QWERTY’s Back!
May 27th 2020 and I am back in front of a keyboard! Wahoo! Thankfully I remembered my password and after a prompt to change it I am back in business. Unfortunately, I no longer have an excuse for not writing blogs. I had talked myself out of using pen and paper because of the sheer inefficiencies of editing without the cut and paste function. First World problems eh?
Unlike those of you in the community that have been forced to self-isolate, here in prison we have been without the many items and activities that you have been accustomed to in order to occupy our days. There is no internet, no Netflix, nor do we have Deliveroo just a tap away. Life is bleak behind a door – it’s a long time.
However, there is one aspect of this whole lockdown that may help those who have avoided the attentions of the judicial and penury system to empathise with those who are, or have been in prison. Uncertainty!
When I logged of my computer at the end of Monday 23rd March the lockdown was already in force in the outside community. Little did I know that Tuesday would start with a notice pushed under my door at 7am informing me that the prison was being locked down – effective immediately.
As the morning wore on the majority of the 39 other residents of my unit started filling in the blanks and making sweeping declarations about what would be happening. I found this curious to say the least. All of them had been surprised by the lockdown. None of them had had any communications with anybody outside the pool of 39 – so where did this ‘reliable’ information come from?
Anyway, I digress. The experience or over-riding emotion that we were feeling was uncertainty. We had little or no information, a broken daily structure and above all – no end date. However, many prisoners are better able to adapt to the interminable uncertainty of a lockdown – we have had practise.
Many prisoners arrive at a prison on remand and most will tell you that remand time is the worst time. It’s like the lockdown – you have no clue when it’s going to end. Remand time is akin to a rollercoaster ride – a new high profile case could throw focus on your particular crime – where courts are eager to appear tough. Political machinations can set sentences fluctuating from one year to the next with as much volatility as any stock market.
My remand lasted for around 6 months and I remember all too well those times. One day one man’s sentence would give me some comfort, while the following week another man’s would put the fear of God into me. On my day in court I was so relieved. I really wasn’t concerned with the length of my tariff – that is not to say that I was in any way blasé about serving prison time – rather I was just relieved that at the end of that day I would be back in my cell and finally have a date that I could work towards – I would have an anchor point that I could use as a reference.
Throughout my sentence I have had numerous other uncertainties. There was a picketing action by prison officers at one jail that caused disruption to our routine. In 2016 a riot saw the jail turned upside down for weeks. A missing knife from another prison kitchen saw us three days behind closed doors – no exercise, no showers and no phone calls, while being fed packed lunches in our cells. So I have become quite adept at shrugging my shoulders and getting on with it.
There are a few things that helped me get through times of indeterminate uncertainty.
- I generally tried to establish if there was any benefit to fighting against the situation – if not, then let it go.
- I break down my time into manageable bite-size chunks. Try not to think about tonight, tomorrow, next week or month. Instead identify what I am going to do for the next hour. When that’s done I worry about what I’m going to do for the next hour, then the hour after that.
- I always try to remember that ‘this too will pass’.
