Part 17 (1/2)

DAY 198 - FRIDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2002

900 a man who has not yet celebrated his thirtieth birthday, but has been to jail eighteen tilar, who has and this is the important point no fear of prison For him it's a temporary inconvenience in his chosen career Because he has no record of violence or involves, he's rarely sentenced to more than sixtransferred to a D-cat, open prison NSC provides him with three meals a day, a room and the coo on stealing until he is caught again He will then be arrested, sentenced and return to NSC, the nearest D-cat to his home in Boston 20 He earns between fifty and a hundred thousand a year (no taxes), according to how many months he spends 'on the out' in any particular year

Mr Hocking (head of security) tells o before he can beat Greville the cat burglar, who left NSC last year at the age of sixty-three, declaring he now had enough to retire on

During a full-time career of crime, Greville was sentenced on thirty-one occasions (not a record) and preferred NSC, where he was always appointed as reception orderly within days of checking back in So professional was he at his chosen occupation that if there was a burglary in his area, with absolutely no trace of entry, fingerprints or any other clues, the local police immediately paid a visit to Greville's hoalow to live off his profits, and tend his garden And thereby hangs another tale, which Mr Hocking swears is true

Greville was the pri from a local museum A few days later, the police received an anony soarden A tea; they were there for five days, but found nothing

Greville later wrote and thanked the chief constable for the excellent job hisover his soil, particularly for the way they'd left everything so neat and tidy

230 pm I have my hair cut by the excellent prison barber, Gary (half a phonecard) I want to look smart for e day for every inmate

The hospital has its own allocated time because we require twenty neels, six sheets, twelve pillowcases and several different ite equipment every week

While the chief orderly, Mark (armed robbery, ten years), selects a better class of towel for the hospital, he tells e of clothes

This particular prisoner works on the farm, and never takes his clothes off frooes to bed He has a double roo to share a pad with him Mark wonders if he does it just to le roo to suffer that amount of discomfort just to ensure they were left alone

Before you ask, because I did, the Prison Service cannot force hihts

DAY 199 - SAturdAY 2 FEBRUARY 2002

924 aestion that a drug specialist visit the prison to givechildren in schools But Mr Berlyn goes one step further and tells ularly visits schools in East Anglia to tell schoolchildren why they wouldn't want to end up in prison, and it may be possible for me, once I've passed s first-hand If my sentence is cut, I would be allowed to visit schools i process after ery, when a very depressed-looking inht the crabs,' he says, his hand cupped around the top of his trousers

Sister unlocks the door to the surgery and lets him in He looks anxious, and Linda appears concerned He slowly unzips his jeans, in obvious pain, and places his hands inside

Linda and I stare as he slowly uncups his hands to reveal two small, live crabs, which he passes across to Linda She recoils, while I burst out laughing, aware that ill be the butt of prison humour for some weeks to come

'Oh my God,' says Linda, as she stares down at his unzipped jeans, 'I don't like the look of that I think I'll have to take a blood sample'

The in around his knees Honour restored, except that he has the last laugh, because it's the hospital orderly ( the two crabs back down to the sea

200 pht in the visitors' car park in possession of two graramramme will be converted into ten points, and each point will be made into three sales Each sale will be one-third heroin and two-thirds crushed paracetamol, which can be picked up any day fro to have a headache Each sale is worth 5, so the dealer ends up with 300 for two grammes, almost four times the market price

Some dealers are happy to remain in prison because they can make more money inside than they do 'on the out' The in another prisoner handed him a packet in the car park The head of security is aho the visitor was, but can't charge hiht in the act He also knohich prisoner the heroin was destined for, but he's also in the clear because he never received it

DAY 200 - SUNDAY 3 FEBRUARY 2002

500 am I rise early and write for two hours

200 pm My visitors today are h the preparations for my appeal on sentence, which are almost complete as both pieces of research on perjury and an attehteen h tariff for a first offender Chris bringsin the art world

400 pm At Club Hospital's Sunday afternoon tea party, David (fraud, schoolmaster) reveals that Brian (ostrich far released Brian is waking in the htened he won't make it back in time for the 7 pm check-in and John is stressed because he hasn't been able to find a job

600 pm Once the club members have left, I settle down to ift from William), I place the contents of a tin of Princes ham, two packets of Walkers crisps and an Oxo cube; hot water is then poured on top What a cos by Andrew Tyler, which is my set text for the week

The food is wonderful, the book harrowing

DAY 201 - MONDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2002

900 a lad from the north block, who only has teeks to serve of a three-month sentence, has been found in his roo frohtly built lad, whosand kicked into his face in those Charles Atlas advertisements I sahen I was a child He is taken to the hospital to be interviewed by Mr Berlyn, Dr Harris and sister behind closed doors He's certain to be placed on red suicide watch, with an officer checking on him every thirty minutes

Mr Berlyn tells me that they've never had a suicide at NSC because if a prisoner is that desperate, he usually absconds The real problem arises in closed prisons from which there is no escape There were seventy-three suicides in prisons last year and not one of them was at a D-cat

Just as Mr Berlyn leaves, the lad ets his bed reappears with a black bag containing two more sheets I supply hi even more helpless than the suicide case; you'd never think this was a men's prison

200 pm I watch four videos on the subject of heroin

I', videos and my dayto-day work as hospital orderly, but I still have no first-hand experience I go over to see David in the CARAT (Counselling, assess to letas the other participants agree, because I'll be the only one who isn't currently, and never has been, an addict

600 p rehab discussion in the CARAT office David asks the five other inmates if any of them object to my presence

They all seem pleased that I've taken the trouble to attend

David opens the discussion by asking if they feel that once they are released they'll be able to resist going back on drugs, and in particular heroin One of theain His relationshi+p with those he loves has been ruined, and he wonders if anyone will ever be willing to ee where he would steal froot his fix, and just before he was arrested, he needed four fixes a day to satisfy his addiction

The next participant says that his only thought on waking was how to get his first fix Once he'd begged, borrowed or stolen the 20 needed, he'd go in search of a dealer As soon as he'd got his half gramme of heroin, he'd run back to his house and, often with his wife and two children in the next rooe tablespoon, to which he would add water and the juice from any citrus fruit He would then stir the mixture until he had a thick brown liquid, which he would pour onto a piece of aluminium foil and then warh a straw One of the inmates butts in and adds that he preferred to sest kick cah then lifts the sleeve of his deniets difficult when there are no veins left to inject'

The one who so far hasn't said a word chips in for the first time He tells us that he's been off heroin for five weeks and still can't sleep, and what h the night

The dealer juht weeks, and then it gets better and better each day until you're back to normal'

I ask what he means by that

'Once you're an addict, you don't need a fix to ood, you need one just so you can return to normal That's when you beco, and the worse you are the more desperate you become to return to nor to talk about the problem in schools, you should start with the eleven year olds, because by fourteen, it's too late

In Scarborough, good-looking, well-broughtup, well-educated fourteen-year-old girls approach me all the time for their daily fix'

The last person to participate is another dealer, who claims he only dealt because the profits allowed hi to ten at night, hiswith a nonstop flow of requests from customers He assures roups that he's been off heroin for nearly seven ain I don't feel that confident after he adds that he can earn 1,000 a day as a seller He ends the session with a statement that takes me but no one else in the room by surprise

'Nearly all my friends are in jail or dead'

He's thirty-one years old

DAY 202 - TUESDAY 5 FEBRUARY 2002