Stress test: part 7 (The road to nowhere)

H.M.P Ford is, as some of you will know, a D cat prison. This means it has an open regime. This is a deceptive description. It is far from the holiday camp it is rumoured  to be. It will become, for me, the hardest part of my sentence. So in that respect I suppose it is like a family holiday at Butlins.

I have heard many rumours about Ford. Most will turn out to be “prison myth” some distortions of the truth and very few will be true. A few examples:

• At Ford local women come in at night – I never witnessed this nor did I meet anyone who had. It was always a friend of a friends cellmates mate. Even if it was true I am certain that even after12 months abstinence I would not be interested in the type of “lady” who is so desperate for a man that she’ll climb a prison fence to meet 400 or so criminals.
• Drugs and Alcohol are freely available. – Well, I can’t argue with this one. However, with the exception of the Verne, drugs are available in most establishments. The choice is larger at Ford, at most places Heroin and Crack are the only options.
• You can go out on town visits And go home for weekends. – Though true, this is not quite as straight forward as it seemed. If one is an Enhanced prisoner on arrival there is a risk assessment which takes 4wks. If one passes this risk assessment and has completed 2/3s of ones sentence an application can be put in for a town visit. The town visit is from 8:30 – 19:30 and one can travel a radius of 15 miles (I may remember some of these details slightly wrong). Money can be taken from the personal funds in the prison account. Nothing that wasn’t taken out of the prison can come back in and there is a breathaliser on re-entry. To qualify for a home visit (it doesn’t have to be ones own home) one town visit has to have been successfully completed. The address will be checked by the prison probation team and on the first full day out of the prison one must report in to the local probation officer.
• You can go out and work. You keep all wages for resettlement. You can also go to Uni. – Again, this is true but not simple. To qualify all the above steps have to be taken but most importantly the prisoner must be serving 4yrs+. Anyone who has been following this blog from the start  will see how this will cause me a problem.

Sometimes the perception from the outside is so far removed from the reality as to be unrecognisable.

When I first arrive at Ford I am slightly taken aback by the amount of space. Had I not come from the Verne and instead from a closed prison I think the shock would have been greater but even so… However, an even greater shock is the regime. I had envisaged a laid back enviroment. A kind of “wind down” for the final stretch of my custodial. How wrong I was.

Immediately we get out of the van we are ordered into reception. It seems that the lower the cat the more arsey the screws. The Induction Screw takes us one by one into his office. He grills me about my offence and my motives. He sneers at my reasons and snorts disbelievingly at my claim of having no money. He truly is an arsehole. Over the next few weeks it becomes clear that any infringement of the rules, no matter how minor will be punished. Harshly.

After the usual reception routine (search etc) we are taken to our accommodation. We have to walk around a cricket square (really, in a prison… no wonder people think  its a country club!) to get to the B wing of the prison. Ford is separated into two wings, A and B. These are then separated into corridors in the case of A wing and “Chalets” or sheds as we called them in B. A wing is a large brick building housing people with four year+ sentences consisting of single cells. It also houses the dining room and the health centre. B wing is made up of twelve+ wooden chalets for prisoners with under four years. They are mostly double rooms.

One of the most irritating parts of Ford will be the amount of short term offenders that come through my room. It is like Scrubs all over again. Three of my cell mates will have spent 1week in Lewis on eight week sentences. What does that teach people? I don’t think short sentences should exist. There really is no point otherwise. Eight weeks which means four at the most and three of those in a D cat. It isn’t much of a Short Sharp Shock. And after twelve months in closed conditions with others who have done many months of time, and therefore know the crack, I simply do not have the patience. They learn nothing, they go back into society and give the impression that prison is easy when they haven’t really experienced it. Its like spending a week in India and coming back saying you know everything about Hinduism. If we must have short sentences then they should be in closed conditions, D cats should be reserved for those who need resettlement or have worked their way down. As an incentive for good behaviour maybe.

On what is called the induction fortnight we are taken around the prison. It is separated in two parts. The residential side, surrounded by an eight foot chain-link fence topped intermittently with old blunt razor wire. And the Industries side which houses all the workshops, surrounded by a four foot chain-linked fence topped with…. erm, nothing. We are told that, technically, when crossing the road we are on temporary licence. It has been a long time since I had to contemplate traffic.

