by Pryce, Vicky
22 MARCH
A very important day as I had my first meeting with my probation officer at ESP, Dee. They have these really sweet offices on top of one of the two towers that formed part of the medieval building and you have to take a spiral staircase that you enter from the courtyard to get there. As you sit talking about your issues, people wander in, assuming they are fit enough to come up the stairs, usually out of breath but asking for appointments to see the staff and for information on the progress of their cases with external probation, which is where a lot of the problems emerge. The girls complained of frequent changes of personnel in external probation and of slow and cumbersome processes. They found the concerns that external probation often raised over the suitability of the accommodation on the outside frustrating and at times petty and inconsistent (they would frequently make comments like: ‘my probation officer really hates me’). The general feeling about in-house probation, however, was positive but all the new girls worried hugely about the first meeting and some had a better experience with one officer rather than the other. I had heard a lot of that being discussed in the Butler’s Room as it was probation that often determined where and when the girls could go out, which addresses on the outside the women were allowed to visit or stay at, and how quickly they progressed towards release. In the case of one girl I got to know well, there was an issue concerning whether she could visit her mother at her mother’s address on her day release and home visits once she started being entitled to them because her mother had also been convicted, for a short period, for her alleged small part in her daughter’s offence, for which the daughter had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. I saw what distress this caused her. She was very close to her mother and spoke to her a number of times a day on the phone. But the whole day’s mood would be ruined by yet another sign that her home visits that she was so looking forward to and her eventual return to normality might be in jeopardy. In addition the company she had worked for and defrauded wanted the money back that she had taken from them. In the end, while I was there, she was coming to the conclusion that given her lack of assets the best way forward was to hand her pension entitlement back to her former employer. It was a neat solution but not one that bodes well for her future security. And in that it resembled the case of a public servant who was in ESP with me and who not only had the ignominy of losing her job and the bad publicity that would make it difficult for her to return to any decent standard of living when she got out, but had to fight through lawyers the threat made by the public institution that had employed her to take her pension away because of the nature of her offence’. Whatever the rights or wrongs, such extra knocks reduce so hugely the chances of a smooth and fast rehabilitation that I wondered what, if any, protection there is for prisoners who basically face being destitute on leaving prison.
Many of the negative by-products of having a conviction when one returns to outside life, however trivial, victimless or non-threatening the offence may have been, are not widely understood. They can make life rather more expensive as well as being a constant reminder of one’s ‘criminality’ in the eyes of others. When my friend Rachel, convicted of fraud, rang to tell her building insurance that covered her mortgage that she had a conviction, the chap at the other end of the phone apparently said something like ‘sorry, we are stopping insuring you as of this minute’ and hung up without any further explanation. She was rather shocked. It was a similar story with her car insurance. Fortunately she got help from Leanne, a fellow ESP resident working for a company called Unlock while finishing her sentence, who put her in touch with providers who don’t exclude offenders and ex-offenders and managed to get her cheaper insurance than before for both her house and her car. The Unlock charity, founded and run for a number of years by ex-offender and commentator Mark Leech, gives advice on its website to prisoners wanting insurance, but experiencing difficulties because of their convictions. There is even a chart to let prisoners know when their convictions are actually spent and no longer need to be mentioned and it also offers advice on when and how convictions have to be disclosed. But the point still is that seemingly small hurdles like these are in reality major obstacles to rebuilding a fully functioning life in society for prisoners and their families. It is a ‘brick wall’ moment when you realise your conviction could stop you being able to insure your possessions, your car, your health or your home. Given the very large number of people with criminal convictions you wonder how many are keeping mum.
Anyway, the girls were right. My case with probation was much more straightforward although the various interruptions from girls and staff entering the probation office through our open ‘interview room’ just by the entrance door meant that we had to stop frequently and the meeting took quite some time. But the space, however idiosyncratic, was delightful. It was great to be high up looking across Kent and the actual meeting was professional and thorough – the right noises were made, the preparation and conditions for release well explained and the unconditional release date all in the system – it was something to look forward to. The first thing was to go through the risk-assessment board that was due to meet at some stage – not sure yet when – with the notes I needed for that board. By the time I left I felt that I had been given all the facts, fairly, had been treated like everyone else, had made progress and knew that someone was going to further things for me. All that was needed was for social services in my area to check that the house was OK, that the daughter and son who lived in it agreed to have me back (what a joke, I thought, little terrors, wonder whether they would object and enjoy possession of the house while I have to go to a hostel!) and since there would be no probation officer assigned to look after me while outside as my sentence was under twelve months (Justice Minister Chris Grayling’s potentially very costly proposals extending supervision to all released offenders including those who have served short sentences having not yet been implemented) the only control would be my curfew from Serco, who would come on the day of release to fit a tag, which would work for two months until my unconditional release day on 11 July. All was clear. The path ahead was fine but I sensed that being fully engaged in the prison activities (as I was) was something expected and that it was being monitored. When I left, my probation officer Dee exclaimed once more about the odd office space and I understand they are trying now to move back to the main building with an extra secure interview room and not too many flights of stairs up so that people are not put off by the effort required to get to them.
