Strangeways

by Neil Samworth

  Alan Taylor was a nice lad. Pleasant, polite, but very disturbed. At one point he started writing scriptures on his cell wall. A governor took me to his cell to highlight something while Taylor was in association and his cell empty. Floor to ceiling were beautifully written passages from the Bible, apparently accurate; chapter, verse and psalm. Why had we allowed a prisoner to do this? he asked. Well, the chaplain had assured us that Taylor had become deeply religious and the verses were genuine. We took the writing material off him, but he managed to find more and it took him a fortnight to repeat it all. Every time we tried to wash it off, he’d just write it back on again.

  Prison wasn’t the right place for someone like Taylor. We did our best with him but the environment was wrong and we couldn’t help. It’s just not realistic to put such people in jail and expect them to be cured, they need proper medical intervention. Three times he came to us, and three times we released him back onto the streets. He self-harmed, tried twice to hang himself, and shortly before he went out for the last time the prison’s housing guy did his best to find him a place to live, in a hostel or somewhere. When they’re freed, prisoners get less than £100 and that’s not going to last long, is it? He had no psychological counselling and could have done with it. Months later I read that he’d been found dead, hanging from some viaduct. I still feel sad when I think about the lad.

  Tom Smith was less sympathetic. Weedy as fuck and in for disturbances that often spilled over into violence, he was all about shit: unprovoked, he’d throw and smear excrement – no saving graces, just nasty. Bodily fluids and shite are the bane of your life on healthcare. It doesn’t stop you dealing with prisoners, just causes inconvenience and is thoroughly unpleasant. He was also vile to nurses, telling them what he’d like to do to them – I don’t need to spell it out. He spat in KK’s mouth, punched a healthcare assistant in the breast who ended up needing scans and, if that wasn’t bad enough, striped a young nurse in a Manchester A & E, which is to say slashed her across the face with a razor blade, ear to chin, and scarred her for life. He was prosecuted for that, but didn’t serve anywhere near long enough because people saw his outward elderly appearance and were lenient. This was a villain of the first degree. Sometimes I wished he was my size so I could knock fuck out of him. But he wasn’t, so I couldn’t, more’s the pity.

  When I first saw him, he was able-bodied and could walk. Then he had a stroke, and although he was about fifty-five, he looked seventy. Within four years of my first getting to know him he was brown bread. He didn’t die in prison; he died in hospital. And during that four-year period, he lost a leg because he was a diabetic on drugs who’d been an alcoholic.

  He hadn’t been with us long when he staged his first dirty protest. His shite-throwing antics were so bad he’d ended up on seg’. An officer there, working on nights and having been pushed to the limit, gave him a black eye. Despite a previously unblemished record he not only lost his job but also got time in prison for assault, which caused controversy and hurt among staff. In court it was pointed out that this officer had worked on seg’ for five consecutive years when the national guidelines say the upper limit is three. His defence barrister called it ‘an accident waiting to happen’ and he was right. I hope at some point that lad gets to sue the prison service for how he was treated. Shameful.

  While all that was going on, Smith came back to healthcare one night at about seven o’clock, and we put him in a cell on Y landing. Twenty minutes later KK popped her head around the office door. ‘Mr Samworth, have you got a minute?’ Normally she called me Samikins, so I knew she was pissed off about something. Sure enough, the outside of Tom Smith’s cell was littered with shitty paper that he’d shoved under the door.

  The landing stank like a sewer. Then the threats and abuse began. He’d been on healthcare less than an hour and was going on like this. Other people had to live on that unit. At that point he should have gone straight down the seg’ but was never going to, because of the assault. We were stuck with him.

