Porridge

As far as we know this is the first of its kind anywhere.

This is a prison diary written from a Scottish jail.

It's a cliche to say it's a harrowing account but the honesty and immediacy makes it much better than a documentary. Follow this guy's story as he recounts the experience of going to prison for the first time.

Nobody would doubt the need for people to be taken to account for their actions, but the casual institutionalised degradation is telling.

Before you ask, he's in for an aggravated traffic offence. Post comments and they'll be answered from prison.

Does anyone know of anyone else in the world doing this?

1 comment

http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com/

Not quite as serious as he relies on humor (that's American for humour), Yet sounds like a pretty awful place.

"My new co-habitants are enduring the twin evils of a broken swamp-cooler and a cockroach infestation. They are proving to be the crème de le crème of good sufferers. A neighbouring asthmatic inmate happily described how he inhaled a cockroach that had crept into his nebulizer. He could feel the insect crawling around inside him and promptly vomited his stomach contents. Unfortunately the cockroach was not ejected, as it was lodged in his lung. He was subsequently awarded “sufferer of the week� without any real competition. *

* “Sufferer of the week� was an idea of mine that has delighted and distracted my fellow inmates. The title is given to the inmate who the rest of the pod feel has suffered most.

My cellmate and I have used 6 tubes of AmerFresh toothpaste and 6 ounces of Razorless Beard remover cementing cracks in the walls. The cockroaches still flood our cell every night and I have awoken several times this week to observe my body hair stood up on end and a cockroach crawling on my person. I had previously considered my ape-like fur coating as one of nature's cruel jokes, but now I have discovered that it is a useful defensive shield against verminous insects. My upright hairs must seem like an unwelcoming forest to the little foragers."

left by tiny on 06 January 2006