About Time dedicates many of its pages to publishing the letters of people in prison, as well as from their family and friends.
This is the centrepiece of the paper: a platform for people to share their experiences and learn from each other.
I write to extend feedback – re: your monthly paper. I must say that it was with more than the usual measuring spoon of interest that most here @ MRC welcomed its arrival.
12 months into being remanded in custody. I’m still yet to be sentenced – hence I can’t see the end at all.
We are encouraged to maintain contact with our support people, our wives, our families, and our friends. This upcoming price increase will reduce the amount of contact we will be able to have with our supports.
What I’m hoping to achieve by writing this is awareness of the care I receive and the stubbornness of the exceptional circumstances parole in Queensland.
I’ve made the most of my time in jail this time and have made myself a promise to not just waste my time here, but to learn as much as I can, study, get fit, do as many programs as possible, and come out a better person than I came in as. I've achieved that, and more.
Why are jails so populated by people who are uneducated? What is being missed by the courts and cops and the community that the process of jailing people is formed around the process of not educating people or not identifying the problems in school?
GROW is a community-based national organisation that works on mental wellbeing using a 12 step program of personal growth of mutual help and support. It operates through weekly peer support groups.
I moved units about a month ago and we feed some stray cats here. One even let me pat her last night! It's been over a year since I've patted an animal, so you can imagine how excited I was!
Reading other prisoner’s stories inspired me to keep my head up and keep going now four months in, thank you all who share your stories and words of wisdom.
I have been incarcerated for 22 months of a four-year sentence in Queensland jails. This poem is about my own situation.
On 1 November 2025, QCS introduced a new pricing model: 20 cents per minute for all calls, mobile or local. A call that once cost 30 cents for 15 minutes now costs $3 – a ten-times increase.
I was due for parole in March, and my parole is approved but there is no housing for me to go to.
Our questions, our fears, our thoughts are like demands, tormenting our souls, afraid to face them.
I only have a short stint of a few months, but like most find myself forced to become distant from my family, mainly due to unaffordable call rates.
My name is Steve. I have done 10 years prison time in Long Bay, Grafton, Parramatta, Goulburn, Maitland, Cessnock, Rockhampton, Arthur Gorrie, Borallan, Glen Innes and Silver Water. I got out in 2003 and have remained out ever since.
After being transferred to a minimum security prison with a fully equipped ceramic studio, I was very excited to have the opportunity, and the time, to challenge my skills and creativity.
Congratulations on the launch of About Time. I can only imagine how many obstacles you have navigated to successfully sail the product into Australia’s prisons, and from where I sit it was very warmly received by the inmates, security and medical staff that I share time with.
Congratulations on your new magazine. I have the second edition, and reading through it I discovered what I had not seen. That was the lack of information supplied by Legal Aid for those with very little money who need legal assistance.
Hey there. My name is Sash. Today marks my 9th day in custody since my arrest. I'm here this time for driving whilst disqualified. I've just been sentenced yesterday to 10 months with a 5-month non-parole period.
My name is Shea and I am currently just over 5 years into a 22 year sentence for murder. This is my first (and hopefully last) time coming to prison, and even after half a decade behind bars, I’m still coming to terms with all of the various consequences of the fact.
Hi there, my name is Chris and I sit here, again, in P.P.P. with another sentence, with old feelings of loss or sadness. I just had my 39 year old birthday, again thinking about how many I’ve done being locked up.
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Help us get About Time off the ground. All donations are tax deductible and will be vital in providing an essential resource for people in prison and their loved ones.
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