So, as I was saying: I had a front row seat of the toilet, and my mood was rapidly decreasing from ‘happy’ to ‘fucked off’. After spending the last 20 minutes observing people’s strangely regular toilet habits, I noticed a man walking towards meaning, presumably deciding to sit next to me. From what I could see out of the corner of my eye, he was shaking quite vigorously, and appeared to be in some considerable state of stress. We had a pleasant chat every now and again, and it soon became apparent that he was either on drugs, or in desperate need of some.
This fact didn’t bother me much; after all he was polite and interesting to chat to. It did however seem to bother a lot of the other people that were coming through the carriage. They seemed to be staring down by his feet, then looking at him disapprovingly. I didn’t quite understand why they were looking at his feet, but it wasn’t bothering me too much. Maybe he had quite ugly toes. I dunno. Anyway, by this point my arse had took quite enough of a battering after being sat on the bench for a long time (we’d inexplicably stopped in the middle of nowhere for about 45 minutes), and I went to sit on the floor opposite.
It was about this time the bloke who I had been chatting to shuffled off somewhere else, and left his bag behind. When I finally glanced over to see what was causing everyone so much disgust, I can’t say I was surprised to see PRISONER TRANSPORT on the side of the bag, with a very ominous CONTENTS DANGEROUS plastered down the side. I didn’t question the man when he came back, and it didn’t really change my opinion of him. He had clearly just got out of prison, and probably wasn’t having an easy time adjusting.
But it did make me question the ethics around the release of prisoners. There is apparently all this help out there for ex-prisoners when they are released, but it seems counter-productive to release them with a bag that tells everyone close to them that they were a prisoner. As far as I’m concerned, if you have been released from prison you have served your time, and your punishment should be ended. I don’t think it is fair that most people are stuck with the ‘ex-con’ tagline for the rest of their life, with many people struggling to get any decent jobs purely because they had made mistakes in their life.
This idea was amplified when towards the end of the train journey, a cocky arse of a man walked into the area where we were sitting. He noticed the bag, and sat down on the bench where I had previously been sitting.
“Is that your bag mate?” He said with a sly grin.
“Yeah.” The other man mumbled.
“Which prison were you in?”
“I wasn’t in a prison.”
“Well, it wasn’t Butlins was it?” He grinned, trying to gain affirmation from me from his distasteful joke.
It’s cockroaches like that cocky bloke that make an ex-prisoners time so much harder, and it’s not fair.
Jan 27, 05:17 PM
Rob
Its also cocky guys like that, that are driving the reoffending prisoners rate skywards.
Put yourself in that position, you’d have the lamped him wouldn’t you?
I’ll bet that cocky guy complains about having to pay taxes to keep “them all warm in prison”. I’ll also bet he votes LibDem, need I say more.
