Author Topic: Mark Alexander  (Read 41674 times)

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Offline John

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #120 on: December 29, 2018, 12:32:27 PM »
What I find questionable is why on returning home in January (and months of non-communication), after finding a pile of unopened mail, unpaid bills, etc. and a plumbing leak, which required major attention to the building fabric, judging by the need for three large Hippobags, that it wasn't Mark who informed the police of Sami's disappearance, but his neighbours and then only 24 days later!  If it was left to Mark, I doubt that he would ever have reported his dad missing.

Another good point Myster.  It's the little things that add up to lots of circumstantial evidence which sealed the killer's fate in this particular case.
A malicious prosecution for a crime which never existed. An exposé of egregious malfeasance by public officials.
Indeed, the truth never changes with the passage of time.

Offline Fact Checker

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #121 on: January 02, 2019, 11:33:08 AM »
What I find questionable is why on returning home in January (and months of non-communication), after finding a pile of unopened mail, unpaid bills, etc. and a plumbing leak, which required major attention to the building fabric, judging by the need for three large Hippobags, that it wasn't Mark who informed the police of Sami's disappearance, but his neighbours and then only 24 days later!  If it was left to Mark, I doubt that he would ever have reported his dad missing.

Hi everyone, Happy New Year. Please see the thread below:

http://www.freemarkalexander.org/diary/#top19
http://www.freemarkalexander.org/diary/#top20
http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#church

Mark doesn't for a minute deny that he took his eye off the ball here. There a number of problems. First of all, he was used to his dad either not being around, going away on 'business' trips without further explanation, and not returning his calls. This was just normal behaviour in their household. Odd to all of us, but normal for them.

Secondly, he had been brought up not to question his father's intentions, not to put his nose into his father's business. He, like his mum, had grown up in an environment in which huge emphasis was placed upon guarding his father's privacy and secrecy. So, even if Mark was concerned, or worried, which he was, he wouldn't have dreamed of involving the authorities, for risk of getting his father in trouble and upsetting him.

Thirdly, Mark drew some reassurance from the fact that the social services were monitoring his dad. If there had in fact really been an issue, they would have contacted him, or so he thought. The fact that they hadn't allayed his concerns.

Fourthly, Mark had become completely absorbed in his life at university, where he was not only studying, and enjoying student life, but running a business. Mark has a habit, evidenced here in this very Forum, of committing himself to too much and losing track of other things, like Rosie's letter. It took him 8 weeks to respond to her. It took him almost 12 weeks with his father, before he realised something was up on his return to the UK. Mark has never claimed to be perfect, but innocent people are no less fallible than the rest of us!

Finally, of course, Sami had had a go at Mark the last time they spoke. Mark was holding out for an apology, stubbornly, proudly, perhaps, but nevertheless he didn't want to be the first one to reach out.

All of this created the conditions in which Mark didn't react quickly enough to his father's silence, and failed to read the warning signs that something was wrong. Mark constantly questions whether he could have prevented his father's death if only he had acted sooner, and this possibility, that he could somehow have saved his father continues to plague Mark to this day.
This account is run by volunteers on the freeMarkAlexander.org team. We welcome healthy debate, but please try to avoid making unsubstantiated or libelous claims. Please excuse us if we do not respond to a post immediately. We may need to conduct further research before we can answer a question fully and this might take some time. All of our posted images are licensed by freeMarkAlexander.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Offline Fact Checker

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #122 on: January 02, 2019, 11:46:37 AM »
If Sami was alive after the time which the prosecution claimed that he had been killed then there would have been an electronic and a paper trail to prove it. A frail old man with medical issues just doesn't disappear in this day and age unless something dreadful had happened to him.  That in my view was the crux of the case.  If that was not the case then there would have been evidence to prove otherwise.

