MARIE’S STORY
I lost a baby and was being beaten and, by then, had a habit. Jail, drugs, jail, drugs...
– Former prisoner Marie
Marie – not her real name – is a 43-year-old mother who has been jailed more than 40 times for shoplifting. Her most recent sentence was when she served 120 days in 2019 before being released on an 18-month drug treatment testing order with the support of the Shine service.
My dad died when I was nine. My mum didn’t take drugs or drink but she was left herself at 29 with three kids. She worked jobs but it wasn’t enough to keep the family going.
I remember being about 10 or 11 at school and someone said: “She’s got a pencil case from the 99p shop” and feeling the shame and embarrassment. I thought the whole class was laughing at me.
On the Sunday I walked all the way over to Asda and stole a pencil case for me and my brother and sister so we weren’t laughed at. Then as I got older, 12 or 13, I started experimenting with drink. I met my first long-term partner when I was 15 and I had a cot death when I was 17. That’s when I started using heroin. It was one thing after another, I spiralled. With my first long-term partner there was a lot of domestic abuse as well.
I can recognise it now, I didn’t back then. I thought it was just life. By then I had a drug habit, so it was jail, drugs, jail, drugs.
At the beginning, prison wasn’t really daunting, and at one stage I was institutionalised because my drug habit was so bad and the only time that I felt safe and could control the drugs was when I was in jail. There were times I was greeting on the day I was getting out. I knew I was walking out to a habit so I was deliberately getting myself the jail. As daunting as prison is and as horrible as it is, there’s a structure.
I’ve been clean, off heroin for 14 years. I’ve had alcoholism but I’ve been off that for 13 years. So my problem became prescription drugs, Valium and things like that.
The actual stealing had become a habit as well because it was my life for such a long time. All I’d ever known was in and out the jail, just surviving day to day. I’ve served time on remand and after being convicted. I’ve been remanded and not jailed plenty of times.
I know lassies who have been remanded for a couple of weeks and their kids have been taken off them because they’ve not had support on the outside. It’s families that are ripped apart, just for the sake of a couple of weeks.
I was caught in a rut because I wasn’t able to get support on the outside that I really needed, but in prison you needed to be serving longer sentences to get support and the only service outwith that in the prison is Shine. But when I got Shine and the Drug Testing & Treatment Order together, it seems to have made a massive difference. It’s the first time I’ve properly engaged 100%.
I started getting better and better, and in the last 10 months I haven’t touched so much as a paracetamol. I have literally started living my life.
My life has just spun right round. I’ve got a job and everything now. I never thought I’d come this far.
This is the longest I’ve been out of jail since I was 16. I’m waking up in the morning now and I’m happy.