Jay Hamilton-Smith was just 15 when he was first sent down.
Hailing from Abergavenny, he had a past speckled with stints in care, where he says he suffered repeated beatings and bullying, and eventually found himself on the streets. Desperate for cash to fuel his spiralling gambling and drug habits, he took to thieving from shops.
This led him down a path of relentless criminality, accumulating a rap sheet of 33 offences, spanning from multiple dwelling break-ins – “a s***load” of shoplifting gigs, as per his own words – to five armed robberies. Due to the regularity of his crimes, he was slammed with a life sentence in 2014, subject to serve at least four-and-a-half years.
The 49-year-old, who has admitted to being unable to stop reoffending and spent a total of 28 years behind bars at some of Britain’s toughest prisons, including Full Sutton, Long Lartin, and Whitemoor, says he previously preferred prison life over the freedom of the outside world due to his mental health issues. Having now opened up about his struggles with mental health and after being diagnosed with both autism and chronic PTSD, he believes he is on the road to recovery.
The help he has received, he explains, is what he needed as a teenager to set his life straight. “I want to share my story in the hope it can help others who are in the position I found myself in,” he shares with Wales Online after 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.”
Reflecting on his troubling past, he said: “My childhood was awful.” He detailed a history of bullying, abuse, and an unsettled home life, marked by constant changes between parents, foster care, and children’s homes. He drives his point home by noting: “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. When I was 15 I got kicked out of [school] with a £10 note and ended up on the streets in Abergavenny,” Jay recalls.
“I returned to foster care at that point and was taken in by a couple of families. Looking back, they were good people who wanted to help me turn my life around, but I didn’t trust anyone then. I’d had difficult experiences with many adults in my life up to that point and I distrusted everyone.
“Now, in retrospect, I realise I didn’t give them a chance to reach me. I kept running away and even stole from them. I started gambling at that point and got into drugs. Heroin numbed me. It felt like being wrapped 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.”
His biggest regret, he reveals, was failing to seek help before landing a life sentence in 2014, by which point his criminal CV had swollen massively. “I suppose I fell into crime really,” he recalls.
“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 quick Google search of Jay reveals CCTV footage of him entering shops armed and intimidating staff for goods. During a week-long crime spree in 2014, which led to his subsequent imprisonment, he admitted to robbing a woman at a Spar shop on Clytha Park Road in Newport, wielding a claw hammer.
Three days later, he robbed another woman at a casino in Hereford, this time armed with a piece of wood he’d discovered in an underpass. He turned himself into the police just hours later.
“I’d got myself into a really awful mental state where I’d convinced myself I preferred being in prison,” he remembers. “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.”
Jay, aged 49, candidly opened up about his journey to self-reform. He said: “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.”
He is now aiming for a fresh start in life with renewed hopes, he said. “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.”
