Heaven: A Prison Diary (4 page)

His first job
after leaving university was as a volunteer at a museum in his home town.

He was happy
there, but soon decided he wanted to return to university. That was when his
mother contracted MS and everything began to go badly wrong. After his mother
was bedridden, he and his sister took it in turns to help around the house, so
that his father could continue to work. All three found the extra workload a
tremendous strain. One evening while at work in the museum, Matthew took home
some ancient coins to study. I haven’t used the word ‘stole’ because he
returned all the coins a few days later. But the incident weighed so heavily on
his conscience that he informed his supervisor. Matthew thought that would be
the end of the matter. But someone decided to report the incident to the
police. Matthew was arrested and charged with breach of trust. He pleaded
guilty, and was assured by the police that they would not be pushing for a
custodial sentence. His solicitor was also of the same opinion, advising
Matthew that he would probably get a suspended sentence or a community service
order. The judge gave him fifteen months.
5

Matthew is a
classic example of someone who should not have been sent to jail; a hundred
hours of community service might serve some purpose, but this boy has spent the
last three months with murderers, drug addicts and burglars. He won’t turn to a
life of crime, but how many less intelligent people might?

It’s a rotten
system that allows such a person to end up in prison.

My former
secretary, Angie Peppiatt, stole thousands of pounds from me, and still hasn’t
been arrested. I feel for Matthew.

Lunch today is
just as bad as Belmarsh or Wayland. Matthew explains that Wendy is off. I must
remember to eat only when Wendy is on duty.

I report to the
hospital and take over Doug’s caretaker role, while he visits his daughter. I
settle down with a glass of blackcurrant juice and Evian to watch England
slaughter Ireland, and win the Grand Slam, the Triple Crown and … after all, we
are far superior on paper. Unfortunately, rugby is not played on paper but on
pitches. Ireland hammer us 20-14, and return to the Emerald Isles with smiles
on their faces.

I’m still
sulking when a tall, handsome black man strolls in. His name is Clive. I only
hope he’s not ill, because if he is, I’m the last person he needs. He tells me
that he’s serving the last third of his sentence, and has just returned from a
week’s home leave – part of his rehabilitation programme.

Clive and I are
the only two prisoners who have the privilege of visiting Doug in the evenings.
I quickly discover why Doug enjoys Clive’s company. He’s bright, incisive and
entertaining and, if it were not politically incorrect, I would describe him as
sharp as a cartload of monkeys. Let me give you just one example of how he
works the system.

During the week
Clive works as a line manager for a fruit-packing company in Boston. He leaves
the prison after breakfast at eight and doesn’t return until seven in the
evening. For this, he is paid £200 a week. So during the week, NSC is no more
than a bed and breakfast, and the only day he has to spend in prison is Sunday.
But Clive has a solution for that as well.

Two Sundays in
every month he takes up his allocated town visits, while on the third Sunday
he’s allowed an overnight stay.

‘But what about the fourth or fifth Sunday?’
I ask.

‘Religious
exemption,’ he explains.

‘But why, when
there’s a chapel in the grounds?’ I demand.

‘
Your
chapel is in your grounds,’ says Clive,
‘because you’re C of E. Not me,’ he adds. ‘I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I must
visit my place of worship at least one Sunday in every month, and the nearest
one just happens to be in Leicester.’

After a coffee,
Clive invites me over to his room on the south block to play backgammon. His
room turns out not to be five paces by three, or even seven by three. It’s a
little over ten paces by ten. In fact it’s larger than my bedroom in London or
Grantchester.

‘How did you
manage this?’ I ask, as we settle down on opposite sides of the board.

‘Well, it used
to be a storeroom,’ he explains, ‘until I rehabilitated it.’

‘But it could
easily house four prisoners.’

‘True,’ says
Clive, ‘but remember I’m also the race relations representative, so they’ll
only allow black prisoners to share a room with me. There aren’t that many
black prisoners in D-cats,’ he adds with a smile.

