by Ray Deveroux
So I dropped everything. I gave all the prisoners notice that each and every one of them would be interviewed by me to ascertain the part they played in the mass brawl.
The twenty or so foreign nationals claimed they couldn’t understand the questions. The dozen prisoners with mental health issues thought it was great. One of them dropped his trousers during the interview to show me the swastika he had carved into his penis to show the foreigners who’s boss. Most of the others just cried. One sat there with his fingers in his ears, claiming the noise from the alarm hurt his ears.
The rest of them couldn’t remember any names. Apparently, about fifty prisoners were in their cells having a shit at the time. The brick wall in my office took a bashing and my head hurt.
As for the long term and lifer prisoners, all of them were heroes trying to break up the fights. After a day and a half interviewing each and every one of the prisoners involved, I came to the conclusion that it was Bob’s fault. Not that I told the Governor that – he got a long-winded report on how my staff and me successfully resolved what could have been a most serious situation.
When I gave him the report, he asked incredulously, what could have been more serious?
Anyway, I reported that the Egyptian man was to blame and that he had now been removed from the jail. It was a bit of a half-truth, but he didn’t know that the man had been transferred to an immigration centre as a matter of course awaiting deportation. What he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
We couldn’t charge one hundred and twenty prisoners with fighting; it would have been a joke. The foreign nationals would all want interpreters, the prisoners with mental health issues would claim, well, mental health issues and the long term prisoners had enough experience to drag it out using a varying array of prison rules and legal objections. A couple of prisoners claimed to have their briefs standing by.
It would be massively expensive to charge them all through prison rules, so I decided they would all lose association for a whole weekend. Everyone, even the prisoners, were in agreement. All we had to do for the weekend was open them up for meals and church. Bliss.
It was back to normal from thereon for a time. The usual Officers went off sick with stress, leaving me short of staff, although there absence didn’t make a blind bit of difference to the running of the wing. If anything, it went more smoothly.
The prisoners had made a good job of the furniture. In fact, when it was returned, the furniture was far sturdier. One of the carpentry shop workers told me it was con-proof, meaning it wasn’t easy to break.
Unpredictable
James was one of our regular prisoners who suffered from mental health issues. He kept a look out for the Mental Health In-Reach Team passing through the wing to their offices and would always catch one to discuss his issues. Mainly, he wanted a certain type of medication. Each time he was told he did not need it and that he should wait for an appointment to discuss his problems in private instead of out on the wing. All the Mental Health In-Reach Team knew that he wanted the drug to sell on or swap for tobacco.
He was a maze of cuts. You name it, he had scars there – on his face, body and legs. He even tried to kill himself by sharpening a broomstick and lowering himself onto it through his anus. He was a sick man, who should not have been in a jail. He was also a constant drain on staff. Even though we had to treat him more like a patient than a prisoner, his treatment wasn’t good enough for him. He craved constant attention, and with only three Officers, we could not give him all the attention he wanted.
He would cut himself, come up to me and say look what your staff made me do. Most of the cuts were superficial and could be dealt with by a simple sticking plaster, but on each and every occasion, we had to open an A.C.C.T document, put him in front of the doctor, make appointments for the Mental Health Team and monitor him day and night every fifteen minutes. He was the proverbial pain.
It was our duty to care for these people, and care for them we did, even at the expense of neglecting other prisoners. James’ demands caused resentment amongst the other residents on the wing, that he should get all the attention. Sooner or later, other prisoners would make it known that he was not having it all his own way.
We could not, between the three staff and me, monitor everyone all the time. Instead, we focused on what was current and dealt with matters as they came along.
James had made himself a target, one, because he had got himself into debt by promising medication (which he knew he was not getting) for tobacco, and two, for winding the others up with his constant complaining.
We were watching him. He had already complained that he was being bullied. By that, he meant that another prisoner wanted payment for tobacco lent to him. James wanted to be off the wing and into the segregation unit. The segregation unit was for bad people, not mad people and anyway, he only wanted to be off so he didn’t have to pay his debt.
I had already found out whom he owed tobacco to. In reality, there is no honour amongst thieves. I got an undertaking from the person involved that he wouldn’t approach James to settle the debt. Instead, Colin had mediated that James would pay his debt back weekly from his canteen purchases.
Both parties were happy with this, so all was well.
No, it wasn’t. James owed debts to about ten other prisoners that he hadn’t told us about. Some of them were not as patient as the first prisoner.
We heard a whisper that something was going to go on. We identified the other prisoners who we thought James owed tobacco to and kept an eye on them. I spoke to Hannah and told her that we might be expecting an incident soon. When you have been in the service for a while, you tend to have a nose for trouble and try to prepare yourself and your staff as best as possible. Colin was on Educational Officer’s duty, but I swapped him at the last moment for one of the other staff who was stealing money from the Prison Service. We described staff that did fuck all as thieves. Some of the prisoners were described as oxygen thieves. You can work out why yourself.
