Email Received from a Student

Hello Shaun,

I attended your talk to my school Dover Grammar School for Girls earlier this evening. I just wanted to let you know that I find it remarkable at how you can tell others about things you regret earlier in your life, and the decisions you wish you had never made.
It must be hard for you to tell everyone about the hard situations you went through when in prison. Also, I find your commitment to letting the world know how awful these prisons are, and trying your best to get it recognised uplifting.
I was the only year 10 student in the hall this evening, and the reason I decided to attend was because last year you had talked about this with our year when in year 9. When you told it the first time, I found it amazing. It was full of information, and really made people realise the conditions at which you could be put through as a consequence of taking illegal drugs. I thought it would be good for me to come again since I loved it last time. You don't hold back on the truth which is great because then we find out the truth about what it is really like.
I thought it was wonderful this time that you showed the video of your mother talking about how she felt when all this was happening to you. 


I think this added a lot to the story as it made me and the people around me think about how our parents would feel if we put them through a similar situation.
That's all I really wanted to say.  I wish you all the best in your future. I am so happy that you got out of prison just to tell us your story because it is full of emotions and you are truly an inspiration in my eyes. Thank you.

Yours Sincerely,

Becky Arman, Year 10


Shaun Attwood

Pics/Videos from Guildford Party Time Book Launch/Banged-Up Abroad Premiere

A big thank you to all of the people who showed up at The Boileroom in Guildford on Sunday for the Party Time launch. A combination of karate, BodyCombat and yoga people made the atmosphere spot on. The Banged-Up Abroad episode gripped the audience, and was followed by almost an hour of questions and answers.
Setting up with Mike Hotwheelz and Stuart

Mum

Mum and Callie


With my sister and partner Callie


With Judy from the BodyCombat front row

Mike Hotwheelz





With Martin, a karate black belt

With Mark a teacher from Aldershot

With Seb from Poland

With Josephine



With Sam from the School of Hard knocks

Watching Raving Arizona

With Fotini (far left) from Greece

With BodyCombat instructor Steve from Zimbabwe




With Nige, who just got his karate black belt

With fellow karate friends

With Jon, a former BodyCombat instructor


With Claire and Jill, my senior proof readers 


With Tony, my BodyCombat instructor and his daughter

With Mary from BodyCombat

With Gemma from BodyCombat

With Mike and Elizabeth from BodyCombat



With Dawn from BodyCombat

With Carol from BodyCombat

With Stuart the sound engineer extraordinaire  




Shaun Attwood

Where are you reading Party Time? Menorca, Spain

Review of Hard Time by Gill Hoffs

Click here to read the review.

Banged-Up Abroad Guildford Film Premiere May 26th

This Sunday In Guildford, an arts venue called The Boileroom is showing my Banged-Up Abroad episode Raving Arizona four months before it goes on national UK TV. It's a free event and all ages, including students, are welcome. Doors open at 7pm. The episode is on at 8pm, followed by Q&A.

The Boileroom,
13 Stoke Fields
Guildford, Surrey
GU1 4LS

Tel: 01483 440022

Info at The Boileroom 

Facebook page for the event

Shaun Attwood

From T-Bone (Letter 16)

T-Bone Radiating power and strength, this deeply-spiritual massively-built African-American towers over most inmates. He is a prison gladiator with more stab wounds than Julius Caesar.A good man to have on your side.

Peace my Brother,

  This letter is being written by someone else. I’m dictating it to him. Everything is fine besides the fact that I miss my beautiful wife and you my good friend. I didn’t receive your latest postcard because it had an airmail sticker on it, so please send me some good tidings from across the pond, my brother. How is your niece? I’m praying for her right now.

  I’ve often dreamt of speaking in front of students there because it’s more than just a serious responsibility, it’s an honor, and a privilege that not many people have. I can’t wait to be standing with you, brother, and doing what I believe I’ve been called to do.

  Please say Hi to all of the students in the T-Bone Appreciation Society. Give them my respect and heartfelt thanks for their prayers and hopes for me. Please share with them that I will be there, and I will speak nothing but the truth about my life and how drugs and a life on the street have caused nothing but pain and destruction, and to say the least, heartache.

  The next time, I will help people who are on drugs instead of allowing temptation to control me or problems that we use to make excuses to go to do wrong. It’s the same way all around the world, so what we need to do is help people by telling them the truth about drugs and drug addiction. Man, do I have some things to say, and I will with you and as many people I can in my life.

  I love you brother, so please stay strong and positive. Give my respects to your lovely family.

  Each one. Teach one.
  Steel embrace.
  Strength and Honor

  T-Bone

  Please click here for T-Bone’s previous letter:  http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/normal-0-from-t-bone-letter-15-and-my.html

  Click here for T-Bone's previous postcard: http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/postcards-from-t-bone-3.html

  I now have two books featuring T-Bone, the hard-hitting Prison Time and a self-help book, Lessons from a Drug Lord– both include T-Bone fight stories
  Shaun Attwood  

St Catherine's (Bexleyheath) Visit


  1. Spoke In Kent today. Every now and then the students react wildly (in a good way) and they certainly did at St Catherine's

    Shaun Attwood

Dover Grammar School For Girls Visit


  1. Spoke in Dover yesterday. The students asked so many questions the teachers had to extend the talk by a second session, almost another hour.

