The Loose Screw (10 page)

Meanwhile, the situation at home had not improved much since I had left home at fifteen. Although my dad was now away in Wales most weekends and I was working long hours, when our paths did cross it was a pretty tense atmosphere. When I initially left the army I had applied to join the Ministry of Defence Police and had sat and passed the exam at the Royal Ulster Constabulary headquarters in Enniskillen. The officer adjudicating advised me that I would definitely pass as long as I wrote all my answers in pencil. Almost a year later, after I had gone through two further interviews and a home visit and while I was waiting for a date to report to the training depot, I received a letter telling me that the Ministry was very sorry but as a result of the recent announcement of the cutbacks in the military they were cancelling all recruitment. They were therefore unable to offer me employment at this time -bastards. I had been counting on that to get me out of the dead-end security job it now looked as though I was stuck with. I really began to start panicking about what I was going to do as I knew that I would not be able to stick it out where I was for very much longer.

Out of sheer desperation I did the one thing everyone said I would do prior to leaving Omagh -I wrote to my old company commander, Major Rose, asking him if he could arrange for me to re-enlist. I was shocked and extremely hurt by the brief and very blunt reply I received a few days later, after all his reassurances the day I left. He had told me in his office that I was such an asset and he was truly sorry to lose me and if at any time I found I was struggling all I had to do was drop him a line and he would sort everything out. However, the letter he wrote was short and quite frankly rude, basically telling me that I had made my bed and I now had to lie in it and that there was no way he could arrange for my re-enlistment now or in the future. I was devastated, not so much because I had lost the hope of rejoining but because a man I had respected and given so much time and dedication to, and who not six months ago I would have protected with my own life, was now writing to me as if I no longer existed.

Although this upset me a great deal, I didn't lose any sleep over it. As my friend Charlie Bronson who I was to meet a couple of years later would say, "You've got to just take it on the chin whatever life throws at you. It's not worth crying about" -words of wisdom from a man who truly knows the meaning of getting over such obstacles that are thrown in your path in life.

So here I was, stuck in a badly paid dead-end job with all my best plans for the future shattered in the form of two letters received in the space of about one week. It was now early January 1992 and I had the added pressure of my dad's voluntary redundancy looming, due to take place in June, which would effectively render me homeless. At this time I was involved in a relationship with a girl called Jackie who lived with her parents in nearby Pratts Bottom.

Although I had and never would forget Natasha, I was scared that too much had passed since we had last seen each other. I knew I wasn't ready to handle rejection from her at that time or get my fears confirmed that she may be happily married and not want me disrupting her new life. This didn't mean that I never thought about how things would have been had we stayed together, and I tried on a number of occasions to find the courage to knock on her mum's door whenever I passed through Greenwich.

I didn't really want the relationship with Jackie to get too serious, as I was not sure what I was going to do with my life let alone get into a long-term relationship and get tied down so soon after leaving the army. However, I was in no position to argue when she suggested that we buy a house together to coincide with my dad leaving for Wales. Eventually I was swept away with the whole process of house hunting and before I knew it 'we' had bought a two-bedroom house in Sidcup. I think it would be fair to say that both of us knew from fairly early on that the relationship would not last, and after many arguments and disagreements we both finally made the decision to go our separate ways four years later in 1996.

I felt relieved that we had finally managed to free ourselves from a difficult relationship. The only thing that broke my heart was having to leave my then two-year-old daughter, Lauren, who had been born on 20 February 1994. Lauren was the only reason that the relationship had lasted as long as it had, but we both came to the responsible decision that it was not fair for her to grow up in such an atmosphere. We obviously still have to see each other regularly when Lauren comes to stay, and luckily we are able to get on well for Lauren's sake. Jackie is now in another relationship and I believe that they are both very happy, as I am.

