The day succeeded brilliantly. It was best described by a fifteen- year-old prisoner who told me ‘… it’s been the happiest day of my life, Miss Bird.’
Frank turned to the boys and, as he delivered his words I could see every lad leaning forward to catch every word. It was as if they were spreading heather honey on fresh bread and they did not want to waste a single drop.
‘You don’t have to do these things,’ lectured Frank in that quiet rumble which started inside his huge torso. ‘There are other things to do which are not illegal.’ Heads nodded in full agreement. If only we could have such visits like this every week, think of what we might have been able to achieve for these boys?
As he was leaving, now back in his suit, Frank turned to me. ‘A word of advice Veronica. Always feed your celebrity first, before he meets his audience. I haven’t eaten a thing as my hand was shaken so many times I thought it was going to drop off by itself. Everyone wanted to touch me as if I was Jesus.’
‘Next time Frank, I will make sure you have a banquet before you meet my charges, but at least, we made you comfortable for the day. Perhaps you should come in a track suit?’
Frank’s rumble was louder. ‘Know what I mean Harry.’ He touched his nose and sighed, genuinely concerned for the boys who were laughing and joking as they leaned forward to wave him off.
It had been a very different scene on the day I had arrived at Thorn Cross. As I entered the site two boys were slugging it out with bare knuckles until they were finally separated by officers. Two hundred plus alpha males, their testosterone brimming over with unreleased tensions means continual trouble unless they are constantly occupied, which is why we spent so much time in education and training. For the first time, many of these boys were obliged to listen and learn (as opposed to playing truant from school as they had done) and often surprised themselves in the interest they gained from beginning to believe they could excel in a trade.
There is a point here. I know I have repeated myself over the issue of training but these offenders were still very young. If we could get to them even earlier, there was a chance we might never see them in Reception collecting their bundles. With Frank Bruno’s bee in a bottle droning in their ears, ‘know what I mean Harry’ they could relate his freedom to their own in the future.
Step forward yet another Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, to make a visit. He came, I am sure, because our re-offending rates were dropping to very low figures and he needed to carry the good news to other prisons. It might also be quite useful to find out how we did it. No doubt, he would also be able to advise Cabinet, the Government was doing something right. He clearly approved of the humane conditions and showed his pleasure at the facilities and the prison regime. Especially so, he learned that a group of young trainees were working with a group of handicapped patients every week in the gymnasium. This sort of news does not get into the newspapers nearly enough and he recognised the fact. He called our prison a ‘show-piece’ as he later described his visit.
Like his predecessors, his intellect often pushed one into silence, yet he hid it behind a façade of school at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge with an accent from the past which was always reassuring. He would, I think, have placed a firm hand on any tiller he was asked to hold.
Thorn Cross never ceased to amaze me. Prisoners here designed and patented a braille bingo board which has now been sold around the world. In some ways, it was like a school. I would watch these young lads growing up, their whole lives before them, realising that maybe, there was something in life out there other than pinching cars, fighting or stealing from shops. Some of them could have been my children, naughty children I know, but I wished them well when they left and they would often thank me with awkward words but genuinely delivered.
Thorn Cross was my first job with males. It was an open prison so no hardened criminals. For that, I would have to go to Armley and that was a different ball-game altogether.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ARMLEY – THE HARD ONE
‘I’ve done it!’
‘Oh well done. Well done,’ Joan said, delighted into the phone. There was genuine happiness in her voice. ‘Who is it? What’s his name? Where is he from? What-’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ I cut her off. Crossed wires. ‘No Joan, I haven’t got married. I’ve made Governor Three. At Armley.’ I let that sink in for a moment. Joan, like the family, had always believed I would go off and marry secretly, and tell them all after the event. She did not understand I had become wedded to the Service years before.
‘Oh!’ Again, though this was said without quite as much enthusiasm, until realisation of what I had achieved sank in. ‘Armley! For God’s sake! That’s a dangerous place, isn’t it?’
Armley was, at the time, one of the biggest prisons in Europe with over a thousand male prisoners confined there, holding many lifers, many fanatics and the like of The Ripper had passed through the enormous and forbidding main gates. There were IRA men there as well, not the most dangerous of those who had been captured, but these ones had tried to blow up Marks and Spencer’s with explosives. They were eventually moved on to Durham to give them a fair trial.
I had been told Armley was in a mess, not made any better by the fact I had never visited the prison and had not been able to make my usual brief call before taking up the post. My job as Governor 3 meant I would run the prison under a delightful Governor 1 who was fully engaged in the long-term planning of the Service while ensuring Armley moved forward at the same time. Robin Halward was one of the brightest and youngest Governor 1’s in the Service. He was constantly called upon to sit on Committees and consultation meetings despite the fact he was a sick man, but he never let his ill health slow him down. Even when in hospital he would have his papers brought to him so he could continue with whatever he was working upon.
Robin had been asked to set up a team culled from the Prison Service to bid against Private Sector companies for the running of Manchester Prison. This was the first time the public sector had been permitted to bid. (today, there are 14 out of 118 prisons which are private or contracted out).
