The Loose Screw (32 page)

When I arrived, I discovered that the nurse had not even been notified, so I left him in her hands and went in search of 'Niff Naff', the name given to the house block governor, to get some answers. My first point was that the inmate had been placed in a single cell, which is strictly against the rules of suicide watch, and also the razor he had been issued with should have been taken off him. I then tackled the issue of the lack of assistance and staff attitude towards suicide attempts in general. He offered no answers to my questions and neither did he at any time ask whether I had been affected by what I had just witnessed or whether I wanted to see a post-incident counsellor, which should be normal practice. Instead, he said that the inmate was just seeking attention, as, if he had really wanted to kill himself, he would have done so. Of course this was possibly true, but it was not the sort of comment you would expect from a trained prison governor.

The inmate did eventually receive treatment and subsequently made a full recovery. I, on the other hand, now had to endure the typical backstabbing behaviour from certain members of staff. Because I had effectively saved a prisoner's life, I was considered a soft touch -apparently I should have left him to carry out his wish. The stress of dealing with such attitudes was beginning to take its toll on me, coupled with the fact that Natasha was coming to the end of her pregnancy.

No more than two weeks later I fell foul of the bad element of staff once again. I came on duty at one o'clock for a late shift and began unlocking the landing for association as normal. However, when I opened cell 28, which housed three inmates with whom I usually got on well, one of the inmates came flying out of the door at me, brandishing a table leg. Luckily I managed to dodge the piece of wood as he tried to hit me with it and I instinctively grabbed the inmate and wrestled him to the floor. He was not a small man, but when the others in the cell realised it was me they helped calm the situation down. This was one of the advantages of building a good working relationship with the inmates and treating them fairly, whereas another lone officer faced with the same situation would almost certainly have been seriously injured. The inmate was, of course, escorted to the segregation unit and charged with assault on an officer.

It turned out that a certain officer called Geoff had taken a dislike to this inmate and had spent the whole morning and lunchtime winding him up.

Obviously he had been 'stewing' behind his door for an hour and a half and just flew at the first uniform he saw, which unfortunately happened to me. I had seen this happen before when an innocent member of staff had been hurt due to another's unprofessional bully-boy tactics. The incident left me shook up and annoyed. I carried out the rest of my shift, but in my mind I had finally reached the decision that I could no longer work in such an environment.

When I returned home that night I was still shaking with anger and Natasha noticed and asked what was up. I told her what had happened and that I felt that if I returned to work I would end up assaulting another member of staff before being put in the same situation again. She was fully supportive and told me that if I felt so strongly I shouldn't go back. The next morning she rang 'Niff Naff' and explained that I was stressed out and wouldn't be going back for some time.

In fact I spent nearly the whole of the following year on sick leave due to stress and received no visits or help from the Service at all. The only correspondence I got was when I had to go to see a Home Office approved doctor after six months, who signed me off for a further six months. I was, of course, still being paid: full pay for six months and half pay thereafter. This gave me a chance to think about what I was going to do with my life. The truth was, I didn't no; all I knew was that I couldn't return to the Prison Service.

It was nice to spend time at home with Natasha during the latter days of her pregnancy. She took paid maternity leave, which meant we were not losing any money. This would not last, however, as the Prison Service would soon stop paying me and I would then go onto statutory sick pay. I had to decide to resign officially from the Prison Service and seek other employment.

Altogether I had spent almost seven years as a prison officer. However, had it not been for certain financial commitments and my need for job security at that time in my life, my service would have been considerably shorter. I had enjoyed some good times, such as my work with Charlie, and I had met some interesting people, but the ignorant, violent, cowardly, bully-type people I came across far outnumbered the good. These people really are a cancer that is eating away at the Service from the inside out and destroying what should or could be a highly respectable and rewarding career. Unfortunately it is, as many of you will no doubt agree or have experienced for yourselves, much easier sometimes just to go with the flow rather than constantly attempt to battle against it. Many like me have no doubt tried, but inevitably we all find the constant struggle far too stressful and eventually have no more fight to give, so we end up either being swept away with the majority or simply resigning to try to forget the whole experience. Some simply get caught up in the web of lies, deceit and bullying tactics just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and like me find themselves hitting a brick wall of ignorance and mistrust when they try to report any unprofessional conduct by fellow officers. Alternatively, they just feel too intimidated by senior staff and management to pursue the matter further.

Trying to avoid being sucked into this conspiracy of false accusations and victimization took its toll on my mental state of mind after a while so much so that I would go home on occasions with so much anger and frustration bottled up inside, usually as a result of unnecessary confrontations caused by unprofessional members of staff, that I would often feel as if I could totally lose control and have an overwhelming urge to smash up the house. I felt many times that my personal safety and indeed my own liberty were constantly being put at risk due to the uncontrollable antics of many of my colleagues. To put it bluntly, in 'Jim speak' their behaviour boiled down to nothing less than ignorant arseholes with piss-poor training and management by men who themselves had cut their teeth in the violent, bullying world of a penal or borstal system, which involved the 'short sharp shock' treatment that has long since been proved to be ineffective.

The problem as I see it is that it is quite the opposite to short and sharp these days, and the shock is in fact meted out as a constant battering of an individual's emotions over many months. In my old mate Charlie's case, he has endured non-stop sensory deprivation and both mental and physical pain for over thirty years. I finally cracked under the pressure after just seven years, and I was supposed to be on the side of the instigators. I had the benefit of being able to walk out of the gates at the end of my shift and go for a walk or a drive, have a few beers, or confide in a loving family to help me unwind when I got home. Charlie and countless others like him don't have this luxury and so just get buried deeper and deeper into the belly of the system. They get no relief from the pressure, or the chance to talk to a loved one or anyone who cares about their position. In the dead of night they are left feeling totally alone, having had all traces of human emotion knocked out of them through either physical or mental aggression.