This is a fair point John, even if Sami wasn't frail by then:

http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#health

Our understanding of Sami's activities during September and October are still pretty sketchy:

http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#financial

What we have been doing however, is establishing patterns in his past when he had behaved in the same way, seemingly 'disappearing' or going 'off grid'. This is helping to demonstrate that Sami had previous form. Even his own neighbours had commented that:

"He was perfectly capable of dropping off the radar when he wanted" JP

"There was no point in pursuing him if he didn’t want to be pursued... Even if he was in, he wouldn’t necessarily answer the door or see anyone" SSP

"If he wanted to remain private and uncommunicative, he would do just that" MP

And the Serious Case Review panel "observed 'he seemed not to exist'"

Let's just run with the prosecution theory for a minute though. If we forget about the question of whether he really was around for another month, and say that Sami died in September, the evidence still goes in Mark's favour. He wasn't there long enough, even on this timeline, to carry it all out. The motive is implausible, the forensics are missing, and the crime doesn't fit the man. All the indicators point to him being innocent.

This account is run by volunteers on the freeMarkAlexander.org team. We welcome healthy debate, but please try to avoid making unsubstantiated or libelous claims. Please excuse us if we do not respond to a post immediately. We may need to conduct further research before we can answer a question fully and this might take some time. All of our posted images are licensed by freeMarkAlexander.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Offline Myster

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #123 on: January 03, 2019, 01:15:11 PM »
So if Mark didn't do it... who did?

An aggrieved father in the building trade who discovered that Sami was up to some questionable monkey business online with his underage daughter, found out where he lived then took the law into his own hands?

or

An itinerant jerry-builder who dug a big hole behind the garage, but disposed of Sami when they argued over the cost, then stored his body until he'd gathered enough raw materials i.e. sand and cement  to make an amateurish "professional" three-layer mortar root-barrier with Sami underneath as the fourth?

or

Someone from Sami's landlord flat rental days who took exception to his Egyptian origins?

or....?

It's one of them cases, in'it... one of them f*ckin' cases.

Offline mrswah

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Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #124 on: January 03, 2019, 02:06:37 PM »
If Sami was known to disappear from time to time, why did it seem strange to the neighbours when he disappeared the final time? Was it Mark's answers to their questions that made them suspicious?

I wonder why they didn't go to the police, rather than confiding in a neighbour who was a retired policeman?


Offline Fact Checker

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #125 on: January 03, 2019, 02:21:39 PM »
If Sami was known to disappear from time to time, why did it seem strange to the neighbours when he disappeared the final time? Was it Mark's answers to their questions that made them suspicious?

I wonder why they didn't go to the police, rather than confiding in a neighbour who was a retired policeman?

More to the point, why didn't a single one of them simply walk up to his front door and knock on it? Why didn't any of the neighbours actually pick up the phone and call his home? Remarkably, you might think, none of them did. Odd?
« Last Edit: January 03, 2019, 02:27:58 PM by Fact Checker »
This account is run by volunteers on the freeMarkAlexander.org team. We welcome healthy debate, but please try to avoid making unsubstantiated or libelous claims. Please excuse us if we do not respond to a post immediately. We may need to conduct further research before we can answer a question fully and this might take some time. All of our posted images are licensed by freeMarkAlexander.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Offline Fact Checker

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #126 on: January 03, 2019, 02:36:14 PM »
So if Mark didn't do it... who did?

The investigation, and our understanding of Sami to date, seems to indicate three main possibilities:

1) A house-keeper or other employee who took advantage of the cover of anonymity they gained from Sami's benefit scam. Because Sami was returning claims with false employee names, they avoided having to register with the authorities, or being vetted. Receiving payment in cash, they could avoid declaring their earnings. They had easy access to the house and would have known the area well.

2) A direct or indirect victim of one of Sami's confidence tricks, perhaps through his online activity on adult dating sites and chatrooms.

3) A loan-shark Sami owed money to, or had defrauded. In other words, Sami's past caught up with him, there was a confrontation of some description, and something went wrong. There is also the possibility, given the very unusual and extreme manner of burial, that some kind of message was being sent out to those in criminal circles.

We believe whoever was responsible could not have acted alone.

Samuel knew he had made “many enemies” over the years, as he confided in AH who he once asked to “look after Mark for me” should anything “happen” to him. A violent altercationwith one of his tenants, who tried breaking into Samuel's home, led to a criminal conviction. Samuel even kept a list of some ‘enemies’ in his address book. Mark's grandfather has also described how Sami “could easily accumulate many enemies”.

