The Loose Screw (12 page)

The thrilling tour of the bathhouse over and our books filled in accordingly, it was time to return to C-Wing to observe the feeding of the lunchtime meal. In all prisons lunch is served at about eleven to eleven thirty in order to allow the staff to break off for their lunch officially at twelve thirty, but in practice its usually as soon as the wing is fed and secured. So as a rule the staff are a little more enthusiastic about serving lunch and dinner than breakfast. As a consequence, the staff usually try to avert any trouble that would obviously delay their own lunch break.

However, this was not the case for the two young officers on the three's landing on this occasion, who obviously thought the chance to impress some fresh-faced NEPOs was worth losing some of their lunch hour. I am, of course, referring to the second incident of the day, which I mentioned earlier. I was stood with Mickey Mc on one of the bridges that spanned across the wing when a cocky young London lad who was all of eighteen came out of his cell and said "Morning Guv" in a cheeky but harmless way to the two landing officers stood on the bridge next to us. As he went past Mickey and myself he said to us, "Don't listen to them or you will never learn how to be a good screw", and laughed on his way down the stairs. The two officers seemed to let this harmless banter really upset them and both puffed out their chests as they told us, "We will have that little fucker when he comes back". They also told us to put our notebooks away and not write anything down about what we were about to see, as we would not learn this part of the job at the training school but would pick it up when we got posted to our permanent nick. The young lad came back up the stairs carrying his dinner and a mug of tea, and was very closely followed back to his cell by the officers. At the cell they made it quite clear that the moment we heard a commotion we were to blow three times on our whistles and get back out of the way.

The inmate's cellmate was ordered out of the cell and the two officers went in and pushed the door almost closed. We could hear the young lad trying to convince them that he was only having a bit of a laugh and apologized if they'd taken offence. The officers apparently were not interested in this and within a few seconds we heard an almighty crack and a cry of pain followed by an almighty crash of furniture as it seemed to really kick off.

Mickey Mc blew his whistle and almost immediately I heard the thunderous sound of the Wandsworth Express charging towards our location. Time to get out of the way, I thought. Dozens of staff arrived at the scene and the prisoner was eventually brought out, bent over in restraint with blood pouring from what looked like a very badly broken nose, and some pretty severe bruises already beginning to appear on his face and naked torso. The two officers came out grinning, as if they had just emerged from a free brothel, and received congratulatory pats on the back from some of the other staff.

We then overheard them discussing with a senior officer which one would claim on their report that the inmate had attacked them first and therefore had to be restrained. I stood there and could not believe what I had just heard, especially as I knew how calculated the attack was. However, I was in no position to do anything about it as no one would believe me over two officers and whoever else would support the story with false statements. Over the next few years I would witness many incidents such as this one and, although I am ashamed to admit it, whilst I never physically assaulted an inmate in such a way I did provide backup stories to help cover other officers. This was not out of choice but rather through peer pressure, and it was the pressure to perpetrate such lies that contributed to my reasons for resigning from the service.

I heard later that the young lad received three days' CC, i.e. cellular confinement, solitary with no bed during the day, plus the loss of twenty-eight days' remission, not to mention the broken nose and the record of an assault on staff that would plague him for the rest of his sentence regardless of what prison he went to, and all for a bit of cheeky banter. I must stress that not all prison officers behave in such a way, but that incident was the first indication of the huge amount of pressure the majority of decent officers are constantly under to partake in such bullying or at least to help cover it up.

On the way home that night the three of us all agreed that both incidents had left a mark on us. The only one of us that tried to make out he thought it was brilliant was our driver Geoff. He was getting himself all excited when he was telling us how he had had to practise real self-control in order to stop himself from jumping in and having a go. The fact that we had seen him shit himself and dive for cover in the tearoom seemed to have slipped his mind, but we let him have his moment of glory. However, the following day Geoff would show his true colours once again when we entered the gym for our first of many physical education lessons by none other than Gary Taylor, a regular contender for Britain's strongest man and the Wandsworth gym senior officer.

After the usual briefing to start the third day, we made our way to the gym for our first lesson. Over the previous couple of days we had heard all sorts of rumours about what to expect in the gym at the hands of the sadistic Mr Taylor. Everyone seemed to look to me to help them through it, being ex-army, but I was more worried than all of them, even 'fat' Alfie who was sweating buckets at the mention of the word fitness. My experience told me that I would be expected to perform one hundred per cent better than the rest of the group purely because of my background. The fact of the matter was that I had probably done less physical activity than any of them over the past year and was dreading the prospect too.

We got changed and lined up inside the gym, each of us staring nervously at the circuit of weights and exercises already set up around the floor. Then we saw an even more daunting sight, which almost blocked out the light completely as he squeezed his huge torso through the gym office doorway. Mr Taylor had arrived and he looked even worse than the accounts we had heard about him previously. I noticed that Geoff had gone ashen white and seemed to be struggling to breathe regularly. I thought, I know this guy is big but there's no need to go over the top. Then I realized his eyes were focused beyond Mr Taylor and his terrified gaze was fixed on two inmates standing in the gym office making tea. He stuck his hand up and demanded to speak to Gary Taylor in private. This is a great start, I thought -if there's one thing I have learnt it is not to piss PTIs off before the gym lesson. Gary was not about to squeeze back into the office for anyone, so he told Geoff to say what he had to say in front of the group.

Despite his pleas and the obvious desperation in his voice, Geoff had to admit what was wrong in front of us. It turned out that one of the gym orderlies, an inmate who was about sixty years old and four-foot tall, used to be Geoff's milkman and Geoff, the man who couldn't wait to steam in yesterday, now demanded an immediate interview with the Governor as he felt he had to resign. By the time Geoff had stuttered out his request the rest of us, Gary included, were all on the floor pissing ourselves. Seeing our response, Geoff ran out of the gym and spent the next half an hour sulking in the toilets.

