Reformatory For Girls

Jenny was stunned by her sentence. On the first day she could hardly speak. She found her voice on the second day, when her solicitor visited her.

“I can’t believe it!” she cried. “I’m not the sort those places were meant for!”

“I’m sorry Jennifer,” the solicitor said. She was a small woman with a friendly face who Jenny had regarded as an ally, indeed a friend at first. “The court decided differently. They take the view that your case calls for a period in a disciplined environment. I assume you know something about the new Special Units?”

“Of course I know! Look at the way it’s been all over the media!”

There couldn’t be anyone in the country who didn’t know one thing about the new units – that there was corporal punishment there.

“Then for God’s sake, take my advice!” the solicitor said. “Knuckle under when you’re there! Keep your resentment under control and be obedient, and you’ll get through the six months without trouble.”

Jenny knew there was no more point in protesting about the injustice she’d been done: how she’d been framed by her ex-husband for an act of violence committed by himself during one of his rages. The way he’d made it seem it was Jenny was so transparent that she couldn’t believe she’d have trouble getting her innocence accepted. She’d learnt too late – not that she’d have had the resources of her own to do much about it anyway – that when the matter had persisted, he had personally paid the fees of a criminal investigation company to discover some evidence to support his story, and then the fees of a licensed prosecuting company to take it to court. It must have cost him everything he had, plus massive borrowing. She’d been arrested, spent several months in prison on remand, and now after a short trial, she was to be sent to one of those infamous new units.

The idea was that they were an extension of the ‘short sharp shock’ regimes, first tried in the previous century for dealing with thuggish young people. They’d been the talking point of the country not long ago – she’d discussed it with friends herself – when a photograph which had been smuggled out had appeared in all the media. It showed a girl bending over, her pants round her ankles, her upper clothes tucked up to her armpits, being caned on her bare behind.

The opinion of Jenny’s friends was probably typical. They themselves might be shocked, they argued, but the sort of person who’d be sent there needed discipline. Something had to be done, in this disordered middle of the twenty-first century, about the criminals and hooligans who were wrecking society and making life a misery for everyone. Jenny herself wasn’t sure at the time, but had changed her mind soon afterwards, when a girl she knew at work was attacked, robbed and sexually humiliated, by a gang, believe it or not, composed exclusively of young women. (It was in a highly visible place too, beneath an advertising screen at the side of a motorway, and they swaggered around showing off to the traffic while doing it, confident that no one would intervene.) Jenny hoped fervently that they’d be caught and sent to one of the new units, where they’d get what they deserved. She never dreamed that events were about to begin that would end in being sent to one herself.

She asked her solicitor, “Can’t we appeal?”

“Against verdict or sentence?”

“At least against the sentence. I know it’s useless about the verdict.” Even her own solicitor didn’t believe she was innocent, Jenny could see that. She’d seemed to believe her at first, but her attitude changed when Jenny kept getting into trouble in the remand centre. Jenny considered herself acting out of character by being difficult, but the resentment carried her away. It was a pity; she’d have liked this solicitor’s respect. She’d been lucky to get anyone on legal aid; only people with some old-fashioned idealism were willing to do legal aid work nowadays.

“We could appeal against the sentence, yes,” the solicitor said. “But for a start, I don’t think you’d get legal aid for the appeal – “

“I’ll take out some of my savings if I have to.” What I’ve got, Jenny thought.

“I honestly don’t think there’s any point. There’s very little chance an appeal would be heard in less than six months, which is as long as your sentence. Not with all this congestion in the courts, which you must have heard about.”

“So I’d stay here for six months waiting?” At the moment Jenny was still being held in the ordinary prison.

“No, you’d still go to Harper Wood. It has the same status as any other type of custodial sentence. Your appeal, if we present one, will come up in due course, but you’ll have been there meanwhile, and almost certainly have served your sentence by the time the appeal is heard.”

“That’s ridiculous! It means I’m not really allowed to appeal!”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the situation.” There was a pause. The solicitor then said,

“Look at it this way. You’ve got off with a much shorter sentence than if you’d been given ordinary prison. You’d have got two years at least for malicious wounding. Just keep out of trouble in Harper Wood and count yourself lucky.”

Jenny went back slowly to her cell, or as slowly as the screw escorting her would allow. As she let her in the screw said, “The first two weeks will be the worst. After that you’ll get used to it.” Jenny didn’t know if the woman was genuinely advising, or mocking her. The screws didn’t like her, because of the reputation she’d brought with her from the remand centre.

As Jenny came in, her cellmate Cal held the reefer she was smoking behind her back. She was going through the motions of pretending to avoid discovery, so the screw pretended not to notice. This was an unspoken agreement between most of the screws and the inmates. They’d effectively given up trying to prevent pot being smoked here, in the ordinary prison. Jenny was one of the few prisoners who didn’t smoke it.

“The solicitor reckons I’ve no chance of getting out of it,” Jenny said, when they were locked in. “So it looks as if we’ll be seeing one another for the next six months.” Cal was also being sent to Harper Wood Special Unit.

“Yeah, sure, great,” Cal said vaguely. She talked as if she was drugged even when she wasn’t smoking pot. There was a pause. Then she said, “Hope you don’t bring your trouble with you. I don’t want no whacks across the bum.”

“You’re more likely to get into trouble, with your reefers. Bet they crack down on it there.”

“Crack!” Cal gave a gurgling laugh. “Yeah, crack! Wonder if you can get any there.”

Jenny gave up trying to communicate, and sat, staring gloomily at the wall.

There were two more girls in the prison waiting to be transferred to Harper Wood, called Alison and Frankie. The four of them became friends during the days of waiting, and had many conversations about the institution they’d be going to.

