"Closing!" A woman prison officer bellows out the word, her arms stretched across the doorway. She presses a button and a grate of thick iron bars slides shut with a thud. I'm inside now. It's impossible not to be overcome by a sense of deja vu. You've been in this place a hundred times in a hundred movies, walked these colourless corridors, breathed in the sweat and disinfectant, flinched as the doors slam behind you. Over there is the observation desk where the guards are laughing at some joke behind bulletproof glass. There are the inmates' relatives in the visiting room, some looking bored, others trying hard not to cry. There are the prisoners themselves, dressed in their dark blue uniforms like pyjamas. There are the 30ft walls for you to stare at, and dream of scaling. Here are the rolls of barbed wire, glistening platinum white in the midday sun.And there in front of you is a person looking up, with a nervous smile. She has blue eyes, hazel brown hair and freckles. Her prison number is stamped across her back: 599905. Nicole Ann Dupure. Height: 5ft 2in. Weight: 140lb. Date of birth: July 8 1986. Earliest release date: Life.
When she was sentenced, the judge ruled that the time she had spent in jail awaiting trial - 264 days - should be credited against her term of incarceration. What does that mean? Nobody can predict when Dupure will die, so nobody can calculate when to let her out. Her sentence demands she stay in the Robert Scott Correctional Facility, the main women's prison within the state of Michigan, for the rest of her natural life. She will never have the chance to demonstrate her remorse or convince anyone she has reformed: it is stipulated she is not entitled to parole.
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