Heaven: A Prison Diary (26 page)

I have a visit
from an inmate who was sentenced to three months, which means he’ll serve
around five or six weeks.
His crime?

The theft of
£120 while in a position of trust.

He was a
policeman. I am not going into much detail about his crime, as I’m more
interested in the problems a police officer faces when being sent to jail. He’s
remarkably frank.

On his arrival,
he was placed in the north block, and within minutes recognized a drug dealer
he’d arrested in the past. He reported this to Mr Hughes, the unit officer, and
was immediately placed in segregation overnight.

The duty
governor had to make a decision the following morning as to which one to ship
out. He chose the drug dealer, as he had recently proved positive for an MDT.
The policeman was put back on the north block, given a job in the kitchen and
told to keep his head down. That was a week ago. So far no one else has
recognized him, but he still has two weeks to serve.

Incidentally,
he was originally charged with stealing £1,000, which, by the time the case
came to court, had dwindled to £120.

However, that
was three years ago, and during that time he was suspended on full pay (a
little over £60,000).

The police and
Prison Service don’t seem to care how much taxpayers’ money they spend. If
either service were a private company, they would be declared bankrupt within a
year. I’m not suggesting he shouldn’t have been charged, but I am saying it
ought not to have cost over £100,000 and taken three years to discover if he’d
stolen £120.

I stand in the
drizzle watching the prison football team do a little better than last week.

However, one of
our best strikers, Jean-Noel, is called off when Mr Masters (our coach)
receives a call over the intercom to say that Jean-Noel has a young lady
waiting for him in the visits hall. He runs off the pitch, quickly showers and
changes, and joins his girlfriend.

At the time we
are 1-0 in the lead. We lose 5-1.

At tea I felt I
had to chastise Jean-Noel for getting his priorities wrong and letting the team
down. After all, surely the match was more important than seeing his
girlfriend, and in any case, how could he forget that she was coming? He
laughed, and explained that they’d had a row during the week, and she told him
she wouldn’t be turning up. She did, and we lost.

Another pile of
letters awaits me in the hospital, including a long handwritten missive from
John Major, who among other things mentions that he’s heard that I’m writing a
prison diary. He suggests that reporting the facts will be both interesting and
informative, but he also wants to hear about my personal feelings on the issues
and the people involved. He adds that he’s not surprised that the public have
been so supportive; he says he got far more sympathy and backing when he lost
an election than when he won one.

The members of
Club Hospital meet for tea and biscuits. However, as Brian (ostrich farm),
Keith (knowingly, etc.) and John (fraud) were released this week, and David
(fraud) and Malcolm (fraud) are on town leave, our little band of miscreants
has dwindled to five. We discuss whether we should ask anyone else to join the
club, as if we were all attending a Conservative committee meeting; and let’s
face it the Conservative party seem to be suffering from a similar problem.
Some of them have been released, and several more are on temporary leave. But
just like prison, one must wonder just how many will in time return.

I spend a quiet
evening reading and bringing the diary up to date.

The duty night
officer wakes me and asks for an ice pack. I take one out of the fridge and ask
if he needs any help.

‘No,’ he says
without explanation, and dashes off.

The same
officer wakes me again when he returns accompanied by a prisoner called Davis
who has a large swelling on his forehead and cuts over his face. Mr Hayes
explains that the inmate has been in a fight, and the window in his door has
shattered, leaving glass all over the floor. The prisoner can’t remain in his
room,
because if he were to be injured by a piece of broken
glass he could sue the Prison Service for negligence (can you believe it?).

While we make
up his bed Davis tells me that the other prisoner involved in the fight was his
cell-mate Smith (one of eleven Smiths currently at NSC), who has now been moved
to the south block. They have shared a pad for eight months, a sort of forced
marriage. Smith, who works in education, often needs to borrow cigarettes.
Davis got sick of this and refused to hand over his tobacco, so Smith took a
swipe at him. Davis claims he didn’t retaliate, as he’d recently been up on a
charge of taking marijuana and didn’t need to be ‘nicked’ again. Once Smith had
calmed down, Davis decided to leave the room. As he opened the door, Smith
picked up a table leg that had broken off during the fight, and took a swipe at
Davis – hence the shattered glass and the cuts and bruises.

