At the moment I am just finding myself. Most of my life I’ve tried fitting in, people-pleasing, having an image. Today I’m finding that I have responsibilities and I need to face them. I’m finding a new way of life for myself, I’m caring more about people, my family. I’m back in Church now, and I have a lot of faith today and a belief in myself. My life has always been crime, prison and drugs. It’s not like that anymore – basically what it is, I’m finding a new life. It’s exciting, and I look forward to every day now. It’s strange but for thirty years I felt that my life belonged to someone else. Now I’m finding myself for the first time, it’s been difficult but I am enjoying being myself. I’m caring for other people now and putting people’s thoughts before my own. In the past it’s always been my way, but it’s not like that anymore and there is a caring side to me now. I want to lead a clean life, a normal life, be a law-abiding citizen, which I don’t know much about. I want to get my family back, have contact with my kids. That’s an important thing for me; I haven’t seen then for years. My prison sentences started at an early age in the 70’s and 80’s until now. From pleasing people and addictions, because my addictions were not just drugs, but gambling, bandits, cars and I also spent four years out of a six years sentence in a French jail for smuggling drugs. The French judicial system goes back to Napoleon and they seem to make it up as they go along. For a foreigner it’s not the place to be. Over there you are classed as a terrorist and they think you should not be in their country. For the first fifteen months it was very lonely because there was no English and I had to learn the language to get by. While I was in prison my girlfriend left me after 12 years, my best friend committed suicide and my brother-in-law was killed, so my kids were the only things that kept me going. It was difficult at first, learning a new language, a new way of life, new diet, but when it came to the end of my sentence I met a lot of English and there was a lot of solidarity. We were a tight group. We had no education, because we were foreigners, no work because we were foreigners and we were extradited. We’d had no visits, no mail. Prison over there is reckoned to be three times as hard because of all this. It’s totally different. Prison hasn’t worked for me. There wasn’t a lot of discipline in my life as I was growing up, but it’s like going to school – if you go for a certain crime, you come out knowing that crime better. After my last sentence in Preston Prison I can see that drugs are rife in there, it was scary. I knew that I’d come out this time with a habit if I didn’t come to T.H.O.M.A.S. there are gangs running about there and I’m classed as of the old school. I never used to be afraid, but even I’m afraid now, you just don’t learn anything in jail. The change I see in the Prison System now is a lot of violence, all drug related. When I was younger, there was a lot of crime but in my opinion in prison today there are a lot of drugs, debt and a lot of people getting hurt; they have no control over it. It’s a sorry place to be. For someone going inside for the first time it must be very scary. I’ve been in the prison system over twenty-five years and I’ve seen it get worse and worse and I think the problem is drugs. Personally I think the government should concentrate on treatment centres, because people go into jail with a habit, do a detox, go into general population which is a different part of the jail and they just carry on as if they were on the outside. They come out learning nothing. Instead of building more prisons they should build more treatment centres. Preston where I come from is a big city with a big drug problem. There has hardly been any help since the early 1990’s. If you want to get clean in Preston you have to do it off your own back. If prisoners have drugs the place is quiet, if they haven’t that’s when the trouble starts. In Preston which is a big prison, there is only a small DDU which works very hard. I have a lot of respect for them and time for them, but it should be a bigger unit. I realised that my life had to change when I was in court. I had no one to turn to, I was on my own, I was homeless, I had no contact with my kids. I got into jail, did a detox, I had contemplated suicide and I had to humble myself and ask for help for the first time in my life. I saw a CARAT worker who introduced me to T.H.O.M.A.S. T.H.OM.A.S. has given me my life back; it’s given my mum some hope in her life; life skills; it’s given me everything I need as long as I work the Programme with the understanding that I am not alone anymore as I always thought I was. There is a lot of hope and belief. I’m getting too old for this now and my life has gone by without realising what I’ve done to others. But I can make amends now and when my mum rings I can hear hope in her voice and she tells me that though she hasn’t seen me she can tell that I’ve changed. I’m quieter now and I’m back in Church twenty-five years later from being an altar boy. |