One victim of fraud has described Sami as follows: "He is basically a clever thief and has meticulously planned to make easy money out of a naïve young girl and me". He alleges that "my signature has been forged on the deeds of trust and the transfer of the mortgage" in order to place his step-daughter's share of the property into Sami's own name without her family realising. Her family describe how she was "in such fear of [Sami] that she... gave him power of attorney" over her financial affairs. Sami went on to secure mortgages in her name without her knowledge, selling the properties without repaying them, and then leaving the lady laden with the debt.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2019, 10:54:48 AM by Fact Checker »
This account is run by volunteers on the freeMarkAlexander.org team. We welcome healthy debate, but please try to avoid making unsubstantiated or libelous claims. Please excuse us if we do not respond to a post immediately. We may need to conduct further research before we can answer a question fully and this might take some time. All of our posted images are licensed by freeMarkAlexander.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #127 on: January 22, 2019, 04:42:49 PM »
With respect, this question seems a little gratuitous. For the record, Mark has been assessed by a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, and at the request of the prison service a Mental Health counsellor (30 sessions over the course of a year). None of their findings indicate any evidence of pathology, psychopathy, or any other abnormality of the mind. Mark was understandably diagnosed with depression shortly after his conviction, and has been taking medication for anxiety as a result of this ordeal, but there are no underlying issues pre-dating his time in custody.


This means diddly squat and again boils down to a matter of opinion
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #128 on: January 22, 2019, 06:55:47 PM »
With respect, this question seems a little gratuitous. For the record, Mark has been assessed by a Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist, a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, and at the request of the prison service a Mental Health counsellor (30 sessions over the course of a year). None of their findings indicate any evidence of pathology, psychopathy, or any other abnormality of the mind. Mark was understandably diagnosed with depression shortly after his conviction, and has been taking medication for anxiety as a result of this ordeal, but there are no underlying issues pre-dating his time in custody.

You could be referring to numerous murderers; this isn’t uncommon

Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #129 on: January 25, 2019, 12:38:21 PM »
The investigation, and our understanding of Sami to date, seems to indicate three main possibilities:

1) A house-keeper or other employee who took advantage of the cover of anonymity they gained from Sami's benefit scam. Because Sami was returning claims with false employee names, they avoided having to register with the authorities, or being vetted. Receiving payment in cash, they could avoid declaring their earnings. They had easy access to the house and would have known the area well.

2) A direct or indirect victim of one of Sami's confidence tricks online.

3) A loan-shark Sami owed money to, or had defrauded. In other words, Sami's past caught up with him, there was a confrontation of some description, and something went wrong. There is also the possibility, given the very unusual and extreme manner of burial, that some kind of message was being sent out to those in criminal circles.

We believe whoever was responsible could not have acted alone.

The above has been manufactured by Mark, who in turn has manipulated others to go along with the theories.

Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #130 on: January 25, 2019, 12:40:51 PM »
The investigation, and our understanding of Sami to date, seems to indicate three main possibilities:

1) A house-keeper or other employee who took advantage of the cover of anonymity they gained from Sami's benefit scam. Because Sami was returning claims with false employee names, they avoided having to register with the authorities, or being vetted. Receiving payment in cash, they could avoid declaring their earnings. They had easy access to the house and would have known the area well.

2) A direct or indirect victim of one of Sami's confidence tricks online.

3) A loan-shark Sami owed money to, or had defrauded. In other words, Sami's past caught up with him, there was a confrontation of some description, and something went wrong. There is also the possibility, given the very unusual and extreme manner of burial, that some kind of message was being sent out to those in criminal circles.

We believe whoever was responsible could not have acted alone.

The above appears to sit alright with you but the following doesn’t?

But why at this moment in particular? The timing is off. The idea that he would nurse his father back to health, only to turn on him, just doesn't sit right. And this at the very moment when he is supposedly being granted his freedom. If he wanted to get away from Sami, all he had to do was walk out of the door and never come back. He could have made a clean break in Paris or London quite easily.

Not as yet. Mark's lawyers collated a list of about 40 contractors who Sami had hired to do work at the house over the years, and phoned them all. Nothing really came out of this however, and it seems unlikely that anyone would implicate themselves that way at any rate.

