excerpt - Prison Education Gave Me A Degree of Freedom

I was born in 1963 at a Royal Air Force base in Lincolnshire. It wasn’t until I was aged 20, I gained my first criminal convictions for two attempted robberies which resulted in a 30 month Youth Custody sentence, then spent the rest of my early adult years drifting, moving from one job to another, but also committed relatively petty, mostly impulsive, but occasionally violent crimes (criminal damage, common assault.)
My directionless way of life also included several periods in psychiatric hospitals for clinical depression, until July 1995 when I began a five year prison sentence for wounding.
I went to prison an un-educated individual with massive failings to overcome. With few apparent skills or abilities, my prison beginnings were unpromising. With a sheer determination to turn things around, I embarked on a programme of part-time education. Also, around the same time I developed an interest in writing.
Five years later I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in criminology, and then two years later with a master’s degree in social research. In 2003, I taught criminology to undergraduates and then started writing for Teesside University’s student newspaper with my first article for a regional newspaper, appearing in the York Press in 2005.
I began writing and contributing for the Evening Gazette and blogging for the Northern Echo. And in 2007, my article, ‘Our Heroes’ about my grandfather’s heroics on the Somme, appeared in a book, ‘Times Past: The Story of York’, written by York Press Deputy Editor, Bill Hearld. In 2010,I was made a Freeman of York along with my mother and sister through our birthright from a long linage of York Freemen. I was recently asked to start writing for the Prison Reform Trust and now work as a full-time freelance writer.

A SNIPPET FROM MY STORY

I could never have realised just how much of an impact writing my autobiography would have on me emotionally. As the days go on I keep searching for answers and snippets of information to jog my memory, but it’s the sudden unexpected bursts of memories that makes this story come to life.
I have searched for several angles and pondered as to what it’s all about - even started two different drafts.... ‘I never do things the easy way'.
My biography differs to a lot of other ex-prisoners stories. My sentences were relatively small in comparison and I was never a career criminal, but one thing I can share with people is how I managed to ruin my life by getting a criminal record. Prison was merely a brief punishment for the crimes; it was having a criminal record that was to spoil any chances I had of making something of myself.
It made my life a huge uphill struggle – and then only to go back 10 years after my first stint and really screw things up.
A lot of society can accept the folly of youth as a reason for going off the rails – depending on the severity of the crimes of course. In most cases, a young person can still turn things around. But for me, I turned things around in my 30s leaving myself an almost impossible task. I was thinking, 'How can I ever justify my actions now'? After the first stint when I was 20 – maybe – not at 32 though. Most will agree that we can all make mistakes, especially when we are young and irresponsible and that people deserve a second chance - right?
The only thing is, how do you convince people you deserve a third, fourth, fifth, sixth or umpteenth chance? Can you ever change after a certain age? What is the age where society will accept your actions as having been those of someone who was at the time: ‘young and daft’? ‘He just made a mistake’? And what is society’s deadline for people to get their life in order? Surely I’d blown that now?
Having a criminal record when I was younger was a burden when it came to employment but unless you were as asked if you had any convictions by your interviewer or someone informed on you, you could get a job. Now with almost all employers requesting CRB checks, things have changed and made it more difficult for people.
I went along the self employed route in the end and I am proud to say that I gained two degrees as a result of my unstoppable thirst for education which started while I was in prison. But hand on heart? It all came too late.
People tell me I shouldn’t look back – that I should always look forward. That’s cool, but the past doesn’t allow you to do this as there are always reminders somewhere, somehow and you’re continually made to answer for your misdemeanours; like when you go for that job, start a new relationship or start filling out a form for something you really want to do and the dreaded – ‘a CRB check will be required’ comes up.
I am now 48 and still a victim of my own stupidity. Two photos of me wearing a cap and gown proudly hang on my mother’s living room wall which are reminders that I obviously always had the ability to achieve things, so why wasn’t it spotted when I was at school?
If I had, had the qualifications I have now, at the start of my adult years, they may have been a passport to a successful career and I may have turned into a very different person.
I am not politically minded nor do I want to enter into political debate, but I can see a comparison of when I left school in 1979, aged 16, under the Thatcher government as an unskilled, uneducated young person. Young people like I was are now labelled as NEETS (not in education, employment or training). I chose the army to escape this when unemployment on Teesside soared as hundreds lost their jobs in the steel industry. The area was depressed and the dole queues were increasing. I didn’t make a success of my army career though and I deeply regret it as I do for not succeeding at school.
Considering all the ‘life changing’ experiences I’ve enjoyed since entering Higher Education later in life, and in spite of me saying that it all came too late, I failed to see that other doors could be opened as a result. The chosen subject areas of my degrees and the career opportunities they could’ve offered had I not had a record, were not the ‘be all and end all’ – it was the personal development, new confidence, ability to communicate better, and the new transferable skills which would eventually open doors.
Then one day while discussing this with a University lecturer, I raised the subject of former prisoners who had been much worse than me, yet who had still managed to publish books, have films made of them and become success stories, to which she replied: “Yes but they carved their own careers out for themselves”. Of course! I had missed the whole point hadn’t I? I’d come thus far having proven to myself and others that I had the ability to succeed and become a better person, so all I needed to do now was think of how I can carve out my own career.
So I did – it would be writing.
I had forgotten all those years ago, when I used to spend 12 hours a day in my cell writing down my thoughts and feelings on paper; I poured my heart out on reams and reams of A4 sheets over two years spent inside, surely I could put that to good use?
My new degrees and passion for writing were about a new beginning - about a new journey - a journey that continues.