Obviously bumping into someone you have known on 'the out' can provide you with some problems when carrying out your official duties as a prison officer. The most obvious one, depending on the relationship you had with the prisoner before his incarceration and, of course, the way you choose to carry out your duty towards him and other inmates, is the possibility of blackmail or conditioning. By conditioning I mean that you could allow the inmate to use your old relationship or your good nature to force you into doing things for him. Such requests would usually start off small and apparently insignificant, but once you had committed yourself to carrying out their wishes you were then at risk of the threat to carry out tasks of increasing demand. If you did not draw the line and chose to carry out these tasks you could find yourself on a very slippery slope to the job centre or even a prison sentence of your own.

Because I was raised in the south London area, it was inevitable that I would meet people I knew doing time during my career. It was always something I found difficult to deal with and I will describe one or two such occasions and how I dealt with them later. I will also mention at this point that at least ninety per cent of the inmates I have dealt with over the years made comments to me about how I was 'all right' and they would have no problem buying me a drink if they saw me outside. One or two already have, and one in particular was, and is, a man for whom I have the greatest respect and it was an honour for me to be in a position to have a drink and a chat with him. Again, I will cover that in more detail later.

So, although Geoff's frantic pleas did amuse us greatly at the time, he did the right thing in raising his concerns. Only with experience would we learn to evaluate these sorts of risks ourselves and make the decision as to whether they were high enough to take further.

The gym session was nothing like as bad as we had been told to expect, and Gary turned out to be a great guy. We did a fair amount of work in the gym at Wandsworth in preparation for the C&R (control and restraint) training we would do at the college. This included a couple of very gentle jogs around the common that were about two to three miles long. It was the first of these that convinced an already unsure Alfie that enough was enough and he threw in the towel, much to the disappointment of most of us, who had grown very fond of his humour.

The remainder of our first week was spent observing the routines of the other normal residential wings. Each wing followed pretty much the same routine as the others, and all at that time ran on a twenty-three-hour bang-up. This meant that unless an inmate was employed in one of the prison work details he would only come out of the cell for one hour's exercise a day. There was no such thing as association in those days, and it would still be a few years until the staff would be forced to introduce it to many of the old London prisons.

In our final briefing of the week we were told that we had improved significantly since our arrival, but that there was still great room for improvement and we should continue to maintain the standard we were setting for our second and final week. The second week would involve visiting the more 'specialist' areas such as the segregation unit, the hospital and G-, H-and K-Wings, as well as the nerve centres of the prison, the control room and the 'centre'.

I felt relieved to leave the prison gates knowing that I had two full days before having to return. In a strange way I was beginning to enjoy learning about how the prison worked and observing the strange existence led by those inside. I had also begun to realize that the best way for me to deal with the job I was setting out to do was to be myself and use my own brand of sarcastic humour and experience of people and life. This, I concluded, would involve building up good relationships with the inmates I would be looking after wherever possible. Unfortunately, however effective this method would prove to be, I could already tell by the attitudes of some staff that it would be extremely difficult for me to build relationships with inmates without alienating myself from my colleagues. Even by the end of that first week I had noticed how some of our group had dramatically changed their outlook on the role of a prison officer in an attempt to become more accepted by the staff we were dealing with.

I did not have a lot of time to think about the past week over the weekend break, as most of my time was taken up arranging the forthcoming purchase of my new house. As a result, it seemed as if I had not been away from the place when at seven thirty on Monday morning I found myself sat in front of the cheerful face of Senior Officer Nutt once again to begin our second and final week at Wandsworth.

Although still nervous and apprehensive about what to expect, I felt much more relaxed than I had a week ago. The first area we visited that day, however, would soon herald a return to the tension and boil up a hatred the like of which I had never experienced elsewhere in all my travels. We were due to observe the routines on G-, H-and K-Wings, which housed some of the lowest creatures known to man in my eyes.

As soon as we entered the gate into the building that housed G, H and K, I noticed a very different atmosphere to that found on the normal residential wings. There was nothing like the volume of noise for a start, and the staff and inmates all shuffled about with shifty looks on their faces and the place smelt more like a hospital than a prison wing. There were a large number of hospital officers flying around with trolleys full of strange-looking liquid drugs and pills, and more than half the inmate population seemed to be inching along with the use of crutches or wheelchairs. Most of these had pathetic, sad-looking expressions on their faces as if trying to gain pity or use their disabilities as some sort of sick excuse for the disgusting crimes for which most of them had been convicted.

When we arrived, an officer offered to get us a cup of tea, but when I saw the state of the tea boy that would be making it I declined. To be truthful, I didn't trust the dirty bastard to make tea without spitting in it or worse. I hated the atmosphere that hung over this place and made my decision then that I would go to any lengths to avoid working with these people during my career. Luckily I did manage to avoid it because, for some reason that I could never work out, there were always plenty of staff who volunteered to work in these places. The only explanation I could think of for this was that looking after 'nonces' (prison slang for sex offenders) was generally thought of as easier than looking after normal prisoners. The thought of having to sit in on mandatory 'group therapy sessions' and listen to these creatures describe in great detail their crimes and blame their actions on their parents or upbringing made me feel sick in the pit of my stomach.

Some of you reading this may question my professionalism on making these comments. All I would say to you is try to imagine the worse case you have heard in the news on child pornography or rape. Then imagine having to give that person your undivided attention all day and listen to how much they enjoyed it or thought it normal, and tell me that you wouldn't feel for the victims, especially if you have children, young relatives or wives and girlfriends of your own.