The Unexpected Book Group Guest That Changed My Life by Angela Clarke

In 2017 I was giving a talk to a book group in a library, when a woman arrived late. She came in, all apologies, clutching my book in one hand, and holding on tightly to her thirteen-month-old daughter with the other. Her child tottered in that slow, Thunderbird-puppet way that signifies one who’s just learnt to walk. Her soft face, gap-toothed grinning at this new skill. It was obvious why they’d been delayed; the little girl’s tiny shoes unformed on her feet, waved in the air with each unpractised and dawdling step. Everyone made room for them. Cooing over the little girl. Budging up. This would have been a cute but fairly unremarkable moment, had the library not been within a prison. And the woman clutching the child’s hand a prisoner. It took a second for me to process: mother and baby were both living behind bars. 

There is something genuinely shocking in seeing the sweet guileless, curl-framed face of a toddler, in the harsh, institutional backdrop of a prison. And as soon as I got back to my smartphone (no phones, computers, or electronic devices are allowed inside), I started to dig into the facts. 

There are an estimated 1000 women who are currently pregnant in the UK prison system. Estimated, because no one keeps proper records. And there are only 64 Mother and Baby Unit (MBUs) places available. The Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefings make for further concerning reading. 

Women make up only 5% of the prison population in the UK, with 82% have committed a non-violent offence. But the use of custodial sentences for women has still halved in the last ten years. 79% suffer from mental health issues. 10% are foreign nationals, with many known to have been coerced or trafficked into offending. And the rates of self-harm of female prisoners are the highest among the prison system. Twelve female prisoners took their lives in 2016. 

And this is before you consider the number of women (and men) in prison who are on remand. They’ve been charged with a crime, but are yet to go to court. They could be innocent. Regardless, many still find themselves separated from family and children on the outside. And, if the timing is bad, and they are pregnant, they face the realistic prospect of having a baby behind bars. 

Part of the issue with women entering the penal system, is that they are still predominantly the heart of the family on the outside. Research carried out by the home office (Caddle and Crisp, 1997), suggests that 61% of female prisoners are mothers to under 18s. I have overheard female prisoners – who have queued to use one of the only working phones available to them – reminding family members back home that it’s football this term at school, and where to find Jimmy’s kit. They are still running the home from inside. 

Alternatives to incarceration should be sought for women. And if we do imprison them, we should seek to not break up families and separate mothers from their new born babies. Despite the apparent disparity between supply and demand, many of the 64 MBU places available in the UK are not utilised. An expectant mother must present her case to a board (usually comprised of the governor, prison officials, and social services) without access to legal aid or assistance. If she fails to secure a place, and most do, the baby is removed at birth. The child is then either given to a family member outside, or passed into the care system. The mother is returned to her cell, usually with no access to counselling, and required to resume normal prison duties. 

Despite writing crime procedurals and thrillers for a number of years, and being a long-term reader and consumer of crime fiction, I knew nothing of the plight of expectant and new mothers within the UK prison system. When that little girl toddled into my book group she brought with her the kernel of an idea. What if you were pregnant when you were framed for a crime, and sent to jail? How would you prove your innocence from inside? How would you protect your unborn child? And what would you do, if you failed to get a MBU place, and believed your baby was to be given to the very person who framed you? On My Life tells the story of Jenna, who faces this very real nightmare scenario. 

Angela Clarke’s fifth book and debut psychological thriller On My Life is published by Hodder 11 July 2019.

Jenna knows she didn't do it. But she is running out of time to prove it...  Framed. Imprisoned. Pregnant.  Jenna thought she had the perfect life: a loving fiance, a great job, a beautiful home. Then she finds her stepdaughter murdered; her partner missing.  And the police think she did it... Locked up to await trial, surrounded by prisoners who'd hurt her if they knew what she's accused of, certain someone close to her has framed her, Jenna knows what she needs to do: Clear her name, save her baby, find the killer.

Buy the book here.