I had solved the housing problem, so all I had to do then was solve the employment problem and get a job that would pay me enough money to pay for the new house. Every day I would catch the five o'clock train from Mottingham Station, get off at London Bridge and walk the couple of miles over the bridge to St Catherine's Dock. On the way I would buy just about every available paper in order to scan the job section during my twelve-hour shift. This bourgeois existence went on until one day I noticed some sort of cap badge taking up a whole page in the Daily Mirror's job section. On further examination I read it was a national recruiting advert for prison officers and my eyes fell onto the wages quoted, which started at £16,500 a year, a rise of nearly £7,000 from what I was currently earning. It was not a job I would have considered under normal circumstances, but I was in a pretty desperate situation at the time, and on that basis I decided to apply. I thought that at the very least it would offer me the wages I needed as well as the sense of comradeship that I missed from my army days.

The first stage of selection was to sit a multiple choice test at Cleland house, and at the end of the test they read out some of the names of the candidates who were in the room and asked them to leave. After a period of about twenty minutes, during which time I had convinced myself that I had failed, one of the examiners returned and congratulated us on passing this first hurdle.

Some weeks later my old pal Harry went through the same process, and I had forewarned him of the way candidates are split after the test and assured him that if he was left in the room he had passed. On the day of Harry's test they called out the names one by one until eventually Harry was the only one left in the room. He sat back on his chair rather pleased with himself at being the only one to have passed and waited patiently, he said, for someone to come and measure him up for his uniform. About an hour went by before one of the examiners came back and asked Harry what he was still doing there. Harry told him that he was the only one to pass the exam, only to find that they had changed the format since I was there and he was in fact the only one to have failed. I could just picture that smug, satisfied look on his face slowly changing as he put his tail between his legs and left. Harry being the kind of guy he was did not let it bother him too much and after a few different jobs is now a fully trained mechanic. I sometimes wish that I had failed that test.

The second phase of selection was in the format of a formal interview in front of three senior Prison Service personnel once again at Cleland House. I remember that day well. I had been on night shift the previous evening and had gone straight to the interview after getting changed out of my security uniform. Due to the rush-hour traffic I arrived at Cleland House with very little time to spare and rushed to the lifts after getting directions from the guard on the door. I just managed to squeeze through the doors of the lift before they closed fully, and almost crashed into a middle-aged woman who was the only other passenger. Nervously I said, "Thanks, love. I've got an interview with some dinosaurs for the Prison Service upstairs and I am already running a bit late. Knowing my luck I will get some left-wing lesbian sitting on the board who will more interested in my keeping her waiting a couple of minutes than finding out what I have to offer."

As it turned out I had a few minutes to spare when I reached the designated floor and had time to gulp down a quick glass of water to moisten my dry, nervous throat. Finally I was ushered to a door and knocked and entered, then my heart stopped when I saw the 'office clerk' from the lift sitting in the middle of the two other interviewers across the large boardroom table. That, I thought, was that. Me and my mouth had caused me to fail before I had answered the first question. I did, however, have to go through the whole interview, during which the bitch from the lift gave me the grilling of my life, and took every opportunity to try to humiliate me. It felt as if I had been interrogated by the Gestapo for hours, and the strange thing is that the further I progressed in the service in later years the more people I met with similar attitudes to the Gestapo.

I returned home convinced that my misunderstanding in the lift and my own pride in not allowing myself to be spoken down to at the interview had brought an abrupt end to my selection process. On Monday morning I slipped quietly back to work and began to rehearse excuses in my head as to why I had decided the Prison Service was not for me. Some two to three weeks later I received an official looking brown envelope from the Home Office and, despite my initial urge to throw it straight in the bin, I decided to open it. I don't know why. Maybe I just wanted to see how the Civil Service broke the news that you had failed. I read the first paragraph which, to my surprise, stated that I had successfully passed the entrance requirements and had been selected to join course NR31 for officer training. I was required to turn up at HMP Wandsworth on 20 July 1992 for two weeks' initial training and further selection before going on to the Officer Training School for a nine-week course based at Newbold Revel near Rugby.