    Shaun Attwood

Farnborough College Visit

Shaun Attwood

Arpaio Jail Story by Ex-Wife of a Guard


Hi Shaun, my name is Janet. I watched your episode of Locked-Up Abroad and I felt compelled to write you. I have had personal experience with Maricopa's prison system as my ex-husband, David, has been working there for 10 years. He worked there while we were married, and I was integrated into the social aspect of the lives of Detention Officers. I have horrific tails of human rights violations that have haunted me for years. There are thousands upon thousands who have suffered under Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s reign.
 
  I lived in Phoenix for several years. David and I had a little apartment near Durango where he worked the morning shift. I was integrated into a world of severe meatheads and idiot guards. It was always amazing to me the kinds of people that were passed through the academy process. But the guards referred to each other as family, and so these people became my relatives.
 
  My husband was a particularly violent man. He was only 22, but already a monster. I feared him with all my being, but oddly still loved him and wanted only to please him and earn his approval. I guess that's the typical behavior of a battered wife. But the further he worked for Joe Arpaio, the further he continued to change.
 
  After having worked there for maybe 6 months or so, he came home one day with blood on his boots. Like most guards, he was very particular and protective over that "glassy mirror shine" created when a person spent the time and energy into perfecting their appearance, which they believed maximized their authority over the inmates. I was in shock! When he told me what happened, he focused on the fact that there was now blood on his boots, instead of focusing on the fact of how it got there in the first place.
 
  There was an inmate at this facility that the guards all called "Plums." It was unusual for any kind of playful nickname to be used on any inmate, and so I mistakenly took it to mean that they were friendly with him. My husband would come home all the time laughing about something Plums had said or done. I took it to mean that he though Plums was a funny fun guy... I didn’t realize till later that he was just mocking him.
 
  Apparently that day while David was doing his rounds, Plums thought it would be funny to pull a prank on him. Plums had failed to realize that there are no real friends between inmate and officer, and he was about to cross the line. Plums hid in his cell under his bunk. As my ex-husband entered the cell to take a quick look around, Plums sprang out and grabbed his leg. My husband had told me what happened next was just a natural reaction, but I don’t believe kicking an inmate in the face several times is any kind of natural reaction. David was a strong man. He was small, but strong. He kicked Plums several times in the face while he lay on the ground. When I asked David how he could ever do that to a friend, he laughed and told me "He's not a friend! He's an inmate!!... AND he got blood on my boots!" The rest of the night he focused on erasing the blood off his boot, while Plums lay in the hospital with a broken nose.
 
  It was the start of my realization on how horrible the jails were, and how evil Joe Arpaio really is.
 
  As I watched your story last night I cried. I have repressed that life for a long time now and your story brought those years back. I haven't thought about my life with all the guards in a long long time! If you want to post this story it would be a real release for me. These incidents have haunting me for too long!



Video of a guard stepping on the neck of an unsentenced inmate who is cuffed, restrained and even has a hood over his head in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail:



Click here for info about Hard Time, the book about how Shaun Attwood survived Arpaio's jail.

Shaun Attwood

Radley College Visit (Oxford)

My brilliant readers were Tom and Louis
Shaun Attwood

Email Received from a Student Today


Dear Shaun,

You came to speak at my school a while ago now and I have been meaning to thank you ever since.

People come into schools and speak about drugs, sex and danger on a regular basis, yet the most these presentations amount to are jokes dotted throughout the week about how people do all of the above anyway before the talk is completely forgotten. Your account of your time in prison was the first that I'd seen to really and truly touch every person in that room. You didn't tell us to never look at drugs, to report anyone who had the slightest knowledge of narcotics or to stick to every guideline we've ever been given. As a teenager I can well and truly say that this wouldn't have and continues not to have any effect whatsoever on the well-being or common sense of my classmates.

The way you delivered your speech inspired me. The facts were clear but the humour was prominent, keeping us all on the edge of our seats. You taught me that after a high there often comes a low, and however hard and rock-bottom that low may feel, determination and perseverance can always amend things in the end. I learnt about the hardships in jail, and what happens if you come head-to-head with the law; but on top of that there are so many more things that will always stay with me from your talk: The importance of family, the dissolution of dreams that may well result in something better, and yes, how to get my priorities straight. I'm sure you receive countless emails daily remarking on what an awe-inspiring man you are and what a change you make - but I felt that it would only be fair to give back even the tiniest bit of what you have given to me in a talk over a year ago.

Thank you so much,
Keep inspiring,

Grace Beverley, Francis Holland School, London


My response:

Grace,

That's one of the nicest emails I've ever received. I'm sat here eating cheese on toast with a BIG SMILE ON MY FACE. Thanks so much for taking the time to express yourself so eloquently!

Appreciatively yours,

Shaun Attwood

Guards Murder Marty Atencio in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Jail

       
Video of a schizophrenic prisoner being murdered by guards in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail. His crime was allegedly yelling at a woman in a car park. What a sad waste of life.

Click here for my jail survival tips.

Click here to watch my jail survival tips video.