Strangeways

by Neil Samworth

  Bottom line: you had to manoeuvre round people like that, try to keep them pacified or stay out of their way. And that’s awkward in an environment where you have to be tough to survive. As an officer, you need to be able to tell it straight, not constantly worry about saying the wrong thing. The place will eat you alive otherwise.

  The grievances against me were a worry. Prisons are political places and you get a reputation. There’s plenty of opportunity for falling out. As a manager, if you hear a complaint, you should hear both sides of the story before taking it any further, but most often that wasn’t how it went. First in was the one believed. If you didn’t make a fuss and got on with it, you were at a disadvantage. Stuff that should have been talked through was officially investigated without delay, which led to more grievances and bad feeling.

  It also means that when those first complainers get their way, and when the gender or race card has been played, a feeling can grow that some groups are being treated differently to others, whether that is true or not. There’s no place for racism or sexism in any organization – but in prison box-ticking too often had the beating of common sense, and blatantly so. That’s stupidity. A crap officer is a crap officer.

  How about this for an example? I went on I Wing, the detox unit, to fetch a prisoner. HMP Manchester is so big that sometimes you only knew officers to say good morning to, not necessarily their name. Due to shift patterns, you might go months without seeing others. I knew the officer there by sight; there was a slice of cake on the table in front of her, surrounded by crumbs.

  ‘All right, love,’ I said. ‘I’ve come for so-and-so.’

  ‘Hello,’ she said and offered me what was left of the cake.

  Now that’s a no-brainer for me, so down the hatch it went.

  ‘It’s my birthday,’ she said. I wished her a good one, thanked her for the cake and after collecting the prisoner went on my way.

  Following week I took this prisoner back and cheekily asked if she had any more cake. No, she said, adding that I’d got her in bother.

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘You had the last piece.’

  It turned out that when I’d gone, this other officer came in and, spotting the wrapper, asked where his slice was.

  ‘Big Sam, the officer from K Wing, has had it,’ she told him.

  A couple of days later she was in front of a governor. This lad alleged that by deliberately not saving him a piece of her birthday cake she’d been racist. As embarrassing as that may sound – and she did laugh about it – she was genuinely upset and had also been made to apologize.

  Let me tell you, if someone had got a cake out in K Wing with fifteen staff in the office, cut it into ten, there’d have been fighting. If someone could have got hold of three pieces they’d have had three pieces – every bastard for themselves. If I could’ve put a whole cake in my face, I would have. None left when you got there? Tough shit.

  By the time the Bonnie and Clyde investigation ended I was having disagreements with PO Venables on a regular basis. I saw him as interfering and unreasonable; wanted to be left alone to do my job.

  I went to see one of the governors who’d been there when I did my training. He knew me as a decent officer, even though he’d once thought me a cunt and bully. We got on well now. He’d been thinking, he said, and asked if I fancied going to work on healthcare.

  Now, at that time, healthcare had a terrible reputation. Not only were the prisoners in there climbing up the walls, it was short-staffed – nobody wanted to work on it – and people were also wary of one or two of its officers and nurses. My few remaining K Wing mates like Nobby Nobbler said I was mad.

  ‘Look, just do twelve months for me,’ this governor said, ‘and then if you want out I will give you any job in the jail, wherever you want.’

  It seemed like a good offer, so I went over a couple of times to have a look. It unnerved me. Not the job so much as the staff. They looked tricky to get on with, and I’d had enough of that. A couple of the nurse managers were scary, and I began to have second thoughts. But at the front of my mind was that offer, and there was another incident that swung it.

  Again it ended with a complaint, and again the prison eventually saw that there was nothing in it. I was moving prisoners from reception; three were destined for G Wing. It got to eight o’clock and it was noisy, but I picked up the phone to tell them this trio were on their way. These lads would have to wait, the officer on the other end of the line told me, and we got into a bit of a heated discussion, though being deaf in one ear and with everything else going on I only really heard my half of it.

  ‘I need to get them out,’ I said. ‘It’s rammed down here.’

  This admissions officer carried on talking, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying so put the phone down and set off.

  G Wing is very much like K Wing: you walk in on the ones but the office is on the twos. I walked upstairs with this trio, locked them in a room there, and went to the gate. This same officer was sat behind a desk.

  ‘Don’t you bring people onto my wing, and don’t you put the fucking phone down on me,’ she said.

  I was annoyed by her attitude. Every new prisoner comes with documents attached, so I put a pile on her desk with a bit of a thud and told her to go fuck herself.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

  ‘You heard.’ As I went out I slammed the gate, but I soon calmed down. A storm in a teacup, I thought: it would soon blow over.

  A while later, PO Venables came up to me on K Wing. ‘You need to apologize,’ he said and read out the grievance. ‘“On the night of so-and-so, you told officer so-and-so to go fuck herself.”’

  I laughed.

  ‘What are you laughing at? It’s not funny. Did you say that?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not having anyone speaking to me like she did.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to be in trouble. You need to say sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what she said to me?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

  ‘Of course it matters,’ and I told him my side. ‘I’m not fucking apologizing; we’ve had a row she started, that’s all. I was just doing my job, running prisoners.’ I admit I can be a stubborn twat.

