Journey to Release

Counselling in a UK Prison

Smith, Mo, Close, Toni

• Publisher: Waterside Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781909976498
• eBook ISBN: 9781910979433
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy Counselling
• Index: Psychology

Journey to Release is an account of Mo Smith's extensive experience counselling and co-ordinating a counselling service inside 'HM Prison X'. The book gives a history of the service and looks at what is involved in a project of this kind, making it a 'must' for prison professionals and volunteers everywhere. It also provides an insight into the running of an 'embedded' prison counselling service and the clients who use it. A first-hand account, it will be of considerable interest to anyone wishing to learn about the subject, whether as an individual, prison professional, volunteer/potential volunteer, or counselling organizer/provider (including from external agencies). Once a prisoner is released from HMP X there is no further contact so the authors emphasise the importance of counselling that survives the prison setting and thus helps to reduce crime in the future. The book will also be of interest to counsellors and volunteers in a range of other settings in the UK and beyond. Based on practical experience, it focuses wholly on counselling as such (rather, e.g. than psychology/mental health-led aspects, intervention, assessment).

Introduction

The path to releasing pent up emotions and thoughts can be a painful one for anyone: locked-in feelings such as anger or frustration may have their roots in traumas that are still raw despite the passage of time.

For the prisoner, this pain can be additionally intense and impossible to escape.

As counsellors, we uncover painful events and the feelings that go with them by slowly exposing each onion-like layer. The traumas that are unearthed may include things that the client experienced through no fault of their own, or may be about decisions and actions they took because they knew no better at the time.

These events and emotions have often been living within a client for years — perhaps decades — and will have taken a toll upon them. In the prison population, pain and hurt is manifested through aches and pains, irritability and anger, an inability to relax, and a difficulty forming relationships.

In addition, the natural defence mechanisms which act to protect the psyche from unwelcome feelings can develop from light boundaries to thick impenetrable walls. These walls shut out not only the painful emotions and memories, but also everyone and everything that may be able to help, in an ironic reflection of the prison walls themselves.

HMP X (name withheld) is a Category C prison in the UK currently holding over 800 male prisoners.

In 2000, I (Mo Smith) joined HMP X’s Counselling Service as a volunteer counsellor. The service was informal, but clearly doing amazing work with prisoners who wanted to engage and change.

In 2004, I became the co-ordinator of the service and began working with the Governor to introduce safer practices, develop an ethical framework, and grow the service steadily year-on-year.

HMP X’s Counselling Service is unusual in the UK as it is an embedded department within the prison, independent from Healthcare and Psychology.

In other prisons, they perhaps have Cruse Bereavement agency coming in or maybe Rape Crisis in women’s prisons. Some have therapy units which offer holistic treatment.

The Counselling Service deals with anything and everything: abuse, bereavement, relationships, self-harm, depression, anxiety and many more.

My job involves assessing and arranging counselling for suitable prisoners, as well as recruiting and supervising volunteer counsellors. It has been the most rewarding and fulfilling work of my life.

This book contains my thoughts and opinions about how this service works, and why. I don’t pretend to know everything, but I do hope that it may be useful to others considering work in a secure setting or involved in setting-up or running a similar type of counselling service.

Along the way, I have described aspects of clients’ stories with their permission and told their stories in disguise, to protect them.

One

Why Counsel in Prison?

Some people might ask if we should bother counselling prisoners. There is an idea, I think, that they are less than human and should be denied what are thought of as “human comforts.”

To me, every prisoner who asks for counselling is a client. They are human, frail and desperate for answers to the questions of their lives. If you have a problem outside you can get help from various agencies, doctors and support workers. Why not inside prison?

Over the years, I have found that the majority of clients in the prison have experienced some form of negative situation in their childhood which can be identified as a contributing factor to their crimes.

We learn from the moment we are born: how to laugh, when to cry, how to make friends, and how to control and express our emotions. If we are not taught what is right or wrong, and how to problem-solve with compassion and empathy, how do we know what we “should” do?

We all make mistakes — some, truly awful in their scope and impact — but we are capable of regret or remorse. How many times have you said to yourself: “If only I had handled that differently” or “If only I could hold my temper”?

These are normal feelings. Prisoners experience them too.

They too can say “If only” and mean it.

“If only I had dealt with my anger when I was younger instead of waiting until now. At 48, what chance do I have of people believing that I have changed?”

A Client

The prisoners at HMP X can work through a victim awareness course to gain an understanding of the impact of their crime. We have had many referrals from the course (mentioned in Chapter Four) as this opens the client up to acknowledge what they have done.

