Heaven

DAY 199 SATURDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2002

9.24 am

Mr Berlyn drops by. He’s agreed to Linda’s suggestion that a drug specialist visit the prison to give me an insight into the problems currently faced by young children in schools. But Mr Berlyn goes one step further and tells me about an officer from Stocken Prison who regularly visits schools in East Anglia to tell schoolchildren why they wouldn’t want to end up in prison, and it may be possible for me, once I’ve passed my FLED, to accompany him and learn about drugs first-hand. If my sentence is cut, I would be allowed to visit schools immediately, rather than going through the whole learning process after my appeal.

11.00 am

Sister is just about to close surgery, when a very depressed-looking inmate hobbles in.

‘I’ve caught the crabs,’ he says, his hand cupped around the top of his trousers.

Sister unlocks the door to the surgery and lets him in. He looks anxious, and Linda appears concerned. He slowly unzips his jeans, in obvious pain, and places his hands inside. Linda and I stare as he slowly uncups his hands to reveal two small, live crabs, which he passes across to Linda. She recoils, while I burst out laughing, aware that we will be the butt of prison humour for some weeks to come.

‘Oh my God,’ says Linda, as she stares down at his unzipped jeans, ‘I don’t like the look of that. I think I’ll have to take a blood sample.’

The inmate rushes out of the door, his jeans falling around his knees. Honour restored, except that he has the last laugh, because it’s the hospital orderly (me) who ends up taking the two crabs back down to the sea.

2.00 pm

An inmate was caught in the visitors’ car park in possession of two grammes of heroin. On the outside, two grammes of heroin have a street value of £80. Inside prison, each gramme will be converted into ten points, and each point will be made into three sales. Each sale will be one-third heroin and two-thirds crushed paracetamol, which can be picked up any day from the hospital by a prisoner simply claiming to have a headache. Each sale is worth £5, so the dealer ends up with £300 for two grammes, almost four times the market price.

Some dealers are happy to remain in prison because they can make more money inside than they do ‘on the out’. The inmate concerned claims a man who was visiting another prisoner handed him a packet in the car park. The head of security is aware who the visitor was, but can’t charge him because he wasn’t caught in the act. He also knows which prisoner the heroin was destined for, but he’s also in the clear because he never received it.