One of the reasons Ford is harder than the other prisons is that everyday one can see people getting on with their normal lives. everyday I will cross the road and see real cars with real people getting on with their real lives. When there is a concrete wall blocking the view, although one knows that there is a world outside, it is easy (or easier) to concentrate on the environment one lives in. I am able to deal with what is in front of me. If I know that there is nothing I can do about a situation then I can switch it off. This does however lead to instituionalisation. For twelve months the outside world has been a dream, an idea of a place I once lived. Now, everyday, I have to confront the fact that although I could reach out and touch the real cars I still live in a different world so far removed from the real people. Time will stretch, everyday feels like three. Fords apparent freedom is an illusion and the prison changes from walls keeping me in to my mind keeping me in. I could walk out of the prison, jump on a train and abscond (you can’t escape from D cat). The only thing stopping me is me.

For the first two weeks we have to work five days a week, eight hours a day in a factory. This wouldn’t be much of a problem, I have done many factory jobs before. This, however, is the worst job I have ever done (to this day!!). Have you ever wondered how the little square of bubble wrap gets glued into the bottom of strawberry/raspberry punnets? I must admit that I had never given it any thought. 6p per 10000 punnets. Dab glue, place bubble wrap, stack punnet and repeat for eight hours. Soul destroying.

The food is worse than the Verne but better than Scrubs. Tempers flare often as the first few weeks treatment by the Screws seems to be designed to wind people up. In the first to weeks I think often about getting myself transferred back up a cat (by kicking off). Is it worth being here, just to be treated worse than I have been in the last 12months. Luckily in that first fortnight I meet someone who will be a very good friend for the rest of my time. That is probably the only reason I lasted at Ford.

Stress Test: part 4 (Some homecoming)

The sun is peaking over the rolling green hills. There is music playing on the stereo. Through the window I can see trees on the horizon, I see this green and pleasant countryside fly past. What better way to spend an October morning. Except; The seat is hard plastic, the window is sealed and the music is some whining country and western singer complaining about his woman running off with his best friends dog or some such trash. The destination is H.M.P The Verne on the spit of land known as Portland. Not to be confused with H.M.P the Weir which was the infamous prison ship. H.M.P The Verne looks like an old WW2 Citadel and, from the outside at least, rivals Scrubs in the intimidation stakes.

Three days earlier: Waking up at 8:30 as the cell door is unlocked ( I’m on A wing at this point, as its half the size of C wing everyone is unlocked at 830 for exercise for an hour. After weeks of occasional exercise this is luxury.) I turn the kettle on for a cup of coffee and get ready for a morning walk. On the floor by the door is a slip of paper, on closer examination I see it is for me not my idle cell mate who is still sleeping. The slip tells me that I am moving in two days. I am to have all my kit packed, to have handed in all Scrubs property and to be by the Wing office at 9:30. Again many differing emotions battle through my body. I have been on A wing for six weeks now. I successfully completed the “short duration project” which is a run of the mill addiction awareness course. It ran for four weeks and it was because of this course that I managed to get transferred to A wing. After weeks of C wing this is lush. The cell that I’m sharing has a separate toilet room, bliss. Also it is on the fours (top landing) and facing the outside. This means for the first time I can see the outside world. I can see people kicking a ball around on the scrubland or playing cricket. I see people walking dogs and this, particularly, presses on my heart. Every so often I slip away in my head, I imagine Le Stress belting in and out of bushes, hunting anything smaller than her. The downside of being able to see over the wall is that the windows don’t open. Because of the risk of someone accurately throwing a tennis ball filled with drugs over 100ft into a six-inch gap the windows had been sealed shut. There are two vents which don’t seem to let any air in and because we are south-facing the sun comes in all day. It’s what I’d imagine living inside a greenhouse would be like. But it’s worth the discomfort, the ups outweigh the downs. On the course I am out of the cell every morning to do work on triggers, lapses, relapses and danger zones. It’s all work that I have done before, it’s the same technique that is used for all drugs, alcohol, abuse victims, violent offenders, gamblers and sex offenders. They just change the substance. The answers are easy to give, I just have to think about what they want to hear, it doesn’t take much intelligence. Because its classed as education I get paid £2.50 a day which means at last I can afford coffee. Life, as much as it can be in here, is good. So the letter, though not unexpected, is not entirely welcome. I have been bitching for weeks about not being able to do anything. Not being able to do any education as it is only for basic literacy and numeracy. I left school with nothing (children’s homes in G.C.S.E year, not a good mix.) so I thought since I had nothing else to do maybe trying to get some quallies would be a good use of my time. But it’s not meant to be in Scrubs. But now the time has come, now I’m getting downgraded to C category, I’m not sure I want to go. I don’t however get a choice in this. Andy, my cell mate, is getting released two days after I leave anyway so I guess its time.

