Time After Time Synopsis
A funny, touching, challenging and campaigning book about our prisons crisis by the Sunday Times bestselling author of A Bit of a Stretch
Read the hilarious, shocking and enraging inside stories of those stuck in our broken justice system. Meet the prisoners who:
- escaped jail by pretending to be his twin brother
- lived in luxury hotels for nine months masquerading as the Duke of Marlborough
- was put back inside indefinitely for not attending a party
British prisoners have to endure the most inhumane and barbaric conditions imaginable, so why do so many of them keep going back?
80% of criminals who receive cautions or convictions are reoffenders
46% of ex-prisoners are re-convicted within a year of leaving prison
Reoffending costs the taxpayer £18 billion per year
The numbers are staggering. But the reasons behind them will shock you. Former inmate and documentary maker Chris Atkins has spent the last six years tracking the fortunes of a dozen repeat offenders to understand why the state fails to keep them out of trouble.
Featuring funny, wild and poignant stories, Time After Time exploits Chris's unprecedented access to the criminal underworld to understand why the system actually makes reoffending all but inevitable for ex-prisoners.
About This Edition
Chris Atkins Press Reviews
Eloquent, witty, engaging and enraged ... the most important book you'll read this year. -- Sathnam Sanghera
Chris Atkins brings a unique perspective, an unflinching eye and a dark sense of humour to hidden stories from the underbelly of the British justice system. Time after Time is entertaining, unsettling, illuminating and important. -- Rafael Behr
An incredible piece of work. I am trembling with rage at the state of the British penal system. Dear God - I hope this book helps change things. - John Niven
Shocking, scathing, entertaining... If you thought you knew how bad British prisons are, you haven't read this book... It's an inside story to make you weep at the incompetence, stupidity and viciousness of the current system. - Guardian on A Bit of a Stretch
Powerful... a dispassionate record of the grinding down of the human soul, deliberate hopelessness, insane and moribund bureaucracy, the whims of bullying guards, roll calls, curses, kicks and punches.' - Telegraph on A Bit of a Stretch
An incredibly compelling account, not just because of Atkins' incongruity and his knack for black, observational humour, but because it lays bare a system that has become utterly dysfunctional. Atkins is thrust into the heart of Britain's prison crisis and can never quite believe what he is seeing. It's a sort of Kafkaesque haplessness. A bleak catalogue of absurdity. - The Times on A Bit of a Stretch
Surreal, darkly funny, at times horrifying but always humane account of what it's like to be locked up. - Observer on A Bit of a Stretch
A highly readable and thought-provoking account, which illuminates a failing and anachronistic institution in dire need of a radical overhaul. - Daily Mail on A Bit of a Stretch
A soul-searching account... A pacy memoir which is imbued with a dark humour... heartbreaking. [Atkins is] honest enough to have left in the parts that would make his mother wince. - Sunday Times on A Bit of a Stretch
Fabulous. Candid, funny and never self-pitying, this is a must-read insight into why prison simply doesn't work. -- Jon Snow on A Bit of a Stretch It's a cracking book, he can really write. -- James O’Brien - LBC
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