ABSTRACT
As I explained earlier, the glasshouse is the nickname for military prison and the big house is the nickname for the local prisons. Durham was the local prison to Middlesbrough and so those of us from those areas would be sent there which changed from the 1990s when HMP Holme House in Teesside was built. My time in prison may not be seen in line with a desistance journey but I have and continue to argue that prison and desistance can go hand in hand. Currently, there is a crisis with overcrowding, staff shortages, drugs and suicides to name a few but in some cases prison can act as a shock to the system which forces one to reassess their lives and there have been many instances where individuals have used that time and space to turn their lives around. This chapter is the start of that prison journey and I have included the daily, monotonous routine to give readers an insight into what daily life in prison was really like in the 1980s.
