Every day I came to court dressed up smart. See this is how it works, lemme tell you—
You have to make it look like you don’t belong in the dock, like suttin must have gone wrong to land you in this place. A suit and tie is the first step. I know bare man who come court in a suit and tie but they’ll add things like a fitted cap or sunglasses or they’ll pull a gold chain out and have it hanging over their shirt collar. I’ve even seen mandem rocking iced-out bracelets and Rolexes and silk Versace shirts, when the case is for trapping and they’re planning to argue that they don’t live that lifestyle at all, don’t even have enough p’s to pay child support, even claiming they’re on benefits. Some of these man have no sense. Think it’s a movie or suttin. You have to make sure you never drop slang when you’re answering questions in the dock, have to watch how you pronounce words, have to talk like— you know what I’m saying. Don’t come like some bad breed, don’t come like you’re dangerous innit, coz at the end of the day people will see what they wanna see. So I let my hair grow out and I wore a smart blue shirt and black trousers. Not gonna lie though, I was rocking my favourite black and white Air Maxes coz I figured no one’s gonna see my creps while I’m standing in the dock.
I go into court with my barrister at about 11 a.m. There’s all sorts of discussions going on between him and the prosecution, moving about in their wigs and black gowns while my solicitor stands to the side without saying shit. I swear, getting a good duty solicitor is a myth. Take my first solicitor on this ABH case. She never even bothered to read the case file. When she asked me if there was anything I wanted to discuss I was like didn’t you notice the bullshit witness statement where a man described me as light-skinned of West Indian origin with dark Afro hair? For a start I was wearing my doggy-ear cap the whole time so how da fuck could he see my hair? But even more ridiculous was the description of me being light-skinned of West Indian origin. These d-low racists. Soon as they see aggression and hear some road talk they assume it must be a black yout. I’ve been getting this kind of shit from white people for as long as I’ve been on the roads; I must be mixed race, I must be half black, feds saying are you half Jamaican? Mocking the way that I chat whenever I get arrested. All just a reflection of their instinctive prejudice towards anything in which they don’t recognise themselves, their way of doing, being, thinking. Anyway. How da fuck can my solicitor have all these witness statements for months and she never noticed that bullshit? Pure fuckery. Not long after that meeting I changed solicitors.
So anyway, the judge comes in, everyone stands up and then it turns out that the victim isn’t even there to give evidence. The judge says it’s ridiculous, this case has dragged on for more than a year and a half without getting anywhere, in the interest of the court’s time I won’t adjourn the matter any further. Does the Crown Prosecution Service offer any further evidence? The prosecution lawyer says no further evidence and the judge says I direct a formal not guilty verdict to be entered, will the defendant rise. I’m like rah that was quick. Two women in suits with bitter lemon-rind faces stand up and say we’re from the Probation Service. Mr Krauze has continuously breached his community order, hasn’t attended probation meetings and has failed to do community service. The judge says these are very serious allegations and then he adjourns the court session for lunch.
I could never be fucked with community service. Hours of pointless work with other doughnuts, coz let’s face it, if you get caught or you fuck up and get sentenced to community service, you’re a bit of a doughnut. I won’t go as far as calling myself a wasteman but let’s be real; serious criminals get locked up coz they’re seen as a danger to society, a threat to the rule of law. Community service is a slap. You’re a nuisance, a mosquito. You won’t toe the line like everyone else so here is 180 hours of unpaid work that you have to do. That’s what I get for never getting caught for any of the serious shit I’ve been doing. Just minor stupidness like carrying a shank or possession of cannabis or resisting arrest.
There was this one work placement I did with an ex-policeman as our supivisor that was good. He’d let us bun zoots in the morning while he read a newspaper and then he’d take us cinema coz he had a link there who’d let us in for free. The film would finish by lunchtime and then he’d let us go home and mark us down as having done the full seven hours of work. We never had to paint no railings or any of that bullshit.