It doesn’t add
up, and I feel sure Davis will have refined his story by the time he comes up
in front of the governor. Mind you, I’d like to hear Smith’s version of what
took place.

Both prisoners
involved in last night’s fracas have to be passed as fit before they come up
for adjudication at ten o’clock. They sit chatting to each other like bosom
buddies in the corner of the waiting room.

Over lunch I
learn that the two fighting inmates have both had a fortnight’s wages deducted
from their pay packets to cover the damage they caused to the furniture and the
broken window in their room. They also have had seven days added to their
sentence. This is significant for Smith, because he was due to be released in
two weeks’ time. I’m told the reason they didn’t get a tougher punishment was
because both apologized to the governor and then to each other. They left
almost holding hands.

I go off to the
canteen to buy some Oxo cubes, Evian water, two phonecards and a tin of Princes
ham. No chocolate.

Mr Blackman
(the officer on duty) asks me if I want a Valentine card and produces a large
selection for me to consider. They are all about a foot high in size and
contain some of the worst rhyming couplets I have ever come across; more interesting
is that there are just as many cards for men as for women.

I obviously
don’t mask my surprise because Mr Blackman sighs and says, ‘If I didn’t supply
them in equal numbers, I’d be accused of discrimination.’

Ten new
prisoners who arrived from Leicester last night are waiting to see the doctor.
While they sit around, one of them boasts that he can always beat any drugs
test, even fool the breathalyser. Although Lee is well aware I’m writing a
diary, he’s still quite willing to reveal his secrets. Lee is in his
midtwenties, good looking and well built.

However, after
one look at the inside of his arm, there’s no doubt that he’s on drugs, and
heaven knows what state he’ll be in in ten years’ time.

‘How can you beat
an MDT?’ I ask.

‘Easy,’ he
says, and produces a tiny bar of soap from his jeans pocket – the kind you find
in the washbasin of any small hotel. He breaks the soap in half, puts it in his
mouth and begins to suck it as if it were a hardboiled sweet.

‘What
difference does that make?’ I enquire.

‘If I’m tested
in the next few hours, my urine sample will be so cloudy that they won’t be
able to charge me, and they’re not allowed to test me again for another
twenty-eight days. By then I will have had enough time to wash everything out
of my system. I can even go on taking heroin up until the twentyfourth day;
it’s only cannabis that takes a month to clear out of the blood stream.’

‘But that can’t
apply to the breathalyser?’

‘No,’ he says,
laughing, ‘but I’ve got two ways of beating the breathalyser.’ He produces
three pennies from another pocket and begins to suck them. After a few moments
he removes them and claims that the copper neutralizes the alcohol, and it
therefore won’t register.

‘But what
happens if the police don’t give you enough time to put the coins in your
mouth?’

‘I can still
beat them,’ says Lee, ‘using my special breathing technique.’ Every prisoner in
the waiting room is now hanging on his every word, and when the next patient is
called in to see the doctor, he doesn’t move, for fear of missing the final
instalment.

‘When the
police hand you the machine to blow into,’ Lee continues, aware of his captive
audience, ‘you pump out your chest, but you don’t take a deep breath. For the
next four seconds you blow in very little air, until the machine registers
orange. You hand back the machine and gasp as if you’ve given everything.
You’ll get away with it because green is negative and orange is still clear.
It’s only the red you have to worry about, and they can’t charge you once
you’ve registered orange. And,’ he goes on, ‘if your eyes are blurred or
vacant, I also have a way of getting over that problem. There’s a product you
can buy over the counter from any chemist called Z1 which was developed for
clubbers to stop their eyes getting irritated by smoke.

A combination
of the copper, careful breathing and Z1, and you’ll never be charged.’

