The Great Game

Every block in the system shares fundamental characteristics.  Each prisoner alone in their cell for up to 23 hours a day, isolated and finding ways to fill the time.

Another common thread is the perpetual attempt to pass items between cells, a prohibited practice.  Monthly, these efforts centre around tobacco and cigarette papers.

Even in isolation, cons leave their cells.  There are daily periods in the exercise pen, the shower, food to collect, clothes to change... And all of these provide an opportunity for the quick of hand to secrete an item to be picked up by the next man.

Staff try to disrupt this exchange but the reality is that the never have enough time.  With maybe dozens of men to exercise, feed, shower, then their time to search each location between uses is truncated.

This smuggling has always gone on, and long may it successfully continue.

The Mad Rumour

Prison life seems particularly well suited to the generation and perpetuation of rumours.

After all, we have 2 groups - screws and cons - more than willing to believe the worst about each other, and both share a certain base cynicism of the whole edifice.

As I served lunch today I was reminded of the long-standing rumour that the staff in some notorious block who, having beaten a prisoner to death, tried to muddy the time of death by stuffing the body into the wing server hotplate to keep it warm.

I have to admit, it wouldn't surprise me.

Literacy

While sweeping out the 2 cells used for holding people just before they face disciplinary hearings, I take a brief look at the graffiti on the walls.

The dreary "X was here" litters the paint, a boring testament to a man's existence.  The occasional insult creeps in: "fuckin carrot-munching southerners"!. On this showing, I have to wonder if the government's literacy drive is wasted money.

And yet, in perfect script, stands out the surreal injunction, "Polly put the kettle on".

Abuse

It's not exactly rare for a con to let fly a volley of abuse against a screw, particularly down here in the block.

One such staff victim was loudly pondering the line thrown at him earlier that day, an invitation that he should "go suck your momma".

In attempting to deconstruct the precise meaning of this abuse, he pointed out that he'd have to travel some 200 miles in order to "suck his momma".

I raised an eyebrow. "So the travelling distance is the only problem you see with that idea?!"

The Slightly Less Silent Majority

The Ed has sent me the comments left to my Silent Majority post, and I thank all of you who responded to my largely rhetorical question of who reads the blog.

It is a pleasant surprise to realise that such a broad spectrum of people take the time to pop in and read; there's no pressure at all on me to keep you entertained then...!

While it would be wonderful - if naive -  to think that anything I wrote could prompt people to abandon deeply held views, that I have nudged some of you to think more deeply about the issues I raise on the blog is gratifying.

Thanks, one and all.

Censorship and Stupidity

While the old joke may have it that the most dangerous thing on earth is a gorilla with a machine gun, any prisoner can tell you that is wrong.  The most dangerous thing is a dim-witted screw armed with a prison rule.

In this instance it relates to porn, which we are not allowed.  And on that basis a screw confiscated a DVD of Superbowl Thirty.  Why? Because the title said "Superbowl XXX", and with that many X's on the cover then it must have been porn...

Why Decency Matters

There are those who will attack and denigrate prisoners at all costs and at every opportunity.  Some such people occasionally leave comments on the blog and one theme is the eternal question of why should prisoners be treated decently? After all, given the suffering we have caused, why should we get anything more than cold gruel and a daily kicking? I could dismiss such people as being ill-informed, neanderthal, but that would be facile.  Such people, I assume, may be suffering the effects of crime and their contempt may be genuine.  Their comments may be crude but the emotions behind them may be very real and complicated.  It would be abrogating the purpose of the blog if I were to dismiss such people as they dismiss me.

So why should prisoners be treated decently?  There are two main reasons, one utilitarian and one moral.  I don't expect either to persuade those who stew in a pit of their own hate.

In a utilitarian frame of reference, how society treats prisoners has a strong effect upon the levels of future crime.  If you prescribe punishments that include hatred and despair, if you strip away all social capital and reject the prisoner to the extent of being outcast from society, then there are consequences.  Those consequences include higher rates of future offending. It may be emotionally and politically satisfying to hurt those who have hurt us, but in doing so we create future victims.  In this sense, advocating endless punishment and degradation for prisoners is stupid beyond belief; it is the social equivalent of a toddler's temper tantrum.

Morally, to degrade prisoners is to deny a shared humanity.  To degrade other individuals reflects upon the darkness in our own souls.  It is an impulse to be resisted, not fed.  To expel prisoners from society - emotionally, socially, politically - is to expel them from being considered human. And this carries unspeakable changes to all of us.

Treating prisoners decently is often posed as being anti-punishment; it need not be.  But there must surely be limits to punishment, a defined purpose and a rational outcome.  To reduce ourselves to acting out of emotional spasms degrades all involved.