  Anyway, to cut a long story short, this latest grievance also went nowhere, as it became obvious that I wasn’t bullshitting. By then, though, I wouldn’t have cared either way. Frankly, I was plain sick of the place and gagging for a fresh start.

  11. Every Day Hurts

  I arrived on Strangeways healthcare in November 2008, and it was a turbulent first year. At the time they had a system of eight managers – farcical for such a small wing – three nurse managers, three prison managers and two POs, one from the prison, one the nursing ranks. Too many chiefs meant they were falling over each other and disagreeing.

  Six officers would kick off the shift there, reduced to four when two went downstairs to organize the running at nine o’clock, bringing prisoners on and off. In that first year, we looked after about forty patients on the top floor, a lot. The upper landings were known as X, Y and Z.

  To begin with healthcare ran a bit like seg’: a strict routine. Get them out for a shower, hour’s exercise and ten-minute cell clean. Two meals a day plus breakfast and perhaps a phone call. In a morning we’d two officers on each landing, two prisoners out at a time. Cons on unlocks were left until last, when things had settled down a bit and the remaining four officers could deal with any trouble.

  The place had an atmosphere all of its own. Segregation units are intimidating, weird at the best of times, but healthcare is even more unnerving. The inmates are very often mentally incapacitated, which is something for which you don’t receive extra training. Many have done dreadful things. Visitors came on the wing – students, solicitors and so on – and were terrified. Prisoners too were put off by the place. Healthcare was an eye-opener even for the hardest; it demolished everyone’s comfort zone.

  With
most seg’ prisoners, you knew where you were. On healthcare, absolutely anything could happen and very often did. If seriously ill detox patients came on from I Wing, for example – alcohol or drugs – it could get crazy. With booze, after a couple of days they’d be eating flies, throwing shit out their doors, screaming at night and hallucinating. No one got any kip. It was much worse than the seg’, which acted as a pressure valve for us sometimes as we didn’t have the staff. When I went in early to let the night staff get off, like I always did, everyone reporting in that day – nurses included – would pull a face. It got you like that.

  It was the sort of job that really tested your patience. When we had forty on, all the manipulative bastards took some looking after. Lots of officers couldn’t hack it – their stress levels would go through the roof, the pressure got to them. Fair enough. I reached levels of stress on there myself I hadn’t got near before. The threat of violence, difficult people, the horrible atmosphere, constraints of the job – the miseries were endless. At one point we had only two actual prison officers on that unit.

  Light was an issue there too. Aside from cell windows, there was no natural light at all, only that artificial glare given off by fluorescent bulbs, humming and fizzing. Leaving the joint, you’d be squinting like a pit pony. The association room wasn’t too bad – that was quite spacious, with a pool table, comfy chairs and telly, a bit like a pub lounge. You could get ten or twelve people in, barred windows on all sides, so quite bright, not bad considering.

  The noise could be fearsome. If you’d got someone disruptive, kicking and banging doors, it sounded like a Victorian lunatic asylum. When we were short-staffed, people from other wings would come in on overtime, experienced officers some of them, who just didn’t want to be there. Understandable. You didn’t know how to react sometimes: your usual ways of doing things was no use. A lot of staff would try to be the same with the prisoners on healthcare as they were with prisoners on a wing, which never worked. It’s no good shouting at someone with a terminal illness or mental issues to get behind a door. Either they will take no notice, start harming themselves or go berserk.

  And there was the smell. Healthcare was very clean, the orderlies did a good job, but it stank. People weren’t necessarily throwing up everywhere or throwing shite around – though that did happen – but the aroma was constant. It wasn’t clinical, like you’d get in hospital. Nor did it smell of disinfectant really, though there was plenty of it used. It was a farmyard smell, and I don’t mean of fresh-mown hay. It was just the nature of the beast: unwell people have their own body odour. People on medication don’t just sweat BO. Quite often the chaplain would bring joss sticks in; you’d light a few if someone was approaching death.

  While I was there, we knocked through a couple of cells and had a nice little en-suite room built for the terminal inmates, people on their very last legs. Officially, it was called the enhanced nursing suite; we called it the death cell. Otherwise, if people were no danger to anyone any more they might well go to a hospice, still supervised by staff.

  But some cons had spent their life in prison and chose to die there. When Eric died, for example, he was still serving time forty-five years after his original offence, way above your typical life sentence. As prisoners go, he wasn’t a bad fella, although back in 1966 he had killed his girlfriend and got locked up for it. For murder, people nowadays do as little as ten to fifteen, but they don’t backdate an earlier sentence. Look at the Great Train Robbers. Only one guy did the killing, but they all got thirty years. Eric had only ever been out once when, after starting to see a woman, she’d complained he’d had a drink and swore at her, and he got locked up again after ten months. At one point we had him as an orderly, but he deteriorated. He’d always smoked and eventually got cancer. He was petrified. Those familiar walls and bars were his only reassurance.