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Angela is a broadcaster, screenwriter, and The Sunday Times bestselling author of the Social Media Murders, including Follow Me, Watch Me and Trust Me. Angela has appeared on CBS Reality’s Written In Blood, on stage for BBC Edinburgh Fringe and on BBC News 24’s Ouch comedy special, at Noirwich, Camp Bestival, Panic! (in partnership with the Barbican, Goldsmiths University and The Guardian), City University, at HM Prisons, and hosted BBC 3 Counties Radio show Tales From Your Life. She won the Young Stationers' Prize 2015 for achievement and promise in writing. A sufferer of EDS III, Angela is passionate about bringing marginalised voices into publishing. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Research links for this article: 

Birth Companions: https://www.birthcompanions.org.uk/resources/48-safeguarding-children-when-sentencing-mothers

Prison Reform Trust Bromley Briefings: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Bromley%20Briefings/Prison%20the%20facts%20Summer%202019.pdf

Caddle and Crisp, 1997 https://hubble-live-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/birth-companions/attachment/file/55/Motherhood_disrupted.pdf

Jane Corry on Going Back to Prison

I first went to prison eight years ago. Not, I hasten to add, because I’d done anything wrong. I like to think of myself as quite a good girl with my only major offence being that I once parked on a double yellow line (and got caught).

No. I went to prison because my first marriage had ended and – in the same week – my regular weekly column for a woman’s magazine was terminated because the editor left. I was in dire need of regular weekly income so I applied for a job as writer in residence of a high security male prison which was advertised in a national newspaper.

Of course I didn’t want it.   The idea of going into a prison was utterly terrifying. I ‘d seen The Green Mile. So I knew – or thought I did – what going Inside was like. My fears were born out when I arrived at the prison. On the left was a rather beautiful house which turned out to be the admin building. On the right was a high wall with a large nasty coil of barbed wire and several forbidding notices outside.  I was to work in the latter.

Luckily, I messed up the interview almost as soon as I started when the governor – a kindly man who turned out to be a poet on the side – asked what I would do if I was running a writing session and a prison officer told us to leave the room. ‘I’d tell the men to finish half-way through a written sentence so that when they came back, it would be easier to pick it up again,’ I chirped. It’s actually quite a good useful writing tip but I could tell from everyone’s faces I had said the wrong thing.

‘And by that time,’ said the governor gently, ‘most of the prison might have escaped.’

Ah. I hadn’t thought of that one. From then on, I relaxed, knowing that I’d blown it. So when they rang that night to offer me the job, I was horrified. I rang a cousin who was helping me out with practical things during the divorce. ‘Go for it,’ he said. ‘What a challenge!’

Then I rang my sister. ‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘You’re in a difficult emotional state at the moment. Why do you want to work in a depressing environment like that?’

That decided it. I accepted.

On the first day, I was given the keys to the prison. I had to wear them on my belt at all times and be sure to hand them in at the end of the day or I would be sacked on the spot. If they got stuck in a door (which did actually happen later on), I had to stay still until someone came to rescue me.  One had to be particularly careful going through double doors because there was only an inch or so between them and there were always those few seconds when both doors were open and the men on the other side could, in theory, rush through.

They never did.

I also learned, rather to my horror, that I would not be running my writing groups with any officers present. There weren’t enough staff. It would be just me and the men. Sometimes it would be me and just one man for one-to-one feedback. In practice, this was not as scary as it sounded. My writing workshops were voluntary. I was not part of the education curriculum. In fact, prisoners had to get permission from their wings to attend. (This is a very democratically-run prison with therapy in the morning and an extremely low re-offending rate, partly as a result.)  Nearly all the men I came across wanted to write rather than cause trouble.

However, I did have one very intelligent man who wanted individual help. On the surface, he looked like the kind of chap you’d invite to a diner party. But there was something about  him which froze me to my very soul. I later looked up his name on Google and felt pretty sick. But I carried on with our sessions and nothing happened.

