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.
Brothers, seriously, when you look at how much worse off other people in the world have it and you truly understand there really is no rock bottom, then you start to see there are no limits to how good our life could be (and out of anyone we deserve it!).
For the past year or so, it’s been getting harder for mail to get through. I’ve been here for nine years and I’ve never had a problem with mail.
Fight until there is no time left on the clock!
The real reason that I'm writing is not to whinge about our calls or our pay per week, it is about the lack of pen-pal services to give prisoners like myself connection and community whilst incarcerated.
Whilst I appreciate that this issue only affects 0.01% of the prison population, I do find it hard to believe that this issue hasn’t been highlighted previously.
I agree that we should all be held accountable when it comes to our past actions, but what about the system? Is it being held accountable too?
This is the continuous “therapy” I receive from those considered on the “bottom.” Never doubt your goodness.
One thing to keep in mind (and is also relevant) is the unemployment or hygiene wages ($15 approximately).
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