Jimmy McGovern’s hard-hitting drama is a brutally honest portrayal of a failed public service and gets everything right about prison life – minus the tedium
I received my first prison sentence in December 1957. I was 14. Set firmly, as I was, on a path of criminality, I vowed to get to know the workings of the system that held me. In crime, as in life, mistakes occur. And when they did, that knowledge allowed me to survive the 16 years, on and off, I resided in the dangerous prison system.
I gave up crime in 2003 when, almost by accident, I began writing for this paper about the system I had left behind. But I have kept my hand in, as it were, on the state of penal play. This has led me to keep tabs on books, films and TV shows that claim to present an authentic look behind the high walls.
