The Loose Screw (11 page)

Of course most of the decisions regarding closed visits were legitimate and in nearly all these cases the inmates involved accepted the consequences. There were, however, cases that I know of where the inmate was placed on closed visits simply because some staff didn't like them or their visitors. In almost every visiting room I saw during my career I will always remember the tense atmosphere that hung around the room.

The staff always seemed on edge rather like I imagine the fighter pilots felt during their brief moments of rest between scrambles. Some members of staff even seemed to look forward to a disturbance as it gave them the chance to get their hands on a prisoner. This was especially so if there was a particular prisoner who was not very well liked by the staff. It was common when a prisoner in this category received a visit for as many staff from his wing who could get away from their normal duties to congregate in the visits room in the hope that he would 'perform' and they could get a piece of the action.

Another favourite pastime with many staff was to blatantly eye up certain female visitors, especially during the summer months when they may be wearing slightly more revealing clothes. This practice was not only unprofessional but also caused a lot of tension between the already fragile relationship of staff inmate and visitor. Of course, if an inmate took offence at the way in which he felt his wife, girlfriend or daughter was being stared at or talked about, he risked having his visit terminated and being placed on the closed visits list.

I was lucky enough not to be posted permanently to visits during my career, as I don't think I could have conformed to the general attitude that seemed to be required by a visits officer. I was a little too laid back to worry about upsetting a prisoner's weekly or monthly visit.

The end of our first day over, we all congregated back at the training room to meet up with Shepherd and Nutt. We had each been issued with A4 notebooks in which we were required to write up about every area we visited during the two weeks. We had to note such things as the role of each area, how many staff and inmates were housed or worked there and the location of alarm bells and firefighting equipment.

These books had to be written up daily and handed in each night to the training staff, who would mark them and return them together with their comments every morning. I left the prison gates that evening and felt tremendous relief that the day was over. I was physically and mentally exhausted, not because I had done any strenuous exercise but because my first taste of this totally different existence had been so much to take in.

On my short walk back to the station I found myself once again questioning what exactly I was getting into and whether or not I had made the right decision. Once again I answered this question by reminding myself of the financial stability the career offered. I also remembered the promise I made to Jim and myself to keep my own individuality. When I thought about the attitudes of some of the staff we had met during the day I knew then that this would be a hard promise to keep.

The following day I had arranged for Geoff to pick me up at Mottingham Station. He had also arranged to take Mickey Mc and Mick Regan, which not only eased the travelling situation but also enabled us about forty-five minutes each way to get more familiar with one another. We arrived at the prison early on the second day and took the opportunity to grab a coffee and bacon sandwich each. I think we all welcomed this chance, not only to delay the start of the day but also to attempt to quell the butterflies we were all experiencing as nervous fear of the day ahead set in.

Once again we congregated at the main gate until being ushered by our friendly gate officer through the inner gate and taking up our seats in the training room. SO Nutt, who I was really beginning to dislike, passionately delivered the first order of the day. He slammed our blue notebooks on the tables in front of us and began screaming his disgust at the quality and amount of our first day's entry. He reminded all of us, who he collectively called 'gentlemen' in his own condescending tone, of his power to sack us on the spot if we did not produce work to the standard he expected. Shepherd took no part in this show of authority and I couldn't help wondering by the look on his face whether he seemed to hold the same regard for this power crazy, young university boy that I did.

As the two weeks progressed, most of us began to hold a lot of respect for Shepherd. We all agreed that our first impression was that he was going to be the bastard of the two, but he actually proved to be one of the quietest and most helpful members of staff we met. His quiet nature, however, did not mean that he was not capable of looking after himself, and we heard one or two stories about how he dealt with people who tried to fuck him about, both staff and inmates. The main thing was that he was not a bullyboy. He obviously knew his potential and did not feel he had anything to prove by shouting his mouth off and giving people unnecessary grief.

With the morning lecture over, we left Nutt to pat himself on the back for delivering such a powerful speech. Our first port of call was C-Wing to observe the morning routine, which included the serving of breakfast, slopping out and morning applications. The scene that greeted us on C-Wing was like one from a film about Newgate Prison. The wing was reported to be the longest prison wing in the world and stretched from the circular prison centre to an arch-shaped window at the far end, which let in a small amount of light that added to the gloom. Once again the stale air was filled with the stench of human waste and sweaty bodies. There was also a tremendous amount of noise being generated from the different activities -keys and chains jangling, heavy metal cell doors banging open and shut, orders being barked by various officers, and the constant drone of voices and feet dragging along the metal landings and stairs. It was as if I had stepped back in time into an old black-and-white documentary on Communist Russia. Wherever I looked I saw rows upon rows of grey-faced men in blue striped shirts shuffling along the narrow landings, their heads and shoulders slumping as they carried their slop buckets in one hand and metal food trays in the other.

C-Wing, we discovered, could hold about three hundred and fifty inmates of whom at least half appeared to be on the landings, but I could only make out about fifteen officers. Those odds and the whole menacing scene sent a cold shiver down my spine. The whole process was being carried out with military precision, every inmate from each landing following the same route uniformly -out of the cell, along to the recess to empty their buckets, past the landing 'Wendy House' to hand in their daily applications, down one set of stairs, past the hotplate to get their breakfast, back up another set of stairs, along the landing and back into their cells. The landing officers merely moved along the landing, slamming the doors shut as soon as the last occupant was back inside.

We huddled nervously in our position next to the hotplate, where we were told to stand in order to get the best view of the whole process. Being here, though, meant that we were easy prey for every prisoner on the wing that saw the fear on our faces to intimidate us further with threatening stares and sarcastic comments.

