LIFE IN THE SLAMMER

My cousin’s friend has a girlfriend. Her family’s dog-walker’s mate has an uncle who done time in prison. He said that if you show the other inmates that you mean business, and don’t drop the soap in the shower then doing a bit of time is no problem.

Keep your head down and the time will fly… you get visits, letters, free rent and food. You even get to watch films and play on the Playstation. In fact it might even be good. It toughens you up and when you come out everyone will respect you… Won’t they?

With that in mind we decided to speak to Michael Hornby, a man who has worked in various prison libraries for eight years and is now working at Wandsworth Prison. Wandsworth is the largest prison in the country with 1440 inmates at the time of writing.

SENSE: Do a lot of prisoners use the prison library?

MICHAEL: It depends. A lot of the convicts on the VPU (Vulnerable Prisoners Unit) are heavy users. You get Doctors, Lawyers and people like that requesting really obscure titles like “The Complete History of Bedfordshire”. The main prison library is fairly well used.

What people read says a lot about them, what would you say is the most popular book right now in Wandsworth?

“The Profession of Violence” by John Pearson always has been the number one. The prisoners tend to like a lot of true crime stuff about the likes of the Krays. Authors like Martina Cole, Andy McNab, Chris Ryan, Lynda la Plante, Stephen King and anything about Tupac Shakur always goes down well. A lot of them like the love poetry too; they usually send it to their girlfriends.

No surprises there then. Are there a lot of convicts that turn to religion inside?

Yes, there are a lot of evangelists who preach to the prisoners and pretend that they will look after them when they come out. Usually though the prisoner is neglected when they finally do make it out. A lot of evangelical Churches are family oriented places that don’t want the stigma of a mass murderer sitting at the back of their congregation.

What’s the worst situation you have had to deal with in your job?

I myself haven’t had it that bad, I think the worst I’ve had is a paperback slung at my head. You do get a fair bit of verbal.

Do you think that the library helps prisoners to reform while inside?

Well I have my doubts about it, but it is the one bit of normality that prisoners will get during the week. For maybe 20 minutes they are not shouted at or hustled.

How do you handle the more violent prisoners?

The answer to that is that you just get on with it. I like to know what the prisoners have done so that I get an idea of who they are and to make sure my staff are not compromised in any way.

Would you say that young prisoners or old ones are more rowdy?

You definitely get more kicking off in a young person’s jail. The older ones have been in and out of jail, so they know the system and are there to keep their heads down. Only a small percentage of prisoners actually give grief, but certainly in a young offenders institution they are more testing. Actually the worst prisoners I have had to work with are the females.

What’s an average day for a prisoner?

Well some of them can spend 23 hours a day locked in their cells. They don’t get much time to talk to each other on the wing and most of the cells are shared. I’m sure you can imagine what this means if you are locked up with someone you don’t like.

What is the ethnic make up of the jails like?

It varies a lot depending on where you are in the country. In the London jails about half of the inmates are Afro Caribbean with a few Indians and hardly any Chinese. You also get a few illegal immigrants and South American drug smugglers. I have only ever seen one Jewish convict in eight years of prison work.

Do the shows on TV really reflect prison life?

Well I have seen ‘Bad Girls’ and I thought that the prisoners were pretty realistic, having worked in a women’s jail for a time. I think they over exaggerated the staffs role though.

Would you agree that the British Prison System is soft?

Not at all. The prisoners are constantly watching their backs, especially in the shower room where disputes are usually settled with violence. At least 25 percent of the prisoners have serious mental health issues and the hospital facilities are gruesome. Prisoners in some jails are lucky to get a shower once a week, and a change of underwear once every fortnight. Also, the prison clothes never seem to fit them properly.

Prison food is a bit of a lottery too, as the inmates cook most of the food. You can imagine that they might add a few extra ingredients to the recipe. Most people who come out of jail with all their bravado are usually putting on a show. Prisoners are often scared witless on their first day and once the harsh realities of prison life set in this can lead to depression and sometimes even suicide. Jail is a horrible place to be, definitely not a holiday camp.

Michael Hornby, thank you very much.

Well I guess that just goes to show you can’t always believe the hype. Either my cousin’s friend’s girlfriend’s family’s dog-walker’s mate’s uncle gets some sort of sick pleasure out of doing time or he is putting on a brave face. To be honest I don’t care. Jail is the last place I wanna end up. Obviously this interview shows that jail is a bad place… let me tell you that the reality is even worse, we had to leave out some of what Michael said simply because it was unprintable.

The people in jail have lost their freedom, some have lost their minds and all of them have lost something that can never be given back to them: Time.