Once I had received this letter I had mixed emotions about whether or not I was doing the right thing. The money and job security sounded excellent and I would have been a fool to turn the offer down in my current situation for those two reasons alone. But I could not help thinking, even at that stage, that I was going into something that would be totally against the people and place I grew up with and in. I had always been an individual person with a non-conformist method of doing things the way I felt they should be done and when they should be done.

I turned the question over and over in my mind for days, but eventually had to realize that financially I had no other option and so decided to take the job. I did, however, remember the words of my old mentor, Jim Long, and vowed always to try to stick by them and not lose my own identity, something that would test my strength of character to the limit in the coming years.

6

THE PRISON SERVICE -WANDSWORTH

Some weeks later, once again I found myself on a train heading for the unknown with those all too familiar thoughts of nerves and excitement. On this particular journey I did not have the time to think too deeply as I only had to go to Waterloo and connect to the Wandsworth line. All in all I think the journey took about an hour and in no time at all I was getting off at Earlsfield Station near Wandsworth Common.

As I neared the centre of the common I noticed for the first time the imposing grey-black walls of one of the most feared and controversial Victorian prisons in the world at that time. Its presence looming at me in the distance sent a nervous shiver down my spine and I stared at its walls almost as if I were being hypnotically drawn into its structure. For the first time I feared what I was shortly to be introduced to inside these walls.

I climbed the steps up to the main entrance, consciously staring at the ground to avoid the intimidating stares from the line of visitors waiting to be admitted for morning visits. I felt their eyes burning into the back of my head. They knew what I was and why I was there. The same hostile greeting awaited me at the gate lodge by a fat grey-haired officer who grunted and nodded his head towards a group of similarly suited young men sat on a bench when I presented my joining letter. I was to learn quickly that to him and most other officers we were the scum of the earth, lower even than the inmates in their care. We were all now officially NEPOs (new entrant prison officers), the lowest form of life in the prison. I realized that the next two weeks were going to be extremely difficult, and we could expect very little help from the qualified staff to get us through this initial training period.

After a wait of approximately half an hour, during which our number had grown to about twenty, we were led through the inner electronic gate, through the 'Sterile Area' and into the small training room. We filed in and took up our positions in the predetermined seats arranged around the room. Sat in front of us were three uniformed men. The first was a large man sporting two silver crowns on his epaulettes and the first cheerful looking expression I had seen since my arrival. He introduced himself as Principal Officer Freeman, who was in charge of the training school at Wandsworth. He in turn introduced the two men who flanked him. Both bore the bitter expressions on their faces that we had encountered from everyone else since our arrival. These two, Freeman informed us, were his training senior officers and they would be responsible for our training programme over the next two weeks. One was called Shepherd and the other Nutt, and I must admit that my first impressions of both of them made me draw the conclusion that we were going to have a barrel of laughs during this stage of our training.

The rest of the morning was spent with the traditional 'creeping death', where each of us took turns in standing in front of the group and giving a five-minute resume on who we were and what we had done with our lives prior to now. I could not believe after hearing everyone's story that I was in fact the only ex-forces guy in the group and the remainder came from all walks of life. To recall a few, there was Geoff, an ex-double glazing salesmen; Mickey Mc or 'Nervous Nerys' as he came to be known, who was a bit of a jack of all trades, primarily in the building profession; Mark, who had been unemployed for years but was originally a film developer; and Mick Regan, a plumber by trade who had fallen foul of the building trade recession. Mick and I were to work together later at Belmarsh with Charlie Bronson. We both held him in very high regard and the three of us were to build up a mutual respect of one another that remains to this day.

The last person I would like to mention is fat Alfie, the ex-butcher. Alfie was a real character, a proper South Londoner with all the humour and the gift of the gab. Sadly what Alfie had in character he lacked in personal fitness and enthusiasm towards this new profession and he took the option of leaving after the first week. It was a shame to lose him, as I really got on well with him as he was on my sort of wavelength.

