Hip Hip for the Doc!

After a full hour of mind-bending tedium in the woodwork shop, the GP has rescued me from the perils of sandpapering.

It seems that I'm such a physical wreck that manual labour and I should part company for the time being. Damn...

Note to future employers: Just don't expect me to lug stuff about or dig ditches. Apart from that, I'm your man. And reasonably priced as well!

Punitive Health Care

Outside of bad porn or dim basements in Essex, being punished by a nurse is an uncommon occurrence. Except in prison.

What penalties do you suffer if you fail to attend an appointment with your GP? If you really take the Mickey, being struck off his list; but for missing the odd surgery? Perhaps some verbals from the practice manager, a sternly worded letter or two?

The NHS - repeat, NHS - staff who work in prisons have a more potent arsenal to draw upon, the privilege system. For failing to attend an appointment they can issue a formal warning under the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme (IEPS).

These warnings affect our level of privileges. How much money we can spend to phone our families. How often we can receive a visit. And, at open prison, when or whether we can work in the community or have home leaves.

Even if we put aside the legality of NHS staff using the prison's mechanisms of control, the question of its ethics is something I'd really like to see justified.

How Your Value is Judged

In your world the question, "What do you do?" is heavily loaded with socioeconomic meaning. You know that the way you earn a living can be used to judge everything from your intellect to your ethics.

This isn't the case in prison. Our employment is not viewed as a central part of our identity. We may ask each other "Where do you work?", but the response is only a small part in the jigsaw that comprises who we are and far less important in the judgement of identity than sentence or time served.

This may be a function of how prison work is allocated. The blind hand of the market plays no part - the needs of the institution and management imperatives are all important. The needs of prisoners are largely irrelevant, even though this failure to train useful skills may have very real consequences in terms of reoffending.

On a very personal level I can't help wondering about the bureaucratic mind which saw fit to allocate me to a workshop in order to sandpaper prison furniture. Having already spent several months scrubbing floors I wondered if there would ever be a point at which my keepers would consider that I may just may have abilities which could be used to make a more positive and significant contribution to prison life?

Or is this situation a reflection of management attitudes - prisoners are stupid and useless? Perhaps it is over optimistic of me to think that, in the last few months of my sentence, staff may think, "hey, he's on his way out, lets see just what he is capable of?"

Improbable Correlations

As the height of the prison perimeter fence decreases, the height of the toilet doors increase. True.

Both reflect the malign imaginations of our keepers. And so, at Open, there is no security fence, it is a redundant feature. Similarly, in Closed prisons the toilet doors are half-height, leaving you staring passers by in the eye as you sit about your business. Obviously, Devious Things would occur behind full sized doors. Obviously...

In Open, though, we are trusted to go about our toilet behind the privacy of a full sized door. 

Live and learn!

Why?

Why oh why does every other notice from management have to end with blood curdling threats of sanctions?

We get it.  Bad boys are slung out, OK?!

Cast Adrift

One of the pains of imprisonment is the dependancy that the prison service insists upon. We have to rely upon staff for everything from supplying toilet paper to organising release. The full range of human activity is constrained, denied to the prisoner except through the agency of staff.

Until you reach open prison.  Sudbury has a 'do it yourself" attitude, leaving us to fend for ourselves.  This is a shock to some, an irritant for others and liberation for many.

It has its drawbacks.  Prison is prison, open or not, and there are crucial moments when we must engage with the "Administration".  This is not easy when they are nowhere to be found!

Autonomy is also at it best when it rests on sound and plentiful information. The basics, such as where to find our food through to the momentous such as when do I begin my home leaves. This places a burden on staff which is inimical to the attitude of benign neglect that of necessity shakes us out of our previous state of dependancy.

Whether the precise balance has been found here is something I'm yet as unsure of, but as I bomb about the place trying to get my life organised feel sure I'll soon find out.

Merry Christmas

In a segregation unit far away in time and distance, the night patrol was stomping up and down the corridor in his boots, keeping the prisoners awake. This was rude in the extreme; night staff usually wear appropriately silent footwear lest they disturb their charges.

This particular fellow was being ignorant in the extreme, and was subjected to volleys of abuse, all of it unrepeatable for the civilised eye that graces this page.

Until, deep into yet another night disturbed by his footfalls, a prisoner's voice sang out from behind his door.

"Guv", he shouted, "when's Christmas?"

The screw, quick as a flash, replied "the 25th".

The impatient convict replied "No, I mean, what day does it fall on?"

The screw reached for one of the three items of equipment no screw is ever without, his diary, and began leafing through.  Much ruffling of pages later, he shouted back to the con "on a Saturday".

"Thanks, said the con. We'll make sure we buy you a present then - some FUCKING SLIPPERS"!

The Plan

Oh yes, there is A Plan! This comes in the form of a timetable of activities which must take place for the Parole Board

to release me in May next year.

It used to be that Open prisons worked to their own internal rhythm, parole board be damned, and so I expected to be stuck here for a year before release. Sudbury, bless it, has grasped the reality of releasing Lifers and offers four timetables each determined by the timing of the Lifers next parole hearing. As mine is May, 6 short months away, then my countdown to release is as follows:

In the first 2 weeks I should have an escorted town visit. A month after arrival,  I have 2 unescorted town visits and begin unpaid, unsupervised work in the community. This is the real Beginning Of The End, my first forays into the world sans handcuffs in 31 years. Am I ready? Yep. Are you..???

