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.
Prison doesn't easily allow outside support to provide the love and care many inmates require, let alone access professional support.
We have a voice, but through the system, our voices are muted. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, and even grandmothers.
Our external world has so many options and choices, to have, do and be, we even have greater control of this world, more than we have ever had before, yet we are still suffering.
I am the volunteer garden billet and some of my responsibilities are garden plot allocation and seed distribution.
Dad would always say “there’s something about toiling in the garden, getting your hands in soil, it earths me out.”
The lack of housing is creating a backlog for inmates who otherwise would be eligible for parole.
With even the prison staff in industries agreeing that our pay rates are ridiculous, how do things stay the same?
Wow, I won the caption comp for December… I’ve never won anything and the whole jail is congratulating me.
I'll never come back to this place, but I’ll always respect the time that I’ve spent in here, and I understand now how and why people return to this place.
I now live in hope that I can find peace within myself, and there is a faint light at the end of a very long tunnel.
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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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