For lots of officers that sense of organization was important. Not everybody was hoping for drama and excitement. Take my mate Lennie, who’d come in from the ranks of the OSG, control room, ages back. He looked ten years older than me, when he was actually ten years younger. He was one of the chameleon types I referred to at Forest Bank, taking on the work ethic of whoever he worked with. Next to a twat, he’d be a twat. Somebody good, he’d rise to that level. But he did have a big heart. If a prisoner was aggressive he wasn’t the type to dish out orders: what he would do is stand behind anyone taking charge, not cowering but in support. He’d follow you into battle. With staff like that, confrontations either fizzled out or the prisoner got away with it, unless someone was there to provide leadership.
The visits hall in prison is heavily controlled. Lots of fixed tables in rows with a six-inch ‘divider’ in between – the Berlin Wall, as one wag christened it. At Strangeways the place held 200 visitors and prisoners all told. Visitors – they might be family, friends or a solicitor if the guy is on remand awaiting trial – pass through security, and then wait in the hall for the prisoner they’ve come to see, to be fetched in by officers. If they’re partners or children they can hug at the start of the visit, quick kiss or cuddle, and again when the hour is up. Drinks are sold in lidded cups so nothing is passed by mouth; you can’t pop a wrap in a coffee that he’ll swallow and get back later. It’s all on camera. Officers walk up and down monitoring activity. Security is tight.
Lennie was on duty one time when I brought a prisoner over. In the hall I noticed another lad being visited who I knew well. This lad had been a young offender at Forest Bank: big kid, six foot four, plenty of gym, massive arms on him.
‘Samworth, what you doing here? Better go away or I’ll do you in.’ It was meant as banter, but he looked shifty.
‘Don’t be bigging yourself up in front of your family,’ I said, ‘or I’ll sort you out after.’ Yeah, yeah . . .
Lennie broke away from his colleagues. He looked nervous. ‘Laughing boy there is plugged,’ he said. In other words, he’d stuck some sort of package up his jacksie.
Now what should have happened – and would have happened with enough staff on – is that while someone pressed the alarm, the others ought to have approached this kid, told him his visit was over and, if he’d kicked up a fuss, restrained the fucker. So I asked, ‘Why has nobody pressed the bell, Lennie?’
‘We didn’t want to cause a problem.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘Fifteen minutes.’
By then, whatever he’d received – drugs, phone, money – would have been lodged right up his arse. I could have rung the bell myself then and taken him away, but there was nothing to be gained. These officers were embarrassed and asked me if I’d do the strip search when his visit was over. If he’d struggled, he would have been dragged off to the seg’.
As it was, he agreed to go downstairs and squat while I looked up his backside. There’s a lot of controversy around that, human rights and what have you, but how else are you going to do it? Again, rather than escort him to the little room we used for strip searching, they let him come down on his own. He actually knocked on the fucking door. Normally, being on your own with a prisoner in a situation like that would be a no-no. If the lad was a dickhead he might allege I’d felt his cock or grabbed his arse or something, and then I’d be in bother because it’s my word against his. But I guessed the young female officer already down there would prefer not to see this, so asked whether she’d rather wait outside and she did. Again, that didn’t say a lot for those middle-aged men upstairs who were supposed to be prison officers, did it?
This con knew I wouldn’t find anything, though – it would have been so far up by then as to be tickling his tonsils. So he just lifted up his bollocks, bent over, and proffered his ricker.
‘Is that all right, Mr S.?’
Normally when a con received a package and you couldn’t get it back, you’d put him in a dry cell where the toilet isn’t plumbed, it has a tank. Whatever they flush, staff will find. Problem was the dry cell was in use, so he went back to his wing job done. Or not done, if you know what I mean. Got clean away with it. Not only him, his visitors too. The message it sent is that anyone could get away with passing stuff to this kid. The message ought to have been two years on his sentence and his visitors arrested, charged with trafficking. Prison officers without the courage of their convictions are a problem.
Same area of the prison, a couple of months later: Lennie nodded his head in the direction of another lad. I went over and this brick shithouse got to his feet.
‘He’s received,’ Lennie said – perhaps he’d learned his lesson.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘You’re off the visit.’
The guy’s fist clenched. ‘Fuck off, I’m not going.’
‘What’ve you got in your hand, lad?’
‘Nothing.’
Bam! I went for his hand and there we were, fighting. He was a big lad, and it took us a good thirty seconds to grapple him to the floor, while somebody hit the alarm. He’d a parcel all right – a double whammy, phone and drugs – and hadn’t had time to plug it. If we got hold of the thing, the likelihood was he’d be busted, in for extra time. His visitor would cop it too. So he fought like fuck, trying to get his hand in his trousers and push it up inside. This time, because I’d initiated, Lennie was straight in, no messing about, although in the end it took eight of us to restrain the bastard.
That’s prison officers, you see. Not necessarily gym-heads or Rambos or physically fit, just average Joes doing a job that sometimes suits them and quite often does not.
As it happened, the police later found insufficient evidence on camera to prove anything had been passed over, so not only did the visitor escape prosecution, the prisoner also couldn’t be charged by the police for receiving. We had to make do with putting him on report internally. No pun intended.
