Jenni Fagan (2012) The Panopticon.

Write what you know. Jenni Fagan writes about what she knows. You’ll find many of the same characters in her autobiography, Ootlin. A child set up to fail. To follow the path set out for them from cradle to grave. From carers that don’t care. A prison system that is all too familiar for graduates of children’s homes.

Jenni’s fictional other, Anais is 15, and she’s been sent to the Panopticon. Her age is crucial. Sixteen, she becomes an adult. And in Scottish law, she will be treated as an adult. She’ll graduate to the prison system with full honours. Or disappear and go missing as 70 000 people do every year. That’s their trajectory which they meet head-on.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/families-polmont-custody-death-youths-34501266

But Anais is a fighter. The police might fit her up with the attempted murder of a police officer, PC Craig, who bullied and humiliated her as a necessary part of her job, dressed up as looking after the well-being of the community (also in Ootlin). But the circumstantial evidence doesn’t hold up to much. She knows that doesn’t matter. They’ll still get her. There are things in her head. Just outside her vision.

‘There’s wee witches on the insides of my eyelids when I blink.’

She can hear them and see them. Witches are a constant in Fagan’s work. A reality in which women with magical powers can change things, even in the fucked-up system in which she lives. They don’t need to be that magic.  The Panopticon is watching her. Watching them.

Her first job is to fight Shortie. Batter her cunt in. It’s not something she wants to do (as we also know from Ootlin) but needs to be played out. A strict hierarchy. Nutters to the top. Losers to the bottom.

Brian is at the very bottom. He proved his unworthiness by raping a dog and flinging its body over a wall. Most of the girls, including Anais, have been raped, and some of the boys. Spitting and beaten Brian is the least they can do.

Anais is the top dog. Shortie kinda below her but on par. When the push comes to the shove, it doesn’t really matter. It’s them against the world.

Isla and Tash are a couple. Isla has twin babies that were taken off her. They are a couple that plan to be together forever, which they are, but not in a good way. Isla takes the car registrations of the punters Tash services down the docks. They’re saving and putting their money away for that bright new future where Isla and her children don’t die of AIDs and Tash stops slashing herself. Hate is engrained and self-hatred carved into her body.

 John’s kinda cute and fancies Shortie. They slag Shortie off for being the only virgin in Care. John sometimes works the docks too, but not seriously, in the way Tash does.

Anais’s boyfriend Jay is in prison. He’s always texting her. Asking her to send naked pics or make a drop off at the prison. He’s in serious debt. He needs her to come through. He reminds her he gave her a home when she was twelve and all the drugs she wanted or needed. She thinks she loves him, or did, when they were lovers. Payback is overdue.

The denouement is brutal as you’d expect (also from Ootlin). But it’s not all bad. There are good care workers such as ‘Angus’. They’re on the kid’s side. Not the prison-system’s side. Read on.

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Notes.

panopticon /păn-ŏp′tĭ-kŏn″/

noun

1. A hypothetical prison proposed by Jeremy Bentham, having circular tiers of cells surrounding a central observation tower.
2. A prison so contructed that the inspector can see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen.
3. A room for the exhibition of novelties.