My job was to ensure the prison ran like clockwork. I was also charged in seeing if the number of suicides could be reduced. To show how serious a problem it was we had several Samaritans who were highly skilled, training up prisoners as listeners in shared cells. They would watch and report back any concerns if they suspected a deep depression setting in on a fellow inmate.
One of the first things I did for these special cases, was to install curtains in the windows, place a duvet on the bed while we also provided a kettle to make a cup of tea. Anything to soften the grimness and get these particular people through the worst time of their lives.
Then came the sex offenders wing where all the paedophiles were dropped in together, as much for their protection as anyone else. On an early, first visit, I met a young offender in this wing, the down still on his cheek. He was on remand awaiting trial.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I asked. I had to admit to total astonishment as I could not reconcile this young face with the serious charges levelled against him.
As I spoke, the young man collapsed in tears pleading his innocence. It was a ploy I had heard a thousand times before. ‘I didn’t do it,’ rang in my ears as I walked back down the corridor. That night he did not return, so the judge had obviously seen sufficient evidence to clear his name and sent him home. But, that trauma of those awful weeks would remain with that lad for the rest of his life.
Apart from the sex offenders wing, Armley was divided up into other distinct offence sections. Each of these wings had an Assistant Governor in charge of them all reporting up to me. I found this out on my arrival, having mounted the steps which brought me into a main corridor where I could see the Governors’ offices nearby. Ahead, lay a week of induction where I was to meet all my senior officers, so I could sort them out into my strengths and those weaker than the others. There were issues, problems, conflicts and misu
nderstandings which would all need to be dealt with before I could think of moving forward with my ideas.
My attention was drawn to the hospital wing, an area of great importance. I made it one of my first inspections at which time I recognised a prison officer, a woman from an earlier prison. She also had noticed me and, in so-doing turned to a number of her colleagues grouped in a semi-circle waiting to hear me talk.
‘She’ll sort you lot out. Just you wait and see.’ It was a strange comment from a junior officer and it remained with me until I was debriefing with the Governor, Robin.
‘Why do you think she said that?’ I asked a trifle crossly. His reply was to suggest I should not take things too personally. ‘Just a comment to lighten the mood,’ he advised.
But, it was the same member of staff who then came forward a few days later, laying some very serious charges against several prison officers. It became apparent there was some evidence the woman, the whistle-blower, was correct. Only in to the job a few days it still left me with no option, but to suspend four officers and refer the whole matter to the police. As these accusations were serious, the trial was moved to another city to ensure the officers received a fair hearing, unbiased by the location. The case was proved and I lost a good officer in the woman who had to be moved to a prison of her choice to continue her career with all of her moving costs paid. It would have been impossible to keep her on my staff. I also, of course, lost four officers. At the time, I believed I had lost a first-class woman officer though, later, it turned out to be quite the opposite as she was found to be having a corrupt affair with a dangerous prisoner.
This small crisis came with my arrival, a calling card almost and the pressure was never to ease off from then on. But the resolution satisfied Robin I was in control, and he went off on holiday leaving me all alone at the top.
It was a week later. I was commuting to work every week from Wilmslow and I was home at the time, awoken at three in the morning, when the news reached me saying four of my prisoners had escaped.
‘Buggar,’ was the technical term escaping my lips, still groggy from sleep. It was a label used by all governors when they are up a gum tree. Normally three in the morning was when the Gestapo came to call – normally. At the beginning of the week I had got into the routine of packing a small case for I was living out of hotels until I found a house to live in. Packing was one of the least things I had to worry about; I had to get back to Armley as quickly as possible. It had happened on my watch and my watch had only just begun. I was totally responsible. Responsibility travelled up the ladder until it reaches the top rung. As there was no top rung it stopped one down, that was me, Bird. I opened the back door of my car and bunged in knickers and blouses and roared off still half-dressed making my pink slippers press down hard on the accelerator pedal.
When I arrived, the first thing which held me up was a young policeman.
‘You can’t park here madam. We have four-’
I cut him off. ‘I know officer. I’m the Governor.’
The young officer looked down at my pink slippers which were just beginning to emerge from inside the car. ‘Oh, yes madam.’
I threw my bunch of keys at him – quite hard – ‘I’m going in. you park the bloody car where ever you wish.’ Now was not the time for niceties.
Inside was chaos. The Duty Officer could not even give me the correct number of missing prisoners. ‘Well, is it four, or is it five?’ I demanded, appalled that this vital piece of information was not present for me. A mumble followed. He knew an angry Governor when he saw one from four feet away, still in night attire. ‘I want a full roll check, NOW!’ I slipped into my office and brushed my hair. My bag arrived with some shoes. My Assistant Governors began to report in one by one and gradually I brought Armley back under my control.
‘Right, how many are out?’
‘Four Miss Bird.’ Heads bobbed up and down in unison so it was probably four escapees I had to deal with.
‘And how the bloody hell did they get out?’
‘It’s not our fault Ma’am, he said brushing his hair down with a hand, after his disturbed night’s sleep. ‘They got out through the dormitory ceiling into the roof-space.’
