An afternoon in prison.

Everything from the chat with the taxi driver, to talking about art with someone serving life for murder.

Phoebe Minson

Nov 17, 2024

Hello! Thank you for clicking on me.

What to expect from this post:

A bit of a diary entry from an afternoon that I spent visiting a prison last week. Everything from the chat with the taxi driver, to talking about art with someone serving life for murder.
A book that easily makes my top 10 reads of the year list, and which I highly recommend.
An exhibition which I also highly recommend.

When you get to the end, come and find me in the comments if you fancy.

Love Phoebe x

ps. anything said by any residents has been paraphrased, identifying details removed or changed, I had no devices with me to record so things are from memory only and adapted to ensure privacy.

I was late to my meeting on Thursday morning because I went back home to grab my passport, I already had my driver’s license but just in case. I hopped on the train at Marylebone and sunk into an hour with one of my current reads (Anatomy of a Breakthrough) and read about how ‘Take on Me’ was written a decade before it hit the number one spot. Great things take time.

Got in a taxi. Texted two colleagues who’ve spent the most time in prisons (one as an educator and researcher, and one as a family psychotherapist), I also texted my mum (ex-criminal and family barrister turned criminologist) - but she was in San Francisco and didn’t reply until I had left.

(not one line… but very kind and helpful nonetheless)

(again, not one line, I guess the ask was figurative not literal. Another very kind and helpful response. I work with brilliant people.)

Called the prison. “I’m on my way, I’ll still get to you in good time before 2 PM but it might be more like 1:40 PM instead of 1:30 PM. Traffic.”

“Not to worry! See you soon!”

The taxi dropped me off. £22. Tap. I fumbled for my phone as I squinted up a wide deserted driveway to multiple buildings, scanning for a sign, none of them clearly marked ‘reception’ or ‘gatehouse’. I’d read the instructions for my visit so many times I thought I had them memorised. Clearly not.

“EXCUSEEEE MEEEE WHAT ARE YOU DOING? NO PHONES NONE NOT EVEN THE DEPUTY’S” a man five inches higher and three times my body weight bellowed at me from my left, as another guard screeched around the opposite corner in a pincer move.

“Hello, good afternoon! Sorry I was just finding the map, I’m looking for the gatehouse, I need to check in with security - I’m here for the social afternoon!”

“WHAT? You’re here for what?”

We got there eventually. I popped all my electronics in a thin metal locker and joked about Percy Pigs being the only thing of value left in my backpack. “Would you like one?” I got a little smile, we were practically best friends.

I was walked 500m by a guard who told me that his previous job had been “not great, actually… pretty soul sucking. Horrific come to think of it. This is much better, it feels different, it feels like I’m making a difference. Anyway, here you are. When you come back, walk exactly the way we came. Got it?” Got it.

I queued in the cold; in the shadow of the vehicle airlock and 17ft of brick (standard height for prison walls according to Google, I’m not that good at eyeballing the height of walls). I exchanged pleasantries with the chaplain who was also checking in, sorted out my ID, into one airlock, wait, take jacket off, had a security pat down, into the next airlock, wait, put jacket on. Pulled out my £1 coin (in case the locker for my bag and scarf was a £1 coin locker. It wasn't.) I got a little key. Complimented the security guard’s nails, chatted about cold weather drying out our hair, and what we wouldn’t do for a hot holiday! Then I signed a piece of paper.

I was passed to a lovely woman who had been a prison guard but was now a facilitator, she’d “tried to retire, but something pulled me back! At least I’m not in uniform anymore.” We walked through gardens with exceptionally neat edges, perfectly trimmed trees, and a sign which I half read and said something about Italian influence. The skies were grey. The buildings were grey. The grass was a luminous green. Uncomfortably bright against the aforementioned. Have you ever read ‘Never let me go’ by Ishiguro? It reminded me a bit of how I imagined the school in that novel to be. Uncanny. Unsettling. Uncomfortable.

This was HMP Grendon. A Category B men’s prison, and a therapeutic community which operates across six wings, each functioning autonomously and housing around 40 men. The second secure setting I’ve visited this year. First adult’s.

The gardens were quickly forgotten as I walked down about 200m of enclosed corridor, dead straight (at a disconcerting steep downwards angle, were we on a hill? or going underground?), flood lighting, no doors, no windows, chatting curiously to my host, before being handed over (through evermore triple locked doors) to a uniformed guard who had only been there three weeks having moved over from a Category A prison. “What’s the biggest difference?” I asked her as she ushered me to the tea and biscuits counter.

