* * *
I knew that my friends on the outside were shocked at the conditions under which I was being kept, and were trying to get me moved to a more suitable prison. Letters had been sent to the relevant authorities; one even found its way to the Home Secretary Michael Howard. My solicitor had come to see me and had expressed disbelief at my situation. But there was no word from anyone within the prison.
One day, six weeks after I entered Wandsworth, I found out about the board of visitors, a group of people responsible for looking into complaints from inmates. Deciding I could do no further damage, I subtly played off one SO against another and got them to agree to let me put my case forward.
Not one piece of information had been passed on to me regarding my future in prison: there had been no induction programme, no sentence planning, not even the book supposedly handed to inmates, explaining their rights. Incredibly, my father had a copy of it. He once said to me on the phone, "But it says on page 27..."
"What book are you talking about, Dad?" I said, intensely frustrated.
"The book you're given when you enter prison."
I had heard a rumour that such a book existed, but in Wandsworth I was more likely to chance upon the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The board eventually met, heard my case and agreed I shouldn't be on "A" wing, that I should definitely have had an induction programme and that my risk assessment should have been carried out. But I wasn't the exception, I was one of many. The following day a young officer came into my cell to do my sentence plan. He looked incompetent, and from the questions he asked I thought he was.
"Anywhere that will give me an opportunity to learn a new trade, just in case I can't return to golf, and somewhere where I can keep myself relatively fit, Guv."
"But you've got eight "O" levels."
"Yes, but I need a trade, Guv, something I can be self-employed in." I knew there was little chance of anyone gaining employment if they had a criminal record, but he seemed to think learning a new trade was a complete waste of time, and that every jail had a gym.
He then assessed my risk level. He opened a book, looked down the columns and announced that because I was serving a three-year sentence I would not be considered a low-risk prisoner for at least six months. By that time, I thought, I might well be a raving junkie. I considered telling him that my barrister had told the judge my character references were the best he'd ever seen, and that I'd never committed a crime before. But I could see the young officer was just going by the book and the system could not cope with anything else.
The next day he came back. "End of the week you're moving to Coldingley," he said.
"Where's that?" I asked.
"Woking," he said, slamming the door.
* * *
Before leaving, I said goodbye to Steve, who was due out any day, and asked him whether he had heard of Coldingley. "Used to be a "B" cat, good nick then, but it's gone downhill since. Bit dodgy now, so keep yer head down."
It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but Woking is a rural town in Surrey not more than ten miles from Guildford, and although Steve obviously thought it slightly "dodgy", I couldn't imagine a Surrey prison to be all that bad. It had to be better than Wandsworth.
By this time Guido had been released. I knew it was unlikely to be his last time inside and hoped for his sake that he had been able to find somewhere to live, away from the temptations near his home. I had sent the letter I wrote for him, but have no idea whether he received a reply.
Tommo was now in the Scrubs and Steve would shortly be trying out his new golf swing. After waiting three weeks, Jimmy Baker was eventually taken to an outside court where he was prosecuted, and seven days were added onto his sentence (it should have been seven years). He was also transferred to the Scrubs. Only Tony the Scot remained in our old cell.
I had now been in prison for forty-six days and forty-six nights—no time at all, really But in that time I had learned how to "hoist", how to steal cars, where to buy drugs and how to take them. I had several times been in considerable danger—yet somehow I had survived. Now I was being transferred to a prison where the inmates had proved themselves to be more trustworthy, so that less tight security was required. It was somewhere I would feel safer. And so, with a sigh of relief, I picked up my bag, walked out of my solitary cell and headed towards the centre of the prison for the last time.
I have always been a great believer in discipline. My favourite master at school, Mr Tomlinson who taught maths, had had a fearful reputation. He had enforced some odd rules (how could combed hair and clean shoes make us better at maths, we would ask), but even though he was a strict disciplinarian, he was fair. The rules in Wandsworth were not the problem. They were all understandable. It was the way they were enforced that led to the extreme bitterness felt by all inmates. I made my final circuit round the "altar" and watched the faces of the smirking "screws", and I realised that it would make no difference to redesign the prison unless they removed the "star", that potent symbol of a needlessly brutal regime.
As I stood in the reception area waiting to be transferred, the steel doors to the outside opened and a new batch of inmates arrived. There were about ten of them, some big, some small, but it was the last one in the line, a youngster, who turned to me.
"What's it like?" he asked.
Chapter 11
My New Home: Coldingley
~~
The morning I left Wandsworth—21 November 1995—was cold and damp, and the drive to HMP Coldingley in Woking was no joyful ride into the country. Slight though I was, I still found the narrow confines of the sweat box intensely claustrophobic. It must have been nightmarish for the other nine inmates being transferred with me.
A small window, black from the outside, allowed me a view of the countryside as we sped down the A3 and I was filled with longing when we passed the turn-off for Guildford, knowing that Bronya was at home no more than two miles away It was strange seeing the outside world again: the trees were leafless now, reminding me that the cycle of life continued whilst I was caught in a time capsule.
