Over the last few weeks there’s been a shift in the general atmosphere of the hall. The bullying of the Romanians has completely stopped and there’s slightly more mixing between ‘groups’. We all seem a little less reluctant to cross the boundaries that held us. I’ve found that a few people, who previously had ignored me, have come to me for a chat. And, likewise, I’ve found it easier to approach certain people who I had struggled to find common ground with before.

I think the shift has come about because of the three changes that all happened around the same time. First, one of the rowdy young guys, who had a tendency to rev up a few of the other youngsters, has left the hall (though I’m positive he’ll find his way back in here within a few months – he’s been in and out of prison throughout his 20s).

The next change was that the guy who said he fed razor blades to seagulls has been given a warning by prison officers: if he continues to bully the wee guys he’ll be moved to a different hall. Since he himself experienced a lot of bullying when he first came to prison, the threat of being moved to an unfamiliar hall pacified him immediately.

The last thing is that two new guys have arrived in the hall, both of whom are gregarious, confident and good at striking up conversations with people they’ve never met. The hall feels less segregated, more fun-loving, less aggressive, and generally a little kinder. I’ve asked myself whether the change exists only in my head… Am I feeling more established and confident, now that I’ve been here for 7 months? With my release only a matter of weeks away, is it just that something has changed in the way that I perceive the social dynamic? I keep thinking that there’s more than that going on. Something has shifted for everyone.

One of the new guys, particularly, affected the hall a lot. To use a term borrowed from a nature documentary that I saw recently, I think of him as a ‘keystone species’. He reminds me of the wolves that were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the USA: The wolves scared the park’s dear up into the higher ground, which allowed trees to thrive in the valley bottoms. This in turn changed the way the river eroded river banks. So the wolves ended up changing the shape of the river.

This guy’s kind of similar. He arrived, and the dynamic shifted. He announced his own arrival with impressive displays of power, demonstrating his kick boxing skills over a period of two or three days. Lightning-fast kicks whipped the air just inches above people’s heads without warning. Punches were fired at surprised faces, and pulled at the last split-second. One such punch created a breeze that ruffled my eye lashes.

A few days ago, as he and I walked around the Astroturf together, he described himself to me as “The King of the Landing”. Ordinarily, this kind of attitude would make me roll my eyes and sigh. But because I noticed an almost immediate halt to the bullying of the Romanians when he arrived, the sigh that I breathed was instead one of relief. The power balance had altered and the bullies no longer felt quite so cock-sure. Within a matter of days, one or two allies stood alongside me in my attempts to encourage the newest Romanian into the social scene of the hall. For the first time in about a month he was able to walk around the Astroturf without being ridiculed. His self-harming stopped and he didn’t make any more trips to the suicide cell. So I’m hoping that the arrival of our kick-boxing wolf has changed the course of this little guy’s river.

The whole episode has given me a sense of optimism as I think about how prisons are positioned in the criminal justice system. If the dynamic of our hall can change into something that is kinder and warmer, then surely wider social dynamics and structures can also evolve. Expectations of ‘status’, ‘punishment’ and ‘potential’ are not set in concrete. Rather they flex and bend as fresh understandings reshape them into something more compassionate. Compare the incarceration rates and prison systems of the USA with those of the UK…. Compare UK rates with those of our Scandinavian neighbours, and we see the potential that still exists to create more just systems of justice.