So I go back into the courtroom after lunch, the probation officers start listing all the breaches and the judge says it is clear that you have committed a serious breach of your probation, especially taking into account that you had a six-month suspended sentence, but it’s too late in the day to sentence you, so I’m remanding you in custody to be brought back to court tomorrow.
Two twos I’m in the sweatbox, heading to HMP Wandsworth. The tinted windows turn the summer evening into a burning red gloom, as if the sun has turned into a red giant, which I remember from this picture book I used to read as a child. It’s what happens when a star is dying and it expands and engulfs other planets close to it.
HMP Wandsworth – Wanno – is an old Victorian prison, dark, brooding, solid; something cruel and sad about the bricks and blank windows. I get booked in at the reception desk.
They take a photo of me that gets printed onto a label and stuck on a green piece of card; my ID and what I really mean to them now, which is number XF9367. So now XF9367 gets strip-searched behind a little curtain with one big screw wearing purple rubber gloves watching me the whole time. I get naked in front of him and he orders me to turn round, lift my balls, squat and cough, coz if you’ve got anything plugged a cough will usually make it fall out or part of it will drop down. At least I get to keep my own garms since I’m on remand. One of the screws gives me a bedroll and I get taken with all the other new arrivals to E Wing, which is the first night wing.
All I’ve had to eat in the last twelve hours is a sandwich. My stomach feels like it’s stuck to my back. We are told to go into the servery and get some food. Mashed potato. Corned beef. Cup of water. Everyone sits down at a table in the middle of the wing – chairs all moulded metal attached to the table so no one can fling them about – and we start eating. One nitty with wet eyes and wax skin dripping off a skull face sits opposite me, shoving mashed potato with grimy fingers into his mouth. Couple seats down there’s three black akhis – on this Muslim gang ting – rocking grey prison tracksuits, one of them with a massive pink gash down the side of his face, raw, fresh from being gunbucked by armed police. One of his eyes is red with blood. The three of them are starting eight-year sentences for kidnapping. There is a deaf guy who shrinks away from everything, even the few people tryna help him understand wagwan.
Once we finish eating, we get banged up in pairs in one-man cells that have bunk beds in them due to overcrowding. My celly is one white yout from Essex. We spend the evening watching TV and smoking burn. He tells me about his chick who’s got two youts for him and how he can’t wait to see them. He also has a daughter by his previous chick and he’s got her name tattooed on his back and the new girlfriend’s name tattooed on his neck.
Night pushes against the window, filling the gaps between the bars. It hits me that I could get the full six months suspended sentence dropped on me tomorrow so I sit down with some prison paper and a pencil, and write a letter to the judge using my most eloquent English, explaining how I’m studying at uni and a custodial sentence will ruin my future chances, I regret all my actions, I’m truly and sincerely sorry, all that shit.
The next day I’m back in court. Before I know it, the judge is about to sentence me. My solicitor hasn’t said shit, hasn’t even mentioned that I’m starting my third year of uni in less than two months. I ask him to give the judge my letter. The judge reads it and says you are clearly a very articulate young man, but you did not neglect to fulfil the terms of your probation, you wilfully failed to do so. Then he sentences me to three months. Calm. I’ll only have to do a month and a half, I’ll be
out in time for the third year of uni – the letter worked – and then the judge says take him down. I get handcuffed to a court guard and he takes me downstairs to put me in the sweatbox.
Wandsworth is way over capacity so I spend the first night of my sentence in Catford police station, nothing to do except go to sleep. In the morning I get told I’m going to HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire.
Not gonna lie, the journey there is like some prolonged way of dying inside. We get put in the Serco van after chips and beans for breakfast, then driven to Mile End to pick up some people from Bow Magistrates’ who just got sentenced. We sit inside our cubicles for an hour, sweating, stiff, waiting for the van to leave. I read all the names scratched into my window. We’ve been locked in for at least three hours. Then another few hours in London traffic, nothing to eat the whole time, just little tins of water pushed under the door to each cubicle. No space to stretch my legs, the new Dizzee Rascal track, Dance Wiv Me, banging out on the radio non-stop – what a piss-take. Through the tinted windows, the world carries on. Then countryside.
