Time After Time: Repeat Offenders the Inside Stories

(Paperback, Export/Airside)

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Description

A funny, touching, challenging and campaigning book about our prisons crisis by the Sunday Times bestselling author of A Bit of a Stretch

British prisoners have to endure the most inhumane and barbaric conditions imaginable, so why do so many of them keep going back Former inmate and documentary maker Chris Atkins has spent the last six years tracking the fortunes of a dozen repeat offenders to understand why the state fails to keep them out of trouble.

Featuring funny, wild and poignant stories, Time After Time exploits Chris's unprecedented access to the criminal underworld to understand why the system actually makes reoffending all but inevitable for ex-prisoners.

Reviews

Eloquent, witty, engaging and enraged ... the most important book you'll read this year. -- Sathnam Sanghera
Chris Atkins brings a unique perspective, an unflinching eye and a dark sense of humour to hidden stories from the underbelly of the British justice system. Time after Time is entertaining, unsettling, illuminating and important. -- Rafael Behr
Shocking, scathing, entertaining... If you thought you knew how bad British prisons are, you haven't read this book... It's an inside story to make you weep at the incompetence, stupidity and viciousness of the current system. * Guardian on A Bit of a Stretch *
Powerful... a dispassionate record of the grinding down of the human soul, deliberate hopelessness, insane and moribund bureaucracy, the whims of bullying guards, roll calls, curses, kicks and punches.' * Telegraph on A Bit of a Stretch *
An incredibly compelling account, not just because of Atkins' incongruity and his knack for black, observational humour, but because it lays bare a system that has become utterly dysfunctional. Atkins is thrust into the heart of Britain's prison crisis and can never quite believe what he is seeing. It's a sort of Kafkaesque haplessness. A bleak catalogue of absurdity. * The Times on A Bit of a Stretch *
Surreal, darkly funny, at times horrifying but always humane account of what it's like to be locked up. * Observer on A Bit of a Stretch *
A highly readable and thought-provoking account, which illuminates a failing and anachronistic institution in dire need of a radical overhaul. * Daily Mail on A Bit of a Stretch *
A soul-searching account... A pacy memoir which is imbued with a dark humour... heartbreaking. [Atkins is] honest enough to have left in the parts that would make his mother wince. * Sunday Times on A Bit of a Stretch *
Fabulous. Candid, funny and never self-pitying, this is a must-read insight into why prison simply doesn't work. -- Jon Snow on A Bit of a Stretch

Author Bio

Chris Atkins is a BAFTA-nominated film-maker. His documentaries Taking Liberties and Starsuckers were critically acclaimed and made front-page news. He directed the documentary film Who Killed the KLF and has also worked extensively with Dispatches for Channel 4 and BBC Panorama. Following his release from prison, he is now back in North London, filming documentaries and writing.