After only about ten minutes in this position we were told to move up onto the three's landing to observe the applications process. It was up here that we were to witness our first two incidents of how brutal prison life can be. The first incident was a serious assault on an inmate carried out by his cellmate. An officer had just unlocked the cells to our left and the inmates had begun to file down the landing when I noticed in the corner of my eye someone running. I looked round in time to see an inmate bring a lump of wood crashing down on another inmate's head with such force that his head seemed to open up and he fell to the floor with dark red blood spurting from his skull. I froze, partly in disbelief, partly in shock, but mainly because I didn't know how to react and we had received strict instructions not to get involved in any incidents.

I stood there and watched as the attacker continued to rain vicious blows to the downed man's head and body in what appeared to me to be in slow motion. All the noise and other activities around me appeared to be blocked out as I seemed glued to the scene in front of me, until I heard a muffled whistle blowing in the distance followed by the sound of thunder rumbling closer and closer. My dreamlike state was broken as I was hurled to the side of the landing and was propelled into a locked cell door with a bone-crunching thump.

My eyes barely focused on a blur of white shirts that hurtled passed me at incredible speed, and launched themselves en masse on top of the two inmates. I realized that the distant thunder I had heard had been my introduction to the Wandsworth Express, the name proudly given to the response by staff to an alarm bell or whistle being blown. At that time Wandsworth officers regularly boasted about having the fastest, most effective response to alarms than any other prison throughout the Prison Service.

In minutes the wall of staff that now stood in between me and the two inmates parted and I saw two groups of three officers each holding one of the prisoners, each inmate almost bent in half, covered in blood and crying out in agony at the way their arms and wrists were being restrained.

The two groups shuffled past me and I was later informed that they were both taken to the segregation unit to await adjudication the following morning on a charge of fighting and assault.

I also discovered later that the attacker had been at Wansdworth for a good number of months without any previous trouble. He was apparently a model prisoner who kept himself to himself and appeared just to want to do his bird and go home. The victim, on the other hand, was a bit of a lad, or so he thought. He had been transferred the night before from a northern jail for a court appearance and had been put in the same cell as the other man. He had kept his new cellmate awake all night with tales of how he was a champion kick-boxer and would take no shit from anyone. He boasted about whom he had been banged up with and got on really well with -you know, the usual legends such as the Krays, Charlie Bronson and all the well-known faces. In short, he had really pissed off his new cellmate by fucking up his routine. It may sound petty to those of you who are unfamiliar with prison life, but your routine, however you decide to manage it, is the way you deal with your bird.

The easiest way for both staff and inmates to get along inside is to respect people's routines. Many prison staff, both junior and senior, have caused some very serious but totally unnecessary incidents by messing about with someone's routine.

I must admit that that incident shook me, if only by its speed and ferocity. But later that morning I was to witness another incident that left me totally confused about the morality of the career I was entering. With the wing completely fed and all the inmates, other than the workers, locked up in their cells again, there was a short time for us to grab a cup of tea and write up our blue books before having a look at the bathhouse. We were directed to the C-Wing staff tearoom, which was located in two cells that had been knocked through and kitted out with a cooker, fridge and just about everything else needed to cater for making tea, coffee and snacks.

As soon as we entered, the most enormous black man I had ever seen since the incident in Lewisham on Garry's stag night asked us for our order. We soon discovered this was Nathan, the wing's number one T-Boy, and no prizes for guessing how he got the job looking at the size of him. Despite his intimidating appearance, Nathan was a really nice bloke who was only too happy to help us out when we needed any information about who was who and where things were in the prison that we couldn't get from a less helpful member of staff.

We had received strict instructions from staff at the scene of the morning's incident not to record any details of it in our notebooks, so there was not an awful lot that we could write about. We did not even dare to talk about it amongst ourselves, as there were three wing officers in the tearoom having some breakfast, but I could tell by the expressions on the others' faces that they had also been shocked by what they had seen.

The bathhouse was located at the side of the main prison in between that and G-, H-and K-Wings where the 'beasts' were kept. It was empty of inmates when we visited, but we had the benefit of a bathhouse officer to describe the system to us. It was a simple conveyor-belt system that every prisoner had the opportunity to take only once a week at that time. The name 'bathhouse' was a little misleading, as there were actually no baths in the building. It was a long, narrow building with what must have been approximately fifty showers down each side. Each wing was allocated one day a week in which to get all its inmates showered.

At the entrance of the building there was a hatch where we were told every inmate stripped off, handed in his dirty clothes and collected a bar of soap and one tiny sachet of shampoo. They then filed into the showers and took a cubicle each. The water was turned on for three minutes only, and in that time they had to wash and rinse their hair and bodies. The officer laughed as he told us that the usual trick was to turn the water off after about two minutes and watch them coming out still covered in soap.

Once the prisoners had showered they would file through the door at the other end of the building where they would collect fresh clothes and a towel to dry themselves with. They were allowed to wrap the towels around their waists and would then be marched back to their cells to dry and change. The process was carried out on a strictly one-for-one basis, so if they didn't have a towel or any other piece of clothing to hand in at the start they wouldn't get one back. Instead, they would find themselves on report and charged with damaging prison property. Some of you reading this may think they only deserve one shower a week. I have met certain inmates that you would have to force to take one that regularly but, believe me, when you have to work there you would rather let them take as many showers as they like. It also makes everyone's life so much easier when you allow people access to a shower -think how much more relaxed you feel when you step out of the bath or shower as opposed to when you are sweaty and dirty.