The Loose Screw

by Jim Dawkins

  I therefore decided that I needed to act swiftly and approach a letting agency about the flat. I found a tenant quickly and within two weeks I had moved into Natasha's house in Wildfell Close, Kent. I struggled with the two-hour commute to and from the Scrubs for the next few weeks, my imminent transfer date being the only thing that kept me from ending up like Michael Douglas in that film Falling Down. However, only days before my anticipated return to Belmarsh I was notified that once again there had been a fuck-up and I didn't have a place at all.

  While waiting for news of my transfer, a further incident took place that was to be the final straw that broke the camel's back for me. As previously mentioned, an ongoing investigation was under way at that time into brutality against inmates by certain members of the segregation staff. Despite various attempts to exonerate the staff members involved, the net was closing in and this time, I am thankful to say, the outcome did not look good for them.

  I came into work one morning to find the gate had been 'frozen' and all staff were to report to the officers' club. When I entered the club, I found that someone had opened the bar and it was packed with one hundred or so officers, many of whom were drinking pints of ale even though it was still only about seven in the morning. I asked one of the B-Wing officers what was going on, to which he replied that the POA (Prison Officers Association) had called a strike in support of the 'Scrubs Four', as the accused officers had been labelled.

  I had not become a member of the POA, as I did not feel that the subscription fees each month validated the job they were supposed to do, so really I had no right to be there. I had not actually told anyone that I was not a member, as the Scrubs at the time was a staunch union prison, but I knew I would get no support if I decided to stay and, besides, I did not agree with what they were doing. I felt sure that the accused staff members were guilty and I did not feel they should be allowed to get away with their actions any longer.

  I had to leave quietly and explain to the staff on the gate that I did not wish to join the action, and so I requested that they let me through to my place of work. As you can imagine, this blacklisted me even more than I was already, but I stood by my principles and I believe that made me a better man than most of those outside the gate. The strike went on for the whole of that day, and there were in fact about half a dozen of us nonunion members who had reported for duty that day.

  Despite our initial fears of reprisals from the inmates for being on lockup most of the day, apart from feeding times, the majority of them respected the fact that if it had not been for we few and the governors drafted in from other London prisons, they would not even have received any meals that day. Needless to say, I was not flavour of the month when the rest of the staff returned to work, and I thought it best to take a few days off sick while the dust settled. Incidentally, the Scrubs at that time had one of the worst staff sickness records. I recall a funny thing I noticed when reporting back for duty: once so many staff were having time off and putting it down to sickness and diarrhoea, but they could not spell the latter on their self-certificated sick note, that they had written it in big letters on the noticeboard in the orderly room for all to copy.

  Rather than bore you with the details of the problems I encountered trying to solve yet another red-tape fuck-up by the Prison Service, I will just say that this time my experience helped me to resolve the matter a lot quicker than the previous Scrubs transfer. It only took about a month of persistence on my part before I received concrete confirmation of my transfer to Belmarsh, and before I knew it I found myself back in the familiar surroundings of house block three's staff room.

  16

  BACK IN BELMARSH -AND OUT AGAIN

  I felt relieved and happy to be back initially -relieved that I would no longer have to endure the rat race of commuting through London and happy that Natasha and I were together again. For the first time in my life, I felt everything was going right and we would be happy forever. Nothing had changed at 'the Marsh' apart from the fact that most of the young officers I had served with previously were now senior officers on the wings. The routine was still the same and house block three was still the induction wing.

  I was soon reunited with my old mate Bosley who, I was pleased to see, had retained his dry sense of humour and 'don't give a fuck' attitude, and he quickly had me in fits of laughter once again. It didn't take long for me to fall back into the regime of the wing and begin to build my own unique rapport with the inmates on the house block. I had hoped to meet up with my old pal Charlie, who I thought might pass through at some stage, but unfortunately I was not to see him again until after I left the Prison Service. I learned that the Service had built a new 'super-max' unit at Woodhill Prison to house the prisoners considered to be the most dangerous in the system, and this was where Charlie had been sent.

  I spent the next few weeks getting back into the prison's regime, or at least trying to as I had other more important things on my mind. Natasha was pregnant with Morgan and was not having a particularly easy time of it.

  I was growing increasingly tired of the politics involved within the Prison Service and was becoming worried that, in order to comply with the way some of my colleagues thought a prison officer should behave, I would have to let them change who I was. This, of course, would go against the advice I had been given years earlier by my old mate Simon's dad, Jim, and I knew I didn't want to do that. I was now in a bit of a predicament: I knew I had to get out of the Prison Service, but I still had a family to support and it was a well-paid secure job if nothing else.

  The numbers of assaults were on the increase as well as the numbers of suicides, or attempted ones, by inmates. Many members of staff treated these attempts as a bit of a joke and would even ignore the routine of keeping an eye on inmates on suicide watch in the sick hope that they would actually do themselves harm. I had witnessed such attempts before and had seen inmates who had cut themselves, overdosed and hung themselves using their bed sheets -some unsuccessfully, and some who had actually achieved their aim.