23 MARCH
And suddenly in the news something very much up my street. Cyprus, as widely expected, was in economic trouble and the solution seemed to be a particularly destabilising one requiring ordinary savers to be the first to take a hit. Although Cyprus represents only 0.2 per cent of the total EU economy a mishandling of its debt problem threatened to spiral into a major Eurozone crisis. It was all very odd and of course sent shivers down the spine of all countries in debt as trust in banks would be shattered if people who had a few thousand euros of savings suddenly found they were not safe. And indeed that is precisely what happened. Long queues formed outside the Cypriot banks as word spread that everyone would have to lose up to 10 per cent of their savings in a levy to satisfy the demands of the IMF and the EU and allow a bailout to be fashioned. The banks had to close to prevent a run. There were shades of the queues forming outside Northern Rock in 2007 as depositors feared the bank would close and all money would be lost. The European Central Bank and the European Commission seemed to have forgotten that protecting small savers was a sine qua non for confidence in the banking system. It seemed crazy to me that anyone in Cyprus would agree to this but newly elected politicians were unlikely to be thrown out overnight. The public made clear there were limits to what could be done to their savings. Finally, the Troika (IMF-ECB-EU Commission) agreed to limit the size of the deposits beyond which the depositors had to take a cut to over €100,000. But the damage had been done. Once again the EU politicians had shown themselv
es to be out of touch and by establishing the practice that depositors have to be forced to ‘bail in’ to rescue banks they changed the terms of the game. It was obvious to me but even more obvious to my fellow residents, who had a clear understanding of the potty logic behind the handling in Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington of the Cyprus crisis. So we watched the riots and just waited for things to calm down. Wherever I went in the open prison people would raise the Cyprus issue with me. I am not Cypriot but for some reason they lumped me together with all those southern Europeans. I had to tell them and all the friends who wrote to me saying they missed my commentary on this that I was dumbfounded. Was there a logic in this madness? Or was it all lost? I still can’t decide. The Cyprus events made me determined to update my book on the euro crisis and try and make some sense of it. But I was impressed by how switched on my fellow residents were on the matter and how they were able to instantly see the craziness of the originally proposed solution.
This weekend I realised that out of some 100 residents there were only about forty left behind during the day – and many of us were there because our FLED had not started yet. It had the advantage that we each were able to have an extra sausage or double portion of scrambled eggs with our brunch on Saturday and my job cleaning the dining room and looking after the cleanliness of the trays after they had been washed and ensuring teas and coffees were plentiful was much easier. But it raised the issue in my mind that this is precisely how it should be; many more prisoners should be able to enjoy open prison conditions on the inside and more establishments on the outside should offer offenders voluntary or paid employment to help re-engage offenders with the community in the hope of reducing reoffending levels. In the meantime the weekend allowed for a lot of catching up once the walk (in the snow) and time in the gym (warmest place in ESP, run today by the second gym instructor, Pete) were completed. And I got my first haircut by Debbie – scissors being allowed in ESP – and had a much more expert bingo session that evening. The newspapers somehow heard of this and had a story the following day about how I was taught to play bingo, which I had never played before, by my fellow residents and that apparently I loved it. Who can possibly be interested in that story? But the girls seemed to think it was as it should be so I supposed I might as well get used to the fact that nothing is sacred while in prison.
24 MARCH
Getting into the swing of things. Amazingly our main gym instructor, Craig, is here today and the gym would open in the morning and again after lunch. More rowing. Becoming slowly addicted. I row between levels two and three to replicate rowing on water and therefore prevent doing any harm to myself by an overenergetic rowing regime. Some of the girls were practising some dance tunes and asked me to participate. Obviously I would make a fool of myself but who cares. No cameras are allowed inside prison so there was no chance that my attempts to stay upright would make it onto YouTube, so I obliged. Cue much hilarity. ‘You dance really well, Vicky!’ Yeah, right.
And then my second family visit since I got to ESP. What bliss. Three grandchildren visited up with their parents. How lucky I am! The nephew of my roommate discovered that he has a new best friend in my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson and they terrorised the place. Then it was back to the house, slightly shaken as normal but as it was Palm Sunday we had a 6.30 p.m. service with the chaplain, which raised the spirits of us all.
Just before the evening service and after the family visit the chaplain sought me out and found me reading the papers in the drawing room. The enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury had indeed been a great event but interestingly our chaplain had bumped into the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of London and had helped him find his way around. They had started talking and amazingly our chaplain had a message for me from him as the Greek Archbishop apparently knew me and remembered me fondly. I racked my brain in a bit of shock as I couldn’t remember whether I had ever met him but soon decided that the only possible explanation must be that he was around when I got married some thirty years ago in the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Moscow Road, in London. He may even have been the bishop who conducted the rites of my second marriage. I explained to the chaplain that a great advantage of the Greek Orthodox church is that it is happy to allow you to divorce and marry in church a number of times (four, as far as I recall) as long as you have a good excuse for divorcing your previous husband and are prepared to pay a certain sum to grant you a religious divorce which is accepted by the Greek state. The trick is to negotiate the appropriate amount for your wedding for things to go smoothly. In my case, after the arrangements were made and cheques changed hands, I drove myself to church on the Saturday afternoon of my wedding only to be greeted by my brother on the steps of the cathedral. He instructed me to go and park my white BMW round the corner, out of sight, and hide there for a while. Apparently the church officials took one look at the assembled congregation and decided they had seriously underpriced the wedding. It took half an hour of wrangling between the church on the one hand and my mother, my brother and my best man, the Guardian journalist Patrick Wintour, on the other before the priest agreed to proceed with the ceremony on the production of an extra modest cash sum and I was then summoned to enter the church to get married.
