Heaven: A Prison Diary (30 page)

PRISON
SERVICE CHAIN OF CUSTODY

PROCEDURE

Having
completed this procedure, I sign another form to confirm that I am satisfied
with the way the test has been conducted. I am then released to return to the
hospital.

Despite this
being a humiliating experience, it’s one I thoroughly approve of. Although I’ve
never got on with Mr Vessey, he is a professional who cannot hide his contempt
for anyone involved in drugs, especially the dealers.

One of the
inmates up in front of the governor this morning has been charged with illegal
possession of marijuana – but with a difference. When his room was raided they
found him trying to swallow a small plastic packet. They wrestled him to the
ground and extracted the evidence from his mouth. Had he swallowed the
contents, they would not have been able to charge him. The packet was one of
those we supply from the hospital containing six paracetamol pills. This one
had an ounce of marijuana inside, and the inmate ended up with seven days added
to his sentence.

Mr Hocking
appears in the hospital carrying a large attaché case and disappears into
Linda’s office. A few minutes later they both come out and join me on the ward.
The large plastic case is placed on a hospital bed and opened to reveal a drugs
kit: twenty-one square plastic containers embedded in foam rubber show the many
different drugs currently on the market. For the first time I see heroin, crack
cocaine, ecstasy tablets, amphetamines and marijuana in every form.

Linda and Mr
Hocking deliver an introductory talk that they give to any prison officer on
how to recognize the different drugs and the way they can be taken. Mr Berlyn
and his security team are obviously determined that I will be properly briefed
before I am allowed to accompany Mr Le Sage when we visit schools.

It’s
fascinating at my age (sixty-one) to be studying a new subject as if I were a
firstyear undergraduate.

The new
governor, Mr Beaumont, is making a tour of the camp and spends seven minutes in
the hospital – a flying visit. He has heard the hospital is efficiently run by
Linda and Gail, and as long as that continues to be the case, gives them the
impression that he will not be interfering.

Yesterday I was
frog-marched off to do an MDT. Today there’s an announcement over the tannoy
that there are voluntary drugs tests for those with surnames beginning A-E.

These are known
as dip tests, because once again you pee into a plastic beaker, but this time
the officer in charge dips a little stick into the beaker and moments later is
able to give you a result.

I walk across
to the Portakabin, supply another 60ml of urine and I’m immediately cleared,
which makes yesterday’s test somewhat redundant.

I later learn
that one of the
Bs
came up positive, and he had to
call his wife to let her know that he won’t be allowed out on a town visit this
weekend. As it was a voluntary test, I can’t work out why he agreed to be
tested.

Surgery is always
slow at the weekend because the majority of inmates who appear with various
complaints during the week in the hope that they will get off work remain in
bed, while all those who are fit never visit us in the first place.

Carl and an
inmate called Jason who is only with us for two weeks (motoring offence) turn
up at the hospital. Together we remove all the beds from the ward and push them
into the corridor, before giving the hospital a spring clean.

Jason tells me
that ‘on the out’ he’s a painter and decorator, and could repaint the ward
during his two-week incarceration. I shall speak to the governor on Monday,
because at £8.20 a week this would be quite a bargain. You may well ask why
Carl and Jason helped me with the spring clean.
Boredom.
The spring clean killed a morning for all of us.

I watch the
prison football team lose 7 2, and witness two more pieces of unbelievable
stupidity by fellow inmates. Our goalkeeper, who was sent off by the same
referee the last time we played, shouts obscenities at him again, and is
surprised when he’s booked. I fear he will be back in prison within months of
being released. But worse, our centre forward is a prisoner who’s just come out
of the Pilgrim Hospital after a groin injury, and has been told to rest for six
weeks. He will undoubtedly appear at surgery on Monday expecting sympathy. It’s
no wonder the NHS is in such crisis if patients behave so irresponsibly after
being given expert advice.

If I had been given
the same sentence as Jonathan Aitken, I would have been released today.
Jonathan was sentenced to eighteen months, and because he was a model prisoner,
only had to serve seven (half minus two months on tag). Tomorrow I will not be
returning home to my wife and family because Mr Justice Potts sentenced me to
four years.

Instead I will
be meeting Mark Le Sage, an officer from Stocken Prison who visits schools in
Lincolnshire, warning children of the consequences of taking drugs.

I will remain
at NSC until I know the result of my appeal, but for the first time in seven
months (since my mother’s funeral) I will be able to leave the prison and
return to the outside world.

Mr Le Sage does
not turn up for our meeting.

The governor of
HMP Stocken has decided that they should not have to bear the cost of my
accompanying Mr Le Sage on any school visit, as it would no longer be a
voluntary activity that Mr Le Sage would normally pursue in his off-duty time.

