In the months before David Perry’s arrest he tells of how he lived a life of paranoia. “I lived my life just waiting for that knock on the door [from the police], wondering every day if it would come,” he said.
The 38-year-old has been reflecting on his time serving four years and three months in prison for possession with intent to supply cocaine and for dangerous driving after he led Gwent Police officers on a high-speed chase through Cwmbran which lasted half-an-hour before he pulled over.
He threw bags of white powder out the window of the vehicle with accomplice Jerome Nunes as they attempted to flee the “ten to 15” police cars and helicopter above. “I knew I’d made a big mistake on the day when the police attempted to block the car in,” he added. You can get more Newport news and other story updates straight to your inbox by subscribing to our newsletters here.
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David, from Newport, who had hundreds of thousands of pounds of drugs in the Seat Leon on August 8, 2016, fled the officers at first by crashing into the police car and then frantically tried to shake them off by jumping red lights at 3pm in the afternoon. A total of 832g of cocaine was later recovered with a purity of 89% and 92% - described by prosecutors as “very high”.
“I remember it clearly,” he recalled. “It felt a natural reaction to try and escape and I know I put members of the public at risk in doing so. In the moment I didn’t think about that, I prioritised getting away. I didn’t have a chance to worry about anything, I was just running. That all comes [the worry and realisation of what he had done] when it’s over and you’re sat in the prison cell reflecting on events and choices.”
David, who described himself as never having had an addiction to drugs due to his interest in health and fitness, said he “ended up choosing the wrong role models and had a lack of opportunities”.
“I had gone through phases of employment and unemployment, I wasn’t very well educated and I made poor choices,” he explained. “It was the lowest point, sitting there in HMP Cardiff on remand, not knowing how long I would get, just thinking about how I’d ruined everything. For a prisoner that is the worst time you can imagine - it’s the first months that are the worst - the uncertainty of what will happen to you.”
On February 3, 2017, when he was sentenced to eight and a half years at Cardiff Crown Court, David said that while the length of the sentence was “horrendous” for him and his family, he saw it as the key turning point in his life. “The impact of a sentence like that is immediate - a huge chunk of your life potentially wasted. I had no-one to blame but myself - I knew what I’d done. The worst part was knowing how much of my daughter’s young life I wouldn’t see. When I went into prison she had baby features, she was only six. When I came out she was like a young woman. I’ll never see that time - I’ll never get it back, no matter how much I repent and how much I try to give back to my community. That time that I lost with her will play on my mind forever, and she’ll remember the time her dad got taken away.
“What I found was that prison can be a helpful environment if you are ready to make changes in your life. You can go in and misbehave, you can be stupid and make life hard for yourself in there, but it’s not too bad if you go into it with the right attitude.”
Following his sentence he was transferred to HMP Parc in Bridgend where he spent the bulk of his sentence, before he was moved to an open prison at HMP Prescoed, where he was deployed to work on the construction of the Grange hospital in Cwmbran. It was his commitment to educating himself as an inmate, gaining 21 qualifications in various fields such as carpentry, construction, IT, property development and health and safety which afforded him the opportunity at the Grange.
“My days were always the same in HMP Parc,” he recalled. “I’d get up, have breakfast, and use all the help and funding available to me from the Prisoners’ Education Trust to work towards as many qualifications as I could. I’d then go to the prison gym in the evening, trying to have as normal a life as possible there.
“It’s not good in prison - anyone who says it’s good just doesn’t have anything good in their life outside. It’s just bravado. It’s not good - it’s awful to think you could lose everything and your partner could leave you and your kids could turn their backs on you. I had a lot to lose and prison made me realise that.
“All of my freedoms were taken from me. I ate when I was told I’d eat, I went outside when I was told I could. But aside from that there are opportunities available to you as a prisoner and I did try and make the most of those. Working on the Grange site was excellent - really enjoyable. I don’t think it’s common knowledge that a lot of skilled prisoners built that hospital. It was really good to be part of that team towards the end of my sentence and to put my qualifications into practice. It meant I was only in prison early in the morning and at night before I was released in November, 2020.”
David now owns his own property development company, Asp Developments - named after his daughter. Speaking at the site of his latest project in Alway in Newport, where he is working on a wrap-around extension, he proudly describes his most recent “flips” - including one condemned property in Blackwood which he transformed and sold at auction. It won him the best refurbishment award at the Property Investors Awards last month.
“I’ve got four more lined up now which are really exciting projects,” he beamed. “I want to inspire people to see that they can turn their lives around.”
He said he grew up around crime in Cromwell Road in Newport and worried for youngsters in Britain’s poorest areas who also lacked the role models and opportunities as he did. “In some areas kids walk out of their homes and they see flashy cars and motorcycles, but they’re often owned by criminals, not proper role models. These kids aren’t walking out the door and seeing business owners, teachers, engineers, bankers. It manifests into a situation where youngsters see an opportunity to get money fast - not by working on an apprenticeship and building your skills for a few years. They want £30,000 on Friday, not in five years.”
He saw no route out of a “cycle of crime” for offenders unless there was a clear incentive for prison education. “There’s crime everywhere around here, it’s all you grow up around. It’s a cycle, and they can’t break that cycle unless they get opportunities in employment through re-education. But there needs to be a goal at the end of it - and if companies aren’t willing to give ex-offenders a chance then the cycle just continues and they end up back in prison.
“I see a lot of passion in people I was in prison with, they’re employable people - no doubt about it. A lot of companies say they do offer those opportunities to ex-offenders but in reality that’s not the case. The only private company I know who proactively offered help to offenders is Timpson. They were always taking people from Prescoed on day jobs. That’s exactly how you break the cycle.
“I had to start my own company because it was so difficult to get an opportunity elsewhere when I got out. Even now, I see barriers all the time. In property you need money, so when I’m trying to get finance 90% of the lenders say ‘no’ because I’ve got a criminal offence. They Google me and then they say ‘no’. So I have to do bridging loans which are a lot more expensive. It means I have to take on a lot of additional construction jobs to support my property development business.
“For me, I want to be positive and move on, but when your name is out there as an ex-offender it continues to follow you. Some people might say I deserve that, and I understand that thought process. But I think in the main ex-offenders deserve a chance to integrate back into society so they can break the cycle and begin to give something back.”
Two years on from his release, he sees his award as a marker of how far he has come since he sat in the dock. “I’m no longer living with that paranoia, no longer looking over my shoulder, I don’t feel as though I have to commit crime,” he added. “I want to help others now. I want to tell them that crime won’t pay in the long run, but if you focus and persevere - it can work out. My family aren’t too pleased I’m working all of the time - but they’re proud of me, which means a lot.”
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