At 19, when I first started writing professionally and got paid for it, little did I know that one day it would land me in prison. Quite literally.

It started in the Autumn of 2018, a prestigious pilot between Bath Spa University and HM Prison Service – a collaborative research project between two departments Criminology and Creative Writing that would take teaching and learning inside prisons, reimagining educational delivery where it mattered most.

Rehabilitation through writing was nothing new. What was new though was the approach – one prison, 12 weeks, five professional authors and one final anthology of publication-worthy writing by prisoners dedicated to their literary craft. The project stumbled, teetered and at times almost ground to a halt. On my first day, I had left behind crucial ID papers at home and was very nearly denied entry to the prison. Like any classroom we struggled with attendance, despite having a ‘captive’ audience. Retention slipped. Prisoners got moved and the initial 10 prisoners we started with trickled to a final four.

Six months later the anthology was complete. But then new obstacles arrived. The Prisons Service started having second thoughts. There were fresh questions being asked about security, viability and anonymity surrounding a wider publication. How much do you tell from behind bars and what do you censor.

A year later, on a wet December morning in 2019, there was a small ceremony inside Guys Marsh Prison where Chrysalis Chronicles was unveiled. For a Category C prison, this was a first event of its kind. In the midst of a historic election campaign where the incumbent Prime Minister had tried to score as much political mileage as possible from the unfortunate incident on 29 November 2019 at the Fishmongers Hall in London, where two young lives of Cambridge graduates Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones were stopped untimely and brutally trying to do very similar things; the publication and launch of a prison anthology was significant.

The morning after Jack’s death, his father Dave Merritt woke up to a Twitter storm with Boris Johnson on the criminal justice bandwagon advocating longer sentences, harsher penalties and criticising Labour for the early release policy. This was Dave’s reply. “Where most of us saw a tragedy unfolding, Boris Johnson saw an opportunity. Instead of a dignified response he went on the offensive to score points blaming Labour. Jack would have been extremely upset at how things were unfolding. This is not what he would have wanted. He can’t speak for himself anymore. So I had to push back the narrative.”

Chrysalis Chronicles, an anthology from Guys Marsh, is for Jack, Saskia and all those who believe in rehabilitation.