Inside Job by Dr Rebecca Myers
Genre: Biography & Memoirs, Non Fiction, True Crime, True Stories
Read: 18th August 2022
Published: 18th August 2022
★★★★★ 5 stars
DESCRIPTION:
And here I am. Totally alone in a cell with a convicted sex offender who is free to do what he wants. There is no officer. No handcuffs. No radio. Only the man across the desk and me. He looks more petrified than I do.
HMP Graymoor. One of the UK’s most notorious prisons. Home to nearly 800 murderers, rapists and child molesters.
Reporting for her first shift inside is Rebecca: twenty-two, newly graduated – and about to sit down with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
In this gripping, hard-hitting memoir, forensic psychologist Dr Rebecca Myers revisits her time in the ‘Hot Seat’ with Graymoor’s infamous inmates – who might not be as different to us as we think.
This is as close as we can get to knowing what really goes on inside the damaged minds behinds bars.
MY THOUGHTS:
EXTRACT: "Society does not want or welcome sexual violence and child abuse, and rightly so. Incarcerated men who have committed sexual offences, especially against children, are seen as the scum of society. My experience has taught me that underneath it all they are not so different from the rest of us.
However, I wouldn't want my compassionate view of the men as being (whatever is) normal, worthwhile and deserving of a second chance to be misinterpreted as sympathy or condoning their actions. It certainly is not. Yet if we can try and treat men who committed sexual offences this way, then we stand a much better chance of success. And so do they. We know that vilifying, stigmatising and ostracising these men does not help. If we shun and isolate them, deny them jobs and a sense of purpose, then the paradox is that they are MORE likely to reoffend...
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of men convicted of sexual offences desist (stop) naturally.
Your new neighbour might be someone who was neglected, sexually abused, mercilessly beaten and made to watch his mother being raped while he was tied to a radiator. And all before the age of ten years old, while his impressionable brain was still growing. I have absolutely no doubt you have rescued him from such a cruel horror as a young child if you could. Damaged children grow up. Now that child is an adult, can you find it in yourself to lay a role in helping him live safely in our society? It is a question we ALL need to be asking ourselves, and with the bigger picture in mind: the prevention of sexual violence."
Just wow! This has to be one of the most powerful books I have ever read. And non-fiction is usually my genre as I tend to fall asleep at the drone of factual text, but INSIDE JOB is presented in such a way we as the reader are drawn in from the start. We are made to feel a part of the programme in which these men are a part. It is eye-opening, raw and traumatic on many levels. These men are the scum of society and yet they are human too. This book takes us inside the Sexual Offenders Treatment Programme that was run throughout the UK prison system with Dr Rebecca Myers facilitating and then training further facilitators. We get to see first-hand how taxing it is for those who run the programme and how it changes their perception of the world around them too.
INSIDE JOB is honest, insightful and even disturbing at times but also challenges the reader in any pre-conceived perceptions they may have. Myers' account of her experience is astute and honest as she freely admits to the mistakes she made, both personally and professionally, in her early years as a prison psychologist at the Category A HMP Graymoor, one of the UK's most notorious prisons. She worked solely with sex offenders and murderers, running the Core-SOTP and Extended SOTP, a CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) rehabilitation programme designed for offenders to recognise their behaviours and those that lead to their offending. The accounts of each of the men in the SOTP groups are harrowing, disturbing but incredibly raw. No one is left untouched by the disturbing darkness that descends of the horrors that then change the way that they see the world outside of the prison walls.
It is interesting to note the struggle that Myers herself was faced with, finding the crimes abhorrent whilst still conducting her job with an unbiased perspective. And that despite their heinous crimes, they are still human beings. Focusing on the SOTP brought these men to the forefront and through Myers' account she was able to humanise most of them as they went through the arduous and often harrowing treatment programme. We then begin to see beyond their offences, as abhorrent as they are, to the men and before that to the children they had once been...not as an excuse but often recognising them as the defining moments in the life of an impressionably aged young child. It definitely pulls at the heartstrings in places though none of what took place before excuses their offences...however, it does lead to an explanation of certain behaviours which are learnt at those impressionable young ages.
As a societal taboo, it is also widely perceived and accepted that these offenders cannot be rehabilitated but the truth is that in many cases they can be. Through SOTP they are given a sense of understanding of their behaviours which lead to their offences and why. Of course, not all offenders can be rehabilitated as they aren't open to the treatment being offered them. In actual fact, some treat it as a joke. Kyle is one point in case. Some make little progress while others come on leaps and bounds. I especially like how Myers focused on a particular group of men that we follow throughout the course of the book and as the reader we watch them unravel the puzzle, draw their life maps and gain an understanding as to their behaviour and the effects it had on their victims. Again, it is raw and insightful.
Throughout the book, Myers shows compassion and humanity and understanding as she develops something akin to a relationship with these men, as well as her wisdom in perceiving the parallels with her own life and how in many ways she saw herself as being like those men she was treating. Her own behavioural patterns were not so far from theirs and she found that both eye-opening and humbling.
Myers concludes her account with reports of the problems the SOTP faced along with its changes and modifications. To cease all types of treatment programmes would be redundant because the overall idea behind prison is for addressing offending behaviour and rehabilitation as well as punishment. To just punish would serve no purpose. INSIDE JOB is an eye opening and insightful read about the often dangerous offenders behind bars and the efforts in trying to change their behaviour and reduce sexual offending.
INSIDE JOB is a fascinating and engrossing read that just blew me away. It is not an easy read by any means, given the subject matter, but it is insightful and informative with achingly honest, raw and reflective. I liked how she ended with the outcome of some of those she encountered at that time, though it is a shame we never learnt the outcome of them all. I would have been interested to see how well, or not, some of those truly fared.
Overall, I highly recommend INSIDE JOB but it not for the faint hearted. Be prepared that this is not a glossed over account. It is in depth, raw and disturbing in places as it is not for everybody. I highlight the fact that it most definitely comes with trigger warnings such as descriptions of rape, murder and child abuse as well as psychopathy, sexual crimes and misogyny.
I would like to thank #DrRebeccaMyers, #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK for an ARC of #InsideJob in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Dr Rebeccca Myers is a forensic psychologist. Possessing only an undergraduate degree in psychology, she went straight into working in a male maximum-security prison, providing intensive therapy to rapists, child molesters and murderers. She has since spent 25 years assessing, treating and researching high-risk men who have committed violent and sexual crimes and, as such, has a rare insight into their mindset. She also trains and supervises staff/trainee psychologists and has disseminated and published her research at a national and international level.
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