Purgatory

DAY 73 – SATURDAY 29 SEPTEMBER 2001

9.00 am

Jimmy now wants to escape. He’s due to be released in three weeks’ time, but those four days on the outside have given him a taste for freedom. He has no intention of returning to jail. It was Jimmy’s first offence, and he swears it will be his last. I have come to admire the way the Prison Service, the probation officers and the parole board are able to assess which prisoners are likely to reoffend and which are not. They probably make mistakes, which will guarantee them unflattering headlines wishing they had chosen an easier profession. But let’s at least be thankful someone’s willing to do the job.

11.30 am

During exercise Darren tells me about a prisoner who’s been shipped out this morning at short notice. It seems that he was fast becoming the No. 1 drug dealer for the prison, and was happy to exchange his wares – cannabis, cocaine and heroin – for phonecards or tobacco. However, a problem arose because the drug baron on C block was only willing to supply his stock for cash, paid into a private bank account on the outside. Let me remind you how this works. Prisoners will instruct a friend or relative during visits (they consider the phone or letters too risky) to place money into an account of an associate of the prison drug dealer, who then supplies the gear.

When the drug baron on C block found his customers were moving their business to the new boy on B block because he didn’t require cash, something drastic needed to be done. Yesterday, while his rival was in the gym, he paid two other inmates (cleaners) on B block to torch his cell. Result, the prisoner whose cell was torched was immediately transferred to another gaol. This means that the drug baron on C block is able to continue his evil trade and will be released in a few weeks’ time supported by a healthy bank balance.

8.00 pm

There is rarely anything worth watching on TV on a Saturday night, so I finish off Richard II – or to be more accurate, an assassin finishes off the poor fellow. I last saw the play performed at the Barbican with Sam West in the title role. I had been looking forward to his Hamlet at Stratford, but it was not to be.