The truth is better than any story

I've shared with you all before that I have been in jail before.  I was there for 2 months. Two long months.  Two months is certainly long enough to know what the routines are, what is expected and to miss the things that you take for granted in the 'outside world'.  It's this experience that makes me pissed off when I see people make flippant remarks about how 'easy' criminals have it in jail.  It's certainly easier for a lot of people than being out on the streets, but it's certainly no walk in the park.
 

I won't go into what I did to end up in jail in this post because it's all in the post I have made before.  For ease of conversation however I will say that my crime is categorised by the law as a violent crime. Even though I had no intention of hurting anyone but myself, the law likes to put everything in nice, neat little boxes.  I was refused bail and spent three days in a watch house.  I went to court once in that time.  So it is with great interest that I watch news programs talk about the 'injustice' that celebrities (if you could even call them that) receive when they are taken into custody.
 

Stripping from head to toe in front of two officers is horrible, you feel disgusting but it's a necessary part of the custody process. While some officers may take their role a little too seriously, this act is not done with the sole purpose of humiliation, despite what the sensationalised media will tell you.  It's necessary to protect both yourself and the people you will be sharing a cell with. Yes there is a high chance that you will have to share.
 

What are they looking for? Contraband.  Once again if you listen to the media then this only stretches to drugs. It's not. It's anything that can be used as a weapon, both on yourself or someone else.  It includes things like belts, shoelaces, drawstrings, any belongings on your person as well as the more obvious things such as drugs, alcohol and tobacco.  These things are not taken off you to make your life more difficult on purpose, they are there to protect you.  Everyone goes into the cell with the same thing, stand over tactics are reduced this way.
 

Another aspect that makes me roll my eyes is the idea that prisoners get 3 hot meals a day.  The meals might be hot when they leave the kitchen..an hour before they are served to the prisoners but they are definitely not hot when they are consumed.  Ever eaten pasta when it's stone cold? It's like eating glue.  Far from the five star treatment that the media would like to lead the public to believe.  If you live in the residential area, you must get a job so that you can pay for your own food and cook it.  Before you get scared about the prisoners being out amongst the public, these jobs are things like mowing the prison grounds, working in the kitchen, jobs within the jail. 
 

For a few of the prisoners that I shared a section with, them being in jail is better than their life outside.  They have somewhere to sleep, food is definitely coming and they don't have to deal with abusive family members.  It's easy to be grateful for little when you are used to nothing.  

Linking up with Essentially Jess for #IBOT

The long time coming post

image from here

I haven't really talked about this.  Well not in great detail to many people.  I have glossed over the details.  Who really wants to admit stuff like this anyway? This post has been in the back of my mind since I started this blog.  I just needed to find the right words.  On Friday I got in one of my lovely moods where I am mostly inappropriately open about things in my past.  I posted on a friends link about treatment of mentally ill people in prisons.  It all snowballed from there and I ended up pouring my story out to this friend.  I’m glad I did because it gave me the push in the right direction I needed to start this post.  The post where I talk about why I was in jail and what happened. 

I was quite sick at the time and just wanted some sort of medication to kill myself with.  My mum had moved closer to me and while I am forever grateful for the upheaval she created in her life, I felt trapped and smothered. While part of me knew that I had bought it on myself and that I should be grateful, a much bigger part of me just wanted to give up and not care anymore.  

I had a volunteer job and while on my lunchbreak I walked into a chemist and demanded drugs with a knife. I had no intention of hurting anyone except myself I was just desperate. I couldn't take an overdose on over the counter stuff as I had developed a gag reflex to most of it. It was my 'local' chemist and everyone except the woman i threatened knew who I was and my history. She pressed the panic button and the police were there in 5 minutes. I got arrested and was denied bail. I was in prison while awaiting a court date for 2 months. It was the longest 2 months of my entire life (I’ve been pregnant remember and we all know how that time just flies :|). Thankfully I was allowed bail at my next hearing.

I was 19 at the time. It was definitely an eye opener. I don't have a great deal of trust for people in authority anymore. The uniformed police officers and chemist workers wanted for me to be hospitalised, but the head detective had other ideas...until he interviewed me and realised how much of a mess mentally I was. By then it was too late to turn back. I was refused bail on the basis that I was a danger to myself.  Mental Health interviewed me and deemed me mentally sound….The officers at the watch house rang them again multiple times to tell them they needed to reassess, they refused saying that I was sufficiently medicated and there was nothing more that they could do.  I must add that they did nothing to my medication between me taking a knife into a chemist with the intent of getting medication to kill myself and them finishing the initial assessment.  

This is why I have so little faith in the effectiveness of the public mental health system.  This is why I am so cynical.  This is why I am not a people person.

image from here

This is exactly what one of the cells in the jail I was in looked like.  See that nice silver dome on the roof at the back? That's a camera, yes they can see you pee.  At the opposite end to the toilet is the shower...yes they can also watch you shower too.  

See that light above the bed? That stays on 24 hours a day.  Could you imagine it? Try leaving your lamp on one night and seeing how easily you get to sleep.  All I can say is thank god for high doses of sleep meds.  

See the size of the room? You went into 'lockdown' from 6pm until 6-7am.  There was no getting out.  There was no talking to anyone else.  You could watch tv but it's easier to just sleep.  The guards had around 1.5 hours for lunch each day. Yep you guessed it we were locked down for that too.  Every Wednesday was training day.  This essentially meant that most of the jail was locked down for most of the day.  We even had to eat our lunch in our cells on that day.  

Next time you make a flippant comment about how being in prison is easy...just think about all that.  

Police

It's almost 4 years on and I'm still paranoid about the police.  Every time a police car drives past, my heart starts to beat 100 miles an hour.  It kind of unnerves me that I have police officers as friends on my facebook.  I'm always on edge waiting for the penny to drop.

It's quite possibly worse when I see a prison officer.  My knuckles go white I am clutching the pram so hard.  Sometimes I feel like I have a 'label' that tells them that I've been there.  

I hated every. single. minute of being in prison.  Anyone who says that someone going to jail is getting the 'easy' way out has obviously never been there or even visited.  One common exclamation from the general public is that they get 'three meals a day'.  Sure you get three meals a day but lunch is the exact same thing every. single. day.  It took me 12 months after getting out of prison to be able to bring myself to be able to eat a wrap.  You have allocated milk and if you drink it before the week is up then no more coffee or cereal for you.  Dinner every night is cold, not cool, stone cold.  Its usually pasta or another carb laden meal.  There is also no deviation from the menu, there is a set meal for every single night of the week.  Wednesday night was ham steak....this was just a ham steak in the middle of the plate with a piece of pineapple on top.