Since Sami tended to pay labourers and housekeepers in cash, there are very few records of any of the work that occurred at the home. Despite building work of this nature being noisy and labour-intensive, the neighbours maintain that they saw no-one doing any work until Mark showed up for an hour and a half on 19 November.

http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#contractors
http://www.freemarkalexander.org/faq/#night

Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Fact Checker

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #131 on: January 29, 2019, 04:31:05 PM »
The above appears to sit alright with you but the following doesn’t?

Sorry Nicholas, maybe we're being a bit slow here but can you explain what you mean? What's the inconsistency?
This account is run by volunteers on the freeMarkAlexander.org team. We welcome healthy debate, but please try to avoid making unsubstantiated or libelous claims. Please excuse us if we do not respond to a post immediately. We may need to conduct further research before we can answer a question fully and this might take some time. All of our posted images are licensed by freeMarkAlexander.org under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #132 on: December 09, 2019, 11:58:34 AM »
Here is a link to Mark Alexander's twitter and Facebook accounts which are run by his friends on the outside

https://twitter.com/MA_Campaign?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

It is worth noting that he is supported by Terry Waite and other influential people.  I do not think they would be supporting someone who is guilty.

‘Mark Alexander’ on twitter

”Smart Justice' also means focusing on the quality of a sentence, rather than the quantity - using the time that people spend in prison 'smartly', rather than extending sentences in an unproductive fashion. Time must be seen as a resource to be invested not wasted

‘The voices of miscarriages of justice victims go largely unheard and ignored. We believe it's important that people like Mark are included in discourse about criminal justice reform, because they have first hand experience of how the system has failed them.

‘With respect, you cannot simply project your bad experiences with Simon Hall onto all other miscarriage of justice victims. The person, the circumstances, and the facts are completely different from case to case.

‘These cases are disturbing, but mustn't be allowed to undermine efforts at bringing about real and meaningful change in the criminal justice system to help prevent miscarriages of justice happening in the first place

‘Mark's father had a habit of disappearing for periods of time, linked to fraudulent activities under 11 separate aliases, so it was not unusual. He had also brought his son up to maintain secrecy around his affairs, so Mark was understandably reluctant to go to the authorities
'

It is worth noting that he is supported by Terry Waite and other influential people.  I do not think they would be supporting someone who is guilty.

Daisy are you claiming Terry Waite and ‘other influential people’ can’t be hoodwinked?
« Last Edit: December 09, 2019, 01:22:30 PM by Nicholas »
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #133 on: December 11, 2019, 08:55:43 AM »
Have only just seen this and I agree

But he's still in contact with Daisy and still maintaining innocence https://insidetime.org/tweeting-prisoners/

1st June 2012
Tweeting prisoners by Matthew Whitehead Andy Stanford-Clark with contribution from Mark Alexander HMP Gartree 

“When my friend and colleague Mark Alexander was convicted of the murder of his father in 2010 it wasn’t long before I started talking to a friend of mine to work out how we could increase Mark’s ability to communicate with the outside world. Working in the technology industry it’s not long before either of us tries to apply our skills to a given problem. Andy has a long and established history of developing technologies that allow remote devices to connect with the rest of the world. To both of us Mark was just another hard-to-reach source of information and we wanted to make sure he was connected.

Before Mark went to prison he was an avid user of Twitter. By the time he was convicted in September 2010 he had around 100 friends following him. To us Twitter seemed to be the perfect way for Mark to keep in touch with what his friends were up to, and to allow him to remain more closely in touch with people he could longer contact as easily as he used to.

As well as keeping Mark informed, it was also designed to let his community of online friends know more about life in prison. It wasn’t long before it was serving more of a purpose than just letting his friends know what was on the menu that day, how he felt, or how his music practice was going; Mark has been working to clear his name ever since his conviction 18 months ago. As he goes through the process of appeals and his legal team make progress, we wanted Mark to be able to give his friends updates on the case and his campaign.

