Strangeways

by Neil Samworth

  The wanker had been to court the night before, a basic prisoner in his own clothes.

  ‘I want no fuss or alarm bells,’ the SO told me quite clearly, ‘but here’s Ivor Biggun’s corned beef.’ The maroon combo. ‘Tell him to put them back on. If he won’t, lock the door. We’ll sort it later.’

  Standard practice. After court, they get changed.

  As soon as I’d left the office, Two Pens whipped this clobber out of my hands and him and his gang of mates ‘made haste’ to the tosser’s cell to deliver their own brand of dynamic security. He cracked the bolt and in they all piled. It was well over the top.

  ‘Put these fucking clothes on!’ he yelled. It sounded like an LA drugs bust. When they came back out he said, ‘Where’s our fucking back-up, you soft Yorkshire twat.’

  ‘You what?’ I said. ‘There were ten of you, to one prisoner.’

  He was at the end of his tether all the time. When a job affects you to such an extent, it’s time to pack it in.

  Anyway, Ebenezer Two Pens and me shared one job on the K Wing servery, which was to order the following day’s hot meal for the prisoners. If you’d sausage, chips and beans on the menu today, you’d request some different scran tomorrow. One hundred and sixty portions of whatever you decided, plus a halal choice for your Muslim prisoners – thirty of that, say – and maybe fifteen butty packs too. Some lads preferred crisps, orange, yoghurt, cereal bar or some other snack food, especially when they’d worked all day. The servery could be stressful, especially if you ran short of food, but Christmas Day was a piece of piss. No thought required.

  Lucky for him, Two Pens was on duty Christmas Eve – so, easy. You’d order the full works, wouldn’t you? Lashings of turkey followed by Christmas pudding and custard, quite definitely; halal meals and a few butty packs, just in case. Not this clown. He asked them for 170 portions of fish curry. On Christmas Day! No one ate that at any other time of year – it was minging. I only found out when I phoned the kitchens on Christmas morning with my own order for Boxing Day.

  ‘Very funny, Donna,’ I said to the lass who answered. ‘What’s he really ordered?’

  ‘Fish curry.’

  I had a Bertie moment. ‘You are going to send the biggest wing in the jail 170 portions of fish curry on Christmas Day?’

  ‘It’s too late now,’ she said. ‘I thought it was strange . . .’

  Anyway, I told our beloved SO and boom – through the fucking ceiling. ‘You cannot do this to me! The wing will go bananas. It’ll be 1990 all over again with tinsel on.’ He told me to get back on to Donna.

  ‘Right,’ she said. ‘What I’m going to do is send you the fish curry, which comes with rice. But what about chips as well?’

  We were getting somewhere. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Can you do me 200 portions of chips?’

  Yes.

  ‘Got anything else?’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty tight. I might be able to send you two dozen Christmas dinners, but that will be it.’

  ‘Have you got anything else for a main course?’

  ‘We’ve got eggs.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Eggs.’

  Now they didn’t usually get eggs, the lads. We’d only served them once before on K Wing, when there’d been a food shortage. It’s the sort of grub that prisoners love, though. Like toast. They didn’t get that at one time, although they do now. Egg and chips, believe me, would be a delicacy, a speciality dish. So I said, ‘Can you send me 200 portions of egg and chips, Donna?’

  ‘Yes, I can. I’ll also send you the Christmas puddings and fish curry and anything I’ve got left over. Happy Christmas.’

  It was eleven o’clock on Christmas morning now, so I started prepping the cleaners. I sent them out on the landings to tell everybody that Two Pens had stitched me up. I told them I didn’t know for sure what would be on offer, definitely egg and chips, and that whatever I got they could eat.

  It used to come in on two trollies, but this day the kitchens did us proud. I’d never seen so much grub. Tray after tray of chips, about 360 portions . . . rice . . . more fried eggs than there are chickens in the north west of England, rubbery as fuck but who cared . . . fish curry, which actually wasn’t bad as fish curries go . . . and butties galore. A big steaming pile of plum duff too. And custard.

