Shining a Light on the Hope-Filled, Stressful Journeys of People Leaving Jail

Listen to Jarrah performing Exhaustion here

Exhaustion is a one-women radio play about life after jail. Jarrah, a woman in her 40s, gives the audience a massive dose of ‘real talk’, offering her vulnerability and her struggles to overcome the challenges of life after release from jail. She inspires empathy and concern as she shares the things that are important to her and how she feels.

However, Jarrah is not the only person telling this story.

In fact, it took the bravery, honesty and passion of 48 amazing people with lived experience of incarceration and drug use to produce Exhaustion along with 2 other short plays, Reflections and Hate This.

The plays are the final stage in a unique project bringing together research and the arts to shine a light on the hope-filled, stressful journeys of people leaving jail.

Lead researcher Kerryn Drysdale explains: “Life isn’t necessarily easy on the outside. It is all about helping ordinary people to listen, understand and learn the reality of what people go through after they’re released, and to get the right support services out there.”

Kerryn put together the project in her role at University of NSW’s Centre for Social Research in Health and looked for support from 2 Victorian centres for research - Burnet Institute and La Trobe University.

Importantly, she made sure every step was overseen, debated and agreed by peers with lived experience. Peer involvement not only meant the audience gained an authentic insight, it was a way of respecting the 48 interviewees by ensuring their stories were heard and understood.

For Kerryn, it was important the play taught audiences to understand more and judge less.

“We try to get people to think about why people face so many problems trying to connect with their lives and society after jail. These include a lack of stable housing, steady income, and access to drug treatment. Trying to pull all this together adds up states of exhaustion that may make it too hard to carve a new path in life and easier to return to the old one, no matter how much willingness and hope someone has.

“When we listened to the 48 interviewees, we heard of ways people rolled with the punches.

That included noting when you are tired and giving yourself a break. Feelings of being overwhelmed are both common and valid.

“We also want to get the message out that those responsible for transitional supports and post-release services should be thinking about the types of demands they are placing on exhausted and overwhelmed people. They need to be flexible and respond to people’s needs better so they can help them more.

“There are so many competing and urgent decisions people have to make – about housing, money, family and keeping to complicated corrections orders. Services have to understand how overwhelming it can be to jump all these hurdles, often without anyone to support you and a judgemental society that is unforgiving.”

Users News talked to Jarrah, the actor who had the honour of bringing voice to Exhaustion.

Working with people in prison is a passion for me and I really enjoyed the creative process.

For me, it’s about lived experience that I have, about sharing that and making it a bit better for everybody. Saying: we’ve all got this in common and let’s not be ashamed of it and let’s talk more about some of the things that we find difficult.

But at the time we didn’t know if it was going to be really successful or if people would be interested in it, or not interested. So it was just like a little project but then it really took off. Corrections decided to play it on the radio at the correctional facilities, which is fantastic.

I think hearing a first-hand account of something you’ve been through, or something you’re expecting, is really valuable, I think, in terms of decreasing anxiety and knowing you’re not alone in this experience.

I don’t have any lived experience of being in custody myself. I’ve got lived experience of other things (I’m a peer worker at an NSP) but not that one. But I had a partner who went into the system as a child, and then “juvie” then prison. He’s spent a good portion of his 50-something years behind bars or on probation or answering to somebody at some point. When I met him, he’d only been out 6 weeks.

I saw the police targeted him and really doubled down on him. Even just walking down the street not doing anything, he would be targeted. So I really watched how his likelihood of going back inside was massively more than anybody else’s in the community.

And how unfair that is because you’re really trying to learn again how things work in this society. The behaviour that you learn that keeps you alive and safe on the inside is not the way you’re supposed to behave on the outside. So you’ve got forget everything, literally, as you walk out that door. You’ve got to forget all that behaviour, accelerating from zero to 100 in any emotion. Everything has to slow down. That was quite tricky for him. Particularly because it’s been from a kid that he’s been doing it.

But also, you just can’t do anything wrong. You have to do everything by the book, at least until you’re off parole, and expect the police to turn up and harass you. If you’re expecting that, then you’re not going to get upset by it. Just go, “Yep, come on, check me. No problem,” and just breathe through it. Reacting to it is not going to work. You’ve got to respond to it rather than react. And respond with, “I have expected this. Let’s just get it over and done with.” You’re not going to change the system by getting angry and upset.

I think they had unrealistic expectations. He wasn’t allowed to abide by the same rules as everybody else. He can’t carry a pair of pliers or a screwdriver in his bike kit. He can’t do that. I can but he can’t. He will get stopped and searched and have them taken off him. He is under a different set of rules than everybody else. It's not supposed to be like that.

We lived in boarding houses for 5 years, because that’s the only rental place you can get. And that’s going to keep you mixing with the same group of people, it doesn’t put you very far afield.

It’s really hard getting employment. They’re not building your self-esteem at all. And discrimination and lack of self-esteem go hand-in-hand and they can affect how much you feel like brushing your teeth, they affect if you feel like you’re worthy of getting a job, or worthy of healthcare. They affect if you’re going to change yourself today and try a bit harder.

We need to stop discriminating against these people so they start feeling a bit better about themselves and can change and turn their lives around and be productive members of society in whatever shape or fashion that is for them.

I think if you look at the reasons for crime, people don’t just wake up in the morning and go, “Yeah you know I just love breaking into peoples’ houses! I’m going to go out and do that today because it’s so much fun!” They wake up going, “Jesus I’m hungry! I’m unwell, I’ve got a drug and alcohol problem which I can’t get access for because there aren’t enough services.”

Hate This, written by Carissa Lee, is another piece in the series. You can read it, or listen to it performed by performed by Angeline Penrith here.