The Stupid Leading the Blind

Long gone are the days when a prisoner could pass through these stygian halls to be disgorged into the daylight of freedom with little effort.  This particularly applies to Lifers.

Gaining release, and finding a bearable way of life along the way, requires deliberate effort by the prisoner.  It is required that we engage with many processes, all of them quite bureaucratic.  The most prominent of these are the Offending Behaviour Programmes, the psychology courses intended to cure us of our wicked ways.

These courses are heavily reliant on written materials and demand copious amounts of "homework".  And there lies the trap - for those with sensory impairments, low IQ's, or the plain illiterate then progress towards release is blocked.

For the illiterate, a couple of extra years may be served as the prisoner is forced through an educational programme, before starting the OBP courses. For those with impaired senses or learning difficulties there is no such obvious solution. I've met deaf prisoners who have had to fight for years just to have an induction-loop installed so that they could engage with group work.  And I've met men with learning difficulties who have wasted the best part of a decade just waiting for psychological assessments.

Such people are royally stuffed.  Unable to undertake the psychological courses that earn release they find themselves being bounced from prison to prison as each Governor finds it easier to transfer "the problem" rather than allocate any resources or brain-power to deal with it.

In this convoluted way, and through no fault of their own, prisoners with disabilities often serve many more years than their crime deserves.  They are punished for their deficiencies.

No-Mind

My trick to surviving, to remaining just this side of sanity, is to refuse to look more than a few moments ahead.  This way, I hope to avoid any angst that may arise if I accidentally lift my eyes from my mop and broom and see an unknown number of prison days ahead of me.  I'm trying, hard, to just "switch off", if only for a while.