  Walking down to the servery, the prisoners were buzzing – ‘Oh, chips and egg, man, yeah! Nice one.’ Nobody left with an empty belly, and it was another silent night, no thanks to the Grinch who’d tried to ruin Christmas.

  New Year’s Eve could be a rum one too, though no one inside was ever in the mood for partying. I know I wasn’t and nor were the prisoners. Every year it was described as a potential flashpoint. We went on high alert but it never kicked off. Like Christmas itself, it was a melancholy period. On K Wing it was just a normal day. Most of them found something to watch and had a smoke. Or got some shut-eye. As the countdown approached it went quiet very, very quickly. If I were on nights, I’d do my rounds of the landing at eight o’clock, ten o’clock and midnight, by which time pretty much everyone was fast asleep. In prison it didn’t pay to look too far ahead.

  At Forest Bank, back in 2003, one officer I worked with kept pestering me to take her to this New Year’s Eve do she’d been invited to, once we’d banged them up. She was on at me through the shift. I was working New Year’s Day though, so knocked her back. I knew from engineering that if you’re supposed to work that day you’d best not ring in sick. You don’t want to be driving in pissed either.

  She carried on mithering and I started to feel shit, thought it might be flu. We’d a lad come on the wing with an arseful of weed; the place stank. The whole wing was stoned, so maybe it was that. I rang the manager, ‘Just warning you, I’m doggo.’ He wasn’t happy, and nor was this lass as she went off to ring in the New Year alone. I couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning, shaking like a shiteing dog. My nose ran like a tap, eyes watered, I felt awful. I phoned in poorly and did get a warning when I went back into work two or three days later.

  Fast forward to K Wing in 2007. A lad came in who I knew well; I gave him a nod, bit of a cheeky chap – I hadn’t seen him since Forest Bank. As we were chatting he chuckled, ‘Remember New Year’s Eve – were you rough?’

  I totally lost it. Ragged him off his feet and into the back of the cell, pinned him up with a forearm, choking him.

  ‘Mr S., Mr S., let me go . . .’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘It weren’t me – it were her you were working with!’

  Now I know he’s a con and so hardly the most reliable witness, but as soon as he explained it all made sense. This lad said he’d seen her popping a tablet in my brew, probably to liven me up a bit and go with her to that fucking party. I was fuming. Mind you, as a student of eastern mysticism I knew all about karma, and took comfort in how she’d already had her comeuppance in more ways than one . . .

  Some time after that New Year’s Eve, while I was still at Forest Bank, an orderly had approached me. He’d told me to check the laundry. He was a good lad, this one, took prisoners’ washing and brought it all back ironed, dried, folded, the lot – hard bastard for sure, in for some horrendous crime, but a terrific cleaner.

  ‘Nah, it’ll be mint,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, Mr S. Check the laundry.’

  So I’d had a walk over and found the door ajar by a few inches. I pushed it open and looked in. Guess who was inside? The female officer in question, up on the washing machine and having a party for two with a con, a lifer as it happened. Tits out, head down, both going for it like billy-o.

  What the fuck . . . I’d thought, backed out and shut the door.

  She started hammering on it. ‘What you doing? I’m trapped in here! Help!’

  I phoned the security manager, someone I trusted. ‘We’ve got a fucking problem,’ which we did, quite literally.

  The shagger, once unlocked, said nothing, just skulked off back behind his door. He was on a b
ig sentence, saw a chance and took it. You’d think prisoners would like an officer who did favours, whether like this or by bringing in clothes or drugs or whatever, but funnily enough some have a code of integrity. They view bent officers as weak, a bit of a plague. By the end of the day, he’d been transferred many miles away. As for the shaggee, ‘Get your things, hand in your keys,’ the manager told her. ‘I never want to see you again’ – and she was walked to the gate.

  For obvious reasons, sexual relations between prisoners and staff were strictly forbidden. There was the usual hypocrisy – she was a slag while he was just doing what came natural – but the bottom line is you can’t be having that. It’s a clear-cut issue for officers too, so this time no one was accusing me of being a grass. The prison could have called in the police, but in circumstances like that people are often given the opportunity to go of their own accord as it saves embarrassment all round.