The whole journey was bizarre: such a familiar route, yet the instinctive feeling that I was going home was so far removed from reality. I was suffering from "conditioned response" and was relieved when our journey came to an end, the large electric doors at Coldingley rising like a huge portcullis, inviting us in. At the sight of the high fences topped with razor wire all thoughts of a less secure environment evaporated. I thought back to the last conversation I had had with an officer in Wandsworth.
"Got a bad reputation, Coldingley, one of the worst "C" catnicks in the country. But you'll get stuck here if you're not careful. Best get on while you can and try to get a transfer from there." Closet-compassion from a Wandsworth "screw"—heady stuff. Mind you, with over six hundred of them in Wandsworth there had to be one or two sympathetic ones.
In the courtyard outside reception, we were left to wait in the sweat box for over an hour before anyone came to see us and, from the outset, it was obvious the regime was more lax. During that hour I had more than enough time to study the structure of the prison buildings. Built in the early 1960s it looked more like a comprehensive school than a jail, and the ugly architecture would have raised Prince Charles's hackles.
Eventually we were uncaged, and the usual processing of inmates took place in reception—a strip search, followed by a "mugshot" photo session. I automatically adopted the facial expression I had used during years of prizegiving photos and, later, I found I was about the only inmate who didn't look like a mass murderer. Finally, we were issued with Coldingley clothes—jeans, sweatshirt and standard prison underwear—all of which were secondhand. I was, however, amazed to find that at Coldingley, in common with all other "C" cat jails, we were allowed to wear our own casual clothes. I couldn't see the point in asking for much to be sent in: a pair of extra jeans and a T-shirt would do me, but my own underpants would be a bonus.
After being counted, inspected,
and checked by the doctor rather in the manner of a herd of cattle, we were labelled "clean" and led away to "C" wing.
The accommodation quarters comprised four wings, each housing seventy inmates. "C" wing was the induction wing for new arrivals, and had originally been designed for "B" category security: I learned that officers used to be permanently stationed on each of its three landings. But since the prison had become a "C" cat, the officers had disappeared to an office on the ground floor, leaving each landing unsupervised. Unless there was an emergency, the officers never wandered the landings, and this had led to a complete absence of cleanliness and order. The landings were filthy: stale, mouldy food littered the floor, dustbins overflowed, and the windows were so dirty that almost no light filtered through. It made me think of a building that mutants might inhabit, years after a city had been "nuked".
On arrival I'd been delighted to receive a key to my cell, but when I was led to my new home on the second landing and left to unpack, I found that there was no keyhole on the inside of the door: when you were "at home", it remained open. Being locked up in my impregnable fortress in Wandsworth had had its advantages, and I immediately felt ill at ease. I was to live on this dark, stinking landing with twenty-three other inmates—but with no supervision. In Wandsworth you couldn't move without being scrutinised. At Coldingley there was more privacy, but it quickly became obvious that this had its dangers.
"Got any burn?" came a ridiculously low voice, and I turned round to see a huge black guy filling my doorway.
Wow! I felt cornered, nowhere to run, no officers to hear my screams. My panic had been activated by the doctor who had given us a brief lecture on our arrival.
"If you want condoms, they're free at the medical centre."
Well, no one was going to take me for a ride!
"Sorry, mate—got nuffin'" I said, putting on my best East End accent, wishing I had a convincing scar—and hoping he'd seen the film where the little guy is brilliant at Kung Fu. He lost interest and drifted off, and I realised that until we were locked up at night I would be exposed to all predators. For the next ten minutes defence became my top priority and I set about fortifying my cave.
I quickly worked out a method to block the door with my bed. I pulled a wooden hanger apart: with a nail at each end it looked perfectly innocent until wielded. I removed the batteries from my radio and lined them up on the window sill like "303" bullets so I could hurl them at intruders. It was the best I could do. My most effective line of defence, though, would be through using my ability to get on with people and finding some suitable thugs to protect me.
It was half-past four when I finished "digging my trench" and, with half an hour before tea, I laid out and checked my personal possessions. By now I knew that virtually nothing could be sent into a prison from the outside. Everything had to be bought on the premises but as I spent nearly every penny on phonecards I had virtually no possessions. I had even gone back to using prison soap which, I had decided, was the cause of my dry skin. The one apparent bonus of my new cell was the power socket on the wall, that enabled me to use my radio without batteries.
There was neither loo nor basin in the cell, but by the side of the power socket there were instructions for unlocking the door at night in order to use the toilet. If I pushed the marked button I would be put on a waiting list, eventually allowing the door to be electronically opened from downstairs. I would be allowed six minutes, after which I would have to be back at the cell, where I would have to press in a coded number to re-lock the door. Unfortunately, since the queuing time tended to be so unpredictable most of us would still have to use the bucket.
At five o'clock, armed with my plastic plate, knife and fork, I crept through the dark corridors and found my way down to the canteen where I had my first look at my cohabitants. At first I thought I had the wrong room—music was blaring out—but after seeing an inmate pass me with his plastic plate I entered.