In the end, for the sake of my sanity and the well-being of my family, I had to admit that I could no longer subject myself to working in that type of hostile environment. I felt powerless to change the way the Prison Service had been conducting its clandestine methods of running its business for so many years, and felt I had no choice but to get out of there.

Since leaving, I have felt it necessary to write to the Home Office on a couple of occasions in search of answers to points I felt needed explaining -the first being the reasons behind the decision to twice refuse me clearance to visit Charlie. I expressed how I could not understand how I was able to work in three high-security prisons but was not able to visit a prisoner as a civilian and I was intrigued as to how this decision had been reached. I was in contact with Charlie via letters, I had a permanent residency in the UK, and I did not have a criminal record -all these I knew were key factors if you wanted to be passed to visit a Category A prisoner. As you might expect, the reply from the Home Office was a typically vague excuse to the effect that it was not common practice to divulge the reasons for refusing someone's visiting status, and as an ex-employee I should know the process involved in vetting all potential visitors. Well, yes I do know, and I feel that I fit their criteria perfectly. I can only assume that someone in their ivory tower could possibly harvest a grudge against me, feeling embarrassed by the fact that I have broken ranks and spoken out against staff misconduct, and they are scared of what my honesty might uncover. In true Home Office style, they have chosen just to ignore me and hope I will eventually grow tired and go away in much the same way that they bury Charlie and others like him deeper and deeper inside the system in the hope that their failings in the treatment of these prisoners in their care will be buried with them: the classic 'out of sight out of mind' tactics.

On another occasion I wrote to my old boss in the Green Jackets, Sir David Ramsbotham, a man for whom I have the greatest respect and who was at the time employed as the Chief Inspector of Prisons, to voice my opinion and concern about Charlie's treatment and the behaviour of some prison officers I had encountered. He wrote a very good letter back to me, dated 7 April 2000, saying he would pass my comments and concerns on to the Director General of the Prison Service and ask him to respond. To this date I have never received a reply from the Director or his staff, other than to acknowledge receipt of the letter I sent to Ramsbotham. In his reply to me, Sir David Ramsbotham did comment, and I quote: "The behaviour of staff in some of the prisons beggars belief and the verbal evidence I hear from other places confirms it is not confined to those prisons on which we have been reporting most recently. This is a sad state of affairs and one of which the Service should be ASHAMED."

Strangely enough, Sir David resigned from the post after a relatively short term in office, Perhaps, like me, he too realized he would get no support in implementing any procedures to stamp out this unacceptable behaviour, or maybe he was pushed out because he came too close to exposing the truth about the corrupt and violent staff in the employ of the Prison Service, not to mention the inadequate conditions of many of our prisons.

All I can say about my resignation is that it felt as if a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. It has taken a long time to readjust and I hope that by sharing my knowledge with you it will lighten the burden of shame I carry from what I have witnessed or been involved in whilst working for the Prison Service. At the time, I was fortunate to have something wonderful to look forward to and to help me forget the Prison Service, for a short while anyway -the impending birth of Natasha's and my baby.

Morgan Jennifer Dawkins was born on 19 February 1999 at Chatham's All Saints Hospital. This was a great day for me and Natasha as well as for her older sister, Lauren, who thought that her arrival had been specially arranged for her own birthday the following day. It had not been an easy pregnancy, but thankfully Morgan was born a bouncy, healthy baby. Her arrival meant that I now had to motivate myself to find work. The truth is, however, I had no idea what I wanted to do, except something that I would enjoy and would support the family at the same time.

I got a sales job selling CCTV and security systems, which I gave my best shot but at the same time discovered I am not a salesman. So I moved to the printing firm where Natasha worked and became their warehouse manager. This suited our situation, as we could travel to work together and drop Morgan off with Natasha's friend Donna or her sister Sam, who had agreed to look after her. Initially I was happy at the printers, but after a few months I had not been offered the opportunities I had been promised and, when my current position looked threatened due to the loss of a large contract, Natasha and I decided I should leave.

Natasha was earning a fairly good wage, so we thought it would be a good idea for me to sign on and stay at home to look after Morgan. In reality this seemingly sensible move was to destroy our relationship due to my feeling depressed the longer I was out of work. At this time I also made contact with Charlie, who had just published his own book Silent Scream, and I became involved with many of his friends and supporters. Suffice to say for the present, the details of my life since leaving the Service have been eventful and emotional and would be best told as a separate story.

I reached an all-time low in my life for a period, as I didn't even no where I was going to live let alone get a secure job to build a new life for me and my girls. I worked for a time as a labourer with my old mate Simon and then, when made redundant, I took another printing job that Natasha helped me find. Nothing I did, however, really appealed to me or struck me as something on which I could build a career.

However, just when I was beginning to wonder if I would ever get my life back on track, a friend I had made, who was a director in his own family's tanker business, came to my rescue and offered me a job in his firm. I have worked for them for the past year and really enjoy it. They also put me through my heavy goods licence training, which is something I had wanted to do but could not afford to pay for myself. Once again, the full details of my new job are best kept for another day, just like my involvement with Charlie since leaving the Prison Service.

My life is not fully back on track, but for the first time in almost two years the future looks brighter than ever. Who knows what it will hold, but I just hope that I am able to continue to enjoy life and provide for my family as best I can. I am sure I will continue to help Charlie in any way possible and will let you know how I get on, but for now I have said all I can. I will leave you with the favourite phrase of my old pal, which everyone should remember throughout their lives: