The Loose Screw Page 25

  I was greeted on B-Wing with a certain distrust from the majority of staff, as they had all heard that Belmarsh was a 'soft nick' where staff treated prisoners with kid gloves. They seemed concerned that I was some sort of governor's grass, and it actually took some time for many of them to begin talking to me. One of the only officers that accepted me almost straight away was 'Hutch', who was in charge of the threes landing -my new designated place of work.

  To look at Hutch, you would probably categorize him as a 'right horrible cunt', which is how the inmates would describe a bad screw. His appearance did not reflect his nature, however. He was a fair man with a personality quite similar to mine. Don't get me wrong, he did not take any shit and he could get into a row if a prisoner took the piss out of him, but he was an even-handed man who commanded respect from the majority of inmates. Like me, they knew where they stood with him, and if we said we could not do something they knew we had genuine reasons and it was not just that we could not be bothered.

  I quickly got to know the inmates on the landing, in particular 'Sully' and 'H', the cleaners. Sully was in his thirties and was a keep-fit fanatic. He worked hard both on the wing and in the gym, where he was doing a course to qualify as a games coach. He passed all the relevant courses and, so far as I am aware, he secured himself a job in a sports centre on his release. Unlike many of the other prisoners who often found it hard to adjust to life outside and consequently ended up back inside, we never saw Sully again, and that was something that Hutch and I were really pleased about.

  H was an old hand and had done a lot of bird in his time. He knew the system better than most of the staff, but never used this knowledge to gain anything he was not entitled to. Most of the other prisoners respected him and he was good at resolving disputes with other inmates. If H told anyone that Hutch and I were okay, they never questioned his judgement and knew they could trust us. There were one or two officers who worked the opposite shift to Hutch and me that took a dislike to H and went out of their way to try to push him into breaking prison rules so that they could sack him and get him put in the seg. He was, however, too long in the tooth to fall for their mind games and knew he was winding them up even more by not taking the bait. He would, of course, tell Hutch and me all about any agro he had had when we came back on duty.

  It was not long before I was involved in my first incident on the wing, which occurred in the threes landing office. It involved a Welsh officer, Tim, who seemed to have a particular hatred for all inmates, and a young lad recently transferred from a northern jail. We accepted large intakes from jails around the country in an attempt to ease the growing overcrowding in Britain's prisons at the time, even though it meant we had to allocate three inmates to each cell.

  Tim took an instant dislike to this northern inmate, as he asked if he could make a phone call when he arrived on the wing at about eight o'clock one evening. This request was perfectly reasonable, as he was transferred without notice and his wife and small child were due to visit him the following morning at his old prison. He just wanted a minute to tell them not to waste their time and money, as well as to advise them about his new location. Tim made it clear that he was not going to allow this phone call, despite the fact that inmates on other landings were being given access to phones, which obviously upset the new prisoner. Although he expressed his frustration, he did not 'kick off' and he returned to his cell with no further argument.

  However, although he had not caused any trouble, his card had been marked by Tim who, for the next few days, shadowed his every move in an attempt to wind him up enough to have a go. The inmate showed remarkable self-restraint until he made a request to see a governor on application-one morning and handed it to Tim, who happened to be the officer on duty. It was general practice at the Scrubs at that time to rip up the majority of prisoners' applications, as they generally meant more work for the staff. Tim, however, did not tear up his request, as he saw another opportunity to use it.

  Tim summoned me to the office and told me he was "going to have that cunt" and that I just had to back up his story. The inmate came in and Tim immediately started to shout and scream at him, telling him he had a bad attitude. He got up from behind the desk and walked round the front to physically push the inmate. Finally, having had enough and in an attempt to protect himself, the inmate grabbed Tim. They grappled each other to the floor and both fell against the office door, effectively locking the three of us in the office. I pressed the alarm bell and attempted to separate Tim and the inmate, but they had got themselves wedged between the door and the desk, both being quite big lads. Eventually I managed to pull them apart and had to stand between them to prevent Tim from launching at the inmate again, as he was now going mad.

  The next problem I had was that, with the door now free to open, there was a horde of staff tearing down the landing to get a piece of the action in true Scrubs style. The first officers through the door were staff from the adjacent seg unit, who dived straight in. As soon as Tim said he had been assaulted, one of them smacked the inmate in the face and they both dragged him back down to the floor. I will give the lad his due: he did not go down easy, but he did not physically strike any of the officers concerned.

  He just kept saying that he was the one that had been assaulted. Eventually he was dragged screaming and under restraint to the seg where he was greeted by the reception committee, who would have given him a few digs to teach him that you cannot assault an officer in the Scrubs and get away with it.