6. Once Around the Block
In prison noise is constant. There’s a non-stop background hum. You can talk above it, but there’s this low-level drone of chat and music from the cells. If it got too loud you’d warn them. From six o’clock in the evening that volume would lift and during association time, after tea, the vibe could be electric. On K Wing, 200 prisoners would be out, locked on their landings. The place buzzed like a giant beehive, and could sting like one too if you weren’t careful, which is where dynamic security came in. Those two little words cover a lot of ground, but basically it’s about developing staff–prisoner relationships that are built on respect, routine and common sense.
Dynamic security, in my view, is one of the most important aspects of prison life that in recent years has become devalued with disastrous consequences.
Security – physical, procedural and dynamic – was dealt with in training, although none of it means anything until you experience it first-hand. The last category is probably the most instinctive and some people bring little to the buffet. Me, I tried to build good relationships from the start and they stood me in good stead. One of my ex-customers lives less than 100 metres from me now, as the crow flies. Manny, they call him. He was a bad lad, he knows where I live and is no mither. I was known as someone who was firm but fair. I got on with people, treated them with respect.
One lad was an absolute monster; a cage fighter who came into Manchester prison after winning some belts. He was a European champion at some form of mixed martial arts – I don’t know what. He’d got a pedigree and weren’t happy at being in jail. He came on our wing and there was somebody there who knew him, a Scouse lad from the same sort of arena. He says to me, ‘Mr S., he’s a bit of a handful. If you want to put him in with me . . .’
Couple of days later we got in a row with him, me and my mate Nobby Nobbler, who you’ll meet properly in a bit. We were toe to toe; it began to look dodgy. Reception had taken some rings off him, which he hadn’t taken kindly to. Nobby lifted his eyebrows at me, as if to say,
Fuck me, I’m not after fighting this. He’s a brute. Fortunately this Scouse lad then wandered down the landing and took our cage fighter by the arm, leading him away. After a few minutes the new kid came back.
‘Sorry, boss,’ he said, shaking Nobby and me by the hand. ‘I must apologize for my behaviour. I’m out of order,’ and off he went with his mate.
Dynamic security infiltrated everything as far as I was concerned. If you worked a lot of overtime, like I did, you might find yourself on reception doing strip searches. I always tried to do that in a proper, appropriate and sympathetic manner, others just used to bark orders. To me, that’s counterproductive long term. Without looking soft, you need to respect their dignity a bit and they’ll remember that, meaning they might well be less hassle in future. They’ll go to G Wing and then maybe move to K Wing where they’ll remember you. It’s about building a rapport.
Nobby, although he liked to make out he was a badass, he’d do his bit, Trailer Pete the same, one or two others . . . chat to the prisoners, tell them how it is, sort things out. Fantastic. Always remember, as a con, if your money’s run out, your mam’s ill in hospital, whatever, you have to ask a screw. You can’t phone finance yourself – ‘Where’s my brass?’ – they rely on you. And don’t forget that prisoners move around, not only on the wings but through prisons too – many of those lads I knew at Forest Bank I bumped into again at Strangeways.
Familiarity, decency, respect . . . all these things come into it.
In a lot of ways, being in prison is like being in a soap opera. Prisoners interact with each other, friendships build, people fall out, all the things you’d expect. I’ve seen prisoners come in homeless, not a penny to scratch their arse with. You put them in a cell with a lad you know and they’ll take them on board, help them get on with it. If someone’s been on a wing a long time and been all right, you might put them in with a mate as a favour. There’s not a lot of surface bullying, believe it or not, and in fact some lads inside wouldn’t allow it of anybody.
Friendships can be formed on the bus, coming away from court. If you’ve shared a holding cell, there’s a face you know to latch on to and it builds from there. Some are quite unlikely. Once, we had the son of one notorious gang leader in the city palling up in a cell with a lad whose dad was very high up in the ranks of their deadly rivals. They got on well. Some time later, on the out, one actually tried to kill the other, who ended up losing his eye.
In every prison on every landing there was a Mr Big, a mover and shaker. Some of the best-behaved lads, who were trusted with jobs like prison cleaners or whatever, were very often candidates for that. They might be running drugs or tobacco, having people beaten up if they stepped out of line, that sort of carry on. They’d take people under their wing too. There was always a hierarchy, sometimes two or three lads living in uneasy alliance, turning a cheek to what the other group was doing. The channels can be quite complex, but someone is always pulling the strings. We officers didn’t give anyone special treatment, but we knew the Mr Bigs were there and that underworld could be very scary.
Their reputations can be an extension of what goes on outside, mutual enemies and mutual friends. Even then, though, you could use dynamic security to get what you wanted. You might have a word, ‘Look, can you sort this kid of yours out who’s kicking off or else he’s going on basic,’ and they’d nip it in the bud because they wouldn’t want to lose a ‘soldier’. The haves and have-nots are another hierarchy, as is toughness, though not as much as you’d think. There are plenty of hard bastards, street fighters, inside with fearsome reputations, so it’s not as if that’s a unique talent. I remember one con, a real hard case, who could beat anyone senseless. He couldn’t hold out against four nineteen-year-old kids who battered him and then covered him in sugar and boiling water.
