The Loose Screw (23 page)

One such incident, which occurred whilst Dave and Charlie were with us on the unit, was the particularly vicious attack on an older prisoner we had on the unit at the time. This guy had never been in prison before and was a fruit and vegetable stall owner in his fifties, who somehow had ended up on remand in the max secure unit because of some people he knew outside. Guilty or not, the guy was like a fish out of water. He didn't have a clue and was obviously terrified and extremely intimidated by the surroundings in which he now found himself. All that apart, he was a genuinely nice man; well spoken, polite and seemed to get on well with the other inmates on the unit, who realized he was out of his depth and took him under their wings.

However, the fact that he was obviously totally inexperienced in the art of 'doing bird', coupled with the fact that he was an educated man who thought that the screws were there to look after the inmates and provide them with advice and support whenever they needed it (which of course was exactly our job description but was not recognized by most members of staff), made him a 'pain in the arse' and a definite victim for the bully squads.

For weeks this man was ridiculed and tormented by a number of officers in an attempt to goad him into even the slightest sign of aggression towards them, but he never rose to it. You could see the frustration rising in the faces of these officers and around the tea-room table during lunch they made no effort to disguise their hatred for this man. One thing I was certain of was that it was not so much IF this man would be attacked by staff, but WHEN.

From the main unit leading out onto the exercise yard there was a corridor, which was about twenty foot long and at each end was closed off by means of an iron wicket gate and a further electronically operated, reinforced door, which was controlled via a buzzer and intercom by the main control room. This corridor was known by both staff and inmates as 'muggers ally'. One Saturday afternoon two northern officers, who liked to think they were the ultimate law on the unit and who had been the main characters in the conspiracy to target the fruit and veg man, were bringing in the members of spur three, including Dave and Joe Pyle, from the yard.

In a carefully pre-planned move, they had arranged for another two officers to meet them and assist in bringing the inmates back onto the unit. They remained on the yard as the inmates filed off and passed through the first door to wait in the corridor. Both doors could not be opened at the same time unless there was a serious incident either on the exercise yard, the seg unit or on visits, or indeed inside the corridor. The two officers on the yard had deliberately arranged for their target to be the last prisoner to come off the yard and, as the three of them approached the first gate, one of the officers in the corridor closed it in their faces, leaving them alone in the sterile area between the corridor and the exercise yard.

Due to the nature of the timing mechanisms on the doors, before they could reopen the first door the second door had to be opened to allow those waiting in the corridor to get back onto the unit. This in itself is bollocks, as all they had to do was override the system, but this just confirms that the staff in the main prison control room were in on what was about to happen too. Once the inmates and staff had passed through the second door and it had been closed behind them, they opened the first door to allow the two northerners and the old boy into 'muggers ally'.

Once inside, and with the doors locked again, the two officers without warning set upon the prisoner and subjected him to a vicious and unprovoked attack, all because they had taken a dislike to him and they could get away with it. After a few minutes, as planned, one of the officers pressed the green alarm bell situated on the wall in the corridor and continued to beat the prisoner until some other staff responded to the bell and gained access.

Of course all the staff knew what had actually happened, but they just reacted as if the inmate had assaulted the officers first, and so he would be subjected to a bit more pain by the adrenalin-pumped officers arriving at the scene. Once he was relocated in the unit's segregation area and the staff had allowed themselves a period of celebration, he would be required to be seen by a medical officer to check for injuries.

This particular incident, as with so many others carried out on a daily basis in our prisons, left the inmate in question with some pretty serious injuries. He was found to have two broken ribs and serious bruising to his face and body. The problem was, however, that the medical staff were all in on the cover-up too. You hear the authorities all the time going on about the criminal code, whereby one criminal will never grass up another one. Well, let me tell you, the authorities also abide by this same code and use it far more than those in the criminal world and to cover up far more heinous crimes.

