Life after jail: 'I've never felt so exposed'

When Darren Balfe (32) was released from prison he had his bus fare and little else. “I got out of the gate and I didn’t know what to do. I was lost. I really was lost.”

Although he was a “big young fella”, well able to take care of himself, he says: “I’ve never felt so exposed. I’ve been in about three or four different prisons in Ireland . . . I just got on with prison, it doesn’t affect me, but I understand they do nothing for you. There’s no learning from it, there’s no going into rehabilitation.

“There was nothing there for me, I done my Junior Cert there but I never got my results off them. There was school there but it was just a show, there was nothing that helped you with coming on the outside.”

Sudden transition

The sudden transition from prison to the outside leaves former inmates feeling insecure and anxious. “I’m after having this routine going, of being [in prison] every day. It’s a great routine to get into, but the minute you get out of prison and you haven’t got that routine you’re straight back to f***king drugs.”

On the outside he “didn’t know what to do and I said it to a few people ‘I want to go back to jail, I don’t feel safe now’. Now don’t get me wrong, I got over that in a few days but at the time I was lost, I really was.”

When he got out he also “missed a lot of people . . . You build bonds with people in prison. I met some of my best friends there, these are true people. You look into some people’s eyes and you know they’re a thieving bastard, but you can be talking to someone else and you know you have a true friend and you build up that bond with people in there.”

Other times “I wanted to stay and they threw me out. I went in to do a detox one time and I got right down to 10ml [of methadone] and when I got down to 10ml I’m saying ‘Judge, keep me in for three more weeks . . .’ I’m asking them for help and they’re sending me in the opposite direction.”

‘You’ll be back’

He says when prisoners are going out the door the guards say to them: “Ah we’ll see you in a week . . . you’ll be back.”

“But the truth of the matter is most people do [go back].”

Former prisoners wouldn’t feel so lost “if there was proper supports there . . . a group setting with other people that are only out. You get hope off people like that, people who are making it. And if groups like that were set up it would be great”.

Balfe said he got in touch with the Peter McVerry Trust, a homeless support organisation, and if it wasn’t for that “I think I’d be dead”.

“But there’s a lot of people out there not so lucky as me . . . Most people I’ve met had to go to the likes of Cedar House [a night shelter in Dublin city]. Can you imagine getting out of prison and going in to Cedar House? I would rather be in prison, I really would. I would rather be in prison than that place. I swear to God it was the worst.”