I've held off writing or talking about our prison visit to HMP New Hall on Monday (for my Collaborative Performance Project module) mainly because I've needed a while to collect my thoughts about the whole experience. I wasn't really expecting anything in particular before I visited and I wasn't even scared by the prospect of being in the company of the female "dregs of our society", but nevertheless, the visit left me feeling completely hollow and incapable of holding a proper conversation about much for a whole afternoon and evening.
With a bit of reflection, I think it's fair to say I was a little in shock. Although the group working in Rivendell (the juvenile unit) were given a complete tour of the juvenile wing, we were only shown round the education department, so we were presented with the surreal experience of walking round what felt like a normal HE college, surrounded by several-metre-high green fences topped with barbed wire. The only glimpse we got of the actual "prison-like" bit of the prison was a quick glance to the left to see a corridor marked at every few feet with heavy white gates. With that image imprinted in my mind and still giving me shivers, I'm glad we weren't given the full tour we were primed for. And the actual department? Also all very surreal and unexpected.
The education department is a confusing mix of what you'd think prison cells may look like and a primary school. The classroom walls are covered by brightly-coloured displays created by the women: pictures they have created from cutting images out of magazines and pasting them onto coloured paper, and drawings vividly coloured in or stencilled with bright coloured pens. On the table of the room we were left to wait in while our guides were rounded up, there was an image created by one of the women depicting herself and her three children with the words "single parent family" stencilled underneath. Amongst this quite uncomfortable display of relatively childish work were "class rules" and "what you hope to gain from this course". There were thick white bars across each of the windows. Each of the classrooms opened onto a main corridor granting access to the two small "break" rooms: a rectangular room with bare white walls and low wooden benches along three of the walls. The contrast between the two was awful.
We were given a tour of the department by two women who were on the Business Ed course. It was their job to take us round, getting each teacher to explain what they were doing with their class and generally chat to us about why we were here. The two classes that stand out for me the most are the Kitchen class (I can't remember the exact name of the class, but they were covering food preparation, hygiene, etc) and the class simply described to us as "the one where the girls who would struggle in the normal classes go".
The teacher in the Kitchen class explained to us about how her girls were being "angelic" today and were "behaving themselves": the "girls" referring to a group comprised mainly of middle-aged women, a few younger women and a heavily pregnant woman in her mid to late 20s. On hearing this, one of the younger women chipped in "We're not all bad people in here you know - some of us are nice people just in a bad situation". I couldn't have put it more succinctly.
The women in the other class were the most upsetting. They were clearly either heavily sedated or just not with us in this world, most of them staring out into space or quietly colouring in tessellation patterns. The description of the class was one given to us by the teacher in front of his whole class - there was no pretence that these women could be considered in the same way as all the others we had seen or the women who were showing us round. They shouldn't have been there.
For the other half of our visit, we were sat with the PHSE class (some of which we may be working with when we return to conduct out workshops in April) and were given the opportunity to ask them pretty much anything, and them us. Before anyone had a chance to say anything though, one of the women (with a large amount of facial piercings and a black and fushia pink mohican) burst into a fit of giggles, quickly followed by the other few women sitting round the table. It was quickly explained to us by another one of the women (with a shaved head and baseball cap) that "someone in this room is rather hot", with a meaningful look in Ginny's direction. The experience was similar to that of being in a year 8 class full of pubescent teenagers - very unnerving considering most of the women were older than us. The rest of our time there all but two of the women became resolutely silent, unwilling to ask any questions with their eyes tilted to their laps with their arms crossed or their fingers fidgeting.
Leaving felt wrong. Knowing that all the women we had met that day (bar the staff) couldn't leave whilst we were phoning for taxis to take us to the train station just seemed... wrong. I knew they were there for a reason - but what reason? Only a tiny percentage of women in prisons are there for violent crimes, the majority are there for theft, fraud, prostitution or drugs offences. Surely there's a better way to deal with these problems instead of locking them away from their children and their families? I knew I'd feel this way after meeting them - after all, as I explained to someone who asked me what it was like in a hushed, excited tone the day afterwards; they're just people. People like you and me, people with families, who had homes somewhere once, just people who have done something wrong and are paying dearly for it.
The fact they've done something wrong though - does that mean they should be treated like kids? Given tasks to draw patterns using circles, squares and triangles, magazines to cut nice pictures out of, and praised in front of strangers for being "angelic"? Called "girls" by every nearly every member of staff, most of whom are younger than them? It just seemed all wrong. What these women need is help, not patronisation. There is a reason why people offend, and sticking them in cells for a few months or a few years isn't going to change the reasons they committed the offence in the first place. In fact, they're even more likely to re-offend, losing their homes whilst they're locked up and consequently losing their children or partners because of this. Education is a help, but not this way. These prisoners are women, just like the teachers teaching them. We are all equal in that sense, and should be treated as such since these women have chosen education over manual labour.
And the women who are so sedated or so out of it they can't even join in with the main classes? Should they even be in prison at all, let alone an education system? What good is it doing them sitting in a room colouring in pictures? And how does it make them feel to hear they "wouldn't cope" with the work everyone else is doing being aired to a few strangers visiting from a university? They're like children; they're treated like children and some even have their mindset. Prison is right for some - I do still believe that, but I also believe some of them should never be put there in the first place.
Is there any wonder these women suffer from major self-esteem problems? That their confidence is so low that the minute they leave prison they resort back to the numbing drugs or the security of organised prostitution? There's no respect there - and why would there be? These women ARE "the dregs of society", the ones that several people have told me deserve to rot in jail because they're bad people and don't deserve to mix with us. And who the hell are we to judge? Our society isn't so great that we can consider ourselves to be the angelic layer of it. We're all human - we all have similar traits, similar thoughts, desires, hopes and dreams. It's just that some of us don't stand a chance where others do. They deserve some kind of respect - not praise for what they've done, just an acknowledgement that they're human too, and because of that some respect is deserved.
I won't be calling them "girls" during my workshops. And I won't be asking them to draw pretty pictures. They're women in their own right - funny, intelligent, interested women, and I for one am interested to hear what they have to say and what they feel about a society that has failed them somewhere along the line.
That word "panties" is appearing a little too much in his thought process for my liking...
Now, wait a minute Apollo. What exactly is your profession supposed to be again?
Um... what?