  The wider issue is the standards we should expect of a prison officer. They’re just human beings, they’re just civil servants, as I keep saying, and they’re not paid very much. But they’re in a job where, if they do it badly, the consequences can be extremely serious.

  9. Black and White Town

  What is quite definitely unacceptable in a prison officer? Let’s start with racism.

  Tackling racism inside is far from straightforward. Why wouldn’t it be? If racism occurs in the outside world then of course it will be an issue in jail. Think about it. Officers, most of them white, guarding a population of inmates of all races and cultures who are guests on account of being liars, cheats and much much worse. The sort of people – criminals in short – who if you give them an inch will steal half of Greater Manchester, the vast majority being completely innocent, or so they’d have you think. Many are plausible in their alibi – might even believe it themselves – charismatic and manipulative. If a prisoner can paint himself as a victim he very much will, especially if there’s advantage in doing so. It’s obvious really. A prison officer is a handy target, but the scope for him or her to abuse their powerful position is also enormous. It’s a potential minefield.

  Whenever I was called a racist – which very rarely happened because I am not – I’d walk down to where the incident forms were, write my name on it so they didn’t spell Sam wrong and say, ‘There you go, lad – fill it in.’ Having been an officer myself, I naturally tend to think about these issues from our side of the bars first and foremost, since that’s my own experience. I promise you this – my own treatment of prisoners wasn’t consciously driven by race, religion or colour, and nor in the vast majority of instances was it different with the screws I worked with. You treat them as criminals, plain and simple, deal with what’s in front of you. If a person is polite and well behaved, they’ll get that back. If someone is arrogant or takes the piss, plays the victim or thinks of you as their butler, you might adopt a less friendly approach. It’s important that they know you are the boss.

  I met my fellow officer Raffles on my very first day in Strangeways, and boy, could he be ruthless. The inmates on his strip didn’t fuck about because they knew they’d be punished, even the hardest among them. He had his own particular brand of dynamic security. I spent half of my first shift on the twos, where I ended up mainly based, and the other half on his landing. Before he’d so much as said hello, he’d slapped a clipboard in my chest and told me to ‘Get the labour out’ – i.e. organize the prisoners who were off to work. Then he sauntered back to the office and made himself a brew.

  Over time I got to know Raffles better – he had a dry sense of humour and I began to like him – but he could make you cringe sometimes, the way he spoke to people. He gave it to you straight and talked to everyone that way. He wasn’t one for nuance. It was an attitude that could land officers in bother, especially when it came to race. He wasn’t a racist, but he wasn’t one for backing down either. The majority of prisoners get on with their jail; they know which officers they can push and how far, and won’t go beyond that point. A minority can get arsey and their behaviour deteriorates, resulting in confrontation with prison officers. At this point a prisoner might play the race card and you would be informed that someone had put in a complaint. You might be told to go easy or to watch your back. Raffles however would not think about diffusing the situation – convinced he was in the right, he’d still be on the prisoner’s case. He was like a dog with a bone! This could lead to further complaints of racism even though that wasn’t the cause of his behaviour. He challenged management and fellow officers just as much – he was difficult but he was consistent and I would definitely have him on my team.

  I’ve seen loads of TV programmes and read tons of reports where the prison service is accused of institutional racism. In September 2017, the Labour MP David Lammy said that some prosecutions against black and minority-ethnic suspects ought to be dropped or deferred due to ‘bias’ in the British criminal justice system. Overt discrimination was in decline, he reckoned, backing up what I’ve said I suppose, but BAME individuals still had it tougher than anyone else. He said there is ‘greater disproportionality’ in numbers – 3 per cent of the public is black, rising to 12 per cent inside.

