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He used to bring me rosecea

By Jim Griffin
April 2, 2010 at 3:00 pm

The latest adventure in the skin camouflage outreach project took us to Kilmarnock Prison last Friday. Project Officer Helen Irvine and I visited the maximum-security prison, home to about 600 inmates, to discuss delivering the service to prisoners scarred by violent attack, self-harm or intravenous drug use.

Now, I normally wouldn’t tell you what goes on in stir because I’m no lagger but Top Dog said in this case it would be okay. First we had our fingerprints taken by an electronic reader then posed for ID photos to go on our temporary visitor passes. I looked so shifty it’s a miracle they let me back out. Then we went through a scanner, left our phones and flashdrives in a locker, passed through a turnstile controlled by another fingerprint reader and were led through a series of corridors and locked doors as we made our way to the meeting room. Helen got a bit nervous; a clear sign of a guilty conscience.

We met with the healthcare team to discuss how we could help people remove the physical signs of life in prison or the life leading up to their time there, covering over prison tattoos and scars left by incidents or lives of violence. For people hoping to move on, covering over that visual legacy could be a major step. The fear that people could tell just by looking at them would be removed.

The meeting went well, with staff responding with a mixture of interest and hard-earned cynicism about the number of male prisoners who’d want to use the service. They raised some interesting issues we’d not thought about: under the private prison’s contract the inmates aren’t eligible for NHS prescriptions which is how people usually get the camouflage creams, and there’d be an issue around finishing powder as powdered substances aren’t allowed for obvious reasons. These are things to discuss but it’s exciting to explore the idea and we’re hopeful we’ll work something out.

As we only met with staff we didn’t get a strong sense of prison life but according to my research several prisoners would have been escaping via Rita Hayworth, a couple dozen would have been practising their Thriller routine, a small number would have banjoed Plastic Jesus and a number of undercover cops with comatose criminals’ faces on would have been trying to get the comatose criminals’ autistic brothers to tell them where they’d planted their bombs. And despite being a male prison all the inmates would have been bulky Australian women.

Helen’s going back in on 6 April. I figured as much. You can tell just by looking at her.

Photo credit: ICRC

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Tags: prison, Skin Camouflage

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