“Well.” Pause for dramatic effect. “There’s been NO alarms. I was at the last place for 5 years, we had 10 days without an alarm, in that whole time.”

She shook her head in disbelief and nodded a smile of thanks at the resident who had served us mugs of boiling hot tea (I embarrassingly burned my tongue instantly).

“I don’t feel like I’m working. Everyone is so friendly, so kind. The other guards say “Hi, you’re new, nice to meet you”, I play pool and card games, and did I mention there's been no alarms. Nothing.” Then she humbly caveated her lack of knowledge of the wing with her newness and proceeded to tell me in excellent detail how it all worked.

Men must be referred, or refer themselves to move to Grendon from a Category B or C prison, if they have more than 18 months to serve and have been off Category A or escape list for at least six months. They must meet the “drug-free” criteria (no positive drug tests within two months of referral), and they must understand and sign up to the standards and expectations of the community which include:

daily group or community meetings
regular group and individual therapy
community activities to promote skill development and generalisation, e.g. work assignments, delegated responsibilities, organising events, involvement in prisoner/staff committees
staff supporting the community in democratic decision-making and providing pro social role models
staff and prisoners challenging and giving feedback about behaviour that is anti-social or linked to offending behaviour patterns.

Compared to other prisons, residents/prisoners (the words were used interchangeably which admittedly added to my discomfort) have more privacy (fewer cameras, fewer guards, individual cells), more autonomy, and more to do. They are still in prison. Some, for a very long time.

I spent the next two hours chatting over cups of tea and custard creams to several men, I heard about the democratic election of the Chair and Vice Chair position, and how there are reps for just about everything (Plant Rep, Fish Tank Rep, Gym Rep). I heard about the art therapy, and enjoyed leafing through flip books of cartoons and illustrations done over the last decade by one man.

I heard snippets of stories; how they had come to Grendon, where they were before, the difficulty of transitioning, their hopes, their commitments to growing and learning and understanding themselves and others, their childhood traumas (survived an attempted murder as a child, starvation and neglect amongst other things) how long they had left (a few years, life), how they felt about serving their sentence (“It’s not just me serving it, it’s my family”). How they felt about killing someone, or hurting someone, or hurting themselves. How pencil drawings had helped them break through grief; the darkest and blackest memories, pulled into the light, and rendered in beauty.

Flip me. Art is powerful stuff. As if I needed reminding. I’m understanding more and more that wherever you find pure love, pure truth, the whole of life, pure creativity, the child artist, you find God - in whatever way you know or think God to be - and God hangs out in Grendon.

Mostly, they told me all this with soft smiles, self deprecating jokes, and such a high level of emotional intelligence - which I’d find hard to locate maybe… anywhere else? Phrases like “beginning to understand consequential thinking was a game changer for me” and “considering myself and my actions as part of a wider cycle of harm gives me clarity, but doesn’t remove my accountability, you know?” took me aback and in the old-fashioned-dentist-waiting-room-aesthetic community room, echoing with poor acoustics and too many people, aggressively lit and with uniformed guards leaning relaxed against doorframes and sofas, eating digestive biscuits, it all felt… you guessed it, uncanny. Unsettling. Uncomfortable. The men themselves couldn’t have been more interesting, interested, engaged, honest and funny. Human. Obviously. But I was still in a prison. And most importantly, so were they.

The whole room fell silent for about 30 minutes somewhere in the middle, and we listened to a round of speeches. The Chair, a few residents, a few members of therapeutic staff. a former resident, a resident who had been deselected for drug misuse and had been reselected after some time away, “I realised I had buried a little boy a long time ago, and through this process I had to dig him back up and shake him off and look him in the eyes. And I knew I’d let him down. So what can I do to make it better? I was in the care system, I was an addict at the age of 9, and in jail by 13. The world made up it’s mind about me, and maybe I did too. I’m an old man now, but I still have time to make it better. All you lads, we all have the time to make it better. It will be worth it.”

It was chilling. I felt overwhelmingly privileged to be let into this space, and I felt weirdly unworthy. I kept forgetting to breathe, realising a few milliseconds too late each time that I'd been holding my breath and having to disguise my heavy breathing as some kind of choking on a ginger snap. Kind smiles were directed my way.