By the time the van gets to HMP Bullingdon, we’ve been in the sweatbox for like six hours. It is early evening and I swear it’s against human rights or some shit but I ain’t got time to pity myself. There’s nothing I can do to change the situation, I can’t go back in time, I can’t suddenly decide that it’s too much for me, that I wanna go home, that I’m not cut out for this or any of that moist talk. So rather than getting all nervous – like oh my days man’s going pen, what am I gonna do, what’s gonna happen, what if this and that happens, what if someone tries to rape me in the shower or someone tries to cut my face while I’m getting dinner – rather than all that, just accept the reality. If you can understand that, you can survive anything. Even life.
When I step out of the van I’m so relieved to be out of that box, to stretch my arms and legs and stand upright, that I’m actually glad I’ve arrived. Bullingdon is a big modern prison in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside. Sandy concrete with brown corrugated roofs, high walls, barbed wire everywhere. Straight into induction. Clothes taken away apart from boxers and socks. Property bagged up. Strip-search. Naked. Shiver. Squat. Cough. Blue T-shirt and grey tracksuit. Bedroll. Smoker’s pack. Breakfast pack with two teabags because tea is a human right in England. Get put into a general holding cell with next mandem sitting on benches.
Walking in I’m greeted by one older prisoner who’s doing the induction for new arrivals; hench brudda with gold teeth all through his top row, puts out his hand and as we shake we both say I’m Gabriel—
Nah don’t lie, he says.
Swear down, I say.
My name’s Gabriel, he says.
So is mine, I say and show him my prison ID from Wandsworth.
Jesus fucking Christ. Come sit over here he says, grinning gold as we sit down on one of the benches and start talking. He’s doing life for murder. I’m not into superstitions and alladat, but I swear down this must mean suttin. It’s a sign, know what I mean? Like how many mandem do you know called Gabriel? I bet you don’t even know one, let alone two man banged up in the same pen to rahtid.
In the holding cell. Birmingham brer well over six foot comes in rocking a yellow tracksuit, transferred from another prison. Eyes moving about like they don’t trust his own face. Says he’s from the Burger Bar Boys, them man that are always doing mad shootings in Brum. Says he’s looking for his bredrin who’s in here for popping his own sister. Says the brer’s sister try snitch on her brother for a shooting and man don’t tolerate snitching. Next young brudda opposite me rocking Muslim prayer beads, talking like I swear he’s from South London. Calls everyone cuz. I ask him and he says his name’s Hollywood. Says he’s from Lewisham. I say I’m Snoopz. I’m from Kilburn. We smoke a burn while we wait.
Couple next man come into the holding cell. Some Muslim akhis who know Hollywood. One of them is a white brer who sits down next to us. Hollywood says what you in for akh? The white brer says he robbed one Asian woman in Slough for her kettle and while he was tryna rip off the watch, the woman started reciting the shahada, which is the prayer Muslims recite before they die. I swear down akh, I thought she was Sikh, it was too late to stop, if I’d realised she was a sister I’d never have done it, and Hollywood laughs and says nah that’s fuckery akh.
Some next older brer comes in to sweep the holding cell. He has grim reapers tattooed on both arms. Lift your legs up boys, he says as he sweeps under the benches. Fuckinell, I sound like my mum. I’d make a great mother I would, he says and walks out with the broom over his shoulder.
My name gets called – XF9367 Krauze – and I pick up my bedroll and smoker’s pack and the Burger Bar brer gets called and we follow two screws out. We get taken onto B Wing. It’s near 9 p.m. and the wing is disintegrating in darkness. It is lined with blue steel cell doors all the way down on either side and there are white metal staircases leading up to two more levels of the same thing. Between the balconies on each level, I see wire netting, there in case someone gets dashed over the railings or someone tries to throw themselves off one of the levels. Shit. I’m actually in big man prison now, it’s gonna be a whole next experience. Whatever. Man will ride it out either way.