Once we had done our 'creeping death' it was the turn of the training senior officers to do theirs. Shepherd was a man of very few words, briefly mentioning his years in the Prison Service and the fact that he too had served in the army for a number of years. The only other thing he told us was that he would never work in another prison, as Wandsworth was the only place that 'did it the right way'. I was to hear this from virtually every officer I met during the following two weeks and it was not long before I was to realize what they meant.

Nutt, on the other hand, had plenty to say about himself, although he had in fact done nothing to boast about in my opinion. He told us that he was part of the accelerated promotion scheme and as a result had progressed up the ranks quicker than most. He was a university graduate who was on the fast track to becoming a governor, a grade he hoped to attain within five years of entry. I was to meet many of these high-flying yuppies in my time and never had much respect for any of them. To me they all lacked two of the most important qualities in life. In a job like the Prison Service common sense and life experience of the real world are, I believe, essential qualifications. It must have been Nutt's own insecurity that made him take great pleasure in telling us how important he was and how he had the power to sack us on the spot if we did not do what he told us when he told us. I struggled to stay awake while this pratt was giving us his fantasy life story, but I could not help noticing that by the look on some of the others faces they thought he was godlike.

Once these formalities were out of the way we were told to go for lunch and after that we would be taken into the main prison for a tour. During the hour-long lunch break we began talking to one another within the groups of five that we had been separated into. My group consisted of Mickey Mc, Geoff, Mark, Mick Regan and myself. I knew from the morning session that we were all from the same area of southeast London and were therefore all hoping to get posted to Belmarsh, a new maximum security prison near Woolwich. We all seemed to share the same reason for being there and that was job security and financial stability. Not one of us would have made the Prison Service our choice had we been able to get employment elsewhere that offered a similar package. We sat chatting for the hour, each of us trying to validate to the others the reasons we decided to choose this career, but I knew this line of conversation was in fact masking the fear of the impending tour that each of us was experiencing.

The hour came and went quicker than I would have liked and soon we were being herded into Wandsworth's infamous reception, our starting point for the afternoon.

The first thing that I remember once inside the grey walls was the unmistakable smell that hung in the stagnant air. It was a mixture of the stale sweat of hundreds of bodies and the choking stench of human waste that escaped from the slop buckets used by every inmate to relieve themselves in their cells. This stench was particularly strong at this time of day as it was one of the three times a day when the inmates got to 'slop out', i.e. empty their buckets into the drains located in the recess (toilet and washing facilities on each wing).

The thickness of the putrid air only added to the incredibly claustrophobic feeling and made my stomach wrench with an uncontrollable urge to be sick. We stood shaking in the centre of the floor and I noticed all our faces turn ashen white as we noticed five prisoners filing through the metal gate in front of us. All five were identically dressed in brown plastic shoes, blue jeans and blue-and-white striped shirts tucked into the jeans and buttoned all the way up to the neck.

As they were led past our group they all stared at us with blank expressions, but as I gazed around our group in an attempt to not look at the faces of these men, I noticed that most of us were staring back in the same way. For all of us this was our first glimpse of a real-life convict in the flesh. I could see that we all looked terrified of them, but these men were in fact 'Red Bands' -trusted prison workers who gained their positions for good behaviour. If we were terrified of these men, how would we cope when we got on the wings and met some of the prison's less conforming residents?

This silent stand-off was broken by the arrival of a huge prison officer who bellowed at us to pay attention and introduced himself as the reception principal officer. It was with this imposing figure of a man that we were to spend the next hour or so learning about the duties carried out in reception. He wasted no time in boosting his own ego by telling us that he was the most important man in the prison, a claim we were to hear repeated by many others before the two weeks were out. He also took great pleasure in telling us, in front of his audience of idolizing staff, of his hatred for NEPOs and giving us the distinct impression that we were really messing up his routine.