The morning of the move; I’ve said my goodbyes, packed my stuff and I’m waiting by the office to be called. There are six people waiting with me; two for court, one for D cat, one for release and two of us for transfer to The Verne. 9:30 comes and we are led through the maze of corridors to reception. There are four temporary changing rooms on each side of the hall with a Screw in each. I am shown into one of the rooms and given a box. It’s the same box they used to store my stuff when I first came in. As the officer performs a full search he replaces my prison clothes with the, by now really stinking, clothes that I got off the plane in soooooo long ago. I even get my Oakley’s back! I’m then asked to sign to say that all my property is accounted for and escorted into another sweat-box. Unsurprisingly I get the same seat. After 20 minutes waiting the van starts and we are off. On the way through the massive gates I reflect on the last three months. The last six weeks have coloured my memory. I don’t remember the difficultly of trying to reach people when I first got here. Nor trying to get my head around the maddening rules and regs. Neither do I recall the feeling of complete aloneness or impotency. I think instead of the people who I have shared the last six weeks with. Who, through the course, I have shared some emotive moments of my life and who have shared theirs with me. And I feel sad that our paths will not cross again.

We reach Dorset, everything here is a memory. This is the last place I lived before the fateful flight. As we reach the Dorchester/Weymouth roundabout I realise that just ten miles from here my truck is parked up. Roughly five miles from here Le Stress is with my ex, probably chasing sticks or rabbits. I feel a lurch, not from the van though the driver can’t have long passed his test but, from a wave of homesickness. I am so close to my home, dog and friends yet for the good it does I may as well still be in Africa. So near but so far from home. Not in distance but in time. We drive through Weymouth and I can’t tear my eyes from the window. I’m hoping to see someone, anyone, that I know. But I don’t. The van tilts up and we drive up a steep and winding road. Up and round, up and round until we come to The Verne Citadel. If I had thought Scrubs looked intimidating this place was more so. It was like a Fortress. At least from the outside. Once inside everything was different.

The Verne is an “open” C category prison. It is as far from the regime of Scrubs as it is in distance. The reception building was apart from the main prison building, we filed in expecting to be shown to a holding cell. There was no holding cell. We sat in reception while the reception Screws went through our personal kit trying to get some sense of what to expect. For the first time since Scrubs I got to keep my clothes, all I now needed to do was to get them washed.

We were escorted from the reception building by an Induction orderly. Orderly’s are prisoners who have reached the Enhanced level (There are three conduct regimes; 1, basic -this is the punishment regime. Exercise, letters, canteen spends are drastically reduced also the t.v. is taken out of the cell. 2, standard -this is the regime all prisoners come in on. 3, enhanced -on this level one can get better jobs, single cell, more access to one’s private spends, more visits in comfier seats [in the Verne anyway] also at a point in the sentence can apply for rotl. Release on a temporary licence, more on that later). As we walked to the induction wing, A2, I was struck by the space. There were no iron gates to be unlocked. There was grass, I hadn’t seen grass for months and trees. Trees, in prison!! The wings were like nothing I had imagined. It was more like student accommodation than prison.

The wings are on the right

We were shown into the wing and the Induction officer sat us down and explained some of what we needed to know. We were shortly to  be assigned our rooms (not cells). We would have a key to our rooms. Each room had a bed, a kettle and a t.v. Also a wardrobe (with hangers) a set of drawers, a desk and a chair. At the end of each floor there were two shower cubical, two toilets and a bath. A FUCKING BATH!! It was all getting a bit surreal now, I kept expecting to wake up at any moment. The next morning we would be starting our induction which would last two weeks. The routine would be 8:00-8:30 breakfast (fresh cereal and fresh milk) then from 9:00-12:00 first work/education period. From 12:30-14:00 lunch (in a dining room with salt, pepper and real knives and forks). From 14:15-16:30 second work period, 17:00-18:15 dinner and then from 18:30 until 20:00 we were free to walk around the prison, go to the gym or library. Sign up for extra education, whatever. By 20:00 we had to be back on the wing and outside our doors for roll check. After the roll check the main wing door was locked but we were allowed to go into each other cells until 00:00. After Scrubs this was astounding. But the extra freedom was paid for, the Screws here I would find out came down hard on any transgression. There was very little leeway especially at the beginning and much more was expected from us. At the end of the first day as I lay on my bed my head was spinning. I had just got used to one regime and set of rules and everything was turned upside down on me. As much as I liked the idea of this place getting to grips with it would take some doing. It took a long time to sleep that night. I was back in Dorset but it made no difference. I was still removed from the world. The silence compared to Scrubs was deafening. Yes, this would take some getting used to.