Authors: Vicky Pryce
With a break in the weather, I had one last lovely long walk round the lake and the estate before an intense chat with Liz and Craig, the gym instructor, about
life and the future. Then half an hour of rowing, a frantic rush to have a shower without burning myself before brunch and then extra helpings of scrambled eggs (put on my plate while the chef wasn’t watching or pretended not to), before I tackled my belongings.
Nigel, the officer at the reception desk, and I spent about an hour putting most of what I was taking home in a huge rucksack my son had brought in and sorting out the bags I would be sending home via my visitors (more books) that afternoon. Then I had the pleasure of my last visit in prison, this time from David and Lisa Buchan and Baroness Stedman-Scott of the charity Tomorrow’s People, for whom, while senior managing director at FTI Consulting, I had provided one of the first free economic evaluations under the auspices of Pro Bono Economics, a
charity
of which I am a patron, of Tomorrow’s People’s programme to get difficult 16–18-year-olds jobs. At the end of my very last visit, David and Lisa kindly took five of my bags away and dropped them at my house; my daughter put them in the study where they mostly still remain, alongside the previous lot.
We celebrated my final evening of bingo and then enjoyed a cheese feast in my room, with presents given out to everyone. It was stuff I had bought from the canteen – cheese for Sarah, tobacco for Amy, Cadbury sticks for Judy, coffee for Sue, more Kit Kats for Liz, cereal for Charlotte. I also gave out food I had hoarded from our ‘grab bags’ which I didn’t like, mainly biscuits and health cereal bars, and, of course, stamps; I included lots of stamps in little thank you cards I had somehow managed to obtain or had made myself. There were lots of kisses to people I would not see in the morning and also little thank you notes left for the staff.
The process felt quite businesslike at times,
especially
as I sorted out my accounts. Whatever was left in my balance, plus the £46 that everyone gets on release, would be transferred to my external bank account. I kept some money for last-minute phone calls but in the end, despite ringing everyone I could think of, I was still left with £14 of unspent phone money, which you cannot get back or transfer to anyone else who may need it.
Was I emotional? Maybe, but I didn’t let it show. I was desperate to get back to my children and friends, so they could see that I was OK and stop worrying about me as they had done since I’d first entered prison. But I also knew that I would miss my fellow residents and maybe, strangely, also the simple routine of prison, knowing full well that life on the outside would not be easy. I knew I had to face photographers and the media, both of whom would follow my every move and document every success or failure. There would be many challenges as I tried to return to some form of ‘normality’. My experience, however, was
eye-opening
and I knew it would stay with me forever; it would shape how I thought of the world and how I behaved in it. And I would never forget it – or my fellow residents.
My last full day. Aanjay and Alison lovingly squeezed me some orange juice and I had three pieces of toast and jam before completing my dining room duties.
At my last church session I discovered I wasn’t the only one leaving: the chaplain, Tony, announced to a stunned congregation that he was leaving for Ford open prison at the end of the month. We agreed to
stay in touch and I have since heard that Sally, a lady with whom I spent a lot of time, has taken over the post temporarily, which is so well deserved and I am sure she will look after the girls really well.
D
-day. I should have been released on HDC on the twelfth but the way the system works, you cannot leave on a weekend or a bank holiday but have to wait until the first working day after it. So, I was allowed to leave on Monday 13 May. I can still to this day not understand why this is so. It used to be that if the date fell on a weekend you could be released on the Friday but that had been stopped relatively recently – again I don’t understand why, unless it was the result of yet another law and order campaign.
Still, as the big day approached the girls had been constantly asking how much longer I had and how I felt. Of course, I was thrilled but I had to keep calm. Come each departure, however, the excitement among the girls is palpable. Why? First of all, you leave via the front door, the only time you are allowed to do that during the entire stay there, and not from the back, which is how you arrived. I hardly cared but for the other residents that seemed to matter a lot. The superstition was that once they left, they were not to look back as that would mean they would be
returning
at some stage.
More importantly, the departure was finally proof that you could really leave the place for good. For the residents each departure brought their own closer so although there were many tears as friends parted there was also hope. In my case I had very few of their problems – I had a home of my own, loving children, I had not benefited from my crime so there was
nothing
to pay back financially, I did not owe anything except my court case costs, whatever they ended up being, and I had had huge support from people on the outside. Obviously I had to rebuild my career but I felt that my experience could also be put to good use for my fellow residents and others in the system.
I was able to focus on the real immediate issue causing a lot of excitement among residents and staff: the photographers had gathered outside once more. Amazingly, some of them had been there since the previous weekend thinking I was being released then and were ‘casing the joint’ to find the best position from which to take their pictures.