  At nine o’clock, the night staff came in and I waited for KK, Bradders and Sandy, so I could toddle off down the drag with them. I always did that. If they were going to be late, I’d wait. It was then that we’d have our bitch for the day, get in our cars and leave it all behind, so that when we got home we could be decent human beings with our families. As KK and me walked past Tom Smith’s cell, though, I could smell burning. I didn’t bother lifting the flap. I looked at KK and she looked at me. We didn’t press the alarm. If we’d done that, they’d have frozen the gate and no one would be leaving. I got the fire hose, had a look in and this creature was sat on the bed in his boxers. He looked like Stig of the Dump. His body and face were covered in hot shit, flames lapped around him. I hosed the sides of the door, washed the shite off the hatch and, just as I’d done with Riley, blasted the little bonfires he’d got going to smithereens.

  A guy came up from security and looked in as the rancid old twat swore and cursed and danced about, trying to get out of range. He said I needed to be careful, as the governors were watching like hawks. On camera all they’d see was me dealing with a cell fire, so I carried on for a good five minutes until all that mud was washed off. Dripping wet in his boxers, he was a feeble thing. We got him out – and he came out now because he was cold – and put him on constant watch. Eventually we did clock off, and when I came in next morning the place stank to high heaven again.

  The final time this scrote came in I was on with the Stretcher Bearer, an older bloke I got on well with. Lads got called ‘stretcher bearer’ if they worked in the office, not as infantrymen on the front line. I had one tell me his job was more dangerous because he talked to murderers, terrorists, gangsters and so on face to face, one on one. One on one! When do you get them odds on a landing? Six officers to two hundred! Bollocks to that. The lad was all right – he laughed when I pointed this out where others might have put a grievance in. Anyway, Smith, looking feebler than ever, was put in a ‘safe cell’. His leg had gone by then, but he was still abusive, all seven stone of him, especially to women, and still chucking shite around.

  Because of his frailty and blood sugar being so low, they were afraid he would have a heart attack. KK said we ought to send him out to get some bloods done. Stretcher Bearer and me were elected his escorts. I wasn’t keen on going, but the Stretcher Bearer was up for it. ‘We’ll be all right, Sam,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a laugh.’

  So off we went with the human muck spreader.

  At North Manchester casualty the ward sister knew Tom Smith all right. This was the hospital where he’d striped the nurse, so they weren’t going to forget him, were they?

  While we were talking, a big turd dropped out of his backside. KK had put him in a hospital gown, so we got a full-on view of his bony arse as this dollop of crap landed. The ambulance crew looked at me and I apologized – I don’t know why: he was the filthy bastard.

  The nurse asked what he’d done that for.

  ‘Fuck off, you slag,’ he said, scraping it off the bed and onto the floor. They couldn’t get us in a side ward fast enough.

  It was boiling hot in there, no air, and we had a two-hour wait before a doctor arrived. By which point, he’d dropped another turd and the place was stinking. We were directly opposite the main reception desk. Smith tried to spit at the doc, called him a bastard and refused to give any bloods or sign a disclaimer.

  ‘Listen,’ the doctor said, after ushering me outside. ‘If we get his bloods and he refuses treatment, fair enough. We’d have tried. If we don’t try and he leaves here and dies, we are in even more trouble.’

  So we went back in and, as the doctor stood out of the way, Stretcher Bearer put a sheet loosely over Smith’s head. The git was spitting like a camel while I grabbed a puny arm, put one hand on his chest and pinned him to the bed. Any governor watching would have been aghast, but fuck ’em. The doctor nipped in with his syringe, drew blood and escaped being showered in phlegm.

  Tom
Smith, though, was now bubbling and gurgling, a regular little poop machine. We’d been in there three and a half hours and I was starting to feel faint. I can still taste the stink now. The Stretcher Bearer had been right. We found ourselves laughing a lot, out of despair. Smith refused to be cleaned up, so same procedure, sheet over his horrible noggin. Four hours in, our relief shift turned up. Never have I been so pleased to finish a shift.

  Then there was Crosby, a lad in from A Wing, not a sex offender but an OP, own protection – he’d built up a drug debt on B Wing. We only got him because he had a personality disorder and had been threatening self-harm.

