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The Hard Times: Prison Diaries
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Apr 6 2025
Pages: 244
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.55 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
A book about crime, punishment, rehabilitation, greed, compassion, dignity, personal choice, and putting a newspaper to bed before the editorial team gets locked up for the night.
HMP North Shore was a Category A prison on the east coast of England. Built on the site of a former RAF camp, the prison lay 12 miles south of the old fishing port of Cragsholme and about 100 miles from anywhere anyone in their right mind would rather be.As beachfront properties go, it offered little opportunity to enjoy the wide expanse of sand on its doorstep. Not that the prison's male residents could ever hope to catch a glimpse of anything beyond the jail's 18-foot-high walls. The only life on the muddy flats below was a transient colony of grey seals dodging low-flying RAF jets on what remained a very active live bombing range.
On a good day, North Shore was home to 250 offenders. However, good days were hard to come by in a place like this; the number was often closer to 320. With much of its population serving life terms, inmates could reasonably expect to share a cell with someone banged up for murder. Not that there were any angels in residence - most of the men behind North Shore's walls had arrived there via a violent route.
I found myself at North Shore for very different reasons. Unlike most of the men behind these walls, I would be walking in and out of the front door every day. Despite this, I was still on the run.
I was on the run from my life as a freelance journalist, scraping together a living from all-too-irregular commissions and shifts in various London newsrooms. I was on the run from a flat I couldn't afford, and from the misery of early morning and late-night commutes to and from zones one and five. I was on the run from the mediocrity of a career I had dreamed of pursuing since I was ten years old. Be careful what you wish for.
I had landed a twelve-month stretch at North Shore, covering maternity leave as the news editor of The Hard Times, a newspaper written for offenders by offenders. I'd been offered the job on the back of a feature I had somehow managed to squeeze into The Guardian. My story about the role of employment in the rehabilitation of offenders struck a chord with Bev, the paper's publisher. Following a hastily organised interview - during which she tore the article apart (was it a slow news day?) - she offered me the job on the spot, and I soon found myself on a train heading north.
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