Alex

A lighthouse in a terrible storm

I was given an 8.5 year sentence in March 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement and I was on trial in the week Harvey Weinstein was being arrested in New York. Spending two nights in police cells before being taken to HMP Winchester to be doubled-up with a very ill pensioner was the bleakest, most difficult time I can remember. At reception, alongside being reduced to a number, was a leaflet for FASO. I wrote as soon as I was at last given a pen, and was thenceforth given monthly emotional sustenance mostly from Margaret, as she kept me informed of other peoples’ challenges during this era of automatically ‘believing the victims’. The tie-in with Progressing Prisoners Maintaining Innocence (PPMI) organisation was immensely helpful too.

Through FASO and learning what I could about the 21st century justice system, I learned that a third of British men had a criminal record, and that there were 1500 wrongful convictions per year (as reported by both the CPS and the BBC). At some point Conflict Resolution will need to be used for most known-party allegations, if the state doesn’t want to spuriously convict thousands more men as they aim to increase prison numbers, at the cost of £45,000 to the taxpayer per year. There is already an overwhelming and increasing ambivalence about sex convictions in prison, due to the enormous rate and wide variety of the people being sent there. Margaret and FASO were the first to throw a lifeline to my personal raft, just before I went under, and I can’t thank them enough.