About Time dedicates many of its pages to publishing the letters of people in prison, as well as from their family and friends.
This is the centrepiece of the paper: a platform for people to share their experiences and learn from each other.
I write to extend feedback – re: your monthly paper. I must say that it was with more than the usual measuring spoon of interest that most here @ MRC welcomed its arrival.
12 months into being remanded in custody. I’m still yet to be sentenced – hence I can’t see the end at all.
We are encouraged to maintain contact with our support people, our wives, our families, and our friends. This upcoming price increase will reduce the amount of contact we will be able to have with our supports.
What I’m hoping to achieve by writing this is awareness of the care I receive and the stubbornness of the exceptional circumstances parole in Queensland.
I’ve made the most of my time in jail this time and have made myself a promise to not just waste my time here, but to learn as much as I can, study, get fit, do as many programs as possible, and come out a better person than I came in as. I've achieved that, and more.
Why are jails so populated by people who are uneducated? What is being missed by the courts and cops and the community that the process of jailing people is formed around the process of not educating people or not identifying the problems in school?
GROW is a community-based national organisation that works on mental wellbeing using a 12 step program of personal growth of mutual help and support. It operates through weekly peer support groups.
I moved units about a month ago and we feed some stray cats here. One even let me pat her last night! It's been over a year since I've patted an animal, so you can imagine how excited I was!
Reading other prisoner’s stories inspired me to keep my head up and keep going now four months in, thank you all who share your stories and words of wisdom.
I have been incarcerated for 22 months of a four-year sentence in Queensland jails. This poem is about my own situation.
On 1 November 2025, QCS introduced a new pricing model: 20 cents per minute for all calls, mobile or local. A call that once cost 30 cents for 15 minutes now costs $3 – a ten-times increase.
If I get to the end of my sentence (another 13 months), then I will be dropped into a motel for three days, then after that, I’m on my own. It doesn’t seem fair.
I read your paper the night previous, and a part of me that previously was dead or dying suddenly felt alive and connected to others with similar struggles and trauma.
I was determined to strive for something different. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be honest, open-minded and willing today.
In March 2024, I completed a program called Mates for Inmates. It was a program where we had dogs that came in from the Lord Smith’s Dog Home that needed to be retrained so they could be rehomed to those looking to adopt a dog so they can eventually find their forever home.
A problem I have come across here at Woodford is that the only reading glasses you can get (if you are poor and not eligible for free prescription glasses) are #16 and are only 2.0 magnification!
Luckily, in the week leading up to sentencing, I made contact with whom I now call the “Gods of Criminal Defence”.
I’m eligible for release mid-July if I can find a suitable address, and I’ve applied for a Crest public boarding house address, but they’ve advised me of a minimum 12-month wait time.
At this point, we struggle to even be released on our parole date while being a model prisoner, which I feel is our right.
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Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
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