Heaven

DAY 110 MONDAY 5 NOVEMBER 2001

8.28 am

When I was an MP I often heard the sentiment expressed that life should mean life. I am reminded of this because we have a lifers’ board meeting at SMU today.

There are nine lifers at NSC and you can be fairly confident that if they’ve reached a D-cat, they won’t consider absconding. In truth, they’re all fairly harmless. Two of them go out each day to work in an old people’s home, one in a library in Boston and another for the local Oxfam shop.

Linda, their probation officer, joins us for coffee during the morning break. She adds to the research I’ve pieced together over the past three months. I began my prison life at Belmarsh on a spur with twenty-three murderers. Lifers range from cold-blooded killers like Denis Nielsen, who pleaded guilty to murdering thirteen victims, down to Chris, who killed his wife in a fit of rage after finding her in bed with another man; he’s already spent fourteen years regretting his loss of temper. Nielsen began his sentence, and will end it, in the highest security A-category facility. He is currently locked up in a SSU (a special security unit), a sort of prison within a prison. When he moves anywhere within the prison, he is always accompanied by at least two officers and a dog, and he is searched every time he leaves his cell or returns to it. At night, he places all his clothes outside the cell door, and an officer hands them back to him the following morning. Nielsen told PO New on several occasions that it would have been better for everyone if they’d hanged him.

Now that the IRA terrorists are no longer locked up on the mainland, of the 1,800 murderers in custody, there are currently only seven SSU inmates.

Now Chris, who killed his wife, is at the other end of the scale. He’s reached D-cat status after eleven years, and works in the kitchens. He therefore has access to several instruments with which he could kill or maim. Only yesterday, I watched him chopping up some meat – rather efficiently. He hopes that the parole board will agree to release him in eighteen months’ time. During the past eleven years, he has moved from A-cat to D-cat via seventeen jails, three of them in one weekend when he was driven to Preston, Swalesdale and Whitemoor, only to find each time that they didn’t have a cell for him.

All nine lifers at NSC will be interviewed today, so further reports can be sent to the Home Office to help decide if they are ready to return to the outside world. The Home Office will make the final decision; they are traditionally rather conservative and accept about 60 per cent of the board’s recommendations. The board convenes at 9 am when Linda, the lifers’ probation officer, is joined by the deputy governor, Mr Berlyn, a psychiatrist called Christine and the lifers’ prison officer.

The first prisoner in front of the board is Peter, who set fire to a police station. He’s so far served thirty-one years, and frankly is now a great helpless hunk of a man who has become so institutionalized that the parole board will probably have to transfer him straight to an old-peoples’ home. Peter told me he has to serve at least another eighteen months before the board would be willing to consider his case. I don’t think he’ll ever be released, other than in a coffin.

The next to come in front of the board is Leon.

The biggest problem lifers face is their prison records. For the first ten years of their sentences, they can see no light at the end of the tunnel, so the threat of another twenty-eight days added to their sentence is hardly a deterrent. After ten years, Linda says there is often a sea change in a lifer’s attitude that coincides with their move to a B-cat and then again when they reach a C-cat. This is even more pronounced when they finally arrive at a D-cat and can suddenly believe release is possible.

By the way, it’s almost unknown for a lifer to abscond. Not only would they be returned to an A-cat closed prison, but its possible they never would be considered for parole again.

However, most of the lifers being interviewed today have led a farily blameless existence for the past five years, although there are often scars, missing teeth and broken bones to remind them of their first ten years in an A-cat.

During the day, each of them goes meekly in to face the board. No swagger, no swearing, no attitude; that alone could set them back another year.

Leon is followed by Michael, then Chris, Roger, Bob, John, John and John (a coincidence not acceptable in a novel). At the end of the day, Linda comes out exhausted. By the way, they all adore her. She not only knows their life histories to the minutest detail, but also treats them as human beings.

4.00 pm

Only one other incident of note today – the appearance at SMU of a man who killed a woman in a road accident and was sentenced to three years for dangerous driving. He’s a mild-mannered chap who asked me for help with his book on Kurdistan. Mr New tells me that he is going to be transferred to another jail. The husband of his victim lives in Boston and, as the inmate is coming up for his first town visit, the victim’s husband has objected on the grounds that he might come across him in his daily life.

The inmate joins me after his meeting with Mr New. He’s philosophical about the decision. He accepts that the victim’s family have every right to ask for him to be moved. He’s so clearly racked with guilt, and seems destined to relive this terrible incident for the rest of his life, that I find myself trying to comfort him. In truth, he’s a different kind of lifer.

10.00 pm

It must be Guy Fawkes Day, because from my little window I can see fireworks exploding over Boston.