Unlike Wakefield, Bristol is a category B prison, and some of the men here considered less risk than their colleagues up north. Inside for lesser crimes. She glances around the room and suspects that is to see them too lightly. There are men in this room she wouldn’t want to share a bus seat with. Perhaps they had only ever been caught for their lesser crimes. Their faces are smug because they know where the bodies are buried.

 Although, maybe the lesser the crime, the more likely they are to want to take part in her study. That would be interesting. Maybe there’s a point in a criminal’s career when they could be rescued, the recidivism halted. Catch them early enough. That had to form a part of her considerations.

Because there are more of them, they hear her out in silence and she finds that more forbidding than facing the six men previously. As much as she had wanted them to sit still and listen then, she now prefers the previous interaction to this intimidating staring.

Eighteen is a large enough group to merge together. Most are anonymous, although a couple stand out. There are a few smirks here and there, a few blank faces as she reels off the study aims and criteria. There are many she will never see again.

There is one she hopes to see again. One man she’s keen to recruit. He’s sitting at the end of the front row, slightly apart from the others, as if he considers himself not one of them.

Subjectively good-looking in a brutalist, end-of-times-willing-to-repopulate-the-earth kind of way, he has black hair, a square chin, broad chest, strong nose, and every positive-adjective body part. Her mother would have called him a stud. Her father a Neanderthal. He’s about forty and he hasn’t taken his eyes from her all the time she’s spoken. She senses in him an intelligence that’s absent in some of the other blank faces.

“Any questions?” she asks.

 “Show us your tits, luv.”

It wasn’t the kind of question she’d prepared herself for. It wasn’t even a question. But she’d imagined something similar happening several times. Then prayed it wouldn’t, and hadn’t really faced the idea that it would. Had swept it under the carpet of her planning. She’d thought a small group would be easier to handle. Hadn’t really imagined a crowd of this size.

The laughter sprang from all corners, and the smirks rippled through the men. The guards pretended they hadn’t heard.

How she handled this would set the tone for every possible interaction she would have with these men in the future. It might even affect recruitment. 

“Why don’t you show us yours,” she said, “they’re bigger than mine.”