Authors: Vicky Pryce
The former probation officer told me that often women’s prisons are viewed by the system as being too expensive – they do indeed cost more because of the complex needs of the women sent to prison but there can be a tendency to almost ‘blame’ women for being difficult and costly compared to men, rather than looking at their specific needs and designing prisons to fit those needs. And there could be savings if that is true, as many believe there is a strong
argument
that women just don’t need such high-level or very expensive security as men do. But people I spoke to think that it is possible that the MoJ and the NOMS will see reconfigured ‘resettlement’ prisons as fulfilling the purpose of open prisons. There is some talk about prisoners staying put in one prison throughout their sentence, being (relatively) near to home and
undergoing
a more open regime towards the end of their sentence. If they do go down that route, one might guess that it would be tempting to ‘sell off’ the nice bit of ‘real estate’ that an open prison like ESP
represents
– ‘realising’ assets to pay for the ‘new’ approach. I was told that this might indeed be in the minds of the reviewers, who may subscribe to the view that for some reason open prisons are always thought as too expensive. They should not be, given the much lower staffing and regime requirements on the
security
front. While I was there all the work was done by the residents and the staffing was minimal. The farm seemed to be self-financing though of course relying on rather cheap labour. And I’m sure a lot could be done to improve the revenue of the estate.
Of course ESP is housed in a rather old building that needs constant attention. There were workmen there most of the time fixing things and also
dealing
with the lighting, fuses blown because of the bad wiring of hairdryers, floors falling under the strain of extra heavy office furniture, repairs to the roof, you name it. Repairing the rather splendid but
yellowing
Spanish ceiling in the pool room, which seemed to have been ruined during its smoking room days, would cost near £100,000: it would have to be dismantled, brought down, cleaned and then put back together again. Those assessing it didn’t think that the prison was ready at that point for the extra expense.
That Saturday evening at ESP, after the ‘grab bag’, which contained our takeaway dinner products, was distributed at 5 p.m. and roll call was taken, the dining room got ready for bingo. I had never played bingo before. Even though so many girls went out on the weekend a large number would make a special effort to get back to ESP and through security by 6 p.m. on Saturdays so that they could take part in the game. Various tables were very competitive and when there were wins people often shared the rewards – though I don’t want to exaggerate the extent to which people really wanted to give part of their hard earned Kit Kat prize away. I won a Cadbury’s Flake the second time I played and made it last a week. I only won once more and this time it was a Kit Kat. To my shame I just don’t like Kit Kats and couldn’t bring myself to eat it despite its novelty value – I had to give it away!
Roast lunch today. Lovely parsnips and pork. I
shuddered
to think what my previous inmates in Holloway
must be having for their lunchtime meal and
determined
to start writing to them. Straight after lunch, we had our visits. For me, it was the first visit in the new place; no one had questioned the names I’d put down for visits and even the grandchildren were coming, which was so exciting. Girls ‘dressed up’, put make-up on and jewellery, which was freely allowed, to see their loved ones and we waited in the drawing room to be called one by one as our visitors arrived. In contrast to what happened in Holloway, we were able to walk by ourselves, through the grounds to a visitors’ centre, which was like a large cricket shed with round tables, a bar, children’s toys and a good view of the house. We were then left alone. If the weather was nice we could sit out in the garden at tables. Visitors were checked when they arrived and we were checked when we went back into the house in case we had been handed anything which was still not allowed. But they could bring clothes and toiletries and books and plates and other things one needed, particularly in the first twenty-eight days of getting there – thereafter clothes could be exchanged every three months but you still had to keep to the upper limit of items allowed at all times, which the women found too restrictive. You were also entitled to five toiletry items a month (women’s sanitary needs were met for free inside ESP) and, if you had money on your account, purchases of up to £20 a month were allowed from the monthly Avon
catalogue
or Pak Cosmetics company, which specialises in products for Afro-Caribbean women. This was all in addition to weekly purchases from a ‘canteen’ sheet which contained some 100 items from which residents could buy extra products using their weekly wages
and up to £25 from their ‘float’ if they had one. The list of items ranged from cigarettes to hair dyes. Most of the girls spent their money on phone calls and the rest on sweets and cereals though a number of us used ‘canteen’ to buy some healthier items to eat each week such as fruit and olive oil.
My family duly brought me lots of things I needed and that was great – more items arrived with each visit over the next month: books, stamps and
stationery
were allowed but had to go through reception first. I couldn’t understand why stamps had to be sent separately rather than handed out to us when we met our families. I later discovered that there was a concern traces of LSD or other drugs may have been pasted on the sticky bit by whoever was sending them. Similarly magazines were considered to be dangerous as there could be other drug substances smeared on the pages. I had no idea! As a result, during my entire time inside I thought it was some bureaucratic rule to frustrate everyone for the sake of it – no one had explained to me why the system was as it was. This lack of communication is not a trivial point – academic research into experiences of imprisonment shows that rules without
explanation
serve to fuel anger, frustration and a sense of injustice among prisoners. Worse, these experiences will likely be reinforcing the inequality or unfairness many have encountered prior to their time inside.
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I was thrilled to see my visitors and they were so pleased to see me in a much more pleasant
environment
compared to Holloway. The two hours passed very quickly and the treat for me was also being able to have a drink of Blantyre apple juice, which was made with local apples and bottled by
the Blantyre inmates. Having compared the juice in these bottles with other apple juice available on the outside I would vouch that it was brilliant – and my children and other visitors thought so, too. For some reason it was not available in ESP except through the coffee shop in the visitors’ building although it was also sold to the general public in the farm shop that sold the produce from the ESP farm, meat factory and gardens. But they never made enough of it and for some of the weekend visits we were left disappointed with no juice available. There is some business opportunity being missed here, it seemed to me. Also for some incomprehensible reason the farm shop closed at 12 on Saturdays when it could have sold a lot to the visitors who arrived at 1.30 p.m. if it stayed open a bit later. Many of us suggested this while I was there but never got a proper answer. In this rather tight fiscal environment, with cuts across the MoJ’s budgets requiring the service to ‘sweat’ the assets, this seemed to many of us to be another lost opportunity to increase revenues.