  Tim and I, in the meantime, had to fill out our reports of the incident. He had already sorted out what he was going to say, and it was useless for me to try to say anything different, as he had three or four other officers willing to put on paper that they had witnessed the incident and confirm that he was attacked by the inmate without provocation. He also covered his back by claiming to have received injuries, such as muscle strain in his back, and entering this in the accident book. This was to ensure that the prisoner would receive maximum punishment on adjudication and that Tim could take a week or two off on the sick. On the adjudication, Tim produced a report from his doctor. He had taken three weeks off work and possessed paperwork from other staff confirming his version of events, so the inmate never stood a chance.

  This kind of cover-up was typical of the prison adjudication system, but at the Scrubs it was even more finely tuned. It was expected that an officer could call on another officer to confirm their version of an incident, and this practice was well known even by the governors. Prison adjudications have been likened to kangaroo courts, and this is certainly true in my experience, especially at the Scrubs.

  By Christmas I was beginning to get used to the regime on B-Wing and I had also sussed out which members of staff I could talk to. About a week before Christmas, I heard from my old mate Charlie when he sent me a letter and a card to the wing. He had been doing well on house block four until some Iraqis who had hijacked a plane arrived. Charlie is very patriotic and hates bullies and terrorism, so when these Iraqi terrorists began strutting about on the wing Charlie felt he had to step in. In typical Charlie style, he hijacked the

  hijackers and taught them a lesson while holding them hostage in his cell. Classic! Once again, Chaz, I've got to hand it to you.

  The arrival of this card and letter, plus a letter from Mr Outram regarding his recommendation that I should be put forward for a Kostler award for my work with Charlie, stirred up some unrest among certain other members of B-Wing staff. One or two of them showed their disgust that I had received correspondence from a prisoner, not least Charlie, who received such a brutal reception when he arrived at the Scrubs.

  My personal life had taken a dramatic turn at around this time, as I had recently been reunited with my childhood sweetheart, Natasha. I was at this stage living in my own flat near Uxbridge, and Natasha would drive over from Greenwich, where she was working two or three times a week. We enjoyed good ti
mes both in the flat and down the Heath Tavern, the local pub on the Uxbridge Road. I was really happy, but was growing to hate working as a prison officer more and more each day. I think meeting Natasha again reminded me who I was and how my personality did not suit the way I was being pressured to behave in the Prison Service.

  I still enjoyed a drink and had a funny night on the piss whilst on nights the week before Christmas. I had gone sick for a couple of nights because Natasha had come to stay, and when I returned on the Saturday I was told that I would be taking care of the lifers' hostel just outside the gates next to the officers' club -oh dear! My senior officer, himself a self-confessed pisshead, briefed me on what to do: "Just go and have a drink in the club until about half twelve, then go and count the lads and report the numbers to the control room, and then if it's still open go back to the club."

  I, of course, followed his instructions to the letter and fell out of the club at about three o'clock in the morning barely able to walk let alone count. I bounced through the hostel, going from one room to the other counting the inmates, who were cursing me from their beds. I reported sixteen inmates secure in the hostel to the control room -not bad seeing as there were only twelve housed there at the time; still, better too many than too few!

  I sat on the chair in the office and spilt a two-litre bottle of water, with which I was trying to sober myself up, all over the chair and myself. I decided that I had to attempt to dry the chair, so I took the base off it, together with the wooden frame, and found that it luckily fitted into the industrial drying machine in the hostel's laundry. For some reason the din of the wood-framed base banging around the metal drum of the dryer was the last straw for the already pissed-off inmates. Let's just say that three of the biggest and meanest-looking ex-murderers housed in the hostel were recruited by the others to 'persuade' me to take the chair out of the dryer.

  After about an hour or so's drunken sleep, I awoke and wandered into the kitchen to make a coffee. Strangely enough, the sudden lull in conversation by the tired-looking inmates and the look of 'we are going to kill you' in their eyes made me lose my appetite for coffee and I slipped away quickly and quietly. Instead, I went home to catch up on some sleep, checking I wasn't being followed and locking the flat door firmly behind me. I woke some hours later at around dinnertime and remembered I had to drop an application form for a transfer back to Belmarsh into the personnel department.

  Once I had done this, I called into the club only to be greeted by the words "That's him" as someone pointed me out to the hostel senior officer, who didn't look very happy. After hearing how he had spent the morning listening to complaints by a string of inmates who greeted him in the form of a queue outside his office that morning, I decided to leave and return to the neutral ground of the Heath Tavern. I spent a few hours in there sitting at the bar alone with my thoughts about how I was becoming tired of the routine at the Scrubs. The lack of time I could spend with Natasha was getting to me and I hoped I would get my transfer approved as soon as possible. In fact this simple request once again proved too difficult for the 'brains' behind the Prison Service to action without problems.

  Depressing is the only way to describe my day-to-day working life at that stage as I waited for news of my transfer request. I was constantly battling to swim against the tide in terms of the attitude of the majority of staff towards their treatment of all inmates. It was clear to me that the Scrubs was too set in its way to accept change or an officer with different work ethics. Perhaps they were scared what might come out. At times it became so difficult that even I thought it might be easier just to fall in line with everyone else and act as they did, but my conscience would never allow it.

