On a warm summer's afternoon, I find myself navigating the maze of a high security prison. My footsteps echo down the empty halls and my key chain rattles at my side. My route through involves unlocking barred gates and heavy doors, travelling down a series of identical corridors, passing prison officers watching and waiting at their stations. A lack of windows throughout the prison means no daylight permeates the atmosphere. Instead, cheap strip lighting, low ceilings and oncewhite walls create a sense of enclosure.

Clutched in my hands is a homemade certificate and a set of teaching materials. The lesson that day had involved a discussion of all the conversations we had had throughout the course: What is society? What is knowledge? How do we choose how to act? What is morality? What makes us who we are? What constitutes change? Over the past three months, along with a group of passionate, opinionated and thoughtful men, I had interrogated some of the big questions in life. On the final day of teaching, I head towards one of the wings. When I arrive, I am told the men are on ‘lockdown’. There had been ‘an incident’. I ask the prison officers on duty if I am able to talk to one of the men. The prison officer tells me that they can't unlock anyone but I could go and talk to him through his door. I am hesitant, but it's my last day teaching in the prison, and he had missed the class. I want to give him his certificate and check how he is doing. The prison officer asks if I need escorting to the cell door, but I wave my key chain to him to demonstrate I can make my own way.

I rarely visited the wings. My work meant I spent most of my time in education departments. Usually, on the wings, depending on the time of day, there were men wandering around in dressing gowns and cheap, well-worn slippers, or perhaps flip-flops and tracksuit bottoms. Sometimes they were going to make a cup of tea, sometimes they were trying to get a prison officer's attention, sometimes they were chatting to another prisoner. I was often asked who I was by the men in prison.