Reviews

Forget You Had a Daughter: Doing Time in the 'Bangkok Hilton by Sandra Gregory, Michael Tierney

emmar18's review

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

The best book I've read to get a real insight into prison life in "Bangkok Hilton".

marnash's review

challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

So this was a pretty interesting book. I picked it up at a second-hand bookshop and right off the bat it seemed right up my alley. The first 15ish pages got me excited for the remainder of the read, but unfortunately soon after, I realized that it wasn't going to be as good as I had hoped. The writing isn't too great, but Sandra's story is so heart-breaking and difficult that I still wanted to know what happens next, which is why I was determined to read through the book. I'm happy I didn't dnf it - despite the writing that wasn't for me, it was still a very interesting read.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Confinement, Death, and Sexual violence

greenclovers75's review against another edition

4.0

This is the story of Sandra Gregory and her time in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs out of Thailand. She does part of her time in Thailand and the rest in the United Kingdom, where she is from. Although she was guilty of attempting to smuggle the drugs, the sentence that she received was harsh. She received at first a life sentence, that was then reduced to 25 years. This was longer than some murders in Thailand. The story takes you from shortly before her trip to Thailand, through to her release. She does a really good job of describing the details of the environments she was subjected to. What I found sad, was the way she was treated in regards to her crime. Yes, she was guilty, but compared to those around her, to include the woman who killed and chopped up her husband, her crime was minor. The conditions of the Thai prisons were beyond belief. Tasks were disgusting, and included things like standing in fecal clogged sewer water in order to unclog the facilities used as toilets. Most of the women had constant sores on their skin due to the lack of water and poor living conditions. Unfortunately, things for Sandra did not improve when she was sent to the UK to finish her sentence. Since she was convicted in Thailand, the British government would do nothing to try and reduce her sentence, although even in the UK she was serving terms longer than some of the most vicious killers in the country.

chyneyee's review against another edition

4.0

Somehow, we begin to question the purpose of prison punishment. The prison punishment takes away the offender’s freedom and they should take responsibility for their wrongdoings. However, due to the poor conditions in the prison, stressful guards with their high-risk but low-pay job plus grouping together hundreds of crime offenders in a limited perimeter, the initial purpose to educate a crime offender to be responsible for their committed crime has turned into a survival school.

If they have the chance to be released from the prison, it takes time for them to adapt to the outside world and probably they are still sticking with the survival knowledge which they gained in the prison. The saddest thing is the society treating them differently due to their criminal history which one of the most common reasons that lead them to be repeat offenders. I feel no one have the right to judge or giving them an unfair treatment due to their past if they have a sincere repentance. As none of us is perfect and everyone makes mistakes, maybe the difference is our mistakes are not related to crimes but crime offenders have to bear the responsibility for their committed crimes and pay with their freedom as well.

Book Review: Forget You Had A Daughter by Sandra Gregory