One of the
inmates has been put on suicide watch. He’s a lad of twenty-one, five foot
five, seven and a half stone and terrified of his own shadow. He’s in for
driving while disqualified, and will be released in two weeks’ time.

He turns up at
eleven to collect two new sheets and hands over two in a plastic bag because he
wet them last night. While I go off to the cupboard to collect new sheets, he
walks around in small circles, muttering to himself.

Gail can’t be
sure if it’s all an act, because he’s currently working on the farm and some
prisoners will go to any lengths to get themselves off that detail. In fact,
when he learns that he will be granted a change of job, he smiles for the first
time. However, Gail can’t afford to take any risks so she writes out a detailed
report for the unit officer.

Suicide watch
in this particular case means that an officer (Mr Jones) will have to check on
the inmate every hour until all concerned are confident he is back to normal.

This usually
takes two to three days. I’ll keep you informed.

Doug has the
flu and Carl is at singing practice with the ‘cons and pros,’ so I’m on my own
for the evening.

I read a paper
on the effects of heroin on children, written by Dr Simon Wills. I never
imagined that Dr Wills would replace Freddie Forsyth as my bedtime reading.

Two new
inductees arrive from Nottingham (A-cat). A young man serving four months for a
driving offence tells me that on his block at Nottingham they had three
suicides in three weeks, and all of them prisoners who had not yet been
convicted.

The other inmate
nods and tells me that he was made to share a cell with a man who was injecting
himself with vinegar because he couldn’t afford heroin.

Mr Lewis drops
in to see Linda, as it’s his last official day as governor. He’s handed in his
keys, handcuffs, whistle, torch, identity card and everything else that denoted
his position of authority. An experience he obviously didn’t enjoy. He jokes
about suddenly becoming aware of afternoon television, and endless advertisements
for comfortable chairs that move with the press of a button, beds that change
shape when you turn over and baths that you can easily get out of.

Mr Lewis
smiles, says goodbye and we shake hands. I suspect that we will never meet
again as we both head towards the world of zimmer frames.

Mr McQuity, the
National Health inspector, pays a visit to NSC, and leaves Linda in no doubt
that he’s well satisfied with the way she is running the prison hospital.

The press is
full of stories about the problems the Prison Service is facing because of
overcrowding. There are currently a maximum of 71,000 bed spaces, and just over
70,000 of them are taken up. The Home Secretary David Blunkett has the choice
of releasing people early or building more prisons. He’s just announced that
tagging will be extended from two months to three, with effect from 1 April.
This would get me out three months early if, on appeal, my sentence is lowered
by even a day.

Among this
afternoon’s inductees is a prisoner from Lincoln who has only three weeks left
to serve. He hasn’t stopped complaining since the moment he arrived. He’s
demanding a single room with a TV, and a bed-board because he suffers from a
bad back. All prisoners start life at NSC in a double room, and there are
several inmates who have been around for some months and still don’t have a TV.
And as for the bed-board, all four are out at the moment.

Within an hour
of leaving the hospital, the inmate was discovered lying on his back in the car
park next to the governor’s car. When Mr Leighton was called to deal with the
problem, he said he could see no reason why the prisoner shouldn’t sleep in the
car park and drove away. The inmate returned to his allocated room within the
hour. He’s been no trouble since.

Among those on
the paper chase today is a young man who has not yet celebrated his thirtieth
birthday, but has been to jail
eighteen
times.
He’s a small-time burglar, who has – and this is the important point – no fear
of prison. For him it’s a temporary inconvenience in his chosen career. Because
he has no record of violence or involvement with drugs, he’s rarely sentenced
to more than six months. He spends a few days in an A-cat, before being transferred
to a D-cat, open prison. NSC provides him with three meals a day, a room and
the company of fellow professionals. When he leaves, he will go on stealing
until he is caught again. He will then be arrested, sentenced and return to
NSC, the nearest D-cat to his home in Boston.
20
He earns between fifty
and a hundred thousand a year (no taxes), according to how many months he
spends ‘on the out’ in any particular year.