Julia Jarman
About Author
Julia Jarman has written over 80 books for children. She lives near Bedford with her husband and has three grown-up children. She has been a schoolteacher and journalist but she now devotes a lot of time to school and library visits to talk to children about writing.
Interview
ReadingZone talks to Julia Jarman about Inside
Published by Andersen Press
January 2010
When Julia Jarman saw a film about a character, Lee, who ends up in a Young Offenders Institution (YOI), she decided to write about what happened to him. 'Inside' is the story of Lee's 12 months inside. Did it make him, or break him?
Q: Why did you want to follow Lee's story?
A: When the film I was watching ended, I just wanted to know what happened to him when he was inside. Lee's character just got to me, he was so real. He wasted his life because he never stopped to think about what he was doing or to examine where his life was going. There are so many Lees or potential Lees out there. This story takes you inside his head, and inside the four walls of his prison.
Q: How did you find out what life was like 'inside'?
A: There are good people in the prison services and they wanted to help me but as time went on, I also felt that there were those who don't want people on the outside to know what it's really like for young offenders.
It was also hard to speak to ex-offenders - most people who have been inside do their best to forget about it and move on. It is such a horrible experience they don't want to think about it or remember it, they just want to put it behind them.
I also spoke to the No Way Trust, which was started by prison officers in Hull, and which travels around with a mobile cell to show people what being inside is really like. And eventually, I did manage to get inside a YOI.
Q: Was there anything about the YOI that surprised you?
A: There were things I had found out about, like the boredom because you're locked up for so many hours, and how threatening the environment can be, but what surprised me was how customised their cells were with pictures and curtains.
If the inmates were on enhanced privileges, they could order things from the Argos catalogue. One lad had made a toothbrush holder from a Colgate packet and sellotaped it to the wall and that became something I could use in the story.
Q: Does the short, sharp shock work for Lee, or send him into the arms of criminality?
A: There are all sorts of people inside YOI's and for many of them, what happens there just doesn't work. The suicide rate is also quite high in YOI's. But it's hard to devise a system that will work for everyone.
Q: Lee is a difficult character to like; he has hit his mum violently and mugged and robbed an old woman. How do you get us to like him?
A: I wrote the book in the first person, through Lee's perspective, so that I could get into his character and so that the reader could begin to understand what drove him to do what he did. When he gets angry he is totally out of control and doesn't stop to think. That is the behaviour he saw from his father who also beat his mother.
The book also questions what drives people to these kinds of violent acts - is it a learned behaviour, or do some people start violent and need to learn not to behave like that? Lee's journey inside eventually helps him to understand himself and forces him to evaluate where his life is going - but there are no easy answers for him, or for the other characters he meets inside.
Q: Who do you want to read Inside?
A: I think anyone who has ever wondered what it must be like to be in one of these places would find it interesting. And I also hope it's a good story in its own right. But when I wrote it, I was also thinking about all those potential 'Lees' out there. If my book can make just one or two people stop and think about what they are doing and the path their life is taking, then it will have been worth writing.
