In conversation the words shocking and shocked spill frequently and easily from the mouths of Susan May and Michelle Nicholson. Between them these two women have served a total of twenty-five years in some of Britain’s harshest prisons for crimes they say they did not commit.

They talk of a sheer incomprehension, of an inability to grasp a reality that materialised around them as they were convicted of crimes they believe they should never have been charged with in the first instance.

“Shocked” walking into a prison, where Michelle describes her first experience as a “newbie” at New Hall where the only option is to be “frightened”. Where “the prison is shouting”, with “the girls in their cells calling to each other” taunting the new intakes. Being “banged in rooms that look horrible… left there till the next morning” with only the echoes of catcalls for company throughout the night. The next day the solitude continues. “Nobody comes to tell you how the routine goes” or to ask “are you alright?” For Michelle the fear this fiery baptism conjures is the reason “why so many people commit suicide in the first couple of days when they reach New Hall”. A prison according to The Howard League for Penal Reform, which since 1998 has had the highest number of self-inflicted deaths.

In 1995, just as Michelle was beginning her life sentence for her supposed role in the murder of her father, and Susan already two years into her term was becoming accustomed to life on the “infamous H wing at Durham”, the total number of women serving life sentences stood at 186, out of a total of 5,792 life prisoners. Today, according to Judge Anthony Thornton, serving high court judge with 13 years experience at the bench, that number is now “approaching 10,000″. A figure greater than Germany, France, Italy and Turkey combined. During that time the number of women convicted of murder, a serious offence such as manslaughter, attempted murder, or imprisoned under the more recent “controversial” Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP), has risen by at least 44%. However, women still only represent a mere 3% of the total lifer population.

For Susan May, a mother of three when she went to prison but now a Grandmother of five, as she sits in the large double-fronted end-of-terrace family home in a suburb of Oldham, she remains to date the only Lifer who has consistently maintained their innocence that has been released on “tariff”. The minimum number of years served in prison before a prisoner can be considered ready for release. Although Susan is able to recount her story with great depth and humour on occasions, the lilt in her voice, the comforting way in which she holds her hands, and more obviously the permanent frowns carved in her face tell a story of a woman who still remains utterly in shock about the events that unfolded around her.

People you meet

However her presence in front of me in her own comfortable surroundings is testament to her own strength of character, as well as the encounters she has had during her time as a Lifer which she describes as being “absolute madness”. She talks of her first Governor at Risely, a Category C prison in Cheshire, who she met recently and recounted to Susan her view of how she spent her first night within that prison. Off how they were struck of Susan’s absolute certainty that “I won’t be stopping, because somebody will be coming along soon … to tell you it’s been a big mistake.” Where every night for the first few months, Susan expected to spot among the new intakes her children or her solicitor to come through the gates ready to take her home from this conscious nightmare.

She talks of the seven years spent at Durham, four years longer than the average Lifer is expected to spend at one of only two first-stage female Lifer prisons in the country. A prison described by a 2004 report by HM Chief Inspectorate of Prisons as having a “constricted and forbidding physical environment” and a “place scarcely likely to enhance the mental state” of the women kept there. As Susan describes it on this “small narrow wing… there was no segregation at all, you mix with [everybody], you rub shoulders with the worst of the worst”, the likes of female paedophiles, terrorists, Mafiosi, and those more infamous such as Rose West and Myra Hyndley. But it was here that Susan encountered Martina Anderson, one of the Brighton Bombers, who helped her “set the standards for how I was going to do my jail.” This “brilliant” influence on Susan’s time there got her into a gym routine, studying, which has led to an Open University degree, fighting her case and creating a prison magazine. Set-up with Sandra Gregory a trafficker of drugs in Thailand, the publication “Time on Your Hands”, provided an avenue, along with proving her innocence, which Susan could dedicate her hopes and energies on.

Common Place

More frighteningly, both Michelle and Susan talk of how scenes of the “horrific” all too quickly become those of routine. Before they went to prison neither woman knew very little about the condition of self-harming, but its frequency inside prison as they saw it, calls into question how people with mental health issues or those seeking attention are dealt with. Susan recalls the case of “one particular girl who used to self-harm by slitting across her throat.” As the girl came stumbling out of her cell with blood dripping “everywhere”, the years of witnessing such incidents, made Susan’s view turn from being one of horror to “Blinking heck, we’re going to get locked in again.” As Michelle says, “you get desensitised to it”, the effect of somebody taking their own life begins to be seen in terms of how it will affect the routines of your own day, the things upon which you become accustomed for your own survival.

Whether through the use of illicit glass women have come across, or sharpening a plastic meal knife, the situation is compounded by the Prison Officer’s lack of ability to act. Even in cases where a prisoner reports to a PO, “Miss, I’ve got some glass in my cell, and I’m gonna cut up later”, they are allowed to search that cell, but if nothing is found they cannot place that girl in solitary conditions for protective measures as it infringes that individuals human rights. All too often the prisoner is allowed to return to their cell and wherever the object is “secreted on herself”, allows for “cutting up” in their own time which can lead to a deadly conclusion.

The “negativity” which pervades prison, as Michelle often points out, is as liable to come from the officers themselves as well as the other prisoners. She tells me of an incident she witnesses first hand. A lifer, Kate, is dependent upon an asthma inhaler to aid her breathing. A member of staff refuses to give it to Kate until the next day and threatens her with a warning if she keeps up her protests. “That night she had an asthma attack and dies”. Another of the one hundred and twenty-seven women that have died in prison since 1996.

System that cannot cope

Sitting in early 2007, evidence presented to a Home Affairs Select Committee stated, “The prison estate has always been poorly equipped to deal with women lifers.” It has been found there are higher levels of drug use in the female system than the male. A 2001 survey found two-thirds of female prisoners were found to have a drug problem. Further evidence presented to the Committee found up to 80% of women in prison have some form of diagnosable mental health problem. Almost half reported to have experienced physical, emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life. A quarter spent time in local authority care as a child, and 40% left school before the age of 16. Against this background, the Committee quoting evidence from an earlier Howard League report, found “women lifers usually served their sentences further away from home and due to poor resources, spent an average of two years longer than their male counterparts despite having a far lower reconviction rate.” Allied to this, comments from Michelle and Susan, in addition to other female lifers points to a “penal system geared to men, not women.”

Where “there are several courses on offer in the male prisons that are not available in the female”. The lack of worthwhile jobs available in prison, where “mind-numbing” ones take precedent over teaching new skills they can use on release. And when they are released back into the community on a ‘life licence’, the Griffins Society that works with female offenders highlights the situation that many “lifers will be released into the community with very little support.” The licence lasting in effect for the remainder of their life, places conditions on that individual such as who they socialise with and where they may live and work.

A female Lifer must manage in a system which is not fundamentally geared to dealing with them, in an environment where the majority of those around them suffer from the worst ills which society can throw up. Of course an individual that commits a crime must pay the price for that crime. But does the current penal system do so in a humane and effective way? Especially if you are one of the many where the issue of guilt is in doubt.