Our tour began at the front desk where newly arrived inmates were received for the first time. Here we were told that every inmate underwent a mini-interview and were formally booked into the prison after having their personal details checked using their own prison records. These records are called 2052s and contained within the buff-coloured cover would be details of the prisoner's movements, adjudications, offences both in and out of prison, personal details, and any other security information deemed necessary. As this was the first port of call in the prison, the officer told us that it was necessary to establish a tough attitude from the start. An example of this is Wandsworth staff's claim that every prisoner that had dared to lean or place their hands on the front desk was immediately 'dropped' by the excess staff who hang around in wait for such an opportunity. Adjudication is the process followed when an inmate is accused of breaking one of the prison's rules and regulations. It is a small court which many refer to as being a form of kangaroo court, where the inmate is placed in a room in front of a prison governor and upwards of five staff and is given the chance to defend himself against the offence he is charged with.

Over the course of my time with the Prison Service I was involved in countless adjudications, some of which I will describe later. A friend of mine, Jan Lamb, has written a book called Guilty or Not Guilty, which includes details of many real-life adjudications, told through the eyes of the inmates involved.

Once past the front desk the inmates are processed as rapidly as possibly through reception before being located onto one of the residential wings. This process involves strip-searching every inmate to ensure they have not attempted to hide anything on their person, and issuing them with prison-issue clothes where appropriate. Usually all inmates are then fed and locked up in holding cells to await relocation onto the wings. Depending on the prison, time and attitude of the staff on duty, the inmates will also get the chance to see a doctor or nurse to establish any course of medication they may require.

Finally 'runners' (one or two officers from each wing) arrive to escort the inmates to their respective wings. Wandsworth is made up of four normal residential wings -A, B, C and D. A further five wings make up the rest of the prison: E-Wing housed the notorious segregation unit and F-Wing the hospital. G-, H-and K-Wings were a separate area which housed all the 'beasts' (sex offenders) and prisoners who had received threats on the normal wings or who were just too weak to survive on normal location.

The four normal residential wings were separated to house different categories of prisoner. A-Wing was used at the time as an induction wing and also housed many of the prison workforce. B-Wing was used as a remand prisoners' wing, as prison rules state that remand and convicted prisoners have to be locked up separately due to the different privileges to which they are entitled. C-Wing held the prison's long-term and high-risk inmates, including those on the E-List who had attempted, or were suspected of attempting, an escape. Such prisoners were unmistakable as they wore prison denim suits with a bright yellow stripe on the back of the jacket and down each of the legs. D-Wing held the remainder of the prison workforce and other long-term residents generally in a lesser category than that found on C-Wing.

We would have to wait until our second day before we could venture into the main prison and experience the bizarre routines of the wings. With our introduction of reception complete, we had just enough time to get a brief look at the main visiting room before returning to the training room for a debrief on the first day. The main visits hall, as its name suggests, is where inmates receive visits from friends and relations. It is possibly the most volatile area of any prison. The fact that this is the only place inside the walls where prisoners can mix with people from the outside makes it extremely sensitive for both security and inmate relationships with staff.

I had been a visitor on one previous occasion when I had accompanied my old mate Simon's mum when visiting her husband, Jim, in one of the prisons on the Isle of Sheppey. On that occasion I had noticed that some, not all, staff had treated us like dirt merely because we were visiting a prisoner. This attitude towards the visitors was something I noticed immediately at Wandsworth. Don't get me wrong, I have witnessed many visitors exhibit appalling behaviour towards both staff and the inmates they have been visiting over the years, but I firmly believe that this should not affect the professionalism of prison officers employed in this area.

Wandsworth visits hall, as every other prison's, was swamped with staff for the reasons I mention above. The room was filled with small tables and chairs packed tightly together, which were surrounded by high chairs rather like the ones used by umpires at tennis games. From these raised positions the staff would stare uncomfortably at the groups of visitors on their designated tables of responsibility. If any of them saw anything suspicious they had the power to jump on the inmate and visitors concerned and terminate the visit on the spot. An inmate who found himself in such a situation could almost certainly expect a period on closed visits, where all subsequent visits would be conducted behind a glass screen. The length of time a prisoner would spend on these special visits was normally determined by the visits and security governor and based on the contents of reports compiled by officers from visits and the inmate's wing.