I hadn’t
noticed the sudden drop in the black population after leaving Wayland until
Clive mentioned it. But I have seen a few at NSC, so I ask why they aren’t
allowed to room with him.

‘They all start
life on the north block, and that’s where they stay,’ he adds without
explanation. He also beat me at backgammon – leaving me three Mars Bars light.

Sunday is a day
of rest, and if there’s one thing you don’t need in prison it’s a day of rest.

SMU is open as
Mr Downs is transferring files from his office to the administration block
before taking up new responsibilities.

Fifteen new
prisoners arrived on Friday, giving me an excuse to prepare files and make up
their identity cards.

North Sea Camp,
whose capacity is 220, rarely has more than 170 inmates at any one time. As
inmates have the right to be within fifty miles of their families, being stuck
out on the east coast limits the catchment area.

Two of the
spurs are being refurbished at the moment, which shows the lack of pressure on
accommodation.
6
The turnover at NSC is about fifteen prisoners a week.
What I am about to reveal is common to all D-cat prisons, and by no means
exclusive to NSC. On average, one prisoner absconds every week (unlawfully at
large), the figures have a tendency to rise around Christmas and drop a little
during the summer, so NSC loses around fifty prisoners a year; this explains
the need for five roll-calls a day. Many absconders return within twenty-four
hours, having thought better of it; they have twentyeight days added to their
sentence. A few, often foreigners, return to their countries and are never seen
again. Quite recently, two Dutchmen absconded and were picked up by a
speedboat, as the beach is only 100 yards out of bounds. They were back in
Holland before the next roll-call.

Most absconders
are quickly recaptured, many only getting as far as Boston, a mere six miles
away. They are then transferred to a C-cat with its high walls and razor wire,
and will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to return to an open
prison, even if at some time in the future they are convicted of a minor
offence. A few, very few, get clean away. But they must then spend every day
looking over their shoulder.

There are even
some cases of wives or girlfriends sending husbands or partners back to prison,
and in one case a mother-in-law returning an errant prisoner to the front gate,
declaring that she didn’t want to see him again until he completed his sentence.

This is all
relevant because of something that took place today.

When granted
weekend leave, you must report back by seven o’clock on Sunday evening, and if
you are even a minute late, you are placed on report. Yesterday, a wife was
driving her husband back to the prison, when they became involved in a heated
row.

The wife
stopped the car and dumped her husband on the roadside some thirty miles from
the jail. He ran to the nearest phone box to let the prison know what had
happened and a taxi was sent out to pick him up. He checked in over an hour
late. Thirty pounds was deducted from his canteen account to pay for the taxi,
and he’s been placed on report.

I go for a
two-mile walk with Clive, who is spending a rare Sunday in prison. We discuss
the morning papers. They have me variously working on the farm/in the hospital/
cleaning the latrines/eating alone/lording it over everyone. However, nothing
beats the
Mail on Sunday
, which
produces a blurred photo of me proving that I have refused to wear prison
clothes.
This despite the fact that I’m wearing prison jeans
and a grey prison sweatshirt in the photo.

After our walk,
Clive and I play a few games of backgammon. He’s in a different class to me, so
I decide to take advantage of his superiority and turn each session into a
tutorial.

I write for two
hours, and then sign in for roll-call with Mr Hughes.

Doug, Clive and
I watch a magnificent period drama set in Guildford and Cornwall in 1946.

Mike (lifer)
appears twenty minutes into the film, with a chicken curry in plastic
containers – part of his cookery rehabilitation course. Doug serves it up on
china plates–a real luxury in itself, even though we have to eat the meal with
plastic knives and forks.

I eat the meal very
slowly, and enjoy every morsel.

I’ve been at
NSC for a week, and am beginning to feel that I know my way around.

