Dying inside

Our prison system is a seldom explored area of death and dying. In fact, little is known about what goes on in our prisons, mostly because people don’t care enough about those inside to be remotely interested in what happens to them. This doesn’t surprise me. Crime angers people. But I’ve spent time in prisons and I met lots of people almost all of whom would benefit from a programme which made a real and earnest effort to rehabilitate them.

If you’re interested to find out what prison is like, have a look at Ben’s Prison Blog. Ben was imprisoned at the age of 14 for killing  a friend in a fight. He’s still there 30 years later. He is the UK’s first and only prison blogger.

If you want to know what extreme old age in prison looks like, here’s a film from the US. It is only partially descriptive of what happens in UK prisons because Americans lock up more people for longer than we do. But it shows you the consequences of the throw-away-the-key approach.

My thanks to John Hirst for pointing this film out to me.