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| A Story of Crime Addiction |
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I am 47 years old and I’m recovering from a lifetime of addiction to crime. Because of this addiction I have spent 24 years in prisons and institutions, 12 of them in solitary confinement, including when I was aged 10-13. At my worst I was committing thousands of burglaries a year, about 16 a day.
I grew up in the East End of London in an unloving home. At the age of eight I was sent to a psychologist because I was having difficulties and had been expelled from three schools. He asked if I thought my troubles stemmed from being adopted. It was the first I had heard of it. I was deeply shocked and affected; in the seven days that followed I broke into seven houses in my street. This quickly escalated to two or three break-ins a day.
At 10 years old a juvenile court placed me in a secure unit. In a soundproof cell with bars, a concrete bed and a fireproof mattress, I would kick and smash anything I could. I was very frightened. I started having panic attacks where I felt I couldn’t breathe, and was given powerful sedative drugs. I became consumed with hatred and rage. I attacked the warders, permanently injuring some of them. I was released to a foster family at 13, but burgled their house after finding they were being paid to look after me. I hated the world and my main aim had become to commit as much crime as I could to get back at it.
But even then, though I did not have a name for it, I knew I was in the grip of something powerful. One evening aged 15 I went to the probation office. I was desperate. I knew I couldn’t stop what I was doing and needed help. A probation officer asked me what was the matter. I told her: “ What I keep doing is going out, stealing and hurting people, getting locked up and going to prison. I don’t want to do it but I can’t stop.” She said I was the only person who could change this. I left in despair. I was soon sent to approved school and then a young offenders prison.
I spent much time in punishment blocks, on short rations, fighting with other inmates and being beaten and otherwise abused by those in charge. I survived, full of hate and waiting for my release when I would gain my revenge – I could burgle, burgle, burgle. From 18 to 32, I was locked into a cycle of offending and prison. Opening the door of somebody’s property gave me such a powerful buzz, like an addict taking cocaine – but just one more fix would often end in just one more sentence. I very rarely slept and if I did I dreamt of burglaries. When I went out, I wanted to burgle every property I saw. The desire and craving overtook my whole life. I was not able to keep an intimate relationship going, even feeling my wife and our two children were only another way to keep out of prison. I took all sorts of measures to keep out and keep burgling. I was completely obsessed and the compulsion was out of control. On the way to prison from court I would look out of the van window for burglaries to do when the gates opened. On release, I would do as many as I could on the way home.
Once, when I was in an open prison, a group of us were let out to do community work for the day. Everyone else arranged to meet girlfriends and wives, and to have a fry-up breakfast and a pint. I spent my day looking at places to burgle when I got out. Back in my cell that evening I thought about what I could have done that day, and realised again that there was something wrong with me.
Eventually, as part of an assessment before sentence, I was sent to see a criminal psychologist, and he helped me to understand that I have an addiction to crime and that my level of addiction at that time was sky high.
Soon after this the internal barrier I had built up to keep me from feeling began to break down. My wife had asked me to take my youngest daughter out. She was a toddler at the time. I took her to the pub and she was playing while I stared at the river. Then I heard a cry and turned to see she was frantically searching for me, thinking I had gone. I held out my arms to her and she ran into them, clinging on to me. As she held on, I felt a feeling inside of me I had never felt before. Tears rolled down my cheeks. I was experiencing my emotions for the first time in 40 years. The hard walls I had built inside began to crumble. I felt vulnerable in a way I never had before.
Around this time I had the extraordinary experience of being given two suspended sentences by two separate judges when I was up on serious charges that meant I would normally have expected a 6-8-year prison sentence. Encouraged by a friend who had recently converted to Christianity, I made statements admitting the full range of my crimes and also saying how I wanted to change my life. My barrister, advised me strongly against doing this. Against all the odds, I was believed and given the chance to do that. I couldn’t believe what had happened, I had miraculously escaped two certain prison sentences, when I look back I still can’t believe it. Someone was looking after me and I was free to start over.
Treating re-offending as relapse makes absolute sense to me and gives me a structure to deal with the obsession. For the first time, because of my growing understanding of addiction to crime, my life and behaviour makes sense, I can see a way forward in dealing with this problem. Offenders Anonymous and the Twelve-Step recovery programme is helping me to address the core addiction and the personal and emotional issues that lie beneath it. I try to live one day at a time but some days still find it difficult to walk past any house without wanting to break into it. The Offenders Anonymous recovery programme gives me a way to deal with the addiction that has been the centre of my life for as long as I can remember. I know that an important part of the Twelve-Step programme is to make amends to those people I have hurt ( Step Nine) and when I think of the damage I have caused to so many over the years I get overwhelmed and shut down, try to block out the memories and feelings.
I am grateful that I can make a start by being crime free myself and trying to help others like me who are caught up in this lifestyle and can’t stop even when they want to.
I am now five years crime-free, some days are a struggle, the loneliness of being isolated from all the people I once knew is painful sometimes but I am blessed with a happy family life. I love my wife and three children and am starting to feel the increase in self-esteem that comes from staying addiction free and trying to help others who are still struggling. I am beginning to live a life I can be proud of. I hope that you too may be able to enjoy the freedom on the inside that I am slowly beginning to experience.
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