"Yeah, welcome to the Bronx," said the grimacing inmate behind the counter. He wasn't kidding. At Coldingley over seventy per cent of the inmates were black and, for the first time in my life, I was part of a minority group. It didn't matter to me (we were all in the same situation), but it surprised me.
I was reminded of a book I had read, Bonfire of the Vanities, and, as I sat down to eat on my own, in the far corner of the room, I could sense the openly displayed hostility towards "whitey". At a table two along from me, there was a group of about eight black guys. They were all wearing the same clothes, almost like a uniform—huge baggy jeans, a string vest and each had a bandana wrapped round his head displaying the American flag. They looked like a gang from New York, not a group of inmates from a south London prison. On the table was a ghetto blaster, playing at full volume. I couldn't believe it was allowed. It seemed a complete reversal of the sadistic discipline I had encountered in Wandsworth.
* * *
By "bang up" that night (at eight-thirty) I had made two important discoveries. On each wing at the bottom of the stairs were two phones which you could use without having to book (assuming you had a phonecard). Unfortunately, with over seventy inmates sharing two phones, there was a permanent queue and often I had to wait well over an hour. However, to be able to phone home, any time outside working hours, was a luxury, and the best aspect of Coldingley.
My other discovery proved to be the bane of the prison. Whilst I was delighted that the cells contained a power socket, that night I was subjected to an unexpected source of torture. In Wandsworth only small radios had been allowed but many of the inmates at Coldingley had come from less strict dispersal prisons and had brought their huge ghetto blasters with them. The noise was excruciating. In the cell to the right of mine, a young northern kid played Heavy Metal—Anthrax—at full tilt. To the left of me, the dreadlocked Rasta boomed out "rave", and opposite, a member of the Bronx clan whom I had seen in the dining-room blasted "jungle" music to every corner of the landing.
The thin walls dividing the cells shut out none of the volume and, even when my radio was turned up full, I couldn't hear it. For me, the biggest joke on the wing was the food-spattered notice at the bottom of the stairs: "Anyone playing music too loud after midnight will be put on report." That first night I only managed to sleep after the walls stopped shaking—at two o'clock.
The next day heralded (at last) my first experience of induction, where the prison system was explained. First of all we were shown round the prison. The gym fascinated me most. It was minute and it resembled an old, decrepit village hall, with the ever-present badminton court surrounded by weight-lifting areas. The floorboards had gaping holes in them and, high above, the windows were either cracked or broken. I knew quite a bit about gyms—there were good ones and bad ones, but this one was a serious health hazard. A week later I was to read in the 1994 Prisoners Handbook that it was regarded as the worst in a British prison. I had to smile. In my sentence planning all I'd asked for was education and a gym. If this was the gym, I wondered what the education department consisted of.
Eventually we were taken to an office at the bottom of "C" wing, where our instructor assumed we had all been through induction before. I hadn't, and said so.
" "A" wing," he said, astounded when I told him where I'd spent the last couple of months. "You shouldn't have been there. They must be overcrowded." The only bonus I derived from hearing it again was that I shot to the top of the order of merit regarding "street cred". All the other inmates who had come from Wandsworth were from other wings, not "Vietnam", as my old home was referred to. From the looks cast at me by several inmates, I was being reassessed. I sat back, tried to look like an SAS veteran and gradually learned about the system.
When you travel from court you are sent to a dispersal prison, of which Wandsworth is one. Nearly all dispersal prisons are designed to "B" category security. The job of the prison is to assess the risk of an inmate's being violent and the likelihood of his trying to escape. This depends on police reports, previous co
nvictions and character references, but the system fails at the first hurdle. Officers are too busy to fill in crucial forms and often don't read up on the previous character of an inmate—which is disastrous for anyone who wants to turn over a new leaf and use their time in prison constructively. There is also no flexibility.
Once a prisoner is given a risk rating from "A" to "D", he enters a system of progression. After the dispersal prison nearly all are transferred at some point to a "C" category jail. Thus, because of the nature of the system, many of the most dangerous prisoners, initially assessed as "A", eventually reach a "C"-riskjail (even though the process might take twenty years).
At Coldingley there were thirty "lifers" who had progressed through each step and now found themselves in a lower-risk prison. Murderers, bank robbers, drug dealers, we had the lot at Coldingley, all mixed in together to make the most marvellous cocktail. At Wandsworth most of the inmates I had come into contact with were serving short sentences but some of the men at Coldingley were serving twenty-five years. This was indeed the "major" tour and "seniors" circuit!
Coldingley was an industrial prison with three main workshops—the laundry, metal shop and sign shop. Everyone was expected to work and, over the next few days, we had to prove our academic competence while we were assessed for work. To stay in the prison you had to be able to read and write (important with regard to safety in the workshops). It would have made sense to find that out before letting anyone come into the prison, but I came to realise that the paperwork from Wandsworth was so ineptly dealt with that no one could trust it. From our group we lost two because they could hardly spell their own names.
INSIDE (One Man's Experience of Prison) A True Story Page 10