But we had a cunning plan. I had already taken advantage of the previous two visits from relatives and friends in the preceding weekends to give back ten big prison rubbish bags of books and papers, writing pads and diaries, and some clothes so I would be left with the bare minimum on the day. That was helpful since I had accumulated a lot of stuff. Aside from the very many books – generous friends clearly thought I would be bored stiff without anything to read – what took up a lot of space were letters. After the huge postbag I had been given following my sentencing, I had been receiving an average of fifteen letters, e-mails or postcards a day during my entire stay at ESP. Many
I had replied to but so many others I intended to reply to on my return home.
Receiving so many letters had its pitfalls. Many of my women friends wrote to me daily, sometimes twice daily, scribbling on cards while on the bus, on the tube, on airplanes to visit their ailing mother in Cork, from London and then from Italy and back from London, with the result that I became utterly confused about the sequence of events in their lives, with letters arriving at different times depending on where they were posted from.
My great friend Boni would send me little summery cards with flowers on while other people kept me informed of life on the outside. Michael Littlechild, godfather to one of my sons, came to visit me early on but then went off on his travels. As chief executive of GoodOperation, a company that I helped set up and that advises others around the globe on corporate social responsibility, Michael is almost never at home and postcards started arriving from exotic locations, which fascinated my fellow residents. I had his name on my list of allowed numbers and at the various times I tried to get hold of him he was picking up his mobile while having dinner in Poland, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Uganda, you name it. The postcards from him were incredibly colourful and very funny. My friends seemed to have rediscovered writing, which they had forgotten to do in the era of e-mails, and were relishing it. In fact a number have continued to write since. But what fascinated me is the fact that writing a proper letter brought forward the need for people to open up; despite having warned them that staff read everything that comes in, a couple of
male friends started using me as an agony aunt and over five pages of tightly knit handwriting would divulge all their problems. I would respond with an equally long letter – although I knew full well that staff wouldn’t be able to read my difficult handwriting, I was optimistic that my friends would have more time and inclination to decipher it. Hopefully they did and my advice was heeded – but maybe not. It seems that months of using a pen had actually reduced my ability to write legibly and in desperation my friends Jane and Mike Cooke teamed up with everyone and, on behalf of my friends, sent me a book called
Improve Your Handwriting
. Not very subtle! It had no effect and I left it to the library when I exited ESP.
My handwriting did cause extra problems for the staff, who were supposed to read some 5 per cent of what goes in and out, but in fact seemed to me to be reading everything. I once entered the centre office with a letter I wanted to make sure caught the 9 p.m. post deadline. I had made it, they said, but they had just been talking about my very difficult handwriting. Indeed, I could see one of the officers leaning over the desk reading one of the letters I was sending out who turned and laughed and said: ‘Actually, the only words I can read in this letter are Ann Widdecombe!’ I had mentioned her to a friend as she had just written a positive little piece in her column in the
Daily Express
defending me against some attack and I was really grateful. It was only then I realised how difficult their job of reading my mail must be. Even more
troublesome
must have been the letters I was sending out in Greek and French which I can only assume they just classified as even worse handwriting rather than
something in a foreign language, given that no one questioned me about them.
Not that I was the only one with bad handwriting – many an hour was taken up deciphering people’s addresses. Street names were particularly bad so we resigned ourselves by common agreement on a number of occasions in my room that I had no choice but to ring my office and ask Ava, my long-suffering ex-secretary, to see what street was associated with the postcode, which was just about discernible. Often we turned it into a game, passing the letter around and guessing and outguessing each other. You have to keep going in whatever small way.
Back to our cunning plan. It was very simple: get up early, straight after the 5.30 room check by the officers, have breakfast if there was time, bring my remaining stuff down to ensure a final check against my inventory of clothing and books (each day
something
arrived it had to be recorded by hand and itemised in an ever-expanding form and then
countersigned
by me – and then the same process was carried out the other way so they could cross out each item one by one as I was leaving) and then we’d make a quick dash into the car of my solicitor, who had been warned to come early and park at the back.
While managing a quick breakfast (my friend Aanjay had the wonderful squeezed orange juice ready for me) the TV in the dining room was already showing the photographers outside. Well, we missed them all. My solicitor arrived just before 7 a.m. and the wonderful officers who had made the plan guided us through the back and down an alleyway that
eventually
led to a main road at the back of ESP, which we took, and we left the grounds almost immediately.
