Having just finished the last of the christmas cake, a project upon which I have been working devotedly and unaided for a full week, I finally settle down to writing again, considering it marginally preferable to the physical exercise I ought to be contemplating if I’m ever to get into anything with the word skinny in the title again. This blog used to practically write itself, my ire erupting volcanically at weekly intervals. In the beginning every story from the slammer was so implausible and fascinatingly horrid that words rained down onto the page like molten lava. Fiery red. Burnt orange. My pen used to be inked by tears, but I am rarely moved to pick it up now. Hot rage has become cold with the time and prison time is time like no other. Those who have never served it do not understand. Tattoo artists the world over depict its unique torture perfectly as a clock with no hands. The love is still there. I feel it occasionally in fractional thaws that surge like meltwater when we hold each other tightly at the end of a visit, but even when the officers hang back kindly as they clear the hall, heads bowed to give some scant privacy to our last desperate moments together, time is never on our side and soon I am leaving again, waiting by the grey perimeter fence, then back to the car and the dark motorway home. They don’t call it the chiller for nothing. We are human deep freezers now, trying to preserve the lovers we used to be and dream we’ll be again. Nothing flows anymore in this arctic emotional landscape. Blogging has begun to feel curiously like childbirth and Mary Mother of Jesus herself (plus any other mother who has gone into labour over Christmas) will attest that this is an inadvisable pursuit during the festive season, hence no December blog this year. It’s not that there is nothing to write about: in November Prisonbag won the Longford Prize for outstanding achievement making it’s mum proud as punch. There’s precious little dignity in prisonwifery and this was a small moment of unexpected triumph, plus I got to wear heals, read aloud in Westminster and kiss Jon Snow (the broadcaster not the Game of Thrones hottie, but still…). I was invited onto Woman’s hour again too for a special New Year’s Day edition, which pretty much means I’ve arrived at the pinnacle of my ambition and can die happy, and yet still the page stays blank. On the last day of the year comes the inevitable fall. Rob is refused his long awaited move to Dcat (open prison) on the basis that there is an unsatisfied confiscation order against him. This is not actually grounds for refusing a person’s passage through the prison system, but that is slightly beside the point here as no such order has even been issued against Rob anyway. This is prison all over. They get it wrong. You say “Rubbish, show me some evidence, like say, the confiscation order…?”, they say “chocolate starfish cardboard” or something equally senile, and that is the end of it. They always win because they hold the power and the keys to your cell. We’ll appeal. We’ll wait. But it’s hard to keep faith with the injustice system. And why would you keep a (hitherto) non-violent man who is no flight risk under constant guard in any case? Are we made of money in “Great” Britain? Don’t we need the cash to turn the M20 into a car park for Brexit or something? Rob’s immaculate behaviour whilst in prison is mentioned on the refusal letter but counts for nothing, else it wouldn’t have been a refusal letter… This man has been bankrupted, all of his businesses have been dissolved, his pension has been taken and he is serving a nine year jail term. The family world he left will not be the one he will one day rejoin. The girls are almost unrecognisable from the children they were when he left. His mum, fully compos mentis prior to his conviction will probably never see him again or recognise him if she does due to the onset of full-blown dementia - “chocolate starfish cardboard” is a line I borrowed from her… He has nothing at all in the world except for his great spirit and a kindness and intelligence which make it possible to keep on loving him from all the way across the universe in the free world. He has us, but it takes every iota of strength we can muster to counteract the best efforts of the system to prise us apart. When will the pound of flesh be had I wonder? After some really committed gluttony this year, aided and abetted by the efforts of my youngest who has been making sinfully good salted caramel in large batches, ostensibly as Christmas gifts but mostly for family consumption, I have several extra pounds to donate to the MOJ, but it is a hungry beast… What will it take to change the prison system for one that works? It is a question I am asked daily in emails from despairing folk with loved ones held in British prisons. Seventy percent of the 61,500 people imprisoned in 2018 were sentenced for non violent offences. We lock up more of our population than any other European country and more of our prison population are now serving life sentences even than in the US and yet the national audit office confirms that there is no correlation between prison population and levels of crime. I.e prison doesn’t work. The public just think it does. I see no sense of urgency in the corridors of power however. My friend and neighbour Jacob Tas, head of our biggest non governmental prison reform organisation NACRO (who also throws a mean New Year’s Eve party btw) is so utterly demoralised by the constant changing of ministers and the lack of bravery and action vis a vis prison reform in Westminster that he is leaving the job to work on the Dutch Lifeboats. He has given up and I am hard on his heels. I used to think that telling our story might help, but I don’t think that anyone in power is listening. Perhaps we need more than words? Should we prison families begin sending in weekly tupperwares of rotting flesh and viscera to the Ministry of Justice as a symbolic representation of what their system is doing to our families and children whilst also failing to make our streets safer or reduce crime or reoffending? Is 2019 the year for action? My midriff certainly hopes so!