For what those officers did to that man you would be looking at a custodial sentence on the outside, but because it was carried out in prison on people that the public don't know or care about by staff who are expert at making up false statements and getting them endorsed by however many other members of staff that are needed, the incident goes unnoticed and the inmate in fact receives further punishment for breaking the worst rule of our prisons by assaulting an officer.

This particular inmate did attempt to contest the allegations made against him and his solicitor made an attempt to view the video taken that day through the twenty-four hour closed-circuit television camera located in the corridor. He was told by the senior staff at the prison, and also had it confirmed by the Home Office, that unfortunately that particular camera was offline on the day of the assault as it was experiencing technical difficulties -yeah, right, course it was.

This may be a good time to mention a particular inconsistency that I began to notice relating to certain prisoners and members of staff. It is common knowledge that many members of the Prison Service and the Police, as well as many others that hold very senior positions in our society, are also members of the Masons. Funnily enough I have never been invited to join and as a result have no knowledge of the inner workings of the Masonic movement other than the well-known fact that they are all duty-bound to look out for one another.

Although a secretive sect, it soon became obvious which members of staff were either fully fledged or trainee members, and the more I observed the daily regime in the places I worked the more apparent, if not blatantly obvious, it became that some members of staff were giving certain prisoners preferential treatment. The type of additional privileges a Masonic prisoner would receive ranged from extra time allowed on visits or exercise to the smuggling in for them of various items of contraband by Masonic prison officers. I often wondered, if this sort of 'favouritism' could be demanded for relatively minor rewards in prison, what types of mutual favours were being done at the higher levels of government or within the judicial system. I used to hear rumours, for example, as I am sure many of you have, that certain high-ranking police officers or members of parliament would 'get off' charges such as drink-driving or various other such allegations and that they had done so because they were members of their local Lodge, and I believe even more strongly now that such things do go on after witnessing the events I have described above with my own eyes.

Every movement and activity was videoed in that unit, and I know for a fact that not only were those tapes passed on to the police and other criminal investigation departments but also they were used by psychologists who analyzed them in an attempt to gain further understanding of the criminal mind. It fascinates them how a criminal ticks and they would analyze everything from what they ate to how many times they had a wank a day. Good job there were no cameras in the cells, as Dave was constantly getting caught in this act by the same officer, an old bird who we called Zelda from a children's show called Terror Hawks that was popular at that time. If you remember the show you will understand why we gave this officer the Zelda nickname. I am sure that she quite enjoyed catching Dave in the act of daily relief.

For all these reasons the mood amongst the prisoners on that unit was not a good one. There was a real feeling of 'them and us', as most members of staff felt unable to build any type of relationship with the inmates due to the paranoia that had been built up by the reprisals briefings I spoke about earlier. Also, as the senior officer explained to Dave during that hilarious hospital trip, during the four years the unit had been opened I think there had only been two inmates who had served sentences of less than ten years. Such was the hype at the time about the category of prisoner held on that unit that the judge only needed to hear that an inmate standing before him was residing there and he would usually award the maximum sentence. So it was little wonder that morale was at an all-time low. It really was a case of ABANDON ALL HOPE ALL WHO ENTER.

Dave quickly realized this and, as he was more than confident that he would be found not guilty of the charges against him (he was, I believe, the first inmate to be released from the unit with a 'not guilty' verdict at that time), he made it his mission to try to boost morale amongst the other residents. Obviously his pranks, such as the hospital outing, had people talking for months afterwards when word spread, but he was constantly playing the joker in an attempt to raise a few laughs.

One particular caper I witnessed while I was working on spur four one Saturday morning was his 'Groutie' impression. We had unlocked the spur as normal for the inmates to collect their breakfasts and make their morning applications, which most were doing when this classical regal piece of music burst through the air. As we looked around, bewildered, for the source of this music, we saw Dave strutting out of his cell with his nose up in the air. He was dressed in a prison-issue dressing gown and had fashioned a cravat around his neck using one of the legs he had torn off his prison pyjamas, and he was sucking on what looked like a giant spliff, which he had inserted into the outer shell of half a Bic biro to look like a cigarette holder.

