Heaven

DAY 201 MONDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2002

9.00 am

A young lad from the north block, who only has two weeks to serve of a three-month sentence, has been found in his room with his head in a noose made from a sheet hanging from the end of his bed. The slightly built lad, who must be about twenty-one, reminds me of the boy having sand kicked into his face in those Charles Atlas advertisements I saw when I was a child. He is taken to the hospital to be interviewed by Mr Berlyn, Dr Harris and sister behind closed doors. He’s certain to be placed on red suicide watch, with an officer checking on him every thirty minutes.

Mr Berlyn tells me that they’ve never had a suicide at NSC because if a prisoner is that desperate, he usually absconds. The real problem arises in closed prisons from which there is no escape. There were seventy-three suicides in prisons last year and not one of them was at a D-cat.

Just as Mr Berlyn leaves, the lad who wets his bed reappears with a black bag containing two more sheets. I supply him with two clean sheets and he leaves looking even more helpless than the suicide case; you’d never think this was a men’s prison.

2.00 pm

I watch four videos on the subject of heroin. I’m slowly gaining more knowledge about drugs through reading, videos and my day-to-day work as hospital orderly, but I still have no first-hand experience. I go over to see David in the CARAT (Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice, Through-care) office. He is willing to let me attend one of his drug counselling sessions, as long as the other participants agree, because I’ll be the only one who isn’t currently, and never has been, an addict.

6.00 pm

I attend the drug rehab discussion in the CARAT office. David asks the five other inmates if any of them object to my presence. They all seem pleased that I’ve taken the trouble to attend.

David opens the discussion by asking if they feel that once they are released they’ll be able to resist going back on drugs, and in particular heroin. One of them is adamant that he will never touch a drug again. His relationship with those he loves has been ruined, and he wonders if anyone will ever be willing to employ him. He tells the group that he had reached the stage where he would steal from anyone, including his own family, to make sure he got his fix, and just before he was arrested, he needed four fixes a day to satisfy his addiction.

The next participant says that his only thought on waking was how to get his first fix. Once he’d begged, borrowed or stolen the £20 needed, he’d go in search of a dealer. As soon as he’d got his half gramme of heroin, he’d run back to his house and, often with his wife and two children in the next room, he would place the powder in a large tablespoon, to which he would add water and the juice from any citrus fruit. He would then stir the mixture until he had a thick brown liquid, which he would pour onto a piece of aluminium foil and then warm it with a match. He would then sniff it up through a straw. One of the inmates butts in and adds that he preferred to smoke it. However, all of them agree that the biggest kick came when you injected it. The lad from Scarborough then lifts the sleeve of his denim jacket and his trouser leg, and declares, ‘That gets difficult when there are no veins left to inject.’

The one who so far hasn’t said a word chips in for the first time. He tells us that he’s been off heroin for five weeks and still can’t sleep, and what makes it worse is that his room-mate snores all through the night. The dealer jumps in. ‘You’ll start getting to sleep after about eight weeks, and then it gets better and better each day until you’re back to normal.’

I ask what he means by that.

‘Once you’re an addict, you don’t need a fix to make you feel good, you need one just so you can return to normal. That’s when you become a “smack head″ – in between fixes you start shaking, and the worse you are the more desperate you become to return to normal. And, Jeff,’ he adds, ‘if you’re planning to talk about the problem in schools, you should start with the eleven year olds, because by fourteen, it’s too late. In Scarborough, good-looking, well-brought-up, well-educated fourteen-year-old girls approach me all the time for their daily fix.’

The last person to participate is another dealer, who claims he only dealt because the profits allowed him to finance his own drug addiction. From eight in the morning to ten at night, his mobile would ring with a non-stop flow of requests from customers. He assures me that he’s never needed to solicit anyone. He tells the groups that he’s been off heroin for nearly seven months, and will never deal in, or take drugs, again. I don’t feel that confident after he adds that he can earn £1,000 a day as a seller. He ends the session with a statement that takes me – but no one else in the room – by surprise. ‘Nearly all my friends are in jail or dead.’

He’s thirty-one years old.