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Everything feels that little bit more frightening.
(Sign language) There was total communication breakdown. They didn't understand me.
Everyone has their own opinions on how hard prison should be, but with a disability, it shouldn't be any harder.
[Deaf Behind Bars]
I worked as a prison officer, so I was in jail on a daily basis.
I then committed an offence, and I spent three years and three months in prison.
I wear hearing aids in both ears.
I'd taken with me a supply of batteries.
When I arrived at the reception area, I was told that I wouldn't be allowed to have those batteries with me, but then without them switched on, I felt really vulnerable, because I couldn't then hear what was going on around me.
(Sign language) I'm profoundly deaf. My first language is British Sign Language (BSL). My sentence was seven and a half years.
When I arrived from court to prison, there was no interpreter at all. So I was really frightened. I didn't know what was going on.
My English wasn't very good. I had to communicate through notes written in English, however I could.
Prisons are environments that really run on sound, so not only do you have lots of voices going on at the same time, but you have alarms, bells, tannoys, all making noise in the prison environment.
And so if you can't access that, it means that you can't hear if there's a fire alarm going off.
So it makes you more at risk.
If you can't hear what's happening outside of your cell door, or what might be coming, you feel even less in control of your own surroundings.
If another prisoner calls to you as you're walking away and you don't respond, they may perceive that as you being rude, and that could then result in an argument or even physical violence.
I was really aware at times of trying to position myself with my back to the wall so that I could see the door, because then you can see what's coming.
(Sign language) I wasn't able to communicate. I was really stressed. And I didn't feel safe.
My mental health was really bad. I didn't feel well at all. I couldn't sleep, and my mental health problems got worse. I became very depressed. I felt completely isolated and kept myself to myself for a long time.
I got attacked in my cell. I'd have to press the alarm all the time. So they'd have to move me to another cell. And that trauma changed my life.
The way that prisoners are meant to be supported is about making what's called reasonable adjustments to make sure that everyone's treated equally.
But in reality, what's considered reasonable is open to quite a lot of interpretation.
The adjustments that are made should ensure that deaf prisoners are able to access all parts of the prison regime.
But in practice, that's not really the case.
They tend to serve longer sentences because it's much harder for them to prove that they've reduced their risk through completion of rehabilitation programmes,
engagement in education or work or training, because those things aren't so accessible to deaf people.
(Sign language) The first four prisons I was in were the worst time in my life.
The last prison was much better. They taught me how to write and fill in the forms. And then when I got into class, we had a computer and I had an interpreter as well.
If I'd arrived in the first prison and they'd provided an interpreter and given me access to learning English, it would have been better, and my sentence wouldn't have been as drawn out.
Maybe it's just my experience of the three prisons that I was in as a prisoner, but also from my experience as an officer, I feel that making adaptations and making accessibility to all the same things as other prisoners feels like a bit of an effort.
Prison has an impact on you, psychologically, as it is.
To go through it feeling unnecessarily more vulnerable or more isolated seems harsh, regardless of someone's offence.
We might be tempted to say, well, this person's committed a crime and that's why they're in prison, so why should I care?
But at some point, this person will be released back into the community and really we have a choice.
We can either say, no, they should be given no extra support whatsoever and their time in prison is their time in prison.
Or we can try and support them in their rehabilitation, in building good relationships, in having good physical and mental health.
And we know that all of those things reduce the risk of re-offending upon release.
Of course prison's hard and prison should be quite hard, obviously, for it to have an effect.
But everyone should get the same sort of shot at it, surely, and that doesn't happen.
It does not happen when it comes to deafness.
