Heaven: A Prison Diary (28 page)

‘Why can’t he
buy one in the canteen?’ I ask.

‘You can’t buy
aftershave in the canteen,’

Linda reminds
me, ‘it contains alcohol, and several inmates would happily drink it.’

‘But you’ve
just given...’

‘Non-alcoholic
aftershave supplied especially for prison hospitals. On your day of release,’
Linda reminds me, ‘any prisoner can demand a free needle to inject
himself
with heroin, as well as a packet of condoms.’

I can’t believe
how stupid some people can be.

On Monday I
attended a CARAT meeting where one of the participants told everyone present
that he had given up drugs. On Tuesday the same man comes up in front of the
governor for failing an MDT for cannabis.

Seven days were
added to his sentence, and he told me he considered himself lucky not to be
shipped out. Last night the same man was caught on his way back from Boston in
possession of a plastic bag full of drugs that included cannabis and heroin. He
was locked up in the segregation cell overnight, and will be shipped out this
morning to a B-cat with a further twenty-one days added to his sentence.

His stupidity
is not the only aspect of this incident worth considering. If he’d been caught
with such an assignment of drugs ‘on the out’ he would have been sentenced to
at least seven years, but as his sentence is already fourteen, he gets away
with twentyone days added. It’s just another pointer to the drugs problem this
country is currently facing.

Mary has a
piece in
Peterborough
that she came
across on the Web. It makes me laugh so much it’s simply better to reproduce it
rather than attempt any precis. (See below.)

Woman of substance L
ady Archer’s sense
of humour is alive and well. The fragrant chemist has just submitted a
“hazardous materials data sheet” to the
Chemistry
at Cambridge
newsletter.

“Element
: woman.
Symbol
:

Wo
.

Discoverer
:

Adam.

Atomic mass
: accepted as 55kg but known
to vary from 45kg to 225kg.
Occurrence
:
found in large quantities in urban areas, with trace elements in outlying
regions.

Physical properties
: boils at
absolutely nothing, freezes for no apparent reason.
Melts if
given special treatment, bitter if used incorrectly.
Chemical properties
: affinity to gold,
silver, platinum and all precious stones.

The most powerful money-reducing agent known to man.
Common use
: highly ornamental,
especially in sports cars.
Can be a very effective cleaning
agent.

Hazards:
highly dangerous except in
experienced hands.

Illegal to possess more than one, although several can be
maintained at different locations as long as specimens do not come into direct
contact with each other.”

The
Telegraph
also publishes the results of
a poll on Mr Blunkett’s recent pronounce-ments that non-violent, first-offence
prisoners should be able, where possible, to continue their work while
reporting into jails in the evenings and at weekends; 83 per cent say ‘keep
them locked up’, while only 12 per cent feel the Home Secretary is right to
consider legislation along these more realistic lines. I must confess that
before I’d been to prison, I would have been among the 83 per cent.

I phone Mary,
who tells me before I can get beyond ‘Hello’ that Baroness Nicholson has
finally issued a statement in which she offers a grudging apology. (See below.)

Baroness Nicholson wishes to make it quite
clear that at no time did she intend to suggest that Lord Archer had personally
misappropriated money raised by the Simple Truth appeal.

Indeed, it had not occurred to her to think
that it might have been possible for Lord Archer to gain access to funds raised
by the British Red Cross. If tho inference was drawn that she was accusing Lord
Archer of having stolen Simple Truth money from the British Red Cross, she
regrets the misunderstanding and regrets any upset that may have been caused to
Lord Archer’s family.

Mr Berlyn
strides in at a brisk pace. After a few minutes ensconced with sister in her
office, he emerges to tell me that the Home Office has issued an ‘overcrowding’
draft, as all the prisons in the north of England are fully occupied. Result:
we will be getting ten new inmates today, and will be ‘surplus to our manifest’
of 213. Here at NSC we are already seeing those overcrowding statistics
translated into reality.

Mr Berlyn has
directed that two inmates will have to be billeted in the hospital overnight. I
fear I will be experiencing a lot of this during the next few weeks, and I may
without warning have to share heaven with some other sinners. However, as six
inmates are being released tomorrow, this might be only temporary.

Linda and Gail
charge out of the hospital carrying an oxygen cylinder and two first-aid boxes.
All I’m told is that a staff member has fallen off a ladder. On the intercom
it’s announced that all security officers must report to the south block
immediately. It’s like being back in an A-cat where this was a daily
occurrence. Prisoners tell me that in Nottingham ambulances were more common
than Black Marias.

A few minutes
later Linda and Gail return with a shaven-headed officer covered in blood. It
seems that he leaned back while climbing a ladder and overbalanced, landing on
the concrete below. No prisoner was involved.

I quickly
discover that a small head wound can spurt so much blood that it appears far
worse than it is. When Linda has finished cleaning up her patient and I’ve
given him a cup of tea (only the English), he’s smiling and making light of the
whole episode. But Linda still wants to dispatch him to the Pilgrim Hospital
for stitches to the scalp wound, and both she as hospital sister, and Mr
Hocking, head of security, have to fill in countless forms, showing that no
prisoner was responsible.

I read another
chapter of
Street Drugs
, this time to
learn more about crack cocaine, its properties and its consequences. It’s quite
difficult not to accept the argument that some young people, having
experimented with one drug and got a kick out of it, might wish to progress to
another, simply to discover if the sensation is even more exciting.

Only one of the
extra two inmates allocated to spend the night in the hospital appears at my
door, a blanket and sheet under his arm.