I report to
work at SMU. Matthew shows me how to make out an order form for any supplies
that are needed for the office, which will then be sent to the stores, who
should see that we have it the same day. We discover an outstanding order from
5 October for files and paper, marked urgent, and another for 15 October,
marked very urgent. Inefficiency is endemic in parts of the Prison Service.
Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money
is
wasted every
year. The departments responsible for this differ from prison to prison, but to
give you a small example: some years ago there was a prisoner at HMP

Gartree who was a vicious killer and needed to be transferred from
one cell to another, a distance of less than a hundred yards.
Fifteen
officers arrived to move him, an operation that took five minutes. All fifteen
officers claimed four hours overtime. How do I know this? A senior officer who
previously worked at Gartree told me.

Matthew and I
have lunch in the canteen with the other orderlies, and are joined by Roger
(lifer, murdered his wife), who berated me about England losing to Ireland on
Saturday.

‘But you sound
Welsh?’ I venture.

‘I am,’ he
replies, ‘but I don’t care who beats the English. It’s one of the few pleasures
I get in here.’

Mr New arrives
in the office, having spent the morning in court on a domestic matter.

One has a tendency
to forget that prison officers have problems of their own.

Matthew and I
discuss how to improve office efficiency. I’d like to clear out every drawer
and cupboard and start again. He agrees. We’re about to begin, when the door
opens and the governing governor walks in.

Mr Lewis greets
me with a warm, jovial smile. He asks Matthew to leave us and wastes no time
with small talk.

‘The press,’ he
tells me, ‘are still camped at both ends of the prison.’ And he adds that a
prisoner has been caught with an expensive camera and long lens in his room. Mr
Lewis has no idea which paper smuggled it in, or how much money was involved.
The inmate concerned is already on his way to a C-cat, and will not be allowed
to return to an open prison. Apparently several prisoners have complained about
the press invading their privacy, and the governor has given his assurance that
if a photograph of them appears in a national newspaper, they have legal
recourse – a rule that doesn’t seem to apply to me. We then discuss my move to
Spring Hill before the governor calls Matthew back in.

Mr Lewis grants
him a further two days compassionate leave, which will allow Matthew to spend
five days with his father. Mr Lewis appears to have combined compassion and
common sense, while remaining inside the Home Office guidelines.

Mr New arrives
back in the office, anxious to know what the governor wanted to see me about. I
don’t mention the camera as Mr Lewis specifically asked me not to. I tell him
that Mr Lewis intends to speak to the governor of Spring Hill, but he’s leaving
all the paperwork to him.

‘It’s been
dealt with,’ Mr New replies. ‘I’ve already sent all the documents to my
opposite number.’

I ask Matthew,
on a visit to his room in the south block, if he could redo the ‘officers list
of needs’ presently listed on the back of the kitchen cabinet, so that it’s as
smart as the one Doug displays in the hospital. I glance up at Matthew’s
bookshelf: Pliny the Younger and Augustus Caesar. He asks me if I’ve read
Herodotes.

‘No,’ I
confess, ‘I’m still circa 1774, currently reading about John Adams and the
first Congress. I’ll need a little longer sentence if I’m ever to get back to
484 BC.’

I return to my
room. I hate the north block.

It’s noisy,
dirty and smelly (we’re opposite the pig farm). I lock myself in and write for
a couple of hours.

I stroll across
to Doug (tax avoidance) in the hospital. He allows me the use of his bathroom.
Once I’ve had a bath and put on clean clothes, I feel almost human.

Clive (fraud)
joins us after his day job in the fruit factory. He tells me that his fellow
workers believe what they read about me in the
Sun
and the
Mirror.
I
despair.

I leave the
hospital and return for roll-call before going back to my room to write for a
couple hours. The tannoy keeps demanding that Jackson should report for
roll-call. He’s probably halfway to Boston by now.

Final roll-call.
Mr Hughes waves from the other end of the
corridor to show my name has been ticked off. He’s already worked out that I
will be the last person to abscond. I certainly wouldn’t get halfway to Boston
before being spotted.