Life...Don't Talk To Me About Life....

To say that I knew what my place was in the prison society is to understate the fluidity of the prisoners social structure. Broadly, in many places and for many years, my place was that of being useful to those in some dispute with our keepers - the grubby but vital end of jailhouselawyering.

This fairly constant social status is an important psychological crutch. If one knows ones place in the world, ones purpose, then there is some stability which allows for persistence and survival in the face of adversity.

And now...I find myself adrift. Where is my place in the wider society? Asking this after ten days of freedom may seem a tad premature, I confess, but it is an important point. There are ex-cons aplenty, but very few who have taken up or continued any campaigning role that they may have had behind the walls. Some are swamped by the demands of daily life, others only wish to wash the stench of prison from their lives as quickly as possible.

How large a place prison will have in either my consciousness or my life into this new future remains to be seen. But I suspect that for the foreseeable future, prison and I will remain on close terms of mutual detestation. It is the precise shape that this takes that is as yet unformed and leaves me feeling slightly unsettled.

Should I campaign openly and publicly, join Jailhouselawyer on the TV to mock Andrew Neil's hairdo? Write articles and spread them as widely as possible? Begin a reform campaign group? There are so many possibilities and none are obvious to me as yet.

The debate must continue. That the State holds so many in its dungeons must remain a source of unease on so many levels and the injection of informed comment can only turn a shooting match into a more subtle challenge. I would hope...