The Loose Screw

by Jim Dawkins

  13

  HOUSE BLOCK THREE

  By late 1995 I was unable to avoid doing a tour of duty on the house blocks and soon found myself thrown onto the worst one. As I mentioned before, house block three was given the name Beirut due to the chaos that reigned within its landings. The house block's primary role was to act as an induction wing and as a result we took all inmates straight from the courts and police stations. We also seemed to be a dumping ground for any inmate that had problems on the other house blocks. With such a mixture one thing was certain -that amongst its population house block three had some of the worst inmates you could find in a prison. Many were hardened drug users and as a result spent the first few days 'clucking', or withdrawing, from the various drugs that they were hooked on. If anything should be used to educate young people on the pitfalls of drug abuse, then it should be the sight of these pathetic souls sweating and shivering for days unable even to get off their beds.

  The house blocks were a rich haven for drug pushers, who were normally the stronger and most well-known inmates. They took every opportunity to prey on newly arrived addicts, knowing that in their desperate state they could sell them any cocktail of drugs, which they mixed with anything from sugar to powdered bleach to increase their supply. Heavy debts would be run up in this way, debts that many inmates were unable to pay when called upon to do so.

  The ones that could not pay would normally have to repay the debt by being recruited into the pushers' little empire and carrying out smuggling operations by getting their visitors to bring drugs into the prison. By getting others to do this meant that the pushers themselves rarely risked getting caught and getting time added onto their sentence. Drugs in prison are a major problem and one that most inmates that are against their use will agree is ruining day-to-day life in our prisons.

  I think it would be fair to say that no one minded the inmates having the odd joint of cannabis after lock-up, but there are very few that actually encourage the use of harder drugs such as heroin. Apart from the obvious dangers of AIDS through shared needles, a man on heroin is very unpredictable and, if you are locked in a cell with such a person when he goes into one, you have not got much of a chance of defending yourself. There is also the well-known fact that heroin addicts who are desperate for a fix will do or sell anything. This could mean he would steal your personal effects or even be persuaded to seriously injure or kill someone in return for some drugs.

  The presence of such addicts not only made life unpleasant for the majority of other inmates and staff; but also they became easy prey for the bullies, amongst both the inmates and staff. It was generally believed that you could easily get away with giving a prisoner high on heroin or crack a good kicking and he would not remember a thing about it when the drugs wore off. Whilst I personally do not agree with drugs, I disagree even more strongly with bullies and do not see that just because a man is on drugs it gives someone else the right to give him a kicking.

  I remember one such heroin addict who was suffering so badly from withdrawal symptoms that he was almost unconscious on his bed most of the time. One officer who I worked with at the time thought this man was a great plaything and took me into the cell to show me his new toy. At first I thought he was just amused by the lethargic nature of the inmate when he asked him to get out of bed. When the inmate could not get off his bed the officer told me to watch and then proceeded to do something that I could not believe I was seeing. He got up onto the bed and began to kick the inmate straight in the head several times with the full weight of his heavy boots. The inmate could do nothing in his current state apart from cry out in pain and take the kicks. This officer thought it was a great game and assured me that the inmate would never get an assault allegation to stick because he was a heroin addict.

  I was horrified and grabbed the officer, threw him against the back wall of the cell and slapped him right across the head. I warned him that the next time I even heard of him carrying out this sort of behaviour I would kick him in the head a few times. I then told him to piss off and helped the inmate to the treatment room to get his head looked at. I did not mention the officer's actions purely because I do not like to grass people up, so I told the nurse that he had fallen off his bed. I later told the inmate that if any officer ever treated him that way again he should come and find me and I would deal with them my own way.

  There were one or two good officers working on the house block. My old pal Brian had started at the same time as me and, as usual, always made me laugh with his anti-management attitude. Unfortunately, like all areas in every prison, there was a large element of the bully boys who loved nothing more than to hear the sound of their own voices as they screamed orders around the landings. I soon discovered why so many members of staff preferred to work on the house blocks rather than the unit.

  It was a well-known fact that because the unit housed such high-profile prisoners the staff who worked there never got involved with using the restraint techniques on any of them except in very rare incidents. The general guideline was that any disagreement between the inmates and the management was dealt with, wherever possible, without the use of force. You may think, as I do, that this method should be practised in all situations regardless of who the prisoner is. The reality, however, is that the staff on the house blocks used force at the first opportunity and even went around the landings in groups looking for any excuse to use their restraining methods on a prisoner who might be provoked into an argument with them.

  Some staff loved every chance they had to use force and used the opportunity to inflict as much pain on the inmates as possible. The louder an inmate screamed, the more respect the officers involved seemed to get from the large crowd of staff who always quickly gathered on the scene to witness such incidents. It was no secret that many officers carried on in this way not only because they loved the feeling of power but also simply because they knew they could get away with it.

  Most of the inmates who received such treatment were hand picked because it was felt that they would not have the chance of proving that they were struck first. The staff would get together and, often with the help of senior management, would draw up a watertight story of the events in which they would always blame the inmate for starting the incident.

