Heaven

DAY 119 WEDNESDAY 14 NOVEMBER 2001

8.15 am

As I walk over to breakfast from the south block, I pick up snippets of information about last night’s incident. It turns out that the photographer was not a prisoner, but Wilkins, a former inmate who was released last Friday. He was recognized by several inmates, all of whom were puzzled as to what he was doing back inside the prison four days after he’d been released.

But here is the tragic aspect of the whole episode. Wilkins was in prison for driving without a licence, and served only twelve weeks of a six-month sentence. The penalty for entering a prison for illegal purposes carries a maximum sentence of ten years, or that’s what it proclaims on the board in black and white as you enter NSC. And worse, you spend the entire term locked up in a B-cat, as you would be considered a high-escape risk. The last such charge at NSC was when a father brought in drugs for his son. He ended up with a three-year sentence.

I look forward to discovering which paper considers this behaviour a service to the public. I’m told that when they catch Wilkins, part of the bargaining over sentence will be if he is willing to inform the police who put him up to it.

2.30 pm

There’s a call over the intercom for all officers to report to the gatehouse immediately. Matthew and I watch through the kitchen window as a dozen officers arrive at different speeds from every direction. They surround a television crew who, I later learn, are bizarrely trying to film a look-alike Jeffrey Archer holding up one of my books and claiming he’s trying to escape. Mr New tells me he warned them that they were on government property and must leave immediately, to which the producer replied, ‘You can’t treat me like that, I’m with the BBC.’ Can the BBC really have sunk to this level?