Come the end of visiting time, we women hugged our children, parents, partners; waved our
desperate
goodbyes as cars departed and returned to the house, with many often in tears. In fact, some women I met deliberately chose to limit their visits to avoid heartache. Most would spend the rest of the day like zombies, sorely missing their loved ones. We tended to huddle around, try and chat and read the papers, do whatever one could to cheer each other up. Not easy.
On that first day, as photographers had camped around ESP having got word I was now housed there, it was decided I wouldn’t walk to the visitors’ centre but instead be driven there to avoid the press. There
was space in the car so we took two others along. One was a woman in her very early thirties with a number of children including a very young baby. She was having trouble adjusting to it all and on the way back, after seeing her youngest child, she sobbed uncontrollably. A few weeks later she tried to commit suicide, though somewhat half-heartedly, and a week later she was sent back to a closed prison.
As part of our induction course, we met with the prison chaplain, who ensured that ESP covered all faiths and who took service himself in a makeshift way in the multi-faith room, which happened to be next to my dorm room. There were plenty of bibles and hymn books for whoever may want to read them and clergy came to look after any Catholics, for whom the occasional mass was held, especially at Easter, and also any Muslims. At the invitation of the chaplain under the Prison Fellowship scheme, we also had visits from various groups, including a group of evangelist and New Testament folk, who had an interesting way of portraying the ‘facts’ and argued strongly in favour of the creationist view of the world. A Pentecostal group from Brixton visited a couple of times while I was there and ran services that were quite jolly with the level of singing and clapping rising substantially on those occasions. I knew what to expect as my daughter-in-law’s father is a Pentecostal bishop who preaches both in Brixton, near my home, and in Ghana, where he is from originally, and I had been to a number of services he had held.
I started attending service after meeting the
chaplain
as he seemed to be serious about providing
help to the girls in ESP, who he believed had special needs that were quite different to those of the men in Blantyre, who he also looked after. For the benefit of killing any rumours to the contrary, I must say that I did not discover God like some famous male
prisoners
seem to have done. I have to confess also that I am not particularly religious but as a Greek Orthodox I attend church on special occasions such as for weddings (including the two that involved me),
christenings
, the odd funeral (to be avoided) and the Easter celebrations in Greece, which are quite spectacular as they involve open air mass, candle processions, a lot of noise and fireworks at midnight when Christ is resurrected, even though they are supposedly banned. What is more, I had to explain to the congregation that audience participation is not encouraged in my church. You have to sit or stand still while the priest and the male criers sing psalms in a strangely nasal way, leaving the end of the psalm hanging in the air for quite some time for special effect. The
congregation
sits there getting slightly nauseous on the incense that wafts up as the priest waves around a holder he is dangling from his fingers while singing and
walking
about holding the gold-leaf-covered Gospel. The women all found this terribly intriguing but I felt I had something to prove so became an enthusiastic attendee of the various church services. I don’t think that in the eight weeks there I missed a single Tuesday evangelical meeting, a Thursday Bible-reading session (taken by the second chaplain, who came from the Free Church movement, which as far as I understand it is an interdenominational national Christian
organisation
separated from any government endorsement or funding), or the Sunday service with communion
(which I sadly had to turn down each time even though the bread and ‘wine’ – which I suspect was Ribena – looked quite appetising). And there were always branded biscuits, a few classes higher than the little ‘basic value’ packs we were given in our ‘grab bag’. What is more – and definitely an extra attraction for me, being very conscious of needing to keep up my vitamin C intake – the prison fellowship guys brought with them the most delicious mango and pineapple juice for us all each time. A real luxury.
Depending on the time of the service, some girls would arrive a little late from their kitchen duties, others would have just got back from their jobs outside, some would even turn up in their bathrobes and slippers. Not, in other words, the usual type of church attendees in my local Holy Trinity church in Clapham. But the chaplain and preachers were very flexible and understanding. There was a routine. Bible and hymns: books and the CDs and CD player would come out of the cupboard and the person conducting the service or session would also bring CDs with them. We would then shout out the hymns we wanted and if lucky the CDs did have the music needed to
accompany
them and we would sing along. But at times the hymn would be too obscure and there was no music to go with it, in which case we relied on someone, not necessarily always the chaplain, to give us a lead. We were terrible at singing and the combined cacophony at times brought out giggles but for me it was such fun to be able to sing along. Belonging to a slightly different religion and not knowing the hymns from childhood I had always kept quiet during singing in the Church of England but loved the way in which people participated. With my son being at school at
Westminster, the abbey was his local church and I had gone many times to special church and
thanksgiving
-type services for the school, including his own confirmation when he was a teenager by the Bishop of London. I’d loved it all. But the words sung by
everyone
on those occasions still escaped me.
Now I can proudly say that I have become familiar with many hymns – the girls had their own favourites which were chosen again and again, week after week, and they were mainly uplifting ones. Every now and then we would choose one that not many knew and the one I chose floored them, a ‘pop song’ called ‘Tell It on the Mountain’. It had been popularised by the group Peter, Paul and Mary in the 1960s and selecting it showed my age! No one else had a clue how to sing it and my one attempt to lead the way and gain some clout among my fellow churchgoers fell horribly flat. We abandoned it after the second verse.