jutted out my backside, and she laughed. And then she wiggled hers.

  ‘Jan,’ she said. ‘Jan, I’m getting better. Aren’t I?’

  ‘You are, honey. You really are. And you look great! Now come in here with me and have a sandwich.’

  I didn’t tell her that the day before our meeting, I’d been reprimanded for taking my clients out to eat. I wasn’t the only person doing it. More and more often, probation officers and engagement workers had started to buy food for our clients. And it wasn’t just food – sometimes we bought clothing for their children, and toiletries as well. We knew how many of our service users lacked the basics of existence. There were women with no tampons, no deodorant, no soap. But if we declared what we were doing, or if senior management found out, we were told that helping clients in this way was unprofessional. It showed undue favouritism. I disagreed. I thought it showed humanity. Humanity that the system absolutely lacked.

  Izzie was getting better. She was healthier and stronger. She wasn’t using crack any more. I accepted the reprimand. And then I went on doing what was working.

  This was not a simple matter. I understood just how important it was to set boundaries in work. Without them, the most skilled and dedicated people can burn out. I also knew how vital it was for professionals to always be transparent, for their own protection as well as for their clients. Rushing in, however generous the impulse might be, wasn’t always the wisest thing to do. I thought very carefully before I took any course of action.

  But I also knew that lives were saved by working out of hours. Going round to one service user’s house to make sure that she was up in the morning to do what she had to do that day, I found her slumped on the floor in a diabetic coma. I called an ambulance. Left untreated, this coma might have led to her death.

  If we want to turn lives around, we must be there with service users in the mornings, in the evenings, at the weekends – working where the crisis points are. Right now, that isn’t
happening. Too many vulnerable people are falling through the cracks.

  Nina sat in the circle of women.

  She looked anxiously around at the others, cupping her hands around a mug of tea. She hadn’t said a word since she arrived at our group, but it often took time to find the confidence to speak. When you’re used to no one listening, it’s hard to believe that you can say how you’re feeling or that anyone will help you with your problems.

  Her sentence was for handling stolen goods. But it was clear pretty quickly that the crimes had not been Nina’s idea. She was extremely suggestible and always did what other people told her. I wasn’t sure she even understood that what she’d been doing was illegal. Underneath her chair was a pile of dirty carrier bags. I didn’t need to ask what was inside them – I already knew the answer. It was everything she owned. Nina was scared to leave her pitifully few belongings in the temporary hostel where she lived. In her world, nowhere felt secure.

  I wanted us to have a private chat, but that was going to be impossible today. When the probation team was short of staff, as it almost always was, I ran the group on my own, although I was an engagement worker, not a fully qualified probation officer.

  She was very hungry, and fell upon the plate of sandwiches I’d placed in the middle of the table. The food at our meetings was provided by Coughlan’s, a chain of local bakers. When I’d approached them and asked for their leftovers, the director quickly agreed. The company was wonderfully supportive of our work. Later on, Greggs joined in as well. The food made such a difference. But it did much more than that. When the women walked through the doors and saw it there, their eyes lit up. They started helping each other – Tea or coffee? Do you take sugar? They lifted each other, without even realising it. It made our meetings feel alive.

  Food made another difference too. It’s difficult to plan when your belly is empty and you’re scared. By feeding our service users, we could start to help them think about the future. We also offered showers to our clients who were homeless. It’s impossible to keep yourself clean on the street. If they knew there was a chance to freshen up, even a reluctant service user was more likely to attend a meeting.