When Andy and I sat down to work out a way to connect him to Twitter we already had a raft of tools at our disposal. First and foremost we knew we had to have a way of getting messages into the prison. Without this it wouldn’t matter how clever our software was, we’d have to call it a day before we’d even begun. Mobile phones are banned and we knew inmates didn’t have access to email, but we did know about a website called emailaprisoner.com. The website provides a service that allows anyone to write to a prisoner. When an email reaches the prison it’s destined for, it’s printed out and delivered by hand just as if it had been received through the post. We’d both been using the service already to write letters directly to Mark and we decided it would be the perfect way for us to get messages to Mark.

The application we’ve written works by subscribing to the messages Mark’s friends post on Twitter. When messages are posted online they’re received by our software and compiled into a list of messages long enough to make up a complete email. Because the emailaprisoner.com website allows messages of up to 2,500 characters and Twitter messages can be up to 140 characters, each email we send tends to contain 15-20 individual messages. Mark’s friends can also send him messages directly by sending a DM or ‘direct message’ to his Twitter account. Their message gets appended onto the next email and we tag the different types of message so Mark knows whether they’ve been posted on a friend’s feed or sent directly to him.

To allow Mark to reply to messages and post his own updates on Twitter we still have to rely on more traditional means. Every couple of weeks Mark writes a letter to one of us listing the updates he’d like posting. We then type up each message and post it on his Twitter account.

While writing this article about the project we asked Mark if he could sum up the benefits he gets from using the system:

“It keeps me in tune with the fast paced nature of the world I find myself cut off from in prison. I feel tangibly closer to my friends because I get a real sense of their day to day lives and experiences through their updates, whilst in turn I’m able to share my own. In pervading such an extreme environment it brings a whole new dimension to our normal conception of ‘social media’, and offers a real gateway to reality. The impact it has had is enormous.”

We hope that our software will allow Mark to stay in touch more closely with his friends and to keep up to date with the latest activity on a social network the rest of us take for granted. With people becoming more used to rattling off quick Twitter-length messages on the move, it also makes it easier for people to fit messaging Mark into their busy lives.

Written by Matthew Whitehead and Andy Stanford-Clark, with contribution from Mark Alexander (HMP Gartree)
https://insidetime.org/tweeting-prisoners/
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation

Offline Nicholas

Re: Mark Alexander
« Reply #134 on: December 11, 2019, 09:11:37 AM »
1st June 2012
Tweeting prisoners by Matthew Whitehead Andy Stanford-Clark with contribution from Mark Alexander HMP Gartree 

“When my friend and colleague Mark Alexander was convicted of the murder of his father in 2010 it wasn’t long before I started talking to a friend of mine to work out how we could increase Mark’s ability to communicate with the outside world. Working in the technology industry it’s not long before either of us tries to apply our skills to a given problem. Andy has a long and established history of developing technologies that allow remote devices to connect with the rest of the world. To both of us Mark was just another hard-to-reach source of information and we wanted to make sure he was connected.

Before Mark went to prison he was an avid user of Twitter. By the time he was convicted in September 2010 he had around 100 friends following him. To us Twitter seemed to be the perfect way for Mark to keep in touch with what his friends were up to, and to allow him to remain more closely in touch with people he could longer contact as easily as he used to.

As well as keeping Mark informed, it was also designed to let his community of online friends know more about life in prison. It wasn’t long before it was serving more of a purpose than just letting his friends know what was on the menu that day, how he felt, or how his music practice was going; Mark has been working to clear his name ever since his conviction 18 months ago. As he goes through the process of appeals and his legal team make progress, we wanted Mark to be able to give his friends updates on the case and his campaign.

When Andy and I sat down to work out a way to connect him to Twitter we already had a raft of tools at our disposal. First and foremost we knew we had to have a way of getting messages into the prison. Without this it wouldn’t matter how clever our software was, we’d have to call it a day before we’d even begun. Mobile phones are banned and we knew inmates didn’t have access to email, but we did know about a website called emailaprisoner.com. The website provides a service that allows anyone to write to a prisoner. When an email reaches the prison it’s destined for, it’s printed out and delivered by hand just as if it had been received through the post. We’d both been using the service already to write letters directly to Mark and we decided it would be the perfect way for us to get messages to Mark.

