Heaven

DAY 316 THURSDAY 29 MAY 2002

North Sea Camp has five doctors who work a rota, and one of them, Dr Harris, is also responsible for the misuse of substances unit in Boston. Dr Harris arrives at the hospital today, accompanied by a male nurse. Nigel, who is in his early thirties and is dressed in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, with a ring in his ear, has come to visit me because he is currently working with young people aged twelve to nineteen who have a heroin problem. I can see why they would feel at ease with him.

Nigel explains that he can only work with youngsters who want to work with him. He listens to their questions, offers answers, but never judges. They’ve had enough of their parents telling them to grow up, behave themselves and find a job. He outlines the bare statistics – they are terrifying.

There are currently 220,000 heroin addicts in Britain, of which only 3,000 (11 per cent) are involved in some form of detox programme. One of the problems, Nigel explains, is that if you apply to your local GP for a place on one of these programmes, the wait can be anything up to six weeks, by which time ‘the client’ has often given up trying to come off the drug. The irony is that if you end up in prison, you will be put on a detox programme the following day. Nigel knows of several addicts who commit a crime hoping to be sent to jail so that they can wean themselves off drugs. Nigel works directly with a small group of seven addicts, although he reminds me, ‘You can’t save anyone; you can only help those who want to help themselves.’

He then guides me through the problems the young are facing today. They start experimenting with cannabis or sniffing solvents, then progress to ecstasy and cocaine, followed by crack cocaine, ending up on heroin. He knows several seventeen year olds who have experienced the full gamut. He adds ruefully that if the letter of the law were adhered to, seven million Britons would be in jail for smoking cannabis, as possession currently has a two-year tariff. A gramme of an A-class drug costs about £40. This explains the massive rise in street crime over the past decade, especially among the young.

The danger is not just the drugs, but also the needles. Often, drug users live in communes and share the same needles. This is the group that ends up with HIV and hepatitis B and C.

Today, for example, Nigel has appointments with two girls addicted to heroin, one aged nineteen and the other seventeen, who both want to begin a detox programme. His biggest problem is their boyfriends, who are not only responsible for them being on drugs in the first place, but are also their suppliers, so the last thing they want is for their girlfriends to be cured of the craving. Nigel tells me that there is only a 50-50 chance they will even turn up for the appointment. And if they do, addicts on average make seven attempts to come off heroin before they succeed.

Nigel’s responsibility is to refer his cases to a specialist GP so that they can be registered for a detox programme. He fears that too many addicts go directly to their own GP, who often prescribes the wrong remedy to cure them.

Nigel displays no cynicism as he takes me through a typical day in his life, and reminds me that he’s not officially funded, something he hopes the NHS will sort out in the near future. He suddenly brings the problem down to a local level, highlighting the national malaise. Nigel has seven heroin addicts on his books, in a county that has 10,000 on the drug. It’s not a chip, not a dent, not even a scratch, on the overall surface.

Nigel leaves me to keep his appointment with a seventeen-year-old boy who has, for the past four years, been visiting caravan sites so that he can feed his addiction; he cuts the rubber hose and sniffs calor gas. He’s not even breaking the law, other than by damaging property.

2.00 pm

Gail is searching for a bed-board for a new inmate with a back problem. There are twelve boards out there somewhere. The problem is that once you’ve allocated them, you never get them back, because when an inmate is released, the last thing on his mind is returning a bed-board.

Gail calls the south block unit, only to discover that a replacement officer from Lincoln is holding the fort. She throws her hands in the air in despair, but nevertheless tells him about her problem. By cross-referencing with the prisoners’ files, she can check those who are in genuine need, and those who have just come into possession of a bed-board by default. To her surprise, the officer returns an hour later accompanied by seven of the offending bed-boards.

I offer him a cup of coffee and quickly discover that his whole life is equally well organized. He tells me about work at Lincoln, and one sentence stops me in my tracks.

‘I’ve developed a system that ensures I only have to work five months a year.’

The officer has been in the Prison Service for just over seven years, and has, along with five other colleagues, developed an on-off work schedule so he only needs to be on duty for five months a year for his £23,000 salary. He assures me that the system is carried out in most jails with slight variations. He would be happy to work extra hours if he could get paid overtime, but currently few prisons can afford the extra expense except for accompanied visits (hospitals, court or transfer). This is the bit where you have to concentrate. Officers work the following shifts:

Shift A: the early shift, 7.30-12.30 or Shift B: a main shift (day), 7.30-5.30.

Shift C: the late shift, 1.30-8.30 or Shift D: the evening shift, 5.00-9.00.

Shift E: a main shift (night), 9.00-7.00.

The officer and his colleagues swap shifts around and, as there is no overtime, they take time off in lieu. Every officer should work thirty-nine hours per week, but if they swap shifts with colleagues, they can end up doing A+C or B+D or D+E, and that way notch up nearly seventy hours per week, while another colleague takes the week off. Add to this the twenty-eight days holiday entitlement per year, and they need work only five months while taking off seven. Three of his colleagues also have part-time jobs, ‘on the out’ and the officer assures me that a large percentage of junior officers supplement their income this way.

I can only assume this does not come as a surprise to Martin Narey, currently the director-general of the Prison Service. I’m bound to say if my secretary, housekeeper, agent, accountant, publisher or doctor took seven months per year to do another job, I would either reorganize the system or replace them.