  I’ve no reason to doubt his facts and figures, but I repeat, in the vast majority of cases, once inside, everyone I saw was dealt with the same – unfairly on occasion, but that had nothing to do with race. I’ve worked with racist officers, quite definitely. I must have, they are human beings and human beings can be racists. How many do you know? They are in every walk of life, have a look on social media. But I can honestly say I never saw any officer abuse their position on the basis of race and only saw one use a racist insult on duty. She was the sort of officer cons don’t like: inconsistent with her warnings. When that happens, you can find yourself on basic regime without understanding why. Sometimes, nice as ninepence, she wouldn’t even tell them, just add their name to the paperwork.

  One black prisoner absolutely hated me – white this, white that – making threats of rape against my family, sticking it in. I treated him professionally, no differently to anyone else, though I admit that was hard. He was overstepping the mark. One day, on the servery, he must have said something to this officer, because when he turned his back she mouthed an insult in return. Now, having worked in engineering amid all the noise and what have you, I can lip read. I know what she said, but had best not repeat it here because it would only be my word against hers. Either way, this lad, in for petty crimes but a lot bigger than I am, very intimidating physically, spun around on her, going ballistic. His plate went in the air. If I hadn’t intervened and taken him to the floor he would have filled her in. Our manager had a word and soon afterwards she was moved to the VP wing, though not for that. Was she sanctioned? No. How could she be? Nobody but the con had heard a word.

  I don’t know what the target is nowadays, but the prison service back then aimed for about 7 per cent of its annual officer intake being from ethnic backgrounds. I get the logic of wanting to have more diverse staff – it’s important to mirror inside what’s going on outside, then everybody can just get on with the job. But you’ve got to apply common sense given what a challenging place prison is to work. You can’t afford to have weaker staff, which is a risk of employing people by ethnicity alone. What’s important is to encourage the right kind of BAME candidates to apply, then you’ll get the numbers up naturally over time, won’t you? Come to think of it, that’s true for candidates across the board anyway. What you should be looking for is the ideal prison officer – honest, firm, fair, courageous, bit of life experience; well-rounded people in other words. Then just look after your staff well, pay them a decent whack and make sure you’ve enough of them to provide a proper service.

  There was a recruitment drive in Birmingham involving role play that new prison officer applicants had to go through. Job Simulation Assessment Centre it was called, or JSAC for short. I had my doubts about it. Being good at role play doesn’t mean you’ll be
any good in real life, does it? It just means you’d do a fair job of locking Cain Dingle up in Emmerdale. However, at that time I thought I might one day earn promotion and if you wanted to climb the ladder it would be good to have experience of scoring the assessments. So down to Brum a few of us went, where we found eight rooms with a scenario apiece going on that we had to watch. Mine was called ‘Angry Man’. No idea why they gave me that one.

  An officer in civvies pretended to be raging. The potential recruit came in and had to deal with it. It was all being filmed for analysis later. I had to watch how the applicant behaved, reacted and spoke. A group from the North West went first and their pass rate was 53 per cent. JSAC wanted 50 per cent, so that was good. People might not say the right things, but you could see their potential. In week two it was the Midlands’ turn, and by Wednesday, at dinner, the pass rate was 23 per cent – diabolical.

  The eight of us doing the assessments were assessed by three POs ourselves, making sure we scored it right and that the ones we said were suitable candidates actually were. One cockney governor, though, wasn’t happy.

  ‘What I want you to do,’ he said, ‘is go back and pass all the females and anyone from an ethnic background.’

  ‘What?’ said one of the POs. ‘You can’t do that.’

  But we had to do as he said. Let me tell you, some of the people we’d seen were clueless. Some will call that positive discrimination, but it’s not positive at all, is it? You’re giving jobs to people who will be unhappy in them, might get injured and could cause chaos. Why is there pressure to do that? If they’d told us to go back and reassess everyone and pick the best of a bad lot, fine – you’ve got to get officers from somewhere. But again, you should be taking the best candidates for the job, whatever the race or gender.

  A little later we were informed that K Wing was getting a new officer, direct from training. What’s more, she had already put in complaints of a racial nature against the instructors. That didn’t bode well, did it? We were also told our new recruit had been a copper for ten or twelve years, although when she clocked on it turned out she’d been a clerk in a police station, not an actual officer.