Until Monday I’d never been inside a prison complex. It was not as intimidating as I’d expected, but still, the sight of those massive fortress walls, the barbed wires coiled atop them is sobering (it’s funny how, the moment you step inside, your mind automatically turns to all the prison break stories you’ve ever heard of.)There was such a long walk from visitor’s carpark to the main prison — I had not realised how massive the prison complex must be — we walk and we walk and we walk, going through gate after gate, door after door, our IDs and fingerprints are scanned, and briefcases and bags and jackets x-rayed — in case we smuggle in an iron file in a cake, I suppose, or a poster of Rita Hayworth.
Then out in the open air, and still ways to go. Downhill, past large exercise yards on both sides with no one in them, and I begin to roast slightly in my black trouser suit under the sun.
At the interview centre we go into a small room separated down the middle by bulletproof glass. The door opens on the other side and the inmate comes in — we stand and bow slightly, and gesture for him to sit, we all sit. There is no guard with us but a camera overhead. We interview him.
I had felt much nervous energy when I went in to the interview; I feel tremendously sad by the end.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird