Heaven

DAY 180 MONDAY 14 JANUARY 2002

9.00 am

When the doctor arrives each morning, he first signs the discharge papers of any prisoner due to be released. He then signs applications for a five-day leave, showing a clean bill of health. His next task is to see all the new prisoners who have just arrived from another jail. Finally, the doctor handles ‘nickings’: prisoners who have been put on a charge, and again must be passed fit both mentally and physically before punishment can be administered. Once all these inmates have been dealt with, the doctor moves onto the genuinely sick.

Today we have three ‘nickings’. Two are commonplace, but the third even took the governor by surprise. The first was for swearing at an officer, and that has to be pretty extreme for the prisoner to end up in front of the governor. The second was an inmate found to have £20 in his room. The first ended up with four days added to his sentence; the second seven days, but the third…

All prisoners out on town leave have to report back to the gate sober before 7 pm. This particular inmate was a few minutes late and was, to quote the gate officer, legless. Out there you can be breathalysed if you’re driving, in here we are when we’re walking.

When charged with being drunk, the prisoner claimed that he’d swallowed half a bottle of mouthwash thirty minutes before returning to the prison. It is true that a bottle of mouthwash contains alcohol, and it will register on the breathalyser at 0.5 per cent. The trouble was that the breathalyser was showing 3.5 per cent. Next, they checked his medical records, and as the prisoner had not visited the surgery for over a month, and never requested a mouthwash, he was asked to explain why he suddenly drank half a bottle.

‘Because I was giving my partner a blow job,’ he replied.

When the officer recovered from this revelation, he thumbed through the rule book and came up with a winner. ‘Did you sign the trust agreement for prisoners who are on a town visit?’ he asked innocently.

‘Yes,’ came back the immediate reply.

‘And who did you select as the person who would be responsible for you at all times?’

‘My mother,’ the prisoner replied.

‘And did your mother witness the action you have just described?’

The inmate paused for a moment, pleaded guilty, and had twenty-eight days added to his sentence.

11.00 am

Linda leaves the hospital and walks across to reception, where two prisoners have just been taken from their rooms without warning, as they are to be shipped out to Lincoln (B-cat). They have both failed an MDT and came up positive for heroin.

Prisoners are never given any warning they are on the move in case they decide to abscond rather than be transferred back to closed conditions.