I am certainly not a bad person intentionally….

I have noticed that pathological demand avoidance type autism gets individuals labelled bad people due to the actions it causes. That isn’t our intention. I don’t try to be a bad person. I try hard to be a good person. I also try to avoid being child-like. However, I can’t change the way I think about life in general. The way I see things is non-negotiable. I have a very fixed mindset which has been set by my life experiences. I don’t expect others to see things in my fixed mindset. I would appreciate others listening to me. That is something that doesn’t happen much as an autistic person. I may have been hell-bent on revenge after my experiences in the past but anger is a normal reaction to what I had to endure as a whole. I can’t be bothered with revenge  now. I just want to get changes to happen in the current system that is failing vulnerable people. There has to be a certain attitude to get all those changes to happen. I didn’t manage to make the Q&A session online with the criminal justice reform professional after the crime and punishment programme. I was going to log on but I would rather talk to these people one to one privately. I don’t mind talking about my life experiences in a public chat but I felt like giving it a miss tonight.

I honestly didn’t agree with what I saw during the month I was in prison. The inmates aren’t making progress, most of the prison was technically a revolving door for many of those women. There isn’t rehabilitation in the criminal justice system. Once someone’s labelled, everyone pre-judges them on their history. Courts don’t look at the circumstances which led to the law being broken. There has been so much about the Criminal Justice System not being fit for purpose. Those that should be locked up get away. That means there are dangerous people on the streets. The mentally ill are instead being put in prisons. They are vulnerable and don’t deserve to be in that environment. Being locked up in a small cell for hours on end is extremely damaging to someone experiencing mental health problems. I’ve never been the same since my time in prison. It doesn’t have a positive impact on most of the people that go through those places. The Criminal Justice System is contributing to the issues that  those with mental health problems experience. It makes things worse for them. It has knock-on effects that are life destroying.