He glided over to our desk in his prison-issue slippers with a copy of a rolled-up newspaper under his arm and said, "Morning, gentlemen. Has my post arrived? I think I will take my breakfast in my room this morning. Please let me know when my Racing Post arrives, there's good chaps. Do carry on."

It was just this sort of spontaneous prank that kept us all laughing, cons and screws alike; well, some of us screws anyway. There were one or two that really took a dislike to Dave's brand of humour and extended their animosity towards him far beyond the usual hatred that most screws are encouraged to develop early on in their careers towards all inmates. This vindictiveness was apparent each and every day when these members of staff came into contact with Dave, but there is one incident I recall that in my opinion highlights the mentality of most of my colleagues at the time.

We had a prisoner called Ronnie Fields on the unit at the time, who to the inmates was an icon and to the officers a pain in the arse. He didn't give a fuck and absolutely hated screws and wasn't shy of letting them know this. He was, however, a gentleman and, so long as you didn't try any of the usual mind tricks or attempt to fuck up his routine, he just got on with his bird with dignity. He was a great friend of Dave's, but once again was hated by the bad element of staff. He could, however, handle himself very well and had demonstrated this by knocking out a good few screws and cons in his time. So, although he was the centre of most ego-boosting conversations in the officers' tea room, no one would ever have had the bottle to take him out in the way they did other less hardy prisoners.

One afternoon the Irish lads decided to stage one of their regular weekend protests, which usually culminated in the spur getting flooded with a dozen or so officers from the 'elite' security department, who would use heavy-handed tactics to get all the inmates secured back in their cells. Whilst this was going on it became apparent that Ronnie had collapsed on the floor and was clearly having trouble breathing. Dave went to his aid immediately and sat on the floor with him in his arms, trying to help him control his breathing. Shortly afterwards the remainder of the spur had been secured and the alarm had been raised, but it appeared that Ronnie was suffering a heart attack and was in a pretty bad way. Due to the security procedures involved in getting an ambulance into the unit, it usually took a minimum of half an hour for the paramedics to arrive.

What happened next will surely highlight to you the severe lack of common sense and humanity that your average screw had, let alone the basic inability to assess a situation and react appropriately. Basically, most were unable to make any decisions that involved deviating from the textbook method of dealing with an incident, especially when they were confronted with two incidents to deal with at the same time.

Instead of allowing Dave to remain outside his cell with Ronnie to comfort him while they awaited the arrival of the paramedics, they insisted that he return to his cell and leave Ronnie lying on the floor in the middle of the spur. It is a fact that many officers hated Ronnie with a passion and Dave realized that they would love the chance to watch him suffer and possibly die on the floor of the unit that day, so there was no way he was willingly going to return to his cell and allow this to happen.

I witnessed on many occasions throughout my career staff deliberately forgetting to give inmates medication or ignoring a cry for help or cell buzzers from inmates who were either quite ill or even threatening to harm themselves. It was a well-known fact that if you had a death on your wing you were treated as something of a hero in the officers' mess, as an inmate's life was the lowest of the low to a great many screws -they were expendable.

The officers dealing with this particular incident showed the same disregard for Ronnie's health, and their main priority was to get Dave back inside his cell. When he repeatedly refused the order to return to his cell, he was jumped and the staff began to drag him across the floor. There was no way he was going to let go of his mate, and at one time there were six big screws dragging both him and Ronnie, as he was still gripping him firmly in his arms. The only way they managed to get Dave to release his hold was when two of them stuck their fingers into his mouth and began to pull him by his jaw back to his cell whilst also applying strokes across his back and shoulder area with their truncheons. Eventually Dave had no choice but to release his grip and he was banged up, but I still believe that he saved Ronnie's life that day by staying with him for as long as was possible, thus giving the paramedics time to arrive on the scene.