4.19 am
I lie awake for hours, plotting. Although I’m currently revising the sixth draft of
10.40 am
It’s just been officially announced that Mr Lewis will retire as governing governor on 1 January. I go over to the unit office and pick up a labour board change of job application form. If I’m not going to be hospital orderly I’ve decided to apply for his job. (See opposite).
12 noon
Doug tells me that he’s going to try another ploy to get outside work. He has a friend in March who runs a small haulage company (three lorries), who will offer him a job as a driver. The only problem is that he doesn’t work out of Boston, which is one of the current specifications for anyone who wishes to take up outside employment. However, Doug’s wife Wendy will meet the potential employer today and get him to send a fax offering Doug a job of driving loads from Boston back to March. We will have to wait and see if Mr Berlyn will sanction this. I refuse to get excited.
2.00 pm
I walk down to the football field and watch NSC play Witherton. We lose 5-0 so there’s not a lot more to report, other than it was very cold standing on the touch line; the wind was blowing in off the next landmass to the east, which happens to be Russia.
7.00 pm
I sit in my room reading This Week, an excellent journal if you want an overall view of the week’s events. It gives me a chance to bring myself up to date with the situation in Afghanistan, America and even NSC.
Under the heading, ‘A Bad Week’, it seems that a Jeffrey Archer look-alike is complaining about being regularly stopped by the police to make sure I haven’t escaped. ‘It’s most unfair,’ he protests, ‘it’s ruined my life.’ The paper felt his protests would have been more convincing if he hadn’t travelled down to NSC accompanied by a tabloid to have his photograph taken outside the prison.
9.00 pm
I visit Leon in his room on the north block. His fiancee has told her father that he is in Norway on business, and won’t be returning to England until 21 December, the day he’s released from prison.
DAY 137 SUNDAY 2 DECEMBER 2001
10.30 am
Leon’s fiancee is visiting him today, and they’ll use the ninety minutes to plan their wedding.
11.30 am
I join Doug at the hospital to read the morning papers. The People devote half a page to telling their readers that I am distraught because a prisoner has stolen my diary and I’ll have to start again. I wouldn’t be distraught. After 137 days and over 300,000 words, I’d be suicidal.
3.00 pm
Doug has just come off the phone with his wife and tells me that his friend is going to place an advertisement in the
DAY 138 MONDAY 3 DECEMBER 2001
9.40 am
Mr New comes in cursing. It seems the prison is overcrowded and there are applicants from Nottingham, Lincoln, Wayland, Birmingham and Leicester who will have to be turned away because every bed is occupied. Apparently it’s all my fault.
This would not be a problem for Spring Hill, because they always have a long waiting list, and can be very selective. At NSC it now means that if any inmate even
10.50 am
I see Leon walking back from the gatehouse to the stores where he works, and leave the office to have a word with him. Yesterday’s visit went well. ‘But I have a feeling,’ he adds, ‘there’s something she isn’t telling me.’
I press him as to what this might be, but he says he doesn’t know, or has he become wary about how much of his story will appear in this diary? He then asks me to change all the names. I agree and have done so.
2.15 pm
Doug gives me some good news. Mrs Tempest (principal officer in charge of resettlement) has assured him that if he gets an interview with another haulage company, she will accompany him, assuming they fulfil all the usual police and prison criteria. If they then offer him a job, she will recommend he starts immediately, and by that she means next Monday.
It’s becoming clear to me that there are several officers (not all) who are determined that NSC will be given resettlement status, and not just remain a D-cat open prison. Should the Home Office agree to this, then several of the inmates will be allowed out during the day on CSV work and eventually progress to full-time jobs. It’s clear that Doug is a test case, because he’s an obvious candidate for outside work, and if they can get him started, the floodgates might well open and this prison’s future would no longer be in doubt. So suddenly my fortunes could be reversed. Once again I envy the reader who can simply turn the pages to discover what happens next in my life.
4.00 pm
Mr Simpson (senior probation officer) has completed his interviews with the three inmates who are on sentence planning. He comes down to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Over the past six weeks, I’ve come to know Graham Simpson quite well, despite the fact that he’s fairly reserved. I suppose it goes with the territory. He is a consummate professional, and wouldn’t dream of discussing another prisoner, however good or bad their record. But he will answer general questions on the penal system, and after thirty years in the profession he has views that are worth listening to. I suspect that the majority of people reading this diary would, in the case of lifers, lock them up and throw away the key, and in some cases, hang them. However…
All murderers are sentenced to ninety-nine years, but the judge will then set a tariff that can range from eight years to life. At NSC we have an inmate who is serving his thirty-second year in jail. There are over 1,800 prisoners in the UK doing life sentences, of whom only a tiny percentage ever reach a D-cat open prison. There are twenty- two lifers currently at NSC. After being sentenced, they begin their life in an A-cat and progress through to B and C, and finally arrive at a D-cat with the expectation of release. At NSC, of the twenty-two resident lifers, these tariffs are set from twelve years to Her Majesty’s pleasure, and Mr Simpson confirms that although some will become eligible for release, they will never make it. The Home Office simply won’t take the risk.
Mr Simpson explains that it’s his responsibility to assess which of these prisoners should be considered for release, but he will always err on the side of caution because, however many successes you have ‘on the out’, it only takes one failure to hit the front pages.
Mr Simpson admits to one such failure – a man with no previous convictions, who had, until murdering his