The application we’ve written works by subscribing to the messages Mark’s friends post on Twitter. When messages are posted online they’re received by our software and compiled into a list of messages long enough to make up a complete email. Because the emailaprisoner.com website allows messages of up to 2,500 characters and Twitter messages can be up to 140 characters, each email we send tends to contain 15-20 individual messages. Mark’s friends can also send him messages directly by sending a DM or ‘direct message’ to his Twitter account. Their message gets appended onto the next email and we tag the different types of message so Mark knows whether they’ve been posted on a friend’s feed or sent directly to him.

To allow Mark to reply to messages and post his own updates on Twitter we still have to rely on more traditional means. Every couple of weeks Mark writes a letter to one of us listing the updates he’d like posting. We then type up each message and post it on his Twitter account.

While writing this article about the project we asked Mark if he could sum up the benefits he gets from using the system:

“It keeps me in tune with the fast paced nature of the world I find myself cut off from in prison. I feel tangibly closer to my friends because I get a real sense of their day to day lives and experiences through their updates, whilst in turn I’m able to share my own. In pervading such an extreme environment it brings a whole new dimension to our normal conception of ‘social media’, and offers a real gateway to reality. The impact it has had is enormous.”

We hope that our software will allow Mark to stay in touch more closely with his friends and to keep up to date with the latest activity on a social network the rest of us take for granted. With people becoming more used to rattling off quick Twitter-length messages on the move, it also makes it easier for people to fit messaging Mark into their busy lives.

Written by Matthew Whitehead and Andy Stanford-Clark, with contribution from Mark Alexander (HMP Gartree)
https://insidetime.org/tweeting-prisoners/

Tweet-a-Prisoner: Social Media and Prisoners Posted by clarehooper
A friend of mine called Mark Alexander is in prison, wrongly convicted of murdering his father. I know Mark from my IBM days, which means our mutual friends include the wonderful Andy Stanford-Clark and Matt Whitehead.
He’s been in prison for quite some months (good lord, they went fast :/ ), and we’ve primarily been staying in touch via a service called Email a Prisoner. You type your letter into an online form, pay 30p and hit ‘send’. It gets printed in the prison in question, popped into an envelope and delivered to the prisoner, who of course can reply by snail mail.
(Andy and I have been discussing related issues of latency — for  example, hearing bad news by phone one day and receiving a happy letter from before that news the next. I believe he may write about this shortly.)
Email A Prisoner is a nice service, and has been complemented by us visiting Mark, and by phone calls between Mark and Andy (in which Andy often ends up relaying greetings!). Still, these communication mechanisms are a world away from the fast-paced world of social media, even if Email A Prisoner does make things easier: as an expat living in the Netherlands, I have much more contact with my online British friends than the offline ones.
So I was absolutely delighted when Andy and Matt implemented Tweet A Prisoner! As you might imagine, it rather does what it says on the tin — Mark has a Twitter account (tap_MA), and with a bit of technological and social jiggery-pokery is able to update it from prison. Andy’s written an excellent explanation of how the system works.
I wanted to share a few words about the relevance of this to my EngD, where I focused on the redesign of digital experiences for non-digital contexts. As Andy observes in his write-up, in this case we were forced to use non-digital media for parts of the system, yet unless you’re Matt (i.e. the ‘social component’ of the system — the person who is so kind as to close the loop and upload tweets written by Mark) that’s effectively invisible. If I didn’t know Mark’s situation (or read the content of his posts!), I could easily assume he just happens not to log into Twitter on a daily basis.
I’ve yet to chat with Mark about his personal point of view, but this certainly gives him a new way to interact with a bunch of people: he can stay in touch with friends and ex-colleagues, and share his experiences more widely. I’m intrigued as to how his visceral experience of Twitter is changed by this rather unusual set-up.
Unsurprisingly, there’s a dearth of work on prisoner engagement and social media, but I wonder if this isn’t a topic for conversation: social media can help prisoners reconnect with healthier environments. Would that now have an impact in areas such as mental health and rates of recidivism?
On a personal note, I was absolutely thrilled when I saw the first set of Mark’s tweets. Thank you Andy and Matt!
https://clarehooper.wordpress.com/tag/twitter/
Who wants to take on this great massive lie?” Writer Martin Preib on the tsunami of innocence fraud sweeping our nation