Heaven: A Prison Diary (40 page)

Authors: Jeffrey Archer

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Rich & Famous

BOOK: Heaven: A Prison Diary

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You cannot escape from an open
prison, only abscond. There are no walls, just a car barrier at the entrance
and a public footpath at the back. Most prisoners who abscond do so in the
first two weeks. Nine out of ten are back behind bars within forty-eight hours.

There are five grades of
governor; the top man or woman is known as the governing governor. I still
haven’t met one.

Matthew will end up serving five
and a half months.

This is only true in D-cats –
open prisons.

A two-year
period of compulsory service in one of the branches of the armed forces, which
ceased to apply for anyone born after 1940.

8
the door to each
inmate’s room has a large glass panel in it, covered in wire mesh. On the
outside is a green curtain to stop casual passers-by peering in. However,
during the night, prison officers hold back the curtain to check you’re in bed
and haven’t absconded.

Mr New banned all mouthwashes
from the canteen following a similar incident a year ago. As Storr purchased
the bottle at his last prison, Mr New is issuing a new directive, that any new
prisoners arriving at NSC with mouthwash will have the bottles confiscated.

The government dropped the bill
in March 2004.

I never phone Mary on her mobile
because my two-pound phone card is gobbled up in moments.

No suggestion of a scandal at
Spring Hill appeared in the national press during the next twelve months.

Because the
last prison pays the expense of discharging a prisoner.

See
Volume II
–
Wayland:
Purgatory
.

In
Belmarsh.,
around 70 per cent of the inmates were black, in Wayland 30 per cent, and
currently at NSC we have four black prisoners out of 207. I’m not sure what
this proves: possibly there might be more black prisoners involved in violent
crime than in fraud.

An inmate who completes a
quarter of his sentence and proves to be a model prisoner is eligible for
outside work. First he must complete two town visits without incident.

The next step is to apply for
Community Service Volunteers work (CSV), perhaps in an old people’s home or an
Oxfam shop. Once he’s completed a month of CSV without incident, he can move on
to a wage-earning job, making perhaps £200-£250 a week.

This gives a prisoner the chance
to send money back to his wife or partner, and to build up some savings to fall
back on once released.

Interesting
grammatical error.

Frank flew from LA to London to
appear in my trial to deny a statement by Angie Peppiatt that I had been in
Rome with a mistress when in fact I had been with Frank attending the World
Athletics Championships. Not that I think Mr Justice Potts gave a damn, as by
then he had already made up his mind that I was guilty.

Mr and Mrs Barker are now separated.
Mrs Barker stood down from the parole board in September 2001.

He was very distressed to learn
last year that the Home Office was considering closing the prison.

So-called vanity publishers are
only too happy to publish your book – if, along with the script, you enclose a
cheque for £3,000.

The prison is entitled to keep
you until midnight on the day of your release, but you’re usually off the
premises by nine o’clock.

Baroness Nicholson wrote to Sir
John Stevens, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, in July 2001, demanding
‘an investigation into the involvement of Jeffrey Archer in funds raised and
spent through the Simple Truth Appeal’. This precipitated not only a police
enquiry, but a lengthy and expensive investigation by KPMG on behalf of the Red
Cross. Baroness Nicholson’s insinuation that I had stolen money from the Appeal
was irresponsible and wholly without foundation, and on 23 January 2002, the
police closed their enquiry ‘in view of … the lack of any evidence from the informant’.

He later wrote to tell me that
his old firm took him back the day he was released, and treated the six weeks
absence as holiday on full pay.

Caused by the
problem of overcrowding.

The analgesic the inmates most
commonly ask for is Kapake which is a mixture of paracetamol and codeine. The
reason is that codeine will show up in MDT as an opiate, and thus disguise
illegal opiates. The user can then protest, ‘But I’m taking Kapake which the
doctor prescribed.’ Prison doctors are now trying to limit the use of Kapake
and diazepam when a prisoner has a record of taking drugs.

Mr Leighton is unable to make
the decision himself. He reports back the following day that the BBC had
already been in touch with the Home Office, and they have been turned down.

The full report was published in
the
Criminal Law Review
of August
2003.

I was president of the World
Snooker Association until I was arrested, when the board asked me to resign.
Two other bodies expelled me, the Royal Society of Arts and the MCC.

Two prisoners absconded during
their first week at work. Both were caught and transferred to a B-cat in
Nottingham. Two were found in a pub and are back working on the farm; while
three were sacked for inappropriate behaviour – unwanted advances to the female
staff. And that was in the first week.

Most sex offenders, when housed
in an open prison, are given a cover story should anyone ask what they are in
for.

They did. It was published in
the
Sunday Mirror
the next day. (See
overleaf.)

See map page 414.

I had no idea how important this
lunch would turn out to be on the evening I wrote these words.

When I first entered the Liberal
Club,
an elderly gentlemen
remarked, ‘Prison is one
thing, Jeff, but the Liberal Club?’

I assume that Mr Beaumont was
given Dr Razzak’s advice. If so, he ignored it.

One officer pushes the
prisoner’s head down, while another keeps his legs bent; this is known as being
‘bent up’ or ‘twisted up’. In the rule book it’s described as ‘control and
restraint’.

I am pleased to learn that
David, the friendly schoolmaster at NSC who joined Clive’s company on leaving
prison, quickly realized what he was up to, and resigned.

There was a riot the week after
I left, and seventeen inmates ended up in hospital.

I wrote this in
A Prison Diary Volume One
–

Belmarsh:
Hell,
and the Home Office have
shown scant interest. There aren’t any votes in prisons.

An area manager is senior to a
governor, and can have as many as fifty prisons under his remit. He reports
directly to the deputy director-general.

Since Mr Beaumont’s suspension,
Mr Hocking has addressed the tribunal, and made it clear that he was forced to
resign by Beaumont, with the threat of being sacked. But who bullied Mr
Beaumont?

Two years and two prison diaries
later, and I have not received one letter of complaint from a prisoner or
prison officer about the diaries despite receiving some 16,000 letters in the
last three years.

HEAVEN.

All
rights reserved.

For
information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.
10010.

www.stmartins.com

First
published in Great Britain by Macmillan an imprint of Pan Macmillan

Ltd
e

ISBN
9781429953832

First
eBook
Edition :
March 2011

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Archer,
Jeffrey, 1940–

Heaven: a prison diary / Jeffrey Archer.
p
.
cm.

“Volume 3.”

ISBN-13: 978-0-312-35479-4