Of The Man

People have asked me why, on my list of links, I have included one for prisoners' families and another for advice for prisoners. The general consensus seems to be that I should detest the man, and doubtless that would be the case if he had succeeded in his attempt. As it is, I don't. 

Journal Entry February 23rd 2012

One of the policemen who burst through the door on the morning of the 26th came round last night just to see how I was getting along. He was one of the two who took me to the hospital to get my hand stitched up, and he was also pretty much the first to take a lead and run with it.

The defendant is to be sentenced on 23rd March. The CID detective had already mentioned that we could all go, and the young policeman has said that if he's on duty that day, he'll give us a lift to court as he would like to attend. It has the air of an ever so slighty ghoulish picnic but I can't help looking forward to it. He told me a few things about the perpetrator.

I already knew he was a burglar with some 20 years of crime and a few stints in prison behind him. I knew also that he has a brother who is a criminal. The new information is that his father was a burglar. 'He'll have been taken on jobs by his dad when he was small,' offered the policeman, 'Get him through a window, he'd come round to the door and let them in.' So he grew up as an apprentice in his father's profession, got himself a habit and also got himself a son, now 12 years old.

The young copper has had recent dealings with said boy, who he describes as 'A tiny thing, honestly he's so small he looks about 10 at most, he looks harmless...' but he's not harmless. The child's recent brushes with the law include beating up girls on a bus, and stealing a bike. It seems inevitable that one day the boy will follow his father's footsteps straight to the dock. Where is his mother? Who is trying to change things for him?

His father, described to me as 'scum' and 'a nasty piece of work,' has spent the last three months in Belmarsh on 23 hour lockdown, in the special wing they keep for bent coppers and sex offenders, prisoners who don't stand much chance if the general jail populace get to them. 'It's one thing to be in prison with all your burglar mates around you,' said our visitor, 'Another to be in a place like that...he's not having a good time.'

I am not sentimental. That man stole from me and would have raped me if he could. But I wonder about the man, the boy he was and the person he could have been, of his son and what he will become.

I wonder, and find no answers.