Heaven

DAY 126 WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2001

6.18 am

The mystery of Potts’s early release has been solved. A clerical error resulted in the judge thinking the case should be heard at 10 o’clock, while Potts was able to produce a piece of paper that requested his attendance in court at 10.30 am. The judge subsequently agreed to hear the appeal immediately and, having considered the facts, halved Potts’s sentence. The governor called him out of work at the kitchen to pass on the news that he would be released this morning. The first really happy prisoner I’ve seen in months.

8.15 am

Twelve new inductees due today, and as always, if you look carefully through the list you’ll find a story. Today it’s Cormack. He was released just over six weeks ago on a tag (HDC) and is back, but only for eleven days.

Strict rules are applied when you are granted an HDC. You are released two months early with a tag placed around your ankle. You supply an address at which you will reside during those two months. You must have a home phone. You will be confined to that abode during certain hours, usually between seven in the evening and seven the following morning. You also agree in writing not to take drugs or drink.

Cormack is an unusual case, because he didn’t break any of these rules. But yesterday morning he turned up at the local police station asking to be taken back into custody for the last eleven days because he was no longer welcome at the house he had designated for tagging.

‘Wise man,’ said Mr Simpson, the probation officer who recommended his early release. ‘He kept to the letter of the law, and won’t suffer as a consequence. If he’d attempted to spend the last eleven days somewhere else, he would have been arrested and returned to closed conditions.’ Wise man indeed.

12 noon

Leon the PhD joins me for lunch. He’s the new orderly in stores, which entitles him to eat early. He thanks me for helping him to secure the job. I discover over lunch that his doctorate is in meteorology. He tells me that there are not many job opportunities in his field, so once he’s released he’ll be looking for a teaching position; not easy when you have a prison record. Leon was sentenced to six months for driving without a licence, so will serve only twelve weeks. He tells me that this is not his biggest problem. He’s engaged to a girl who has just left Birmingham University with a first-class honours degree, and like him, wants to be a teacher. So far, so good. But Leon is currently facing racial prejudice in reverse. She is a high-class Brahmin and even before Leon ended up in jail, her parents didn’t consider he was good enough for their daughter. He explains that it is necessary to meet the father on three separate occasions before a daughter’s hand can be granted in wedlock, and following that, you still have to meet the mother. All these ceremonies are conducted formally. Before he was sentenced, Leon had managed only one meeting with the father; now he is being refused a second or third meeting, and the mother is adamant that she will never allow him to enter the family home. Does his fiancée defy her parents and marry the man she loves, or does she obey her father and break off all contact? Seven of the twelve weeks have already passed, but Leon points out that it’s not been easy to stay in touch while you’re only allowed one visit a week, and two phonecards.

3.00 pm

Mr Berlyn (deputy governor) drops into SMU to ask me if I’ve invited any outsiders to come and hear my talk tomorrow night. To be honest, I’d forgotten that I’d agreed to the librarian’s request to give a talk on writing a best-seller. I tell Mr Berlyn that I haven’t invited anyone from inside – or outside – the prison.

He tells me that after reading about the ‘event’ in the local paper, members of the public have been calling in all day asking if they can attend.

Can they? I ask innocently. He doesn’t bother to reply.