I met a lovely lady last year. She is an IPP prisoner; this means she
has a minimum tariff, but in reality could be kept incarcerated for as
long as the authorities want. This practice was abolished in 2012, but
currently over 5000 IPP prisoners remain in prison, with over two thirds
over tariff. More on this later…
This lady had a tragic start to
life. One of 14 children she was a Vietnamese boat person. Those of you
my age will remember Blue Peter campaigning about this situation and
raising money to help this displaced generation, fleeing a conflict in
which 65,000 were executed and a million sent to prison camps where
about 165,000 died. Leaving the country was illegal so many escaped in
makeshift boats. It is estimated that 1.5 million vietnamese escaped
this way and around 10 percent of these drowned.
This lady
spends most of her time on BASIC (28 days with little association and no
tv)…and yet I never saw any behaviour that I would consider to be
disruptive, aggressive, or of an offending nature. She didn’t bully
anyone, kick off, fight or argue. She speaks very poor English, but on
top of this has very obvious cognitive difficulties. This has actually
been documented in her records (after a fight from other prisoners to
get it recognised, yes that’s right… other prisoners!). However, it
never seems to be taken into account (equality, diversity, inclusion…)
when she is being punished or victimised.
This lady mainly
gets in trouble for …. hoarding food in her room or taking her food out
of the dining hall to eat later. Bearing in mind she spent her entire
childhood starving and without knowing where the next meal is coming
from, I fully understand this. So should the authorities, but they
don’t. In fact, one officer even regularly stole from her room when he
wanted sugar, milk or crisps for his office (a safer custody officer
which is ironic) and would threaten her with an adjudication for storing
food if she dared to complain!
One of her adjudications was for
having vegetables from the garden in her room. They were being thrown
away despite being perfectly edible. She cannot handle the idea of
wasting food. Do you blame her?
She is the kindest and most
giving person I met in jail. She takes note of all the other prisoners
on her wing and what kind of food they like, and she redistributes the
prison issue food to the right people. For example, I would give her my
sugar, flavours of crisps I don’t like, sometimes things that came with
my salad like crab sticks, noodles and so on. She would then give me hot
chocolates as I don’t drink coffee and plain flavoured crisps.
She
could appear argumentative, but actually she just has a very strong
idea of fairness, always likes to know the rules and keep to them, and
also has the aforementioned cognitive disability which means she will
often question and question in order to understand.
I saw her
bullied by officers, and I tried my best to stand up for and support her
in any way I could. I smiled last week when I received a letter from
her stating she had been taken off BASIC, as her most recent IEP had
been revoked….. the one I appealed on her behalf before I left. :-). I
just pray there is someone else to take over her care and support…..
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