Twenty years ago I was arrested, and Nelson Mandela was freed. I regretted I didn't have any high political ideals I was fighting for, just leading a life that was dangerous and unhealthy, which had to be stopped.

I allowed prison to give me that opportunity, to start afresh, and stuck to that.

I didn't need to be locked up; I'd have gone along with a much lesser deterrent. The damage being in prison has done to my credibility is as great, if not greater, than the lifestyle which led up to it. I am sure community service would have been sufficient; perhaps relocation helped me to stay away from the life I was leading. When I was refused bail in the city, my mother was able to put up a bail address in the country where her partner worked. I was isolated from my partner, but this pushed me into proving I could get back on track.

The process of court is exposing and humiliating enough - surely if you have sympathetic people working with you and the court to help steer you back in the right direction, that's got to be more effective, and cheaper than incarcerating someone. There are other more humane and sensible ways of imposing restrictions and reviewing the progress of temporarily deviant members of society than pushing them behind locked doors and labelling them forever as criminals.