  One particular suicide attempt I witnessed was probably the final straw so far as my decision to leave the Service was concerned. It was not the most gruesome suicide attempt I had seen. It was more the way in which it was handled that finally pushed me to the decision that enough was enough. It involved a young inmate on the threes landing, who was obviously finding prison life difficult and who had already fallen foul of the stronger inmates and bully element of officers. As a result, he was on suicide watch.

  On that particular day, I came on duty after lunch and began to unlock the threes landing. That was when I discovered the inmate lying on his bed, which was partially covered in blood. He had cut both his wrists with the razor blade I could see lying in a pool of blood on the floor, although he was still very much alive, indicating that he had only just carried out the attempt. I immediately put on a pair of surgical gloves, which I always carried with me, and began to wrap his wrists in towels. Whilst doing so, I sent another inmate to alert the staff so they could arrange for medical assistance. Some ten minutes later no one had arrived, so I decided to take the inmate to the house block's treatment room. I told him to keep his hands raised in order to stem some of the flow of blood from his wrists, and helped him along the landing.

  When I arrived, I discovered that the nurse had not even been notified, so I left him in her hands and went in search of 'Niff Naff', the name given to the house block governor, to get some answers. My first point was that the inmate had been placed in a single cell, which is strictly against the rules of suicide watch, and also the razor he had been issued with should have been taken off him. I then tackled the issue of the lack of assistance and staff attitude towards suicide attempts in general. He offered no answers to my questions and neither did he at any time ask whether I had been affected by what I had just witnessed or whether I wanted to see a post-incident counsellor, which should be normal practice.
Instead, he said that the inmate was just seeking attention, as, if he had really wanted to kill himself, he would have done so. Of course this was possibly true, but it was not the sort of comment you would expect from a trained prison governor.

  The inmate did eventually receive treatment and subsequently made a full recovery. I, on the other hand, now had to endure the typical backstabbing behaviour from certain members of staff. Because I had effectively saved a prisoner's life, I was considered a soft touch -apparently I should have left him to carry out his wish. The stress of dealing with such attitudes was beginning to take its toll on me, coupled with the fact that Natasha was coming to the end of her pregnancy.

  No more than two weeks later I fell foul of the bad element of staff once again. I came on duty at one o'clock for a late shift and began unlocking the landing for association as normal. However, when I opened cell 28, which housed three inmates with whom I usually got on well, one of the inmates came flying out of the door at me, brandishing a table leg. Luckily I managed to dodge the piece of wood as he tried to hit me with it and I instinctively grabbed the inmate and wrestled him to the floor. He was not a small man, but when the others in the cell realised it was me they helped calm the situation down. This was one of the advantages of building a good working relationship with the inmates and treating them fairly, whereas another lone officer faced with the same situation would almost certainly have been seriously injured. The inmate was, of course, escorted to the segregation unit and charged with assault on an officer.

  It turned out that a certain officer called Geoff had taken a dislike to this inmate and had spent the whole morning and lunchtime winding him up.

  Obviously he had been 'stewing' behind his door for an hour and a half and just flew at the first uniform he saw, which unfortunately happened to me. I had seen this happen before when an innocent member of staff had been hurt due to another's unprofessional bully-boy tactics. The incident left me shook up and annoyed. I carried out the rest of my shift, but in my mind I had finally reached the decision that I could no longer work in such an environment.

  When I returned home that night I was still shaking with anger and Natasha noticed and asked what was up. I told her what had happened and that I felt that if I returned to work I would end up assaulting another member of staff before being put in the same situation again. She was fully supportive and told me that if I felt so strongly I shouldn't go back. The next morning she rang 'Niff Naff' and explained that I was stressed out and wouldn't be going back for some time.

  In fact I spent nearly the whole of the following year on sick leave due to stress and received no visits or help from the Service at all. The only correspondence I got was when I had to go to see a Home Office approved doctor after six months, who signed me off for a further six months. I was, of course, still being paid: full pay for six months and half pay thereafter. This gave me a chance to think about what I was going to do with my life. The truth was, I didn't no; all I knew was that I couldn't return to the Prison Service.

  It was nice to spend time at home with Natasha during the latter days of her pregnancy. She took paid maternity leave, which meant we were not losing any money. This would not last, however, as the Prison Service would soon stop paying me and I would then go onto statutory sick pay. I had to decide to resign officially from the Prison Service and seek other employment.