The tension was high on the wing. The prisoners started to gather in one place, a sure sign of trouble.
James had barricaded himself into his cell. He had managed to get hold of a handful of razor blades, despite our best efforts to stop him having them in his possession. It turned out that some of the other prisoners had given him the blades to do us all a favour and top himself.
He had also gotten hold of different types of medication, again from prisoners that would sooner not have him around, and had torn up his bedding to make a noose. He had also smashed his television, using the glass from the screen to gouge holes in his legs and arms.
We had only found out all of this when there was an audience of prisoners around his cell door urging him to do it.
After clearing them all away, Colin got to work. James had already made deep holes in his legs and arms, had punctured one of his cheeks and was busy threading a torn sheet through it, which made the job of communicating harder. James couldn’t and wouldn’t speak to anyone.
Colin was patient. He knew that by raising his voice or shouting, James would go further and we would have a death on our hands.
Colin kept talking, quietly, soothingly. It was almost mesmerizing, the way he spoke. Even the staff around him were hanging onto his every word. Colin was a master at this, and we left him to it.
Each time we heard a noise, a bang or a shout, Colin would put his hand up towards us, palm downwards, urging us not to come any closer, all the while keeping up the dialogue. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
I was like a cat on a hot tin roof, wanting impatiently to get it over and done with. Colin was a picture of calmness. How he sat there for hours on end, refusing any offer of a break, talking quietly to James all the time, was beyond me. But he was a trained negotiator, skilled in what he was doing, and it showed.
Colin had a pad on which he made notes. Some he stuffed into his top pockets, some went under the door to James, while others he would pass
to another negotiator standing by. I never saw these notes. At a glance, I could never understand what they meant. It was a sort of negotiator code.
Luckily, the prisoners in the cells next to James kept quiet. They knew that any interference would mean that they would be thrown off the enhanced wing, never to return. They were not risking that for anyone.
Hannah was standing by. She wanted to make sure we had all the support we needed, all the time keeping a sensible distance from the incident. It doesn’t do for wing Governors to get involved – its best that a trained negotiating Officer does all the talking. That way, no decision needed to be made nor demands met on the spot. Potential hostage takers love Governors getting involved to put them on the spot. In all honesty, it just makes it worse.
The negotiator I met from Hull Prison turned up. We greeted each other like old friends. I would want him on my side whenever an incident occurred like this. He told me that Colin was one of his best pupils and that we could not have had a better man for the job. My respect for this fifty-nine year old silver-headed, and, apparently, silver-tongued Officer was enormous, and much to his embarrassment, I recommended him later on for a citation, which he proudly hung in the tearoom. Colin remains one of my closest friends even though we have both retired.
The incident went on all day. Colin wrapped it up at teatime by saying to James, I’m starving, aren’t you?
James obviously agreed. The door opened and there stood James. He had managed to thread the sheet through both of his cheeks and knotted it under his chin so he couldn’t speak. How he was going to eat like that was a mystery, but that was not my concern.
He had also circumcised himself, made small holes on his scrotum and used it like a hanging rack for a toothbrush and razor.
With numerous cuts all over his body, he marched out of his cell looking triumphant. How Colin could sit there calmly while he did all that was incredible.
James was carted off in an ambulance, never to be seen again. Meanwhile, Colin came up to me and simply said: I’ll have that cup of tea now.
I let out a breath that I seemed to have been holding for hours.
Of course mate, one brew coming up.
I went to the tearoom, took a deep breath and put the kettle on.
It’s not all that uncommon for self-harmers to mutilate their genital areas in prison; it’s an area that they think is out of sight for staff to observe.
I have heard many stories from other staff that have come across this form of mutilation; some minor, some so serious that death occurs.
One such story was of a young man who had mental health issues. He was a convicted serial sex offender and a paedophile. He admitted to the Mental Health Team that he could not control his urges and demanded chemical castration.
Chemical castration is not something we do in this country. He even claimed he was a foreign national, and wanted to be deported to a country that carried out this procedure. Obviously, this could not, and would not happen. He had to stay in this country, in prison, and undergo the sex offender’s treatment programme. He had already done the course once and didn’t want to go through it again.
He was found in his cell one morning, dead. He had cut off his own genitals. The post mortem revealed that he had pulled on his testicles and penis to a point where, when he cut through his flesh, all the major arteries disappeared inside his body cavity, so there was very little blood to show for the damage he had caused to himself.
Shifts as a prison Officer are many and varied. Most, like me, prefer to do the longer shifts, as this allows more full days off. Others, like Colin, who was part-time, put in shorter shifts. His shift finished at five that day, leaving me and the rest of the full-timers to carry on and mop up the mess. We didn’t get the time to do it; once one prisoner harms himself, inevitably, others follow.