The prisoners who request counselling are usually very remorseful about what they have done. I can’t speak for the other prisoners, the ones we don’t see.

When our clients come to us, they feel that their whole life has come to a standstill. They feel scarred by what they’ve done. Their families have often disowned them and these men feel forgotten.

At its simplest, counselling helps them to take responsibility for their crimes, and develop some impulse control to stop, think, and walk away.

A was pushed by another prisoner again-and-again. He used all the self-control that his counsellor had helped him find.

“I’m not going to hit you, I am going to walk away and I suggest you do too,” he said.

An officer saw this exchange. He found me and told me what had happened. He told me that A had changed dramatically from the angry man who had arrived at the prison.

B came to counselling wanting answers. Four years ago, he had beaten his three-year-old daughter to death.

Now, still living inside the cloud of shock that had descended on him that night, he asked: “Why did I do it?” and “What on earth was I thinking?”

He said: “My life is over — I deserve everything that is happening to me.”

I always give the counsellors the opportunity to decline a client. In this case, one of the counsellors said that she needed to do so because her own daughter would be on her mind. The counsellors always have this choice.

Exploring the circumstances of his crime and his life was hard for the experienced prison counsellor eventually assigned to B. We worked together during supervision, talking about the memories from her own past that were stirred by her sessions with him and making sure that boundaries were maintained. The counsellor worked on her issues in her own personal therapy and kept in touch with me regularly. They moved forward.

B had been abandoned by his mother when he was five-years-old and left to live with a strict aunt and uncle. He was beaten with a belt regularly and locked away without food or water.

When he became a young man he escaped, only to find himself in an alleyway one night, beaten and sexually assaulted.

That was when he decided to fight back against a world that was his enemy. Alcohol became his friend — the only thing that could wipe out his memories. His relationships were abusive and he often lost control.

One night, his partner said the wrong thing, rejecting him. He beat her and then set upon the screaming child.

The guilt and shame B brought to his sessions was huge.

Counselling didn’t — couldn’t — wipe away his feelings or what he had done, but it enabled him to understand the chain of events and connections that had led him to that terrible night and to begin to accept his actions.

During the times he was locked away by his aunt and uncle, B had learned to bury his feelings. Counselling helped him to access them, and acknowledge the pain and hurt his inner-child was still suffering. He managed to write a letter to that inner-child, apologising to himself for the choices he had made and the path he had taken.

B had a long road to travel. He was not going to be able to forgive himself for what he had done, but gradually he decided that he wasn’t going to take his life.

The counsellor who saw B grew as a professional herself during the work. I feel that it is important to allow counsellors to develop at their own pace and only see the most challenging clients when they are ready and in a stable place.

C had been harming himself for years, driven by feelings from his childhood and the inner-voice of a judgemental father.

When he came to prison, he finally received the help he needed to stop harming and move forward.

He walked into the room, sat down and exhaled deeply.

I said, “That sounded like relief?”

He smiled a little grimly and told me he had been wanting to talk to a counsellor for many years but that none of the prisons he had been in had been able to provide the service.

C told me that he had been put into care from birth, moving from foster home to foster home until he had been taken in by a loving family when he was five.

Tragically, his new parents were killed in a road accident and he was put into a care home.

He remembered the loss vividly — his earliest memories were of disappointment, confusion, loss and sadness.

C was an angry boy who grew into an angry man and got into lots of fights. He was always in trouble. Behind the challenging and demanding little boy was a secret story of abuse in the care home. When he tried to tell, he was beaten and sexually assaulted.

No-one listened to him. When he ran away, he was brought back.

This beginning taught him that he was valueless, pointless, unwanted and unworthy.

In despair, he tried to kill himself. Ironically, drugs saved his life, giving him another way to cope — to escape his life.

C worked hard and showed me that he valued his session by always being on time and making sure that he was showered and tidy for me (this is an important measure of respect in prison as it is easy to let things go).

Soon he decided that he wanted to go to the police — to stand up for himself against the system and people who had abused him. This only became possible because of the work we did in our sessions–building his self-worth and replacing his little-boy understanding with an adult’s insight.

He felt that — as a boy — his care home abusers and foster carers had taught him to get angry and lash out. The man he was becoming during our sessions understood that he was responsible for his own actions now, and that those actions co...

Table of contents

• Copyright and publication details
• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• The prison
• Forewords by the Governors
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Looking Ahead
• Further Reading
• Index