There are debates that could, should, be engaged with.  What should be the aims of punishment?  What should be the limits?  What should the daily regime of prisoners be like, what facilities should be afforded? At present these are not issues for debate but rather act as lightening rods for our basest personal emotions and political urges.  And as long as this remains the case, then society loses as much as prisoners do.

The Charge of the Bright Brigade

It is a pleasure to see that (General) Lord Ramsbotham continues to grace our legislature and pepper Ministers with perceptive prison-related questions.

A man with a keen eye for the inept or unjust, Rambo is of late inquiring about the number of counsellors and therapists available to deal with prisoner's mental health.

Ha!  For an institution which is so keenly equipped to disassemble, dissect and judge us using the tools in the modern psychological armoury, the prison service has systematically neglected our mental health.  Whilst claiming that fully 3/4 of us suffer from a mental disease, the system cheerfully avoids dealing with those problems.

Of course, mental health provision in the wider community is notoriously variable and drug-centred and the expect better in prisons is but a crazy dream.

And yet, I am grateful that there are those such as Rambo who give a voice to such important concerns.  Only persistence in the face of indifference has any hope for change.

Call me Ishmael

Or Sir, Boss, Guv, Officer... Just how do you hail a screw? Not by shouting "Oi, Screw!" And no-one calls staff Sir either, which is a level of obsequiousness that prisoner culture finds nauseating.

Lately I've been hearing a lot of cons calling staff "Boss".  It grates on me, carrying with it shades of the plantation, and "Massa". And like slavery, "Boss" should be buried in history.

For me, a straightforward "Guv" (as in Guv'nor) has always served in any situation, being neither disrespectful nor obsequious.

Strangely, there is no generic equivalent for staff to call prisoners.  As a group we may be "cons", but if a screw wants to get attention of a con, he never calls "Oi, con!". Ever.

The Stupid Leading the Blind

Long gone are the days when a prisoner could pass through these stygian halls to be disgorged into the daylight of freedom with little effort.  This particularly applies to Lifers.

Gaining release, and finding a bearable way of life along the way, requires deliberate effort by the prisoner.  It is required that we engage with many processes, all of them quite bureaucratic.  The most prominent of these are the Offending Behaviour Programmes, the psychology courses intended to cure us of our wicked ways.

These courses are heavily reliant on written materials and demand copious amounts of "homework".  And there lies the trap - for those with sensory impairments, low IQ's, or the plain illiterate then progress towards release is blocked.

For the illiterate, a couple of extra years may be served as the prisoner is forced through an educational programme, before starting the OBP courses. For those with impaired senses or learning difficulties there is no such obvious solution. I've met deaf prisoners who have had to fight for years just to have an induction-loop installed so that they could engage with group work.  And I've met men with learning difficulties who have wasted the best part of a decade just waiting for psychological assessments.

Such people are royally stuffed.  Unable to undertake the psychological courses that earn release they find themselves being bounced from prison to prison as each Governor finds it easier to transfer "the problem" rather than allocate any resources or brain-power to deal with it.

In this convoluted way, and through no fault of their own, prisoners with disabilities often serve many more years than their crime deserves.  They are punished for their deficiencies.

A Long Road

Having been cleared to move to open prison a full year ago, I'm now told that it may take several more months before a space can be found for me.

The problem? An increase in the Lifer population from 3,500 to over 10,000 without anyone thinking to increase the number of places in open prisons through which we must be released.

This is how our lives - and your taxes - are slowly but surely leeched away.

Proctology Calling

So a guy his his mobile phone in the usual place - his ass.

Having set off the metal detector he must now produce the goods in order to leave the Block. Which is the problem.

The phone has decided to migrate and explore the wilder parts of the guy's colon, and refuses to be expelled.

Is there an "app" for that?!?

School's Out

As I watched a group of psychology undergraduates being given a tour of the block I was struck by two thoughts.  Firstly, they made me feel so old; they represented the life I never had.

More importantly, I wondered just how prison staff can ever explain the "prison experience" to such visitors? They can explain the brutalist architecture, they can briefly explain the bureaucratic processes, true enough.  But those things are not the essence of imprisonment; they are merely the external form that conceals the powerlessness and mortification that is the reality of the prisoner's life. Keeping prisoners out of this process of guided tours is to lose a valuable opportunity to educate.

That said, I did take the opportunity to plug the blog.  So, hi students everywhere!

Discrete Comments

The editor tells me that she has had to delete a comment or two posted by prisoners from their mobile phones.

Not for their origin or content, but because they contained identifying characteristics.

Doh!  Come on guys, play smart!