ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the lived experience of the pains of life imprisonment – illuminating how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can desensitise children to violence with profound consequences. The author provides a real-life illustration of how exposure to chronic levels of childhood adversity, poverty, and violence in combination with a desire to ‘fit in’ can impact both a child's identity and behaviour. These symptoms can often be misunderstood within education and have a negative impact on the child's ability to comply with the strict boundaries – rendering children gravitate towards anti-social networks, both familial and interpersonal. The strength of this chapter is the authors' ability to ‘bounce back’ from the depths of despair to create hope for other prisoners. Breaking down barriers demonstrates how the power of education can facilitate desistance for those caught up in our very expensive prison system. The inspirational feature of this chapter is the resilience of the author to go beyond tertiary desistance and provide educational hope for many other prisoners that can now hold optimism in the knowledge that they too can follow the author's footsteps away from crime and onto an educational pathway.