  Altogether I had spent almost seven years as a prison officer. However, had it not been for certain financial commitments and my need for job security at that time in my life, my service would have been considerably shorter. I had enjoyed some good times, such as my work with Charlie, and I had met some interesting people, but the ignorant, violent, cowardly, bully-type people I came across far outnumbered the good. These people really are a cancer that is eating away at the Service from the inside out and destroying what should or could be a highly respectable and rewarding career. Unfortunately it is, as many of you will no doubt agree or have experienced for yourselves, much easier sometimes just to go with the flow rather than constantly attempt to battle against it. Many like me have no doubt tried, but inevitably we all find the constant struggle far too stressful and eventually have no more fight to give, so we end up either being swept away with the majority or simply resigning to try to forget the whole experience. Some simply get caught up in the web of lies, deceit and bullying tactics just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and like me find themselves hitting a brick wall of ignorance and mistrust when they try to report any unprofessional conduct by fellow officers. Alternatively, they just feel too intimidated by senior staff and management to pursue the matter further.

  Trying to avoid being sucked into this conspiracy of false accusations and victimization took its toll on my mental state of mind after a while so much so that I would go home on occasions with so much anger and frustration bottled up inside, usually as a result of unnecessary confrontations caused by unprofessional members of staff, that I would often feel as if I could totally lose control and have an overwhelming urge to smash up the house. I felt many times that my personal safety and indeed my own liberty were constantly being put at risk due to the uncontrollable antics of many of my colleagues. To put it bluntly, in 'Jim speak' their behaviour boiled down to nothing less than ignorant arseholes with piss-poor training and management by men who themselves had cut their teeth in the violent, bullying world of a penal or borstal system, which involved the 'short sharp shock' treatment that has long since been proved to be ineffective.

  The problem as I see it is that it is quite the opposite to short and sharp these days, and the shock is in fact meted out as a constant battering of an individual's emotions over many months. In my old mate Charlie's case, he has endured non-stop sensory deprivation and both mental and physical pain for over thirty years. I finally cracked under the pressure after just seven years, and I was supposed to be on the side of the instigators. I had the benefit of being able to walk out of the gates at the end of my shift and go for a walk or a drive, have a few beers, or confide in a loving family to help me unwind when I got home. Charlie and countless others like him don't have this luxury and so just get buried deeper and deeper into the belly of the system. They get no relief from the pressure, or the chance to talk to a loved one or anyone who cares about their position. In the dead of night they are left feeling totally alone, having had all traces of human emotion knocked out of them through either physical or mental aggression.

  In the end, for the sake of my sanity and the well-being of my family, I had to admit that I could no longer subject myself to working in that type of hostile environment. I felt powerless to change the way the Prison Service had been conducting its clandestine methods of running its business for so many years, and felt I had no choice but to get out of there.

  Since leaving, I have felt it necessary to write to the Home Office on a couple of occasions in search of answers to points I felt needed explaining -the first being the reasons behind the decision to twice refuse me clearance to visit Charlie. I expressed how I could not understand how I was able to work in three high-security prisons but was not able to visit a prisoner as a civilian and I was intrigued as to how this decision had been reached. I was in contact with Charlie via letters, I had a permanent residency in the UK, and I did not have a criminal record -all these I knew were key factors if you wanted to be passed to visit a Category A prisoner. As you might expect, the reply from the Home Office was a typically vague excuse to the effect that it was not common practice to divulge the reasons for refusing someone's visiting status, and as an ex-employee I should know the process involved in vetting all potential visitors. Well, yes I do know, and I feel that I fit their criteria perfectly. I can only assume that someone in their ivory tower could possibly harvest a grudge against me, feeling embarrassed by the fact that I have broken ranks and spoken out against staff misconduct, and they are scared of what my honesty might uncover. In true Home Off
ice style, they have chosen just to ignore me and hope I will eventually grow tired and go away in much the same way that they bury Charlie and others like him deeper and deeper inside the system in the hope that their failings in the treatment of these prisoners in their care will be buried with them: the classic 'out of sight out of mind' tactics.

  On another occasion I wrote to my old boss in the Green Jackets, Sir David Ramsbotham, a man for whom I have the greatest respect and who was at the time employed as the Chief Inspector of Prisons, to voice my opinion and concern about Charlie's treatment and the behaviour of some prison officers I had encountered. He wrote a very good letter back to me, dated 7 April 2000, saying he would pass my comments and concerns on to the Director General of the Prison Service and ask him to respond. To this date I have never received a reply from the Director or his staff, other than to acknowledge receipt of the letter I sent to Ramsbotham. In his reply to me, Sir David Ramsbotham did comment, and I quote: "The behaviour of staff in some of the prisons beggars belief and the verbal evidence I hear from other places confirms it is not confined to those prisons on which we have been reporting most recently. This is a sad state of affairs and one of which the Service should be ASHAMED."

  Strangely enough, Sir David resigned from the post after a relatively short term in office, Perhaps, like me, he too realized he would get no support in implementing any procedures to stamp out this unacceptable behaviour, or maybe he was pushed out because he came too close to exposing the truth about the corrupt and violent staff in the employ of the Prison Service, not to mention the inadequate conditions of many of our prisons.