As so often is
the case in prisons, someone will look for a reason for
not
doing something rather than trying to make a good idea work. I
cannot pretend that I’ve become so used to this negative attitude that I am not
disappointed. Mr Berlyn is also unable to mask his anger, and seems determined
not to be thwarted by this setback. He has decided that NSC will send its own
officer (Mr Hocking) as my escort, so that I might still attend Mark Le Sage’s
lectures. As I won’t know if this suggestion will be vetoed until Mr Berlyn has
spoken to the Stocken’s governor, I will continue in my role as hospital
orderly.

Alan Purser,
the prison drugs counsellor, comes across to the hospital to give me a copy of
The Management of Drug Misuse in Prisons
by
Dr Celia Grummitt. Dr Grummitt will become my new bedtime companion.

Mr Vessey has
charged Chris (lifer, murder) and David (lifer, murder) with being on the farm
in possession of four potatoes and a cabbage. In normal circumstances this
would have caused little interest, even in our selfcontained world. However,
this will be the new governor’s first adjudication, which we all await with
bated breath.

Mr Beaumont
dismissed the charges against Chris and David as a farm worker came forward to
say he’d given them permission to take the potatoes and the cabbage.

As part of my
preparation for talking to children about the dangers and consequences of
drugs, I have a visit from a police officer attached to the Lincolnshire drug
squad. Her name is Karen Brooks. She’s an attractive, thirty-five-year-old
blonde, and single mother of two. I mention this only to show that she is
normal. Karen has currently served two and a half years of a four-year
assignment attached to the drug squad, having been a member of the force for
the past fourteen years: hardly the TV image of your everyday drug officer.

She gives me a
tutorial lasting just over an hour, and perhaps her most frightening reply to my
endless questions – and she is brutally honest – is that she has asked to be
transferred to other duties as she can no longer take the day-to-day strain of
working with drug addicts.

Karen admits
that although she enjoys her job, she wishes she’d never volunteered for the
drugs unit in the first place, because the mental scars will remain with her
for the rest of her life.

Her son, aged
twelve, is a pupil at one of the most successful schools in Lincolnshire, and
has already been offered drugs by a fourteen-year-old. This is not a deprived
school in the East End of London, but a firstclass school in Lincolnshire.

Karen then
tells a story that brings her almost to tears. She once arrested a
twelveyear-old girl from a middle-class, professional family for shoplifting a
pair of socks from Woolworth’s. The girl’s parents were horrified and assured
Karen it wouldn’t happen again. Two years later the girl was arrested for
stealing from a lingerie shop, and was put on probation. When they next met,
the girl was seventeen, going on forty. Three years of experimentation with
marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin, and a relationship with a
twenty-year-old drug dealer, had taken their toll. The girl died last month at
the age of eighteen. The dealer is still alive – and still dealing.

As Karen gets
ready to leave, I ask her how many officers are attached to the drug squad.

‘Five,’ she
replies, ‘which means that only about 10 per cent of our time is proactive,
while the other 90 per cent is reactive.’ She says that she’ll visit me again
in two weeks’ time.

Yesterday I
read Celia Grummitt’s pamphlet on the misuse of drugs in prisons and the
following facts bear repeating:
a.
Seven
million people in Britain take drugs on a regular basis (this does not include
alcohol or cigarettes).
b
.
Sixteen million people in Britain
smoke cigarettes.
c.
Drug-related
problems are currently costing the NHS, the police service, the Prison Service,
the social services, the probation service and courts – the country – eighteen
billion
pounds a year.
d.
If Britain did not have a drug
problem, and by that I mean abuse of Class A drugs such as heroin and crack
cocaine, we could close 25 per cent of our jails, and there would be no waiting
lists on the NHS.
e.
In 1975, fewer
than 10,000 people were taking heroin.

Today it’s
220,000, and for those of you who have never had to worry about your children,
just think about your grandchildren.

Mark Le Sage,
the young prison officer from HMP Stocken, visits me at the hospital. He’s been
in the Prison Service for the past twelve years, and for the last eight, has
spent many hours
as a volunteer addressing schools
in
the Norfolk area.

Mr Berlyn joins
us, as it was his idea that I should attend a couple of Mark’s talks before I
venture out on my own. As I have not yet passed my FLED,

I’ll have to be
accompanied by Mr Hocking, who has also agreed to carry out this task in his
own time, as NSC
do
not have the funds to cover the
extra expense (£14 an hour). Mr Berlyn says that he’ll write to the governor of
HMP

Stocken today,
as Mr Le Sage comes under his jurisdiction.

Blossom
(traveller, see page 193) is at the High Court today for his appeal. He’s
currently serving a five-and-a-half-year sentence for stealing cars and
caravans. He’s grown his beard even longer, as he’s hoping that the judge will
think he’s a lot older than he is, and therefore shorten his sentence. He
intends to shave the beard off as soon as he returns this evening.

Blossom returns
from his appeal and announces that a year has been knocked off his sentence. It
had nothing to do with the length of his beard, because he was only in the dock
for a couple of minutes and the judge hardly gave him a second look. He had
clearly read all the relevant papers long before Blossom showed up.