In the rush I forgot various things, in particular a threadbare green towel that I had taken with me from home when I packed for Holloway, which both my sons used at different times while they were
boarders
for a while in prep school (I was a great one for recycling everything, which you have to do when you have five children). I wanted it with me for sentimental and nostalgic value as there were labels on it with both their names. With every wash in ESP more of the towel would come off by the day but it was just still usable by the time I was leaving – and unfortunately it was left still hanging drying on the radiator below the window next to my bed. It was found later in the laundry room by one of the girls who was due to leave shortly after me. She very kindly returned it all washed and cleaned and neatly folded. What a relief to be reunited with it. I will never be able to throw that towel away.
We left unnoticed except for one lone photographer who seemed to have stationed himself by the crossroads at the back – the only one to have thought of it. Leaving before the usual hour of 9 a.m. we came as quite a surprise to him; he got up from his sitting position (maybe he had in fact been lying down as he probably slept the night there) and tried to focus on us and took a couple of pictures through the car windows. I suspect they were of bad quality and he was not able to sell them. But he must have warned the others and soon after, as we were driving through the beautiful Kent country roads, calls started coming through to my solicitor asking gently for confirmation of whether I was still in the building or had left – of course we had – and they all legged it to Clapham to join the growing throng of photographers already stationed outside my door.
But the thought that went through my head, as we were driving home and getting stuck in the usual early morning rush hour traffic on the A20, was that despite the constant attention and the difficulties that would still completely prevent me returning to normality, I still in reality had it easy by comparison to so many I had met. It is so obvious to me that for women, much more than for men, prison is only a small part of what they have to suffer. The punishment is not over when their sentence ends; consider the children taken away, the loss of home, loss of prospects, the shame and family breakdowns, all of which make any sentence they have to serve disproportionate to the offence itself. Women on the whole, again much more than men, are as much victims as perpetrators of crimes. Most of their crimes are non-violent and women offenders usually pose no threat to society.
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I determined to write about what I’d learned and become involved in the exposing of the illogicality of keeping women in prison and the immense direct and indirect costs of separating women from society when alternative ways of dealing with them, such as through community service orders, seem to be used very sparingly.
I arrived home to be greeted by a large number of photographers and journalists. My solicitor read out my statement saying how glad I was to be home, that I wanted to thank my family and friends but also the prison staff and my fellow residents who I got to know well in East Sutton Park and that I now intended to resume my career as an economist.
Into my home at last and there were lots of hugs with the kids and close friends. Two Serco employees turned up at 4.30 p.m. and the tag was fitted easily. That evening the whole family came for supper and
it was glorious – I had been asked what I fancied and they all prepared food for me that was just amazing. As I looked around the table at all my children, their partners and my grandchildren, I considered my future. Even with reasonable skills and a good track record, convictions and popular perceptions do matter. In the weeks that followed I would have knocks, privileges and other distinctions taken away as people followed rules, and my confidence and image would be greatly affected. I knew, however, that I would receive so much more in terms of support and extra chances. Possibilities would open up that would go some way towards restoring my faith in human nature. I hope my fellow residents get similar support when they come out.
My daughter’s theatre company had been using my house for the past two weeks, rehearsing for a production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. They were all so brilliant but there were lots of young people around and the noise they were making was incredible. When they were going through the sword-fighting scene in the living room upstairs I feared the ceiling would fall on my head as I was sitting in the kitchen right underneath it. In many ways it was perfect to have them around as it really helped me readjust to life outside. They were incredibly sweet. No one asked anything – not that I would have minded.
That night, more food was prepared for me in what would become a pattern for the following two months while my tag was in operation. People would visit practically every night for eight weeks laden with food, puddings, drinks, flowers and the like – the
house was continuously full of flowers after I returned home. Even the postman said it was good to have me back when he delivered the morning’s mail.
It was the Europa League final. In any other year Chelsea fans would have sneered at that competition but we actually took it seriously as it ended up being the only trophy we were likely to get, having exited the FA Cup in the semi-final when we lost to Man City. We joked in ESP that since the game would be a few days after I got out I might just be able to make it to Amsterdam and back before the curfew. I knew it couldn’t happen but my fellow residents took it
seriously
and made anxious questions to their relatives on their daily phone calls to see what time the game was scheduled for and therefore whether it was at all feasible for me to get to the match. Well, kick-off was not until 7.45 p.m. so they realised that even with the best will in the world and if planes were on time, I wouldn’t be able to make it. There were lots of jokes made about how I would be ringing Serco from the air blaming it all on air traffic control. They knew by then how keen I was on Chelsea and we made a pact that if I watched
The Voice
from home they would in return watch the final, so at least we would be close in spirit. I hope they kept their side of the bargain. I kept mine.