One day, there wasn’t a room available for our workshops. The men – most of whom were rapists, murderers or GBH offenders - suggested I went upstairs to their communal lounge near their pads (bedrooms). I pointed out that this wasn’t allowed. ‘Why don’t you ask the signing-in officer,’ one suggested. I did, confident in the knowledge that he would say no. He said yes.

I then had a choice. I could go with the men and, if something happened, everyone would blame me for taking a risk. (I could just see the headlines about ‘naïve blonde going upstairs’). Or I could refuse and then lose the trust of these men with whom I had been working for a year. I chose the first. We had a very rewarding peaceful writing session.

On other occasions, however I was variously spat at by a prisoner; shouted at by someone because I’d lost his work (I found it the next day); and sexually intimidated  by another (the rest of the men in the group told him to leave in not such quite polite terms). 

One experience which will always stay with me, was talking to a man who had learned crime at his mother’s knee. For him,  robbery was a natural career progression. 

I helped him write  his life story which won a major national prize. This improved his self-confidence and behaviour (the whole reason for having a writer in residence) and will, with luck, help him make that transition back into society in a few years’ time.

I worked in the prison for two days a week for three years. But then I got married again and moved many miles away. I ran a couple of workshops in other prisons but they weren’t like ‘my’ prison. My heart wasn’t in it. At the same time, my novels which had until then been in the romance genre, began getting darker and darker. I kept thinking about the young women lawyers whom I used to see going into prison to visit offenders and so I began writing My Husband’s Wife which then got accepted by Penguin and became a Sunday Times best-seller. I have written three more since then, the latest of which is called I Looked Away and comes out this summer. A few months ago, MHW was optioned as a television series. I knew that my old prison hadn’t been able to afford another writer after I left, thanks to budget cuts so I decided to use the option advance to fund someone for one day a week over a year. I couldn’t afford any more than that. But it felt like the right thing to do.

I did, however, ask if I could be involved in the selection process which took place earlier this year This was much harder than I’d thought.  We advertised on social media and were deluged with applicants.  Some of them I knew personally as they were fellow writers. The governor asked me to draw up a short list but it was too hard. So I gave him twenty names and asked him to whittle it down.

Then came the tough part. I went back into my old prison to be part of the interview panel.

I hadn’t realised how daunted I would feel about going through those gates again. It was almost like doing it for the first time. Like me, the candidates were also interviewed by the prisoners themselves. I didn’t know any of them. ‘My’ men had moved on to other prisons. But their successors reminded me of how I’d felt when I first came face to face with an offender. Contrary to popular belief, prisoners aren’t all beefy with tattoos. Many look like a neighbour or a grandfather or a dad on the school run. But some do fit the stereotype. And part of the test for someone who works in a prison is to see if they can handle it.

We were then given debriefing sessions by the prisoners on what they thought of the applicants. And then we interviewed the latter about what they thought they could bring to the role. After that, the panel had to reach agreement on who to pick. Obviously I can’t go into personal detail. But I can tell you that by the end of the day, I was utterly drained. Perhaps it was because of the emotional trauma of going back into a prison environment. Maybe it was being close to offenders again. Or perhaps it was because I identified with the mixed emotions of the applicants.

I also looked back at my former self and wondered, to be honest, how I had done it. Yet at the same time, I am so glad I did. It is, hand on heart, the most rewarding job I have ever done. Many of my men told me that if I hadn’t encouraged them to write, they might have ‘clocked’ someone instead. Officers also reported that behaviour had improved.  For my part, the job had helped me step out of a sheltered middle-class life and into a very real world.   

I am now trying to get funding for another prison, near London, where I have been running some free workshops. If My Husband’s Wife gets to the screen, I have made a promise to myself that I will use that money to continue my support. Meanwhile, if anyone knows of a philanthropist, please get in touch! Writing is a great healer both for the reader and author. Let’s help to spread the word.