Alison had previously spent one six-month sentence in a special unit, so she counted as a veteran of such places. What she was in for, then and now, she was evasive about, and Jenny got really curious, for she seemed an unlikely criminal. She was a bubbly personality with an educated accent, and seemed strangely at ease over the whole thing. Her conversation was usually bits of information together with jokes and peals of laughter. But she wouldn’t tell Jenny what she was here for: the only thing she ever said about it was that they’d not been impressed at her trial when she reminded them of a government admission that it wouldn’t be desirable for the crime rate to drop too fast (even if it was likely to happen), because of the huge number of people employed in security work and related industries. Standing trial, going to the special unit, it was all a joke to Alison, apparently.

Frankie by comparison was a pale worried girl. Surprisingly her history made her the nearest person Jenny met to the criminal type the special units were supposed to be created for. Usually they missed their targets, if the present group was anything to judge by. Yet Frankie, it seemed, had been a member of a gang of ‘B-road-jack-ers’, meaning they held up cars on lesser roads, dragging out, beating and robbing the occupants. “I was led into it,” she told Jenny mournfully. “I tried to say, go easy, but they wouldn’t listen. They led on, and on the estate where I grew up, you couldn’t act high and mighty, you had to join in.” Jenny could believe she’d been led on: she seemed the led type. So of course Frankie was the one member of the gang who’d been arrested and sent to a special unit, while the leaders got away scot-free.

They talked about the corporal punishment. Frankie asked, “Is it really like the pictures showed? I thought it must be a fake. Is it really like that?”

“Sure is, darling, it’s the cane for naughty girls!” Alison replied. She grinned. “Wow, quite a sight! Rather rude!” She giggled.

“But I mean, is it really, do you really have to take your knickers down?”

“Yeah,” Cal put in. “Drop your pants and bend over, and get six of the best. They even call it six of the best, right?” That was to Alison, who nodded.

“But why do they cane you on that particular part of you?” Jenny asked. “Why there?”

“It’s the safest place,” Alison replied. “Anywhere else could be dangerous. On the bottom, that’s where it hurts but doesn’t injure. The bottom!” She intoned the word comically. “That’s the place! On the bottom!”

The bottom, Jenny thought, what a coy word! Once caning on the bottom was considered the right way to bring up children, but not even conceivable for adults. Now it had returned but with the opposite attitude: that it was only adults such a thing could be given to. Or young people anyway: the unit they were going to was for girls aged between eighteen and thirty, with the four of them here in their mid twenties. Mind you, the schoolkids hadn’t usually been caned on the bare skin. And wasn’t it only boys who got the cane in school stories, girls being considered different somehow? Of course, it would be more severe than it had been for schoolkids...

“But why the bare?” Frankie was still incredulous. “Why your bare bottom?”

“It brings home the lesson doesn’t it? Especially if it’s in front of a whole lot of other people.”

“Other people? You mean they do it with a lot of people watching?”

“Not always. But they can do.

“Sounds as if canings are pretty frequent,” Jenny said.

“When I was there it was said that most girls got the cane at least once before they left. But that doesn’t have to be true. Just play the rules darlings, and remember, the screws have to obey their own procedures. The company that runs the place doesn’t want to lose its contract, so they’ve got to be careful too.

“But the cane’s the standard punishment for almost anything. You’ll see it often enough.”

“Can they just do it whenever they want?” Jenny asked. “Doesn’t there have to have a hearing or whatever?”

“You can ask for the decision to be reviewed. But it’s best not to. Review only means that they ask the governor, and maybe the governor will phone the company. But it only takes a few minutes, and as like as not the review will only say the punishment should be increased. Extra strokes. And harder!”

“You really have to take your knickers down!” Frankie repeated. “On the bare! Bare bum, in front of others! Oh bloody bloody hell!”

“That’s just a routine six,” Alison said. “For the stronger stuff, twelve in the gym or something, you might have to be completely starkers!” She laughed again.

Jenny said, “The worst punishment’s what they call a public flogging isn’t it?”

“That’s it! Bent over completely starkers, in front of the whole unit! You’ll probably see one of those as well. Some idiot manages to get it every so often.”

“Wow!” Cal said slowly. But a grin came over her face. “Pretty good from the dykie point of view though.”

Frankie blanched, but Jenny said in a neutral tone, “Better be careful if you’ve got that idea. I’m sure they punish that if they catch you.”

Jenny had got used to the fact that lesbianism was rife in prison – Alison had been involved in it and had already made a pass at Jenny. It seemed that Cal was tempted too. Most girls swore they were straights outside, but inside they developed a taste for the only form of sex on offer. Jenny had to be quite insistent that she intended to remain a straight.

“You’ve got to be careful,” Alison agreed. “You want your bottom fondled, not swiped with a cane, right?” She leant forward and gave Jenny a smack on the thigh.

“Don’t do that Ali.”

The few days passed with startling speed. The morning for transfer arrived and they were collected from their cells. They were taken to Reception and given the usual strip search, which Jenny had objected to so strongly in her early days in the remand centre, but was indifferent to by now. Having to take off all your clothes was something you got used to in prison, like casual swearing, which Jenny also engaged in now but hadn’t at first. She stripped, held out her arms, raised them above her head, was body-searched, watched while her clothes were searched, had a shower, came out and dried herself in front of everyone, and got dressed again. She’d been through it so many times.

The four of them were put into a van. There was no window, so they couldn’t see out, but they knew that where they were going, despite the rustic name, was in a typical part of southern England, in the endless sprawl of buildings, motorways, industrial areas and so on, which covered most of the country. Alison was high-spirited as ever and sang bawdy songs for part of the way, but the others were subdued. Eventually the van halted, moved forward and halted again: they sensed prison gates opening and closing behind them. Then the van doors opened and four screws in a new uniform appeared.