It seems they
found a bed for the other arrival. He’s very quiet, despite the fact that he’s
being released tomorrow. He slips into bed and simply says, ‘Goodnight, Jeff.’

Am I that
frightening?

‘What do you
think you’re doing, you fucking dickhead?’

I’m about to
explain to my overnight companion that I write for a couple of hours every morning,
but when I turn to face him, I realize he’s still fast asleep. It’s the first
occasion someone’s sworn in front of me for a long time, even in their sleep,
and it brings back memories of Belmarsh and Wayland. I continue writing until
seven, when I have to wake him.

‘Morning,
Jeff,’ he says.

By the time I
emerged from the bathroom, he’s disappeared – his sheets and pillowcases folded
neatly at the end of the bed. By now he’ll be in reception, signing his
discharge papers, and by eight-thirty will be on his way, a free man.
22

Our two new
inductees today are somewhat unusual, and not just because they’re both lifers
(we now have 23 lifers out of 210 occupants). The first one tells me that he’s
been in jail for twenty-three years and he’s only thirty-nine. The second one
limps into the hospital and spends a considerable time with sister behind
closed doors.

Later, when I
take his blood pressure and check his weight, he tells me that he’s already
served fourteen years, and two years ago he contracted encephalitis. Once I’ve
filled in his chart and handed it to Linda, I look up encephalitis in the
medical dictionary.
Poor fellow.
Life imprisonment he
may
deserve,
encephalitis he does not.

Mary and James
visit me today, and it’s far from being a social event. Mary even has a written
agenda. I do adore her.

On the domestic
front, she has purchased a small Victorian mirror for the hall, and seeks my
approval. She goes on to tell me that Baroness Nicholson has written saying
that she wants to end the feud, claiming that she never intended anyone to
think that I had misappropriated any funds in the first place. In which case,
how did I end up in a cell three paces by five, banged up for fourteen hours a
day at Wayland, if the police
and Prison Service misunderstood her?23

As for the
prejudice of Mr Justice Potts, it remains to be seen whether Godfrey Barker is
still willing to make a witness statement.

He has
confirmed, on many occasions, in the presence of several witnesses, that Potts,
at a dinner party he and his wife attended, railed against me for some
considerable time.

When my name is
called over the tannoy to report to reception, I assume that James has left something
for me at the gate. I’ve been expecting a dozen
West Wing
tapes that will first have to go to the library before I
can take them out. My gift turns out to be eight tapes, twelve CDs and three
DVDs, not from James, but from an anonymous member of the public, so I can’t
even write to thank them.

Someone else
has sent seven books of first-class stamps and a packet of stamped envelopes,
after hearing how many letters I’m receiving every day. Mr Garley, the duty
officer, explains that I can’t have the stamps (could be exchanged for drugs),
but I can have the stamped envelopes (prison logic).

Shouldn’t the
rule be universal to all prisons? At Belmarsh, a category
A
prison, stamps are permitted. I make no comment.

It’s not Mr
Garley’s fault, and he can’t do anything about it.

Gail is angry.
She’s recently bought a smart new dark green Peugeot, which she parks outside
the hospital. Yesterday, one of the prisoners put matchsticks in her locks, so
that when she tried to open the door, she pushed the matchstick further in and
jammed the lock.

Club Hospital
meets for tea and biscuits. One of our new members, who
has
only been with us for a month, will be released tomorrow.

He was charged
with road rage and sentenced to three months. He will have spent six weeks in
prison. I’ve watched him carefully at our get-togethers and as he goes about
his business around the prison. He is well educated, well mannered and looks
quite incapable of swatting a fly.

He tells the
group that he stopped his car to go to the aid of a woman who was being
attacked, but for his troubles, got punched to the ground by what turned out to
be her boyfriend. The two of them then drove off. He returned home, but was
later arrested for road rage as the woman bore witness that he attacked her.
Had he gone to the police station first and reported them for assault, the
other man would now be in jail, not him. He has lost his job with the
pharmaceutical company he’s been with for twenty-one years, and is worried
about getting another one now he has a criminal record. His wife has stuck by
him, and she hopes that one of his old firm’s rivals will want to take
advantage of his
expertise.24
This
brings me
onto the subject of wives.

Of the seven
married Club members present today, two of their wives have had to sell their
homes and move to smaller houses in another area; two have had to go out to
work full time while trying to bring up children (three in one case, two in the
other), and the other two have received divorce petitions while in jail. I’m
the seventh.

I make no
excuse for the crimes committed, but I feel it bears repeating that it’s often
the wives who suffer even more than the husbands – for them there is no
rehabilitation programme.

One of the
prisoners waiting to be seen by Dr Walling this morning is a regular attendee.

Today he
somehow managed to get a nail stuck in his head. It only grazed the surface of
his skull, but produced a lot of blood.

Once Gail has
cleaned and bandaged him up, he asks, ‘Could I have rust on the brain?’

The prison is
jam-packed; 211 at lock up last night. Two inmates have been released this
morning, and three new prisoners arrived this afternoon from Leicester. They
couldn’t be more different. One is eighteen, and serving a six-week sentence
for a road-traffic offence. He has only two more weeks to serve before taking
up a place at Leicester University in September to read mathematics. The second
is around twenty-four – he is doing six months for punching someone in a pub.
He requests counselling for his drink problem; drink is considered by the
prison authorities to be just as much a drug as cannabis or heroin. The third
is serving six years for GBH, a year of which he spent in Belmarsh.

I attend the
weekly CARAT meeting, but one of the prisoners objects to my presence, so I
leave immediately.