Heaven

DAY 169 THURSDAY 3 JANUARY 2002

7.30 am

Morning surgery is packed with inmates who want to sign up for acupuncture. You must report to hospital between 7.30 and 8 am in order to be booked in for an eleven o’clock appointment. Linda and Gail are both fully qualified, and ‘on the out’ acupuncture could cost up to £40 a session. To an inmate, it’s free of charge, as are all prescriptions.

The purpose of acupuncture in prison is twofold: to release stress, and to wean you off smoking. Linda and Gail have had several worthwhile results in the past. One inmate has dropped from sixty cigarettes a day to three after only a month on the course. Other prisoners, who are suffering from stress, rely on it, and any prisoner who turns up for a second session can be described as serious.

However, back to the present. Eight inmates suspiciously arrive in a group, and sign up for the eleven o’clock session. They all by coincidence reside in the south block and work on the farm, which means that they’ll miss most of the morning’s work and still be fully paid.

At eight o‘clock Linda calls Mr Donnelly on the farm to let him know that the morning’s acupuncture session is so oversubscribed (two regular applicants, one from education and one unemployed) so she’ll take the eight from the farm at four o’clock this afternoon. This means that they’ll have to complete their day’s work before reporting to the hospital. It will be interesting to see how many of them turn up.

9.00 am

Young Ron (both legs broken) hobbles in to see the doctor. He’s on the paper chase and has to be cleared as fit and free of any problems before he can be released at 8 am tomorrow. After the hospital, he still has to visit the gym, stores, SMU, education, unit office and reception. How will they go about signing out a man with two broken legs as fit to face the world? Linda comes to the rescue, phones each department and then signs on their behalf. Problem solved.

9.13 am

When Dr Walling has finished ministering to his patients, he joins me in the ward. We discuss the drug problem in Boston, sleepy Boston, (population of around 54,000).

Recently Dr Walling’s car was broken into. All the usual things were stolen – radio, tapes, briefcase – but he was devastated by the loss of a box of photographic slides that he has built up over a period of thirty years. Because he hadn’t duplicated them, they were irreplaceable, and the theft took place only days before he was due to deliver a series of lectures in America. Assuming that it was a drug-related theft (cash needed for a quick fix), Dr Walling visited the houses of Boston’s three established drug barons. He left a note saying that he needed the slides urgently and would pay a reward of £100 if they were returned.

The slides turned up the following day.

The true significance of this tale is that a leading doctor knows who the town’s drug barons are, and yet the police seem powerless to put such men behind bars. Dr Walling explains that it’s the old problem of ‘Mr Big’ never getting his hands dirty. He arranges for the drugs to be smuggled into the country before being sold to a dealer. Mr Big also employs runners to distribute the drugs, free of charge, mainly to children as they leave school unaccompanied, so that long before they reach university or take a job, they’re hooked. And that, I repeat, is in Boston, not Chelsea or Brixton.

What will Britain be like in ten years’ time, twenty years, thirty, if the police estimate that 40 per cent of all crime today is drug-related?

4.00 pm

No one from the farm turns up for acupuncture.

7.37 pm

Carl rushes in, breathless, to say a prisoner has collapsed on the south block. Linda went home two hours ago, so I run out of the hospital, to find Mr Belford and Mr Harman a few yards ahead of me.

When we arrive at the prisoner’s door, we find the inmate gasping for breath. I recognize him immediately from his visit to Dr Walling this morning. I feel helpless as he lies doubled-up, clutching his stomach, but fortunately an ambulance arrives within minutes. A paramedic places a mask over the inmate’s face, and then asks him some routine questions, all of which I am able to answer on his behalf – name off doctor, last visit to surgery, nature of complaint and medication given. I’m also able to tell them his blood pressure, 145/78. They rush him to the Pilgrim Hospital, and as he failed his recent risk assessment, Mr Harman has to travel with him.

As Mr Harman is now off the manifest, we are probably down to five officers on duty tonight, to watch over 211 prisoners.