BEHIND THE DOOR
JUST TRYING TO write about prison feels dead, like I’m giving it something it doesn’t deserve. You don’t realise how much life there is in a blade of grass, in a shop, in a pavement, in the smell of fumes and dirty streets, until you’re in pen where it’s all just these lifeless surfaces that aren’t even worth describing and so many lives on pause, removed from the outside world.
I get taken to the top balcony, known as the threes and the screw unlocks a door and says in here. The door to cell B333 slams behind me.
The room is just a TV screen flickering blue in darkness. It’s a proper two-man cell with one bed on the left and another on the right. From the right a voice says turn on the light mate. And that’s how I meet Brutus. White brer, shaved head, scar like a crescent moon under his eye, bulldog shoulders. Brutus is facing eight years IPP for armed robbery. He is thirty-two, he’s been in bin several times before and he’s got bare family on the wing. He tells me stories about ordering three-course meals in expensive restaurants with bottle after bottle of Cristal, then dussing without paying the bill and pulling out a machete on waiters who tried chasing after him. I tell him stories about doing moves in London and I do shit celebrity impressions that crack him up until he’s laughing his head off. After a couple days we’re getting on like old friends. He sees one of my drawings and says Snoopz do one for me and above it write Brutus, Armed and Dangerous.
Press-ups on the concrete cell floor. I show Brutus a trick with the whitener that they give us for our tea. Open the packet, start shaking it out over the sink, spark the lighter and as the whitener hits the flame it goes whoosh into a little fireball and he says fuckinell that’s what they’re giving us to put in our tea yeah? Wasps fly into the cell. We chase them around and kill them but more come later. The breakfast pack is a tiny portion of prison cornflakes with long-life milk that you can’t even keep cool because it’s summer and there’s a little packet of jam to mix in but that’s about it. Lunch comes at 11.30 and it is truly deadout. One time it’s just a bowl of soup and two slices of bread. Dinner is at 4.30 p.m.; rice and chicken or some kinda stew, and an apple if you’re lucky enough not to be at the end of the queue, by which time they’ve run out of fruit. Soon as I can, I start trading my burn with next mandem on the wing for crisps and Mars bars and cans of tuna.
I’m on twenty-three-hour bang-up so I only get fifteen minutes in the exercise yard in the morning, walking around with Brutus, then forty-five minutes out of my cell for association in the afternoon when I can have a shower. When I go back into my cell and the screw locks the door behind me there are wasps in the cell again so I kill them.
I’m bare tight with one next white brer on the wing called Solo. He’s only twenty-one, the youngest o
n the wing, sent from a YOI because he shanked his cellmate in the neck with a chicken bone. The screws were doing the whole gladiator ting with the mandem there. One day they put Solo into a cell with some brer who had beef with him. Fam I woke up in the night with the brer on top of me, strangling me with the cord from the kettle, says Solo. Lucky I’d been sharpening this chicken bone from several days before. I cheeksed it when I got moved into the cell with him and put it under my pillow before going to sleep. As he was choking me, I pulled out the chicken bone and shanked him eight times in his face and neck. Fam there was blood all over me, all over the bed, all over the ceiling and walls and they charged me with attempted murder. The brer almost died, but I pressed the buzzer and the screws came and took him to hospital coz I didn’t wanna catch a M for that shit. If it hadn’t been for that chicken bone I’d be finished, says Solo as we jam on the landing outside our cells during association. Solo isn’t allowed to share a cell with anyone.
Solo tells me the Birmingham brer’s been asking him if he’s got p’s on his account for canteen where you can buy extra food and other things once a week. Fam, fuck this brer, I say. He’s a big guy, we might just have to rush him in the showers and poke him up or suttin, blatantly tryna come like he can bully man, and Solo says I’m down fam, whenever you’re ready.
The next day, Solo comes out of his cell in the morning and pulls his top up to show me he’s padded himself all over with newspapers tightly rolled up and packed around him. He says this will at least stop a shank from going deep in man, fuck that Burger Bar yout, if he tries talking shit to man I’m telling him to suck his mum.
Who They Was Page 23