The new wing, still being finished off, was a hospital extension and an education block. ‘But, that doesn’t explain how they got out. Christ-!’ I had to report back to Headquarters on this one. I began to tap my fingers on the top of my desk which was unquestionably not a tune I could recognise. ‘Who is out?’
A young Assistant Governor leaped forward with four names, one of whom was extremely dangerous, the other three were run of the mill prisoners not in the same league as the first. Deployments made by the police already were laid out in front of me enabling me to take stock. I was on my own with at least one very bad guy on the run. It was a scary moment for by now the Home Secretary would have been notified. The Press would be next, yelping in full cry.
My assistants left, all now composed and serious, thankful, I think, they could pass the buck to me. I switched on the early morning news to learn I was at that moment in a helicopter hovering high above the prison taking a ‘bird’s eye view.’ That was nice to know. I’m not sure if the reporter had his or her tongue in cheek on this one but I was not in the air, not even outside the prison. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.
As the picture began to come into focus it became more worrying. All four prisoners had been accommodated on the top floor in a dormitory so it had been easy for them to plan their escape. Three of the men, for whatever reason, had not left but climbed up onto a roof, refusing to come down. It might have been a diversion to allow the fourth man to get away. It was certain that the bad man was well away on the run and there were no sightings. He it was who was likely to harm or even kill anyone who stepped unwisely in front of him, with intent to capture. It was time to order in the riot squad and to send trained negotiators to deal with the three still on the slates.
Then a report came onto my desk which I found hard to believe as the news had been widely spread for several hours. Our escapee had been seen walking alongside the M1 and had been given a bottle of milk by a milkman…for God’s sake! The excuse, I presume, if I had questioned him was he had got up before the news of the break-out. (but didn’t it appear strange that a man was walking up the M1 at that time of the day and had no money to pay for the milk? And why had the milkman stopped anyway?).
The three prisoners were finally talked down at eleven that morning, news which I transmitted on through the Command post I had set up on my arrival which felt like a century earlier. The fourth man, sentenced to fifteen years for armed robbery was not caught for a further two years when, in a smooth targeted response to information received, he was returned to prison having lost his remission.
It meant an enquiry, but first I had to get Robin up to speed. I left a note at his house telling him to contact me before anyone else on his return to the country after his holiday. Meanwhile, we got on with running the prison with one less inmate.
Robin had had no idea of the ‘incident ‘on his return from France but, good as gold, he rang me as soon as he got in through the door. He was concerned. He had to be, for the escape had sent tremors all the way up to Kenneth Baker, the Home Secretary who, in turn, would be obliged to provide answers in Parliament.
The enquiry threw up many questions mostly directed towards me. My job was on the line but, Robin, bless him, backed me to the hilt. The results of the enquiry showed that the most dangerous of the prisoners had climbed out through the ceiling of a room onto the roof and from there out of a window using knotted sheets, lowering himself until he dropped down to the builders’ compound where he was able to make his escape. The others dug the mortar out of some new brickwork and crawled through a hole into a roof space It was all put down to an inadequate budget, plus ça change. Importantly though, major changes were made – everything was rethought through from then on. If a knife or a screwdriver went
missing, the prison would go into lockdown while everything was turned upside down. If nothing came to light the whole process was repeated.
When such incidents arise, it becomes essential to clear the area around the presumed escape area but in all other aspects, the prison has to continue to function as normal. Other prisoners need to be kept calm to prevent the infection from spreading. With this being my first major incident, I had been able to depend upon a loyal staff which was reflected in the enquiry’s final report.
Another small, but satisfying snippet came my way. I learned that when the escape was announced together with the fact it was being controlled by a woman, the Press had stood by for fireworks believing I would not be able to handle the fast-on-going action. This was twenty-five years ago when sexism in all its sad forms still showed its face plastered over the wall on many occasions. I was content to learn that the results had finally filtered back to the editors’ desks where they quietly filed the report for a later day. Score one to Veronica.
*
Eighty percent of my time, I was to find, was taken up running the prison myself. Robin was kept extraordinarily engaged by his masters on strategic long-term planning. So it was, I was approached one day by the family of a young man who had committed suicide in my prison. Prior to his arrest, he had tried to kill himself by jumping off a bridge in Leeds, but had failed in his attempt. His parents had insisted on seeing me to assure neither myself nor my staff were to feel any kind of blame. ‘He was always going to do it. It was in him all the while.’ It was a nice gesture.
Suicide was always deeply upsetting for I felt I had failed in getting inside one of my prisoner’s minds. Often, I could feel the trauma, the desperation and, eventually the resolution that death by whatever means available, was the least evil.
Suicide was something I wanted to focus on, to try and understand what it was that drove prisoners to call it a day; to give up once and for all from the sheer hell of each day. Such despair could often find a way round our fifteen-minute monitoring cycle set up for deeply disturbed inmates. The mind of such a person becomes sharpened in its cunning as a calculation was made on what had to be done in the fifteen-minute window before the next inspection through the door glass. Just as babies must never be born in prison, no man or woman should ever die by their own hand during their sentence. We have somehow failed them and society.
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