The last time I saw Rob was March 22nd, the Sunday of the big announcement and the start of the official nationwide lockdown. Now like everyone else we haven’t seen each other since, we speak on the phone most days for varying amounts of time, as Rob is a category D prisoner now or open prison as it's also known he’s got a bit more freedom of movement around the billet (the unit on which he is housed) so we are luckier than most as he can call throughout the day and there aren’t lots of people queuing up to use the afore mentioned phones.
In a bizarre twist of fate being IPP and not knowing when he will be released has kind of prepared me for this, I’m now used to the unknown featuring heavily in my life and I personally have just come to accept it but it still throws many challenges up.
What is hard to juggle is mixing you children into that and trying to explain that you have no real idea of when you will see them next.
I’m a pretty resilient person, I am time served in waiting and most days I manage to keep my emotions in check. A good day with Rob is usually based around if he’s having a good day.
He doesn’t get up early, unlike me, I am always awake early, especially with my small person sized alarm clock, so I’m awake and busying myself as soon as I can, another coping strategy you learn to develop, being busy helps, like really helps and if you need to take your mind off things then it’s my go to answer.
Anyway, you get a quick call and usually before lunch and maybe another later in the day, that’s it. As anyone will tell you that’s got a loved one in custody you can never predict when you might get that call so you literally take your phone everywhere with you, and I mean everywhere that’s because if you miss that call you’ll have no way of calling back and you’ll just have to wait again, not only is that frustrating it’s also stressful for the waiting family. If you don’t hear you can’t help but worry, you don’t want your mind to go to an irrational place but sometimes it does, has something happened, have they been hurt, are they still there, which sounds crazy but an admittance to hospital doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be told so the unknown features heavily.
On the 3rd of June the government released guidelines around prison visits, however with the distancing rules it’s unclear as to how that will work. How do you take your children to see their dad and then tell them that you can’t touch them? The difference is in prison your meeting is being watched, you have no privacy, and if it's broken there’s the worry about what will happen, will you get a ban, will your other half be pulled off the visit and isolated, what if the baby goes near him, will the kids be allowed, will I take them? The list goes on and on and we haven’t even been told we can see him, we haven’t even been told we can have a video visit.
Visits are pretty much life when you are separated by custody and the global crisis has affected everyone’s ability to be with their loved ones, no one disputes that, prison is no different and we should be treated no differently than anyone else. There was a real concern that if Covid 19 got embedded into the prison system then it would spread rapidly due to the proximity of living conditions, overcrowding, lack of PPE and just general conditions within establishments and the amount of sharing. It was right to stop visits, I don’t think anyone really disputes that, the problem for families with people in prison is that we are being told very little around when we can see each other again and how that will play out. In normal times as a Cat D prisoner preparing for release we would by now have a 2 hour visit each week, a ‘town visit’ once a month which is basically a day out from custody to spend time adjusting to your release, and more than likely a 5 day home leave taken consecutively. In our case this is exactly what Rob was directed to do by his parole board, they wanted him to be tested, to prove that he could cope with being released and have a well-managed transition back into the community and to his family. All of these options have now been suspended due to the current crisis and there is a vivid reality that we won’t be able to see, hug, kiss or spend time as a family for the remainder of this year or as has been rumoured well into 2021, on top of that, which is even more stressful for us, it could well keep him in custody even longer as he's unable to complete this parole board directed plan, his sentence plan. As restrictions are easing for the rest of the country, support bubbles are introduced for people who may be struggling with loneliness and isolation to be able to spend some time together, we are excluded from this. Again, as much as I feel
the frustration at this I can see the logic in not allowing the home leaves and town visits at the moment, what is really frustrating is that we have absolutely no idea where open prisoners who are by their categorisation permitted to have ROTL’s (release on temporary licence) fit into the plans that are made to allow us all to edge closer back to some sort of normal in our lives.
The cornerstone of the IPP sentence is with dealing with the unknown both for the person with the sentence and the families that are trying to live alongside it, the one thing that we hold on to is our contact, our visits with each other; as they have been affected by the lockdown we can now add that into the unknown cauldron of emotions we deal with constantly.
Lockdown for everyone has been a challenge, we all want to know when we will be able to see our friends, families and loved ones again, we all fear the unknown, we await information around how our everyday lives will be allowed to change, shops opening, meeting up with friends and family, its reiterated again and again how well we are all doing and we are rewarded with daily briefings keeping us informed on how and when changes are taking place.
I can tell you when I can go out and buy our daughters 1st birthday present, I can tell you when I can bring my dad to my home for dinner, I can tell you when I can visit my friend’s house, I can even tell you when I’m likely to be able to finally get my hair done but what I cannot tell you is when I’m likely to be able to see Rob, when he will be able to hold his baby, hug his family; we have no daily briefings, we have no scale to work towards, we are yet again facing the unknown and yet again feeling that our plight is forgotten.