  It was a nice sunny day, and we’d taken about thirteen prisoners onto the yard to exercise. They hadn’t been out long when I noticed my prisoners cowering and clambering at the fence. ‘Mr Samworth! Mr Samworth! Let us out!’ On the adjacent yard were the Category A lads, high security; the sort you would not want to meet on the out. They were huddling like kids, clinging to each other in fright.

  In the middle of my yard stood Crosby, stark bollock naked. I thought he was covering his modesty at first, but no. He had shat in his hands. He slowly brought them up and began to rub the stuff all over his belly, chest and head. The stench was sick-making.

  ‘Aaagh! Aaagh! Keep him away from us!’

  Three hours later, once it had all quietened down and he was changed and freshened up, I asked Crosby what on earth had possessed him.

  ‘Don’t know, Mr S.,’ he said. ‘It just seemed like the right thing to do.’

  13. Drug Soup

  Drugs find a way into prison. They are everywhere. You can be the most resourceful officer, have the best work ethic and there is still fuck all you can do about that. I could have run around all day trying to take illegal substances off people – end up fighting – but one man on his own wasn’t going to win the war. Once the drugs are in there, they are going to get distributed. People are going to receive and take them whichever way they can.

  Believe it or not, people will walk past Strangeways, near the middle of town, and chuck parcels in. On K Wing, where there’s netting over the yards, in winter they’ll throw snowballs with stuff in them that can be collected when they melt. Forest Bank was in a park, so you could walk right up to it with your dog. Prisoners might take an orange out on exercise with them, hoy it over the wall, and a mate on the other side would gauge the trajectory and toss one of his own back, full of drugs. Don’t laugh. The fear in Salford was that someone might throw a gun into the yard. While I was there, someone chucked a foot-long machete. The officer didn’t see it but the lad who picked it up was caught on camera. It came in like a fucking boomerang – lucky it didn’t stick in someone’s head. It got picked up and handed to someone else, who walked over to this old fella and started hacking away at him. Sawn-off shotgun? Game over.

  It’s true that staff corruption can also be a problem. There was that officer I mentioned earlier, for example, who went on to do seven years for bringing drugs in. Another lad at Forest Bank, a fresh-faced nineteen year old – too young to be a prison officer – had prisoners all over him. They badgered him for months . . . bring us a phone . . . you just have to pick it up . . . 600 quid . . . wore him down, befriended him. One day he came into a cell and threw a phone on the bed. ‘That’s it now, stop mithering me.’ So they let him alone for a month and started again. We need a phone . . . get us a phone . . . oh, and some two litre bottles of Coke with Jack Daniels in. No 600 quid on offer this time, just a threat to grass him up. Backed him in a corner. One day this lad rang in sick and never came back, well off out of it.

  The officer who did the stretch was in cahoots with a dealer on his wing. He met contacts on the out, brought in the gear and got a tidy wedge for his trouble. Unfortunately, the dealer had a mandatory piss test coming up. He used as well so he got a bag of urine off one of the cleaners. Prisoners try all sorts. They’ll blow up a finger on a rubber glove and fill it with piss, fasten it to their balls and when they are told to have a slash squeeze it. We saw bags and pipes attached to their dick, all sorts. Contaminated samples are another trick. One reckoned he could only have a slash sitting down, got his hand in the bowl, scooped mucky water out and weakened his sample with it.

  In the case of our bent officer, the dealer hadn’t realized that the cleaner was on drugs as well. His piss test still read positive.

  He kicked off big time, this lad, furious. He had to be restrained and ended up being carted off to seg’. So our officer decided to find a new source and moneyman and, of course, one wasn’t long in making himself known. ‘I’ll bung you 200 extra a week if you bring in for me instead.’ Word reached the first guy, who then grassed the bent officer up.

