6.00 pm
Peter (arson, set fire to a police station) has so far served thirty-one years; you may recall that I earlier reported his first town visit. This morning, two officers arrived outside his room and took him down to the segregation cells, which can only mean one thing: he’s going to be shipped out to a closed prison today.
I suspect that one trip to Boston will be the last time he ever sees the outside world.
When I first came to NSC some months ago, Peter swept the main road that runs from the gate through to the office block; some 300 yards away. With a six-foot-four-inch frame, Peter had a presence you could not easily avoid, but zero social skills, and thirty-one years in prison (twenty-eight of them behind bars) ensured that it was never going to be easy for him to settle.
Every morning he would break away from his sweeping and open car doors for members of the female staff. He would then engage them in long conversations. Harmless enough, you may say, but several of the younger girls felt harassed and didn’t complain for fear it might harm Peter’s parole prospects. Unfortunately, these episodes continued, despite several warnings from officers. Governor Berlyn, who is in charge of the lifers, was left with little choice but to take action to allay the staff’s fears.
He took Peter off his job as a road sweeper and asked him to be a reception orderly. Peter made the tea and helped officers with minor tasks. It was beyond him. He lasted a fortnight. They next moved Peter to the officers’ mess, to assist with cleaning and occasional serving. He lasted ten days before being transferred to the farm as a shepherd, where he survived less than a week before being sent to the kitchen. This was no more successful, and he has ended up in segregation prior to being moved back to the B-cat.
Peter is in his sixties, and has no hope of returning to a D-cat in under five years, if ever. This case highlights a bigger issue. Don’t we have some duty to a human being other than to lock him up for the rest of his life? Peter failed to come to terms with the system, so the system has failed him.
When I am eventually released, I am going to be asked so many questions to which I do not know the answer.
DAY 257 MONDAY 1 APRIL 2002
10.30 am
I listen to an announcement over the tannoy.
‘Anyone wanting to assist with the special needs group trip to Skegness, please report to the bus at the front gate.’ The word ‘please’ should have given it away. Prison officers rarely, if ever, say please. However, two inmates still report to the gate in the hope of boarding the non-existent bus to Skegness.
The April Fool prank played on me took a different form. Mr Hewitt, the head of the works department, purchased a jigsaw puzzle of the House of Lords at a car-boot sale, and told me he expected me to finish it by the end of the week as part of my anger management programme.
It took me two hours just to finish the border. I intend to draft in all the members of Club Hospital to assist me with this 1,000-piece monster.
DAY 262 SATURDAY 6 APRIL 2002
Dr Susan Edwards, Reader of Law at Buckingham University, has completed her independent study showing the harshness of my four-year sentence. [28]
Jeffrey Archer, former deputy chairman of the Conservative party and best-selling author, was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice arising from a libel action over whether he spent a particular night with a Monica Coghlan, for which, following a ‘not guilty’ plea, he received a prison sentence of four years. As Jeffrey Archer’s prison sentence is the longest passed in any case of civil perjury and the sentence length is comparable to prison sentences passed in the gravest cases of criminal perjury including murder and police corruption it requires some rather more detailed consideration.
Gilbert Gray QC has already warned Mary that he’ll be able to predict the outcome of my appeal as soon as he knows the make-up of the three-judge panel. What a dreadful condemnation of British justice – that my future will not be decided on whether I’m innocent or guilty, but on who judges me.
DAY 265 TUESDAY 9 APRIL 2002
NSC, like most prisons in Britain, is badly understaffed. We have over 200 inmates, and only 27 full-time officers, meaning that there are never more than 12 officers on duty at any one time. The following advertisement appears in several local papers
I’m told it’s no different for any of the other 137 prisons in Britain. It’s hardly an appealing career, other than for the truly dedicated believers in justice – or someone not quite tall enough to get into the police force.
DAY 268 FRIDAY 12 APRIL 2002
9.07 am
Dr Walling arrives a few minutes late. When Stephen Sherbourne (Margaret Thatcher’s former political secretary) visited me, I told him that if you reported sick between 7.30 and 8 am any morning, Monday to Friday, you were guaranteed to see a doctor at nine o’clock the same day.
Stephen asked if I could think of a crime for which he would be sentenced to two weeks, so he could get all his medical problems sorted out.
11.11 am
MURDERER WEDS PRISON PSYCHIATRIST is the sort of headline one might expect to read in the
Today Andy, a lifer who has served twelve years, has been granted a week’s leave. He has been a model prisoner and expects to be released some time next year. While he was in his previous prison, Ashwell, part of his rehabilitation course included regular meetings with the prison psychiatrist, and as the months passed, they struck up a relationship. I think it right to point out at this stage that Andy is thirty-five, six foot one, with the dark swarthy looks of an Italian film star. When he was transferred to NSC, the psychiatrist visited him regularly. A report of her visit was passed back to her own prison, and she subsequently had to resign from the service. She found a new job in Loughborough and her relationship with Andy continued to blossom. Today they were married at a ceremony in Boston attended by five officers and nine prisoners.
NSC currently has twenty-three resident murderers, and I think I’ve met every one of them. Three of them, including Andy, are among the gentlest people I have ever come across.
3.30 pm
One of the inmates is refusing to take an MDT. It’s well known that he’s a heroin addict, and has found yet another way to beat the system. If he refuses to take the test, the governor can only add twenty-eight days to his sentence, whereas if he agrees to take it and then proves positive for heroin, he could be sentenced to fifty-six