  Them so poorly they’d be staying a while were kept secure on the landings upstairs, while downstairs in a two-storey building was ‘out-patients’: podiatry, dentist, doctor and such – basically anything you can get on the NHS. Doctors and nurses are employed by a trust to work there and the dentists, opticians and so on often have their own practices on the out. Most cons recognize they are getting a service, so don’t complain or kick off. We’d stand outside the surgeries keeping an eye on them if anyone was worried. Any prisoner could apply for a visit, if they had a lump on a bollock, say, or a dodgy tooth. I’ve known prisoners to come out with a new set of gnashers they haven’t paid for. Anything they can get done, they will.

  Two holding cells were also down there in a gated area, with normal location prisoners in the largest. It housed up to thirty-five. The other was for VPs, kept separate. At times it was standing room only in the normal one, and first come, first served. There were three ground-floor entrances and exits: one used to bring VPs in, one for normals and another in a separate stairwell in a gated-off sterile area which took you straight up to the in-patients’ unit. The two zones were kept strictly apart. But whenever the shit hit the fan upstairs, the rumpus could be heard through the ceiling.

  Prison officers elsewhere in the jail often held healthcare in contempt. A big useless lump on C Wing, small in stature with a neck like an elephant’s arse, once gave me a prepared speech I’d heard lots of times before. It got boring.

  ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘these nurses need to realize this is a prison.’

  My hand shot up. Hold it right there. ‘These nurses are in no doubt that this is a prison,’ I said, ‘but it’s the hospital wing of the prison, where inmates are also patients, and I’m happy with that.’

  He’d got the hump because they called cons by their first names, and it’s true, as a profession they did give prisoners the best care they could. But, believe me, none of those nurses were so naive as to imagine them lads as anything other than dangerous.

  Roy Harris came to us from H Wing. He was on a three officer and SO unlock, which was a clue straight away that he was unlikely to be pleasant. At feeding time one day, an officer had chosen to bypass that security protocol, just trying to make things work as we all did, and slid his meal in. To show his gratitude Harris charged the door, jammed it on their arm and broke it very badly. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: prison officers are civil servants. Nothing in your contract says you will get punched, kicked, have limbs broken or be strangled. You are in prison, people say: you should expect it. Well, no you shouldn’t. Fortunately, the officer made a recovery and came back. Another who witnessed the incident left with PTSD.

  As a result of all this, Roy Harris was with us now on healthcare. I’d always check backgrounds so knew what he’d done, and treated him as though he could kick off at any moment. He never assaulted any of us, was rarely out of his cell and a lot of his meals went through the hatch. We had him eight months and I never ever let my guard down with him.

  KK, Bradders and Sandy were the nurse managers for the bulk of my time on the unit and each was very different in their way. Those three women ran healthcare and did a cracking job of it. Over the three to five years we worked alongside one another, they had a manager above them too, but on the whole they were left alone and ran it like a hospital, which of course it was. And actually, the governors of the jail put up with that. When stuff kicked off on healthcare you couldn’t nudge our leaders in with cattle prods.

  I loved those three to bits, forging friendships we still share. Through my time, they were never properly supported from above, however. You don’t want interference, but you do want to know that when trouble erupts, the jail is on your side. What we did was support each other. The stuff they saw and sorted every day would make hard men faint. Our nurse managers were very sensitive as well as talented and practical. When they wanted a cry, I was there. I’d get upset too, especially if they were. A normal person would, wouldn’t they? True, I can’t watch The Lion King without blubbing, but who can? It often felt like them against the prison.

  Healthcare was a hosti
le environment and they faced the risks bravely. They were careful; if we had an eighty-year-old, no legs, dying and no danger to anyone any more, they would not go in his cell without consulting me first. ‘Can I give Mr So-and-So his meds?’ If it was a normal prisoner, there’d always be a prison staff member there. Even governors would spout that ‘Nurses need to realize . . .’ shite. It wasn’t about specific incidents, it was just the general impression. Not ‘macho’ enough, you see. The criticism was unfair.

  KK was what I call a proper nurse. By that I mean RGN – the sort who change bedpans and pat your backside with talc in your average infirmary. It took KK and me a while to become pals, but once we did we really clicked. She was particularly loyal when I had my own psychological battles later on, and is still my best mate today.

  Our other RGN, Sandy, was one of those I’d been warned about – stern, vocal and stubborn. She was a royal pain in the arse, they said, who had been on healthcare yonks. In fact she was just strong-minded, which scares a lot of men to death. Sandy said what she thought and did not take any nonsense. When somebody wasn’t pulling their weight, she told them. I’ve seen her row with governors, POs, SOs – anyone trying to put prisoners where she knew they shouldn’t be. She would stand nose to nose with anyone. I wasn’t quite as close with her as I was KK and Bradders, but we had an understanding and I got to like her a lot. Mutual respect, I suppose. We admired each other’s professionalism. So much so that I tended to be her first point of contact. I hope that was because she knew I’d do things right, a big disciplined lad with bottle.