Former Holloway prisoner Lindsay Dewane speaks to Rob Grant about the first few nights in Europe’s second biggest women’s prison.
“If you smoke you get given tobacco, Rizla and a box of matches when you first go in. If you’re not a smoker they give you a goody bag with biscuits and sweets.
When you go into prison for the first night they put you in the reception.
It doesn’t feel like prison because it’s carpeted, there are curtains on the windows, a wooden bed, a spring mattress and a quilt on the bed.
It’s a shock when you move to the main prison. It’s shabby, the walls are falling apart, the blankets are itchy and there are no carpets or curtains. It’s sparse in comparison.
There are three along one wall, two along the other wall and the loo in a dormitory. A foam mattress, a cabinet, a locker, a wardrobe, some drawers and a safe under the bed is all you have for your possessions.
The locker is only wood so if anybody wanted to get into it they’d just spin it round and kick the back in. I’ve seen it done a thousand times.
They’re very strict, you must to get to education from 8am – 12.30pm.
Here you learn skills such as hairdressing, mechanics, carpentry and textiles or lessons to improve English and maths. You get paid 50p for every lesson you attend.
If you miss education three times in one month you go to solitary. I only ever heard about it from others. It’s a tiny little cell, about two feet wide and about three feet long where you’re given three meals a day and one hour of exercise in ‘the cage’.
Serious offences, such as fighting with prison officers, are punished by up to three months in solitary confinement. But avoid solitary and you cannot get bored in Holloway prison – there’s always something to do.
Once a week you get given a canteen sheet which has all the products they sell in the shop.
Women in Holloway who get mistreated put themselves in that position. I’ve seen it first hand, they’re lippy with the officers.
They just continue the attitude they had out on the road.
In prison, you just can’t behave like that.”
Lindsay Dewane left Holloway Prison in 2006. She is now an interior designer.
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