25 MARCH
People have started sending me e-mails! I was very surprised to get printed copies of e-mails written by a handful of friends who had realised that a system existed to get news to me more quickly, or so they thought, using my unique prison name and number and subscribing for a modest monthly fee to the ‘emailaprisoner’ service, started by serial offender Derek Jones some ten years earlier, apparently frustrated that his girlfriend was not getting in touch. You don’t receive them while sitting by your computer as the internet is bizarrely not allowed – more on that later. The e-mails are printed off by officers and given to prisoners to read with the normal mail. But since they have to be printed, then read and then handed out to you if they pass the test, sometimes, especially if they were sent in the early evening, they do not get delivered to you until post is given out at 4.30 p.m. the following day. You don’t save much although it is slightly cheaper than a first-class stamp. Well, good ideas are rewarded and Jones has sold his Bath-based Prison Technology Services for a six-figure sum to Unilink Software, apparently. There is hope for all of us.
With working and replenishing the coffees and teas for the girls in the dining room one of my daily tasks, I was astonished to discover that there was such a thing as ‘prison salt’, which arrived in specially labelled boxes, ‘prison sugar’, ‘prison coffee’ and the like but none carried any real indication of who was making it. On some weeks we even got ‘prison shreddies’ and ‘prison bran flakes’, which were a real hit with the residents – I made sure the chefs who were doing the ordering knew when we were running low so we were never left without the ‘bowel-opening’ cereals for long. They were not Kellogg’s quality, so the girls added to their order from the canteen the cereal they particularly liked every week, but it was understandable when I looked at the figures in more detail what pressures the kitchens were under. Ministry of Justice figures suggest that in 2009/10 the overall food costs in prisons were £59,959,424. This was up from £33,900,093 in 2000/01, rising somewhat faster than the prison population over that period, but it still leaves very little to be spent per prisoner.90 The annual report on ESP by the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) for the year to October 2012 calculates that there was still only £1.95 a day allocated per resident in that period, pretty much the average elsewhere. Admittedly we occasionally received help from the farm shop – left over home-grown vegetables (most produce, including the meat from the farm that the residents looked after and then processed in the meat factory, was sold externally) and occasionally sausages that were reaching their sell by-date. We didn’t let the date worry us as they were delicious and no one to my knowledge while I was there suffered from serious belly problems – although that could have had more to do with my obsessive disinfect
ing of everything in and around the kitchen and dining room area.
The tight budget the prison service has to work with probably explained the bulk buying of the rather insipid Vietnamese fish we were served on numerous occasions, which must be very cheap indeed despite the transport cost. Some of the girls boycotted the fish because it was so tasteless but I knew that fish, however horrid, must be good for you so ate it diligently – particularly when it had spices on it that added some flavour. Indeed, when I began bringing my tiny bottle of spray olive oil into the dining room each day and my 30p lemon bought from the canteen, which I made last a whole week, to put on the fish others soon brought ketchup and chilli sauce to obscure the taste as much as they could. But overall I think the ESP chefs did wonders with the tiny budgets they were given. The IMB in its report praised ESP’s catering team ‘for their hard work and ingenuity in providing nutritionally balanced meals that are well cooked and varied’ – including halal and vegan food sourced from 3663, the food wholesalers – but expressed surprise and concern that the excellent lamb and pork produced in the farm and sold at the prison’s farm shop or by the shop in farmers’ markets at Headcorn and elsewhere cannot be used in the kitchens.
Still, ESP is lucky in that regard. It still has a working farm. There is a dedicated space for the farm animals and 5 acres are used to grow vegetables and plants, some of which are sold through the farm shop and some used in the kitchen. Similarly the plants are either sold or used for the house and gardens, which are very well looked after – all by the women residents under some supervision by the manager of the farm and the farm shop. The girls are able to study for their NVQs in agriculture and horticulture, and progress if they stay there long enough, though few seemed to be doing so while I was there aside from the woman I would meet each weekend on our walk around the grounds. Those doing garden and farm duty or manning the shop are all licensed to be outside the formal prison grounds and take great pride in how many sausages they have made in the week – very high quality with lots of varieties, traditional country sausages and those with hops being the most popular – or how much they may have made that week in sales. It being a female establishment there was fierce competition going on between different groups of meat and farm workers – I witnessed many a heated conversation where girls would guard proudly the information on their takings from the other set that manned the stand in the farmers’ market the previous week (there are four different markets that the shop goes to in towns in Kent in the vicinity of the prison).