However, we did not expect what was to follow.
John was forty-nine, a quiet individual who was coming to the end of a long sentence. He was part of a group of men who had held up a main post office in Leeds. Although he had only played a small part, he was convicted as a conspiracy to armed robbery.
His role was a driver and look out. He told me he had been in a desperate situation; five children and a mortgage, unemployed and down on his luck, he wasn’t your normal villain. John had never been in trouble with the police in his life and shied away from criminal activities.
He had been offered the driving job through a friend of a friend at the local pub. Although he was aware that it was probably illegal, the promise of a huge pay packet in the end proved too much to resist. He was in debt, his wife was about to walk out if the house was repossessed, his kids wanted the latest phones and he wanted a peaceful life.
He was told to go and get a suitable car to use as a getaway car. He didn’t have a car at the time, it had been re-possessed a month earlier, so his job was to go and get one.
Naive as he was, he took out what little money he had in the bank, telling his wife that it was an investment and bought a car. What he should have got – or rather, what the gang wanted him to get – was a stolen car that had no connections to the robbery.
All was set. He drove the gang to the post office as directed. He didn’t have a clue that the gang had weapons. He said that when the gang members donned masks and produced a pistol and baseball bats, he was shitting himself. He realised then that he had got himself into something far more serious that he had anticipated. The leader of the gang had told him it was a simple job. A quick in and out and they would all be rich.
It was too late by then. He was involved. He sat waiting outside for the other three men to do the job, all the while, kicking himself for being so stupid. He was a nervous wreck, sweating and in fear of his life.
The three men came out in a flurry of shouts, waving their weapons. They got into the car and shouted at John to drive off to a pre-arranged destination.
John was frozen to the spot with fear; he had never, ever been in a situation like this in his life. He was almost tempted to get out of the car and make a run for it, but one of the gang members stuck the pistol in his side and shouted DRIVE!
In a panic, John stalled the car. He had trouble starting it again. It was an old Ford that had seen better days, but it was all he could afford at the time. The other gang members had laughed at him, taking the mickey for not getting a better car. They had no idea that he had brought the car out of his own money, they just assumed that was the best he could steal.
John eventually got the car going and roared off down the street, more with fear than anything else. He drove like a madman, at one stage clipping a black taxi as he rounded a corner. The gang members were telling him to calm down, drive normally, they were only drawing attention to themselves.
It was too late by then, the alarm had been raised. Staff at the post office had hit the panic button and the police were minutes away. Unfortunately for the gang they had already attracted the attention of a local police patrol car that was already in pursuit.
John was really hopeless as a getaway driver; he had no idea how drive to evade police cars or had any experience in driving cars at speed. On top of which, he was starting to panic. The gang were shouting at him to turn left, right, straight on, do a U turn – he was well and truly confused. Five minutes after the chase started, it ended abruptly. John slammed the brakes on. While the other shouted at him to get going, he sat there, head in his hands, crying.
The other three got out of the car and made a run for it, leaving a bag of cash behind. They had stolen around twenty five thousand pounds, and left a bag of coinage behind, obviously not wanting the weight of the money to slow them down.
John just sat there, frozen with fear. The police arrived with guns pointing at the car. John had pissed himself with fright. He was, as they say, caught bang to rights. Not that he could have got away with much anyway, given that the car was registered in his name.
John was hauled to the police station and promised a sho
rter sentence if he would assist the police in catching the rest of the gang. He was shaking as he told them of the full plot, his part in it and the name of one of the gang members. He only knew the one who had been a regular at the pub he went to locally, but it was enough. By the end of the day, all the gang members had been rounded up.
At court, John had turned “Q.E” (Queens Evidence) and was a witness for the prosecution. Again, being naive, he did not know the full impact that would have on the rest of his life.
John was given four years, while the other gang members had got sentences ranging from sixteen to twenty. He had, he thought, got off lightly.
The gang, thankfully, were not major league players in the criminal world, although they had a few connections. John was largely left alone to get on with his sentence. His wife had stood by him throughout the trial. Now that John was in jail, the debts were frozen and with help from various agencies, his wife and family had been re-housed. The fact that John had turned Q.E. had helped. The authorities kept their side of the bargain by moving his family out of area, and paying the rent while John was in prison.
However, all this would change when John was released. He still had debts to pay and needed a job, which was going to be harder to get now that he had a criminal record. The house that his wife and children had been moved into would have to be vacated. The local council would be putting his family in temporary accommodation.
In his mind, he had taken a step backwards – lots of them. He could see no way out. He was acutely aware that one or two of the gang members and their families had found out he was being released soon and he was in fear of his and his families safety.
John, amidst all the commotion of the situation earlier where James had took all the attention of the staff, had quietly put a plastic bag over his head. By the time we had unlocked everyone for the evening association period and for the prisoners to collect their meals, he was dead.