Beyond the Sentence: Hope, Second Chances, and Redefining Futures with Amelia Pickering

Yeah.

So, um, set up 80 years ago, um, which is a long time ago.

Mm.

Victorians may know Pentridge Prison, which is a pretty, pretty awful place.

And a long time ago, there were women that were kept there as well.

And so a young 18, 19-year-old girl named Myrtle, uh, really wanted to do kinda international a- work and was sort of told she wasn't smart enough.

And so I suppose she, like many people, had this drive to, to do good.

Um, and so she decided she would knock on the door of Pentridge Prison and asked if she could come in and spend a bit of time with the women there and just show them some kindness-

Mm

... and maybe bring some humanity into what is a very dehumanizing space, and the matron thought she was crazy but let her in nonetheless.

Yep.

Um, and, and, yeah, she just spent some time with the women there, and when she left, the matron sorta said to her, "That feels really good since you've been in here, actually.

You changed the vibe."

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, that's not the language that he, uh, they used, but that was the sense of it, and why don't you come back next week? And so we've been doing that every week, um, for the past 80 years, bar COVID.

So, um, we, we run...

Essentially, for many years, we offered...

Mostly our work, uh, was in prison with some post-release support.

Yep.

So we, we start inside.

That's part of our theory of change, is that we start as early as remand.

We work with women, um, as early as we can to start to build some trust-

Yep

... um, to show some kindness, to build those preconditions for change, to start to c- create some hope that there is more or better or different than their-

Mm