At 3 months in,  3 town visits, work and... home leaves!

And at 4 months after arrival, I can begin paid work.

By May next year I should be able to approach the Parole Board with a record of activity that demonstrates that I'm not a basket-case. They should then order my release.

This is all happening very, very fast.

Week 1 Part 4

My ambitions for the magazine seemed to chime with the Education Depts and I believe that they could appreciate how I saw developing the mag into a positive force and a small nexus of creativity within the prison - and as a channel with which to engage the outside community.

The words, "You're hired!" had only mjust faded when the phrase, "ah, but, ummm..." raised its all too familiar head. The job of editing the magazine is an "orderlies" position, and such jobs cannot be taken by men who have been in this prison for less than two weeks. Ability, necessity, enthusiasm, experience...all count for nothing in the face of "local policy". Neither does plain common sense.

And so at the end of my week of job hunting I fell into the clutches of the Labour Board. And they have ordained that the sum of talents and aspirations are best met by standing in the rear of the carpentry workshop, sandpapering bits of prison furniture.

I'm really, really, trying to stay positive...


Ed's Footnote: since writing this post Ben has actually started working on the prison magazine.

Week 1, Part 3

Open prisons have a fondness for work that borders on fetishism. With this in mind the wise use all their spare time during the induction week scuttling around the nick trying to find a job. If this fails then the dreaded Labour Board makes the decision.

Given my various ailments, coupled with the failure to shove me in front of the GP within 2 weeks, I was handicapped in this unseemly scrabble for employment. Provisionally graded "Labour 2" (lightish duties) I found my options seriously limited. Obviously all the better jobs were filled long ago.

Relying on my more natural abilities, I began applying for jobs more likely to use my potential. The Library, the advice centre, induction, and - thanks to a quiet tipoff - the Editorship of the prison magazine.

The only door that was graced with a welcome mat was that of the Education Department; a nice change from how Education has treated me in recent years. Keen to replace the Editor who was soon to leave, and being longtime readers of my output, they were very enthusiastic at my appearance...

Week 1, Part 2

There are a range of ways in which to enter a prison, styles of adaptation, states of mind, which can profoundly effect

the way that time flows in that prison.

Although I was rather highjacked and dumped 3 hours away from my home area, given that my next Parole Board sits in a mere 5 months, I squashed every negative or arsey thought and determined to enter Sudbury with a positive outlook.

Through benign Fate, I've fallen in with a helpful and thoroughly decent bunch of people. They are full of advice, questions and - in one case - an endless supply of mischievous lies. In this respect, I've landed on my feet.

I also rolled into a double cell... The torments of this situation are vastly unappreciated by the uninitiated and it serves to ratchet up my baseline stress hugely. I am trying to write this to the accompanyment of Coronation Street and Emmerdale. Oh, the horrors! My cellmate wasn't even born when I came to prison.

Being ninth on the list for a single cell, this stress could gnaw away at me for some time.

Open Prison - The First Week Part 1

The uninitiated often assume, if unthinkingly, that a move to Open prison would include something of a culture shock.

After all, there are few locked doors, no barred windows, no security fence...oh, the freedom!

I must disappoint you. Liberty is the natural, default, state and it is confinement which provides the culture shock. And never forget that Open prison remains prison. The lack of bars and fences only serves to highlight the essence of modern incarceration - it is based upon bureaucracy and managerialism. These things remain, perhaps exist in an even stronger form, in Open prison.

Open prison is also mindbendingly bloody boring. Being unlocked all of the time forces us to live an extremely long day, far removed from the fragmented days in Closed prison where we psychologically adpat to bang-up via the medium of sleep or bad TV. With seemingly little to do in these long days, boredom quickly sets in.

As culture shock goes, the psychological effects of moving to Open are no greater than being moved between two Closed prisons. Each has differences and nuances, but the dimension of physical liberty is not hugely significant.

Lifer should mean Life.. .again

It never ceases to astound me just how many prisoners contain fascist urges, advocating law and order policies which might make Himmler wince.

Cornered by two such proto-fascists, I was berated ("nothing personal...") with the concept that "life should mean life" for murderers. Haven't I heard that dim-witted slogan a thousand times before? And addressed it in previous posts!

The problem with that idea is that the definition of murder is far, far broader than the common mind appreciates. No intent to kill is necessary. All that is required is an intent to cause serious harm, and death resulting. That intent can be inferred from the circumstances.

The legal conception of murder, then, encompasses old ladies who administer a lethal drug at their dying husbands request; through to the craziest of serial killers. And this is where the "life should mean life" chant begins to waver.

It turns out that, faced with these facts, what people actually mean is that Life should mean Life only for the murders that they themselves find particularly awful. And grannies bitten by the euthanasia bug are not included. Odd, that.

These glitches in the argument aside, I argue from a more heartfelt position. That no person is irredeemable. And that no amount of suffering inflicted on a murderer alters the endless fact that a person is dead.

Quote of the Day

Just to give you a sample of the wit that passes for conversation in prison, when we are sitting

around bored out of our skulls...

".. .I'm not gay. I'd never give a blowjob without wearing a condom..."