One of the things I noticed as I entered my grimy first cell in jail was that there were no glass mirrors on the walls.

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I quickly found out that glass mirrors are banned in jail; no doubt because glass can be easily smashed, shattered and used as a weapon. Assaults are commonplace, and the guy with the sharpest weapon usually wins the fight. It pays to be vigilant; perhaps this is also why cells also have no wall clocks.

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The mirrors in jail are mirrors in name only. They are impenetrable flat sheets of polished stainless steel, or polycarbonate, screwed at the edges into the surrounding concrete wall. They are usually placed on the wall just above the wash basin where they share space with multicoloured graffiti.

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A misty film that cannot be wiped away covers the metallic slab, and inmates therefore can’t see their facial details clearly. No matter how close you get to the mirror, the finer details of our faces remain blurred. The “protective reflection” covering the cold, bare metal renders us faceless.

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Areas of the steel sheets are often stained, rusted or warped, making one’s face also appear distorted. One must comb one’s hair from memory. But, after all, this is jail, and who will care if one’s scalp part is crooked? In this place, everything is crooked.

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A mirror is often the ultimate tool contributing to our feelings of self-worth. When we look into the mirror, we suddenly have nowhere to hide. We are met with a reflection, not only of our physical appearance, but also of all the thoughts and feelings we have about ourselves.

Do we like what we see, or do we see only our flaws? Can we look ourselves in the eye without wincing, or do we need to look away quickly because of our guilt and shame?

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Perhaps it’s a good thing we can’t see ourselves clearly. Maybe it’s a small mercy not to see ourselves as we really are in this squalor. That way, we remain oblivious to our vacant looks, frowns and increasingly lined faces. We are only vaguely aware of our silvering hair, sunken eye sockets and roughly shaven faces. Maybe it’s kinder not to be confronted with the fear, the sorrow, the uncertainty, and the disillusionment that fills our eyes.

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We become invisible to ourselves, just as we’re told by the guards to become invisible to each other. We’re likely to give up looking into mirrors here in jail, trying to find ourselves.

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We can’t recognise who we are any longer or what we’ve become. Instead, we are left only with the memories of who we’d once been, and how we once appeared to a world that now rejects us.

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And yet, despite this personal ambiguity, it is ironic that being in prison enables some of us to see ourselves in a different light. We see more clearly than we’ve ever seen before. We see our pride, our selfishness, our anger and our nakedness.

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Although most of us can’t make out what’s dimly reflected before us in our stainless steel mirrors, some of us can still look inward to see clearly the things that really matter. Some of us, previously blind to our shortcomings, have had our sight restored. Maybe we can do without glass mirrors, after all.

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Faceless, perhaps, but on the inside, newly awoken.