Separation from children can be especially hard for women inmates

Pauline served nine months of an 18-month term for benefit fraud when her four children were aged between two and 14.

"Absolutely devastating" are the first words Pauline uses to describe the heartache of being separated from her children.

They want to kiss hug and kiss you and they can't. How do you tell a child you can't touch them? Former prisoner Pauline

The Liverpudlian, who maintains her innocence, spent three months at Risley Remand centre in Warrington, 17 miles from home, before being moved to Drake Hall, 44 miles away in Staffordshire.

Pauline, now 45, was allowed family visits once a month for the first three months, then every two weeks after she had built up privileges.

"It was worse when the children came to visit," she told BBC News Online.

"You aren't allowed to touch them. They want to hug and kiss you and they can't. How do you tell a child you can't touch them?"

"My children suffered in different ways. With my 14-year-old daughter it was as though I had died and she was going through a bereavement. She also found the stigma hard to bear.

"My 12-year-old son went the other way. He withdrew into himself and started playing truant from school."

Pauline's partner, the father of her two younger children, was left to look after the family alone.

"When my case came up I had to go through the legal channels so my partner would be accepted as legal guardian to all four children.

"I wasn't living with him. He was a full-time carer for his father but he took all four children on. It was a real struggle for him, not least financially."

Open toilet

And things were far from easy for Pauline.

During her three months at "Grisly Risley", she found the centre more than lived up to its widely used nickname.

"I shared a cell with a girl who was going through cold turkey coming off heroin. The cell had an open toilet and the girl had diarrhoea. It was totally embarrassing for us both," she remembered.

Amazingly, however, Pauline counts herself as one of the more fortunate ones.

Fellow Liverpudlians she met at Risley were sent to Cookham Wood in Berkshire and Holloway in north London, where family visits could be few and far between.

"I was in with women who didn't have a partner or anyone to look after their children," she recalls.

"They were at the mercy of social services for visits. Many lost their homes while they were in prison and it can take a long time then to get the children back.