  The problem is worse when dynamic security breaks down. Officers haven’t got time to watch prisoners’ every step and bullying, mostly driven by drugs, is rife. When you build relationships you can tell if someone is a bit off, and have a word in their cell maybe. Find stuff out. There might be family members threatened unless they bring gear in – we are talking brutal and devious people. You can’t just let them get on with it. Cuts and austerity and savings are all very well but, if it hasn’t sunk in by now, prison is a place where having too many staff means you’ve got exactly the right amount.

  If politicians are serious about keeping drugs out of prison – and the government tells us it is disgusted with the amount flooding the estate – then get your hand in your pocket and give every jail an airport-style security portal. It’s not going to happen, though, is it?

  There are lots of mandatory drugs tests inside – ‘willy-watching’ the cons call it. A certain amount of prisoners per month go through the system as dictated by the Home Office, who give staff a list of names, picked at random I assume. There used to be monthly voluntary ones too, as an encouragement to recovering druggies, but like everything else they get neglected nowadays because there aren’t enough officers to do them.

  With mandatory tests, a sample was taken, sent off and if it came back positive they got placed on report and had to appear in front of a governor. They could request a back-up test, also completed by the prison service to reinforce the first one. The prisoner, out of his own pocket, could then get their legal team to do an independent test, so that’s three. If they all came back positive the case went to a district judge. Governors used to be able to add days to a sentence, sixteen for cannabis, say. Smack, heroin, brown, might get twenty days. The maximum, if you were persistent, was around forty-two. At Forest Bank, we had one young offender and heroin user come in on a three-month sentence and actually serve three and a half years. He was continually on report for positive tests and physical violence.

  For me, the punishments don’t fit the crime and, for the amount of routine and palaver involved, the number of prisoners punished for smoking or injecting drugs is very small, nothing like it used to be.

  As a prison officer you often hear the general public talking about drugs in jail. They look at you as if you personally dish out little trays of goodies. Students of human anatomy will realize that we are back to cavities.

  In Strangeways, when radios or clothes or anything was sent to prisoners, it was checked thoroughly, taken apart and reassembled if necessary. At one time, envelopes were soaked in hallucinogenic drugs that a con could then get at by wetting them – cunning stuff. Acid tabs under postage stamps, all sorts went on. Nowadays, I suspect the stuff is mostly brought in by mules – addicts who, while out on bail, have been effectively given notice to lubricate and widen their back passage for use when they inevitably come back in.

  When someone with a drugs record is jailed, a nurse interviews him. One lad who came to us admitted to swallowing twenty-five condoms’ worth of ‘smash’. He’d done so because he was in debt. Someone said, ‘Take this gear in and we’ll let you off.’ He wasn’t the brightest and landed an additional sentence. The heroin was safely removed in hospital.

  Prisoners will carry stuff into jail hidden not onl
y up their own arse but also anyone else’s back or even front bottom. If a bloke will get his seventy-year-old mother to bring in a phone like that, as happened once, anything is possible. That’s why even babies are searched. The OSGs who do that job are great at dealing with a public that gets pissed off, especially on a first visit when they are told they have to put their valuables in a locker, walk through a metal detector and then get patted down. Once they know why it’s happening, unless they are up to no good – or ‘no good’ is up them – they tend to be fine. We’ve had prisoners who’ve had a baby on their knee, removed its nappy, taken out a phone, drugs or whatever and shoved it up themselves, or maybe they’d hidden something down a toddler’s leggings. Some of them show absolutely no hesitation in using children any way they can.

  The effects of smuggling can be pretty horrific. We escorted to hospital once this wimpy Liverpudlian who’d been a victim of ‘spooning’, which might sound cosy but isn’t. In an act of bravado he’d told some other cons that he had a phone about his person. At some point he may have had, but didn’t any more. His attackers, as they became, weren’t to know that though, were they? Two strapping lads, six feet four or similar, sixteen stone, had gone into his cell and made light work of him. Broke a couple of ribs, two black eyes, gave him a good kicking. Then they’d stripped him, turned him upside down and, while one held him by the ankles, the other got a spoon and shoved it up his backside, trying to scoop this device out. They found nothing, but left him in a state.