  This sort of behaviour made the job of a decent officer even more difficult. Not only did these bullies disrupt the regime of the house block and alienate the prisoners from us, when a whistle or alarm bell sounded you were never sure if it was a genuine incident or one set up by a member of staff. Although you knew this went on, there was little or nothing that could be done to stop it. In most cases the prisoner was too fearful of reprisals to contest the officers' version of events, and if another member of staff tried to protest he would receive a lecture on how it may not do his or her career much good to drop fellow officers in it.

  Once again, I tried to rise above this way of carrying out your duties and began to try to establish a good working relationship with the good officers and the more permanent inmates such as the cleaners. I began to earn respect from many of the lads on my spur and, as Christmas approached, I was confident that I had established a good regime for both them and myself. However, my methods did not meet the approval of some of the other staff, who would stab me in the back with comments that I was a 'care bear' and too soft. They could not have been further from the truth and all the lads knew that, although I was easy going, they could not take the piss out of me.

  I appreciated all the hard work the cleaners and tea boys did and always rewarded them with an extra shower, the chance to get on the phone or even half an ounce of tobacco now and again. They trusted me enough to let me in on the fact that they had begun to brew a batch of hooch for the Christmas period and offered to let me taste it when it was ready. I was not sure whether this was a great honour or if I was just to be their guinea pig, as some of that stuff can stop a man's heart with one mouthful. I dec
lined the offer but then made the decision that as I was working on Christmas Day I would bring in my small hip flask with some brandy to give them a drop in their coffee. I took a serious risk in doing so as not only could I lose my job and be charged with smuggling contraband into the prison, but also there was always the possibility that the inmates would use this gesture to bribe me in the future. I was, however, fully confident that the select few I had chosen to do this for could be trusted one hundred per cent and, true to their word, I never had any comebacks from any of them. I had to laugh later in the day though when they were all staggering around half pissed and the other members of staff were going mad trying to find out where the hooch was stashed, a secret that I also kept to myself.

  To be fair, Christmas Day was run on a very relaxed regime and we even organized games and competitions between staff and inmates. Each inmate received a bonus of some extra chocolate bars and tobacco and the kitchen laid on a good turkey dinner. The number one governor even made a brief and rare appearance on the house block to wish the staff and inmates a Merry Christmas.

  After a month or two, I had forgotten all my fears of working on a house block and had become happy carrying out my duties there. We had our fair share of fun and games as well as our fair share of nutters who passed through our doors. One group of inmates we received shortly after Christmas was a gang of about eight Chinese triads on remand for kidnap and arson. These boys were scary and wasted no time in establishing their authority amongst the other inmates. They spoke very little English, or so they made out, and the first incident we had involving these budding Bruce Lees occurred moments after their arrival on the house block. They had been brought up from reception and placed in the holding room with about half a dozen other inmates to await allocation to a vacant cell.

  Minutes after they had arrived we heard an almighty commotion coming from the holding room. When we arrived we saw the Chinese beating the shit out of one of the other inmates in the room. We opened the door and intervened and all the Chinese bowed politely to us and retreated to the back wall of the room. It turned out that one of their number had wanted to go to the toilet and so had just pissed in the corner of the room. This had disgusted the other inmates and the one who had just got the kicking had been nominated to vent the feelings of the rest of the group.

  We removed the injured man and made the Chinese inmate mop up his pool of urine. Satisfied that the incident had been dealt with, we locked them back up again. Not five minutes later we heard someone frantically banging on the window of the holding room. When we investigated, the inmate who was banging shouted through the glass that the Chinese were tooled up and ready to kick off. This was obviously a far more serious threat to us and the other inmates in the room than the previous incident. The fact that a knife had been mentioned meant that we would have to tackle the incident wearing riot gear and using shields. The use of such equipment was standard procedure when dealing with armed inmates should a peaceful settlement be unsuccessful.

  As we donned our overalls, helmets and protective leg gear, Governor Outram began to use his powers of persuasion, which he had successfully executed when Charlie had been given the news of his setback on the unit. This was a difficult task even for him, as the language barrier severely slowed down the negotiations and we could not afford to wait for a suitable interpreter to be called in.

  Eventually Outram took the unusual decision to be the first to enter the room without any protective clothing but closely followed by those of us that now formed the four three-man riot teams. You may think this was a foolish decision, but had we rushed in with guns blazing the Chinese inmates who were armed may have had a chance to injure some of the other inmates or some of us before we could disarm and restrain them all. With Outram leading the way in a non-aggressive approach he hoped to minimize casualties on all sides.

  The plan worked and, whether it was down to his approach or the sight of the riot teams, luckily we did not have to remove any inmates aggressively as they surrendered their home-made knives and walked out peacefully. This particular gang caused a few problems during their stay with us, as I have already mentioned. The main thing they would practise was intimidation of other inmates by preying on them in the recess or in the phone queue. They met their match though when a large gang of Jamaican yardies arrived on the house block and made it quite clear that they would not stand for any nonsense from the Chinese.