Before I knew it I was being ushered out, shaking hands, ‘all the best mate, enjoy that apple pie later’, what do you say to people you’re leaving in prison? I was given a bit of a challenge by an artist who I’d spoken to about my current creative recovery to “just do the bloody art and I’d love to see it if you get the courage! You know where I am.”

My last conversation was with a member of staff, a therapeutic practitioner, who spoke to me about what happens when the men are released.

“I just hope that they don’t harm someone else, and they don’t. That would be reoffending in my eyes. Unfortunately, the world they go back to is one where they are stigmatised, likely homeless, and having to navigate a society which has moved on 5, 10, 20 years without them. They’re hungry, lonely, doing their best, and the world is giving them it’s worst. They’ve done the work in here. And it is hard work. It is undoing and unpicking a lifetime of trauma, harm, and some brutal emotions like shame and guilt, and it’s not for everyone, people can’t always stick with it, it’s exhausting, it’s rewiring your whole world view and view of yourself. They’ve often done it with limited, or no, support from loved ones because either it’s too far away and too expensive for them to visit (I spoke to men from the North East, Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall), or there isn’t anyone to visit them in the first place. It’s a hopeful place here, it is, but we’re not naive. There are bigger things at play. And that’s hard.”

(Paraphrased)

On my way out, I noticed the framed art lining the corridors I had walked in through. When did that appear? Portraits, landscapes, line drawings, graffiti, little acrylic paintings of birds, a poem or two, some typography, photographs of the wing, handprints, children. I took them all in. Airlock, wait, next airlock, wait. Through security, one at a time, unlock the little locker, hand in the little key. Airlock, wait. Fresh air.

I shared a taxi with another visitor back to the station. £22. Tap. We spoke about complex systems and structures and how they don’t work together, the taxi driver chimed in. He was having trouble getting medical help for his father-in-law. The GP wasn’t talking to the Pharmacist, who wasn't talking to the care home, or they were talking but something had been lost in translation. Either way. His father in law was in pain, and he couldn't fix it.

My fellow visitor (a therapeutic practitioner in another secure setting) asked me how I’d approach getting other professionals to listen and to cooperate in getting the best multi-agency care for a patient. “Persistence?” I offered weakly and painfully, “and work out what their hook is, what’s their lever? How can you make their life easier, whilst getting what you want for your patient. How might that create a ripple effect or influence another part of the system? It might work. It might not. Listen first. Analyse, think creatively, the unsolvable problems are, more often than not, solvable. Try and sell them a solution where the payment addresses your need.”

“I’d never thought about it like that”

Turns out, that’s a lot of what I think about.

I got on the train back into London, and my body and brain shut off. I slept the whole way home.

And since Thursday, slightly embarrassingly perhaps, every run, every coffee, every hug, every everything has felt like more. And I’ve felt the weight of being free.

Thanks for reading, this post is public by the way so feel free to share it.

One of the best books I’ve read this year was “What are prisons for?” by Hindpal Singh Bui (find here). Published this year, it forensically dissects the history of prisons, colonial influence on prisons, mass incarceration, race, the make up of prisoners, life inside prison and the individual and social ideologies and beliefs which uphold and shape the prison system.

I’d really encourage you to read it if you felt anything whilst reading this (and thank you by the way, it was important for me to record it).

The other part of the week which was prison-y was the brilliant, moving, and essential-viewing exhibition ‘No Comment’ at the Southbank Centre (basement level, look for the pink Spirit Level sign.) It’s Koestler Arts’ 17th annual exhibition of artwork from the criminal justice system, featuring over 200 pieces submitted to the 2024 Koestler Awards by people in prisons, secure hospitals, children’s homes, immigration removal centres, and those on probation and community sentences.

If you’re not London based, or you have other things going on, here’s a few minutes which show and tell you quite a lot about it:

Click here for my tour, it’s my latest video.

Click here for the co-curator’s perspectives.

Ok that’s all.

Not to give you whiplash but the other piece of writing I’ve been working on over the weekend is about female bodies, insecurities, sitting for nude life drawings, the female body in art, social media, face editing apps, and bodily autonomy (I’m afraid I may mention the new US administration, you’ve been forewarned.)

Anyway, that will come at some point (she says noncommittally).

I’d love to hear from you if you made it this far, have you ever been to a prison? What was it like? Do you have strong views on crime and punishment or art? Or even weak views? What small freedom feels less small after reading the above. Writing this in my favourite cafe with a hot matcha is mine. The weight of being free.

All the Art We Cannot See

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