PRISON LIFE CAN VARY DRAMATICALLY

Here in the UK, all prisons are not the same and the way an inmate is treated can vary dramatically from prison to prison and it can also depend on the nature of the conviction or whether a prisoner is maintaining innocence.

Inmates who have robbed banks or laundered money are given hero status but those convicted of sexual offences are treated as the lowest of the low in the prison hierarchy by officers and inmates alike. And of course there is an element of luck involved depending on the individual beliefs of inmates and prison staff who you come into contact with on a daily basis. Just one uncompromising officer or cell mate can make life unbearable.

I have been visiting an innocent man, wrongly convicted of sexual crimes for almost a year. He has been in three different prisons which have had widely different regimes. He tells me that prison life is more about retribution than rehabilitation. He is hoping to appeal his conviction but it will be a long, uphill struggle and it would be far easier for him to admit to crimes he has not committed in order to be released quicker. This cannot be right in a civilized society.

The first prison he was sent to on remand, before sentencing was bearable, but he still needed to be segregated and was described as a 'Vulnerable prisoner,' because of the nature of his conviction. After this he was sent to one of the most notorious jails in the country where the regime was harsh and the food like pig-swill. He has never smoked in his life but was made to share a cell with a smoker. He spent his days sewing boxer shorts, packing tea-bags and cleaning for many hours at a time. He was subjected to brutal treatment and coercive methods to sign away his innocence. The authorities there offered him the chance to go to a better prison if he accepted a place on offender treatment programs. That particular prison was a hell hole but now he has been transferred to a more modern prison which is like a holiday camp in comparison. Visiting him now is a more relaxed affair and I don't feel so intimidated but it is still a prison nonetheless. The prison is privately run and all inmates are treated with respect regardless of their crimes. There is more opportunity for education which he is making use of so that he can spend his time productively. He has been lucky in that respect but over the past year has experienced first hand the sheer brutality of a system that does not recognize a miscarriage of justice has occurred, a system which is bound to abide by the decision of the courts. Inmates maintaining innocence are constantly bombarded with documents to sign away their innocence because it makes life easier for the prison and probation officers who are only taught how to deal with the guilty.

Given the correct support and counseling it is quite possible for a guilty prisoner to benefit from prison life and become a reformed character on eventual release. If a guilty person truly wishes to make amends and repay his debt to society, I feel there is ample opportunity for him to do so. In that respect the prison system is serving its purpose, but for an innocent person, wrongly convicted there can be no possible benefit to incarceration. Each day he wakes up and sees the prison walls that surround him, he is paying a price for the lies of others.

I suspect that the prison system in the US is run along similar lines to the one in the UK, the only major difference is that we in the UK do not have the death penalty. At least that is one horror that an innocent prisoner need not be confronted with here.