I was handed a life sentence in prison and spent 28-years behind bars. I have seen and done horrific things

Jay Hamilton-Smith was 15 when he received his first prison sentence. The vulnerable teen from Abergavenny had been living at the Ty Mawr approved school for young boys before the school was closed following a police inquiry into child abuse.

Jay claims that at Ty Mawr he was forced to watch while some of his friends were sexually abused which added to the trauma he says he’d already experienced as a child. After a childhood in and out of care, during which time he claims he’d been repeatedly beaten and bullied including at Ty Mawr, he ended up homeless and set about stealing from local shops to fund a growing addiction to gambling and drugs.

Soon he was in a cycle of constant offending, racking up a long criminal record of 33 offences including a handful of dwelling burglaries, “a s***load”, in his words, of shoplifting offences, and five armed robberies. Such was the incessance of the offending that he was eventually sentenced to life in prison in 2014 with a minimum term of four and a half years.

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The 49-year-old who admits he couldn’t stop reoffending has spent 28 years of his life behind bars in prisons for some of Britain’s most serious criminals including Full Sutton, Long Lartin and Whitemoor, but says at the time he would rather have been inside than left to his own devices in the outside world. Now, after opening up about his mental health difficulties and having been diagnosed with autism and chronic PTSD which set him on a road to recovery, he says he has received the help he needed as a teen to get him on the straight and narrow.

“I want to share my story in the hope it can help others who are in the position I found myself in,” he tells WalesOnline following his release. “I want to show people who feel there isn’t another way than crime that there is hope for you and you can lead a decent life if you admit you need help.”

“My childhood was awful,” Jay recalls. “I was bullied and abused from a young age. I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until I was an adult and I found it very difficult to fit in as a child without knowing why. My schooling was very sporadic because I spent my childhood and teens in and out of care. I was passed from my parents to foster carers to children’s homes and I never really had a home.

“The longest period I had at home was from 11 until 14 before I ended up in care again. There were up to 60 children at Ty Mawr before it got shut down over the abuse that went on. I didn’t get sexually abused there but while I was there I saw others getting abused including my friend,” Jay claims. Since Ty Mawr was shut down former headmaster Neil Wardell was jailed for indecent assault on a teenager at the site and violent attacks on others. That followed the jailing of the ex-deputy principal Barrie Alden and ex-housemaster John Wright.

“When I was 15 I got kicked out of Ty Mawr with a £10 note and ended up on the streets in Abergavenny,” Jay says. “I went back into foster care at that point and was taken in over that time by a couple of families. In hindsight they were good people and wanted to try and help me turn myself around but I didn’t trust anyone back then. I’d had a difficult experience with many adults in my life to that point and I had a lack of trust in everyone. Now looking back I can see I didn’t really give them a chance to get through to me. I kept running away and even stealing from them. I started gambling at that point and got into drugs. Heroin numbed me. It was like being wrapped up in cotton wool for hours at a time with no memories or flashbacks. I’d just be out of it and in a space where I could forget.”

He says his biggest regret is not admitting he needed help until he received a life sentence in 2014, by which time his criminal record had become huge. “I suppose I fell into crime really,” he remembers. “I started during my time in care when I was dabbling in petty theft which got more serious. I moved onto shoplifting and commercial burglaries and then started invading people’s homes and committing dwelling burglaries. I did stop burgling homes pretty quickly because it didn’t sit right with me after I’d done it. On reflection it’s horrific for the victims when you break into their homes. I’m not condoning burgling shops but I didn’t feel as bad about doing that. I didn’t have a lot of remorse about that at the time. I blamed society for what had happened to me as a child and the life I’d ended up with. I don’t think like that now. I know it’s not society’s fault my life ended up like it did but at the time when I was going through it I felt like that. I blamed society. I didn’t care. Between 1990 and 2014 I committed a handful of dwelling burglaries, a s***load of commercials and five armed robberies.”

A google search of Jay shows CCTV footage of him entering shops with weapons and threatening staff for goods. During the week of offending which saw him jailed again in 2014 he pleaded guilty to robbing a woman at a Spar shop in Clytha Park Road in Newport armed with a claw hammer before robbing another woman at a casino in Hereford three days later armed with a piece of wood he’d found in an underpass. Hours later he handed himself in to police.

“I’d got myself into a really awful mental state where I’d convinced myself I preferred being in prison,” he recalls. “I wasn’t the kind of prisoner who enjoyed committing crimes. It was a means to an end. I’ve never denied anything or pushed victims through a trial. I’ve always admitted what I’ve done. Until I got help and unburdened myself from what was going on in my mind, I used prison as my sort of safety net because I basically couldn’t cope with being on the outside. I wasn’t frightened of prison at all. In some ways I wanted to be there. I’ve been in loads of prisons including some for the lowest of the low – really bad offenders. I’ve been in Long Lartin, Whitemoor, Full Sutton, and I had to try and fit in. It was hard there. I don’t go looking for trouble and I hate bullies because I was bullied as a child, but I can look after myself and I think you have to be in those places. Now I fear going back. I don’t want to go back, because I can finally enjoy living on the outside. I don’t want to commit crimes anymore. I’ve been clean for 10 years now and I’m getting the right support. Life’s so much better for me now.

“The start of my reform was admitting I needed help and getting my diagnoses. I now know I’m autistic, I have ADHD, chronic PTSD, paranoid schizophrenia, anti-social personality disorder and avoidant personality disorder. I’ve spent longer than Nelson Mandela in prison because I never opened up and asked for help. I was a closed book. I’d like to think if I had the help I’m getting now I probably wouldn’t have ended up in prison.”

At 49 Jay says he hopes he can have another shot at his life. “I want to have a better relationship with my kids. When I was at home I thought I was a good dad but I wasn’t home enough because I was always in and out of prison. That wasn’t fair on them. I speak to them on the phone now and then but not as much as I’d like to. I’d like to go abroad for the first time too if possible. I’ve never been able to go abroad because of being on licence. If at all possible, some of the crimes I’ve committed give me sleepless nights, so I’d also like to go back to the victims of some of those crimes and give them some compensation and say how genuinely sorry I am. I didn’t think I would ever be a person who would do those things. I never wanted to be that person. It weighs on me now that I’ve done those things and I’d like to go some way to putting that right.”

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