  However, on Valentine's Day 1998 something happened that confirmed to me that it was worth persevering with my methods of working. I had arranged to meet Natasha after work to take her to the Valentine disco at the staff club. This was a bit of a private joke between us, as many years previously I had taken her to a country and western evening at Bexley mental home with my old army mate, Kia, as his sister and mum both worked there as psychiatric nurses. Natasha has never let me forget this romantic gesture, especially the bit when John Wayne chased her down the corridor in a wheelchair fully equipped with the Stetson and pair of six-guns whilst returning from the toilet!

  Anyway, back to the Scrubs. I had just walked from B-Wing to the gate to deposit my keys when one of the gate staff informed me in their usually jolly style that I was to return to the wing immediately. My protests that I had prior engagements were ignored, as whatever was going on had caused a lockdown, meaning that no one could either leave or enter the prison anyway. I therefore had no choice but to return to the wing and see what was happening. On my arrival I was told to report to the threes landing office where I found the duty governor and senior wing management, who cut their conversation dead as soon as they saw me in the doorway.

  I was informed that an inmate on the threes landing had barricaded himself in his cell and was threatening to harm himself and smash up the cell, and that he was refusing to come out until he had spoken to me. I walked down the landing to the area outside the cell to find about a dozen staff fully kitted out in riot gear, goading and tormenting the inmate through the door with threats of what was going to happen to him when they got hold of him for fucking up the wing routine -nice one boys! My first request was that they retreated to the landing office to remove the intimidation factor from an already tense situation. After some hesitation and protests from many of the squad's members, the governor reluctantly ordered them to retire to the office and I began talking to the inmate.

  He had only been in the prison for about three or four days, and I noticed immediately a nervous fear in his voice. After ten minutes or so of my persuading him that the riot teams, which he described as 'the pack of wolves', were out of earshot and no one was taping or listening to our conversation, he began to calm down slightly. He agreed to take down enough of the barricade to allow me to gain entry and talk to him face to face, so long as I guaranteed that the riot teams would not storm the cell. I relayed this to the duty governor, who reluctantly allowed me to carry on. I must admit that I still could not guarantee that they would not storm the cell over me as soon as I gained entry, but it was a risk I had to take -not least because I was now keeping Natasha waiting and that was something I feared more than any riot team trampling over my head.

  I knew the inmate in question was no threat, and as soon as enough of the barricade was removed I gained entry. I spent approximately half an hour talking to him about why he felt this course of action was necessary rather than talking to an officer. I should have known the answer to that one. He stated that he had been told by one of the cleaners that I was the only officer he could trust and that he was in fear of his life so he could not go to anyone else. It turned out that he had received threats of serious injury and persecution from a group of staff on the wing via a message from an inmate employed on the hotplate. Basically, he was told that the staff didn't like him and would make his life hell by victimizing him. He seemed genuinely in fear of his life and felt the action he had taken was the only way to avoid reprisals.

  After he had told me this, I informed him that all I could do was transfer him to the rule 43 unit for his own protection, albeit against the staff rather than other inmates. Most inmates do not like this option, as rule 43 also houses the sex offenders and there is a danger that you could be mistaken for one of them, but this lad was so convinced that if he stayed on the wing he would be seriously injured or killed that he felt he had no other option. The problem was, he would not name the inmate messenger or the staff involved, if indeed he knew who they were at that stage. I knew that this would impede any subsequent investigation that I could initiate into these allegations; in short, the intimidation factor of these bully squads would prove enough, once again, to avert justice being done.

  All I could do at that s
tage was promise him safe passage off the wing and onto the 43 unit and a guarantee that I would submit a report of what he had told me to the governor on that unit the following morning. I knew, however, that it would be taken no further and that any follow-up on my part would fall on deaf ears, and that by the morning the whole incident would be forgotten and the staff involved would be triumphant in the fact that they had got the inmate removed from their wing and would be free to move on to their next victim. All I had to do was persuade the duty governor to allow us safe passage from B-wing to the 43 unit without the overzealous riot teams jumping us halfway down the landing.

  Permission was granted and I escorted the lad to the unit without incident, albeit with the riot teams close on our heels spouting threatening remarks in an attempt to keep the intimidation going. Once he had been delivered safely to the unit, I was able to leave and attend the Valentine disco, albeit a couple of hours late. We did not stay long, however, as word had obviously spread quickly about the incident. Let's just say that my ears were burning slightly and I could feel eyes glaring at me from various groups of officers around the club.

  This incident confirmed two things to me: one, that I must be doing something right in the way I carried out my duties to gain that sort of trust from a very scared young man; and two, that I was never going to be accepted by the staff at the Scrubs and would always be an outsider. Thankfully, I did not have to suffer the backstabbing and dirty looks for much longer, as not long after that particular incident I received an official letter from Belmarsh's personnel department, giving me a transfer date that was about six weeks away.