Shiny Toilet Paper

My first cell was on the top floor of the hospital wing, facing across the front lawn towards the Gatehouse. This may have been because of my age, a governor tucking me away out of sight; Or it may have been the operation of the practice of the day, which was to put murder-remands on the hospital wing for some time. A large proportion of suicides are comprised of those charged with murder.

The cell contained what I would learn are the furniture staples - a metal bed, one chair, one locker, one plastic pisspot. A large room, ten feet in length, maybe six wide, and the window was thankfully tall. Barred, made of a metal lattice that contained small squares of glass. The door, like most hospital doors, contained a barred hatch which opened and closed with the temperament of the screw on duty. The cell was one of a row of half a dozen, one being a padded cell. Opposite was the Recess, the communal loo with slop-out sluice and bath.

Without realising it in the moment, each of these steps in the process - from entering the gatehouse to the shutting of the first cell door - shrank my horizons. Emotionally, I was severed from my previous existence by the shock of what I had done. Mentally, nothing outside of the perimeter fence entered my head. Physically, my eyes began to adjust to the reality of focusing only as far as the next locked gate.

Within the hour I had been swept up and dropped in another prison. The woman governor came to my cell and told me that she wasn't prepared to hold me in her prison because of my age and I was moved up the road to a large city centre local nick for adults. Avoiding Reception, I was allocated directly to the hospital and placed in a strip cell. This is an empty concrete box, a canvas blanket on the floor as a bed, a pisspot, and given a tear-proof canvas smock to wear. Within a few hours the hospital cleaner was opening the hatch in my door, trying to persuade me to expose myself for cigarettes.

I was left alone for a few of days, banged up 24 hours a day. Each evening a screw would come to the hatch and offer me a sleeping draught, which I always declined. Did they honestly believe that Largactyl would expunge the turmoil of guilt and confusion?

My age must have caused some minor problems, even if isolating me in a strip cell wasn't one that troubled the bureaucratic mind. They were obliged to ensure I receive a minimum number of hours of education and so for an hour or so each day a table was placed across the doorway of the strip cell, and a teacher sat on the outside. I sat there, dressed in my canvas smock - "monkey suit" - pretending to care. Not a single word or image from those sessions comes to my mind.

If only I had realised at the time, this situation held a profound insight into Prison Service mentality. It was illegal to hold a juvenile in that prison; it was unlawful to throw me in a strip cell. But despite this entire disregard for law, they took the time to ensure they complied with the Education Act. Perhaps all total institutions have this schizophrenia. After all, many of the people murdered at Auschwitz had a properly prepared death certificates, all nice and legal. Perhaps the bureaucratic mentality has a universal character, inevitably stripping away the humanity of the individuals who comprise the cogs in the machine.

After a few days, I was returned to the remand centre and back to the initial cell. At least I had clothing, a bed and a window. The rhythm of the day was simple and repetitive but contained no solace or barrier against its reality. A light was set into the wall next to the bed, and was left burning all night. At 7.30 we were awoken by a screw slamming the bolt on the door. Then slop-out; carrying the pisspot to the recess (communal toilet) opposite my cell to empty. Breakfast of porridge and toast was slid, vertically, through the barred hatch. Then you sit and wait.

For what? An empty room contains few diversions. For the next meal, the next head-count, the next... anything. In our case, it was waiting for the screws to switch on the radio. Being the hospital wing, a concession to infirmity was made by having a radio speaker set in the wall above the door. A single radio station was piped through from the control box in the office downstairs. Depending on age and interest, the day was made lighter or heavier by which station the screws selected - Radio 1 or Radio 2. At the other end of the day, huge anticipation was generated by the opening bars of the introduction to the John Peel programme. The radio was meant to be turned off at 10pm, and so if we heard the complete introduction it meant that the night patrol were doing us a real favour in leaving it on for an extra hour or so.

Such are the tiny events that become significant in the barren wasteland of confinement.