In 1965, at the age of 25, Alan Ackland is sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a business associate. In 1971, Sylvia Barker, lonely and depressed after a failed marriage and with two young children to bring up alone, seeks a new direction in her life and applies to become a voluntary prison visitor. Several years later their paths cross.

Spot-welder Aaron Toft assumes the identity of Aaron Osango - an ex-spot welder who has been sentenced to death and is in jail in an African state.

Jean Raymond an upper class woman with a gambling addiction, is given a twelve-month prison sentence resulting from her inability to pay her debts. At first she is overwhelmingly depressed by life in the women's prison; gradually, however, her misery is relieved by the many close friends she makes there. This sympathetic drama traces the contrasting lives and often faltering progress of the inmates of a women's prison.

Mrs Isobel Manners lives a large Victorian house with her two grown up sons; Geoffrey and Edward. Mrs Manners is convinced that someone is trying to murder her.