  That is the way prison life goes. It is a constant battle to survive and it really is survival of the fittest or hardest. As an officer you have to learn to judge each and every incident individually and try to act accordingly depending on that particular situation. This may mean that you turn a blind eye to certain things or you may have to steam in to help an inmate who is in trouble.

  Whatever the Prison Service claims, I stand by the belief that the inmates run the landings and wings of our prisons. The most successful way to run a prison is to find a happy medium where the inmates and staff can work together. There are very few prisoners in the system that go out of their way every day to cause disruption, and the majority of the ones I have witnessed doing so have all had very good reasons. How many of you would smash up your living room and destroy your television just for the fun of it?

  When a prisoner gets frustrated over not getting a valid explanation to a certain problem, the main way that he can get heard is by smashing up his cell. I have witnessed many, many officers refuse to speak to an inmate and forcibly lock him up to get rid of the problem. They then ignore the cell call bell that inmates use to get a member of staff, and sit and wait until the prisoner gets so frustrated and angry that he starts to smash things up. This then gives those officers who love to wind up inmates the 'valid' excuse to get on their riot gear and go into the cell to remove the inmate by force.

  To many members of staff it is part of their daily routine to play such mind games and ultimately get 'hands on' a prisoner before taking him down to the segregation unit and nicking him for assault on staff and damaging prison property. Both these charges are considered very serious and can result in the inmate receiving many days added to his sentence as well as weeks spent in isolation. This sort of behaviour only helps to breed hatred towards the staff by the inmates and can send a man who just wants to do his bird and get out into a deep black hole that can be very difficult to get out of.

  By about January 1996 I had begun to find it increasingly difficult to work with many of my fellow officers and felt under pressure more and more each day to help them cover up some of their acts of brutality or false accusations against some inmates. I was being talked about in the staff room more and more and was beginning to find it almost impossible to carry out my duties in my own unique way. I felt that I might not have any option but to resign, although financially I knew I could not afford to do so.

  When a position in the segregation unit came up my name was put forward by the senior management on the house block as they wanted me out because they had grown worried that I might report certain officers' behaviour to a higher level. The fact of the matter was, I knew that if I had done so no one would have taken any notice and I would have been transferred or sacked and totally alienated from other members of staff.

  I took up the position in the seg as I thought it might give me a break from the pressure I was under, not that I was given a choice really. At about that time I had moved out of Heartbreak Hotel and had moved in with my old army pal Harry in his flat in Uxbridge. The main reason for this was the fact that I felt I could not have Lauren to stay in a flat with twenty or so pissed-up screws bringing all sorts of birds home at all hours. The other reason was that I was beginning to get tired of other officers' company at work, let alone twenty-four hours a day. Also, the travelling was becoming difficult and the shift pattern in the seg unit was slightly more flexible than the one on the house block and allowed me an extra forty-five minutes in the morning to travel across Lo
ndon.

  Taking all those points into consideration, I felt I had nothing to lose by transferring to the seg, and so at the end of January I reported to the acting senior officer for my first day's duty.

  14

  BELMARSH SEGREGATION UNIT

  Belmarsh prison boasts one of the largest segregation units of all British prisons. The unit was laid out over two floors and was equipped with approximately twenty single cells, two strong boxes, its own exercise yard and its own kitchen area. Its appearance was certainly less grim than the seg unit I remembered from Wandsworth.

  I walked to the office, which was situated on the first floor of the unit, and entered it to find about six officers slouched around on various chairs. As I entered, the young officer who was sat behind the main desk looked at me and stuttered, "Y-y-your la-la-late". Fighting back the urge to laugh at this strange-looking kid with his college boy baby-faced features and silly Tintin haircut, I just told him to fuck off and made my way to the kettle to make a cup of tea.

  As it turned out, this Tintin lookalike was actually the acting senior officer of the segregation unit, which will give you some idea of the state of things at Belmarsh at that time. To make matters worse, he was quite a big bloke and really fancied himself as a bit of a hard man. During my time there I learnt to tolerate him because I had to work with him, but his arrogant nature and opinion that he knew everything about everything was typical of the type of person I despise.

  After I had finished my cup of tea, Tintin paired me up with his mate Simon, an ex-navy officer, who was also a pain in the arse who thought he was the dog's bollocks, for a tour and brief induction into the seg unit's regime. In his opening speech to me he more or less said that we were a law unto ourselves in the unit and it was a cushy little number as we got to give some of the arseholes a dig when they stepped out of line. He told me that when a prisoner was first brought down to the seg we would always take over from the escorting staff and place the prisoner into one of the two strip cells on the ground floor. We would then carry out a full strip search on the inmate and, once done, we would vacate the cell, leaving the prisoner a special suit to put on and a heavy-duty grey blanket on the floor. The prisoner would remain in these conditions until he had been seen by a prison medical officer, usually a nurse not a doctor.