The Women Doing Once Upon a Time ; Inside Storyfor Many Women Prisoners, the Hardest Part About Being Locked Away Is the Separation From Their Families. But One Enlightened Institution has Introduced a Scheme Whereby Mums Can Read and Record Stories to Send to Their Children. Eleanor Bailey Meets Three Inmates Who Explain How This Provides Them with a Vital Family Link

Mail on Sunday › February 12, 2009

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Summary

Keira Knightley is on the radio as I drive towards Foston Hall, a women's closed prison in the lush Derbyshire countryside. 'Did you always want to be an actor?' asks the interviewer. Keira laughs. 'Well, with an actor for a father and a writer for a mother, I didn't have a lot of choice.'

These words echo in my mind as I sit in front of Foston Hall's governor, Greg Riley-Smith, who is telling me about another no- choice life path. 'I was talking to one girl, aged 19 or so, who told me that for her 11th birthday her parents had given her crack cocaine. Her mum was a heroin addict; her dad had died of an overdose. What chance has she got?'

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The Women Doing Once Upon a Time ; Inside Storyfor Many Women Prisoners, the Hardest Part About Being Locked Away Is the Separation From Their Families. But One Enlightened Institution has Introduced a Scheme Whereby Mums Can Read and Record Stories to Send to Their Children. Eleanor Bailey Meets Three Inmates Who Explain How This Provides Them with a Vital Family Link

Softly spoken, bearded and liberal, Riley-Smith is not the power- crazed hardman of Hollywood cliche. On the contrary, working at Foston Hall has, he says, taught him that women in prison are victims before they are criminals (he calls them 'clients').

'For a lot of women coming to prison, this is the most decently they've been treated in their entire lives,' he says. 'Of course, they have to be punished - they have to confront the reality of what they have done - but we also want to help them.'

Yet even after a lifetime of physical or mental abuse and now incarceration, the very worst thing for women prisoners, says Riley- Smith, is the forced separation from their children. Th...

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