During my early years on K Wing we had this dynamic security aspect down to a fine art. If trouble was brewing, staff–prisoner relationships were key in shutting it down. You could tell instantly. Lads would start looking at each other, look at you; you’d go to a cell and, sure enough, there’d be scrapping. One minute the atmosphere was lively, then there’d be this slight lull – you knew something was up.
Prisoners are not grasses but, when it’s in their interest, they’ll let you know. ‘Mr S., you might want to look in cell seventeen.’ He might do that because he likes or gets on with me, but also he won’t want banging up. When the alarm rings, the first thing staff coming on to the wing do is stick the prisoners behind their doors. Ideally, as soon as the problem is dealt with, everybody comes back out. More often these days, lack of staff means they are banged up for the night. No time to phone the missus, have a shower or get burn.
In the mornings, your average wing was very subdued. Weekends verged on peaceful given that no one went to work and often stayed in bed all day. No one was in a rush to do anything; it mimicked what happens on the out. With enough staff around they were dull, quite honestly. Standing on a landing from eight until half four . . . you don’t want a riot, but fuck me, there are only so many brews you can drink. Then, suddenly, you’d be dashing to the yard as someone had lobbed a bag of drugs over. So yes, shifts might be boring, but they were also unpredictable at any time of day or night. Which is what made the job of a prison officer so unnerving and, now and then at least, exciting.
In my first couple of years on K Wing, when leaders weren’t in short supply, we worked a buddy-buddy system, looked out for each other. Often I’d pair with Trailer Pete and other times Nobby Nobbler, who was quite definitely the joker in the pack.
Nobby was a big lad then – around eighteen stone and forty-two years old – though he lost a lot of weight later through illness. Again, he wasn’t the hardest man on the planet – not all ex-squaddies are – but he had bottle and a great way with prisoners, a real funny fucker. Anyone who can bring a bit of comedy into jail is going to be popular because there’s not a lot else to laugh about. Unless the joke is on you, of course. He’d cause shit on purpose, Nobby, throw in verbal hand grenades. ‘Are you going to let them get away with that?’ he’d say, winding you up, egging you on. I think the cons admired his troublemaking.
Like everyone else, at first he didn’t like me. A man of good taste. Before long we were getting on fine. Better than fine – we had a lot in common, him and me. We didn’t socialize, but our shifts were always good craic. If the two of us were on a landing and one went to make a brew, he’d tell the other. If one of us went to make a phone call, you’d say so. Going for a piss, same story. Some used to think that was over the top but we had a volatile population. You’d forty cells to supervise and needed to know where your mates were, eyes on all the time in case someone got ragged into a cell. Out of everybody I ever worked with on K Wing, save perhaps Pete, Nobby was my favourite.
With him it was one-upmanship all the time. We had a guy come in from healthcare around four in the afternoon, a stocky foreign national who we put in the end cell. He’d been cutting himself. On my scale of one to ten, he’d have scored a three. They’d done what they could and he was back with us, where he did not want to be. He was still on an ACCT form (assessment care in custody and teamwork), which officers filled in four or five times a day when a prisoner was deemed at risk, confirming duty of care. The forms marked that prisoner’s progress and were given out after an initial face-to-face assessment when a treatment plan was drawn up to keep them safe.
Cell doors have an observation panel – vertical slits behind a metal flap, so you can see what’s going on. I had a look in and he was over in the corner, this lad, only been with us half an hour, rocking away and cutting himself with a sharp object he’d found somewhere. Superficial scratches – well, maybe a bit more. There was some claret, but what he was doing – and he’d not seen me – was splashing water on his arm, out of a cup, to make it look like blood was pouring. Fuck me, I thought, there’s no way the wing staff will tolerate that. He’s going back to healthcare. But whoever found hi
m would have a lot of paperwork, so I walked back and leaned on the stairs. The guy wasn’t dying; I’m not evil. I was just getting one up on my mate. Nobby, who had been making a brew, came and handed me mine.
‘Have you checked on this numpty?’ he asked, sipping his tea. I shook my head, all innocent like. So over he walked, brew in hand, leaned forward and opened the flap. He must have been stood like that for a good ten seconds before looking around, pulling a face and calling me a twat.
‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, offended.
‘You’re a fucking twat. Anyway, I’m having my brew first.’
Moments later, another officer came on the wing escorting a prisoner, as happens in a high-security jail. It’s called running. You carry a radio, ask permission to move and have a maximum of eight convicts per officer. She wanted to know if that lad she’d brought on from healthcare earlier – sideburns like Prince Albert – was all right. We assured her he was fine, knowing his cell floor was likely a river of Ribena by now. Sensing that something was up, she went for a look herself.
‘Oh my god! Oh my god! He’s cut his wrists!’ she yelled and hit the bell.
Prisons are like swimming pools, you’re not supposed to run in them, but suddenly the place was full of people ‘making haste’. Nobby Nobbler looked to the heavens.
‘Fucking hell. Don’t get the nurse,’ he said. ‘I’ll take him to healthcare.’
Strangeways Page 7
