Contents
1 Title Page
2 THE MEANING OF LIFE
1 JOHN STRAFFEN
1 DANIEL REECE
1 JAMES DOWSETT
1 HARRY ROBERTS
1 LINDA CALVEY
1 COLIN RICHARDS
1 CHARLIE SMITH
1 AVRIL GREGORY
1 RICHARD JOHN DENNICK
1 SUE BUTTERWORTH
2 Copyright
It’s like being on another planet … that’s the only way you can cope with it. I had to forget about my life before and think of it as being taken away from the world I had always known and put into another world. A world that was completely alien to me. A strange world of different noises, different smells. It’s an unnatural world, a one-sex world and it’s an unnatural life to be locked away 24 hours a day, every day. You know you’re never going to be able to do simple things like swim in the sea or walk under the stars again. You know that from now on you don’t think for yourself, or make any kind of decision for yourself, you’re told what to do and when to do it. ‘Please, Sir, can I do this? – please, Sir, can I do that?’ You know that’s how it’s going to be for the rest of your life – my life …. If you can call it a life. I think it would have been kinder to hang me.
That was how one of the lifers I spoke to described his life sentence to me. I suppose in a way he was right. Now, every time I drive past a prison and see those high stone walls, I think of the prisoners who are kept there and think of it as just that – another world. A completely unnatural alien world. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you lock a thousand men in one building for years on end it’s going to be like an unexploded bomb just waiting to go off … A world where a simple sausage can start a riot…
I was standing in line waiting to get my breakfast. There had been some delay in getting the hotplates on to the wing and the time allocated for breakfast was nearly over.
‘Get a fucking move on,’ one of the screws snapped as he shoved me hard in the back.
I fell against another con who was standing in front of me.
‘’Ere, watch what you’re fucking doing,’ he said. ‘Look, you made me drop my sausage.’ The half-cooked sausage rolled across the filthy floor, among the fag-ends. The con held out his small metal tray for another one.
The screw serving food said, ‘Sorry that was the last one, there ain’t any more sausages.’
A deathly silence fell along our line. ‘Wot, no more sausages!’ someone gasped. ‘I ain’t having that – I’m entitled to a sausage and I want my fucking sausage and I want it now!’
The screws, leaning against the wall chatting, looked over and one snapped, ‘Never mind about sausages, move along.’ The con was determined, he banged his tray on the hotplate and shouted at the screw, ‘I ain’t fucking moving – I know my rights!’
Things were turning ugly and the screws started moving in. Crack!! The con who had lost his sausage turned and whacked a screw with his metal tray, breaking his nose. Quickly, alarm bells were pressed and an almighty fight broke out. The screws scrambled out of the wing as quickly as they could, locking us inside. We responded by barricading the doors and rampaging through the wing, smashing tables and chairs and anything else that got in our way. It was just sheer frustration bubbling out. It was like a shaken-up bottle of Coke and someone unscrewing the lid. The pressure was explosive! Nothing was going to stop the flow. We smashed everything we could lay our hands on. Nobody really knew why we were doing it. We just were. It felt good to be in control again, but it didn’t last for long. We knew our newfound freedom would be short-lived and every one of us knew the consequences.
After a couple of hours, we had smashed all there was to smash and shouted all there was to shout. We had burnt ourselves out and none of us knew what to do next. We were all sitting around among the debris, smoking and chatting, when the governor appeared at one of the barricaded doors. ‘All right, you’ve made your point, come out now and nobody gets hurt.’
Someone shouted, ‘Go fuck yourself, you old git’, and we all roared with laughter.
The governor shrugged his shoulders and gave the nod to the riot squad who were standing directly behind him. They looked like something out of a science fiction film, with their full facial helmets, big batons and riot shields. Believe me, they meant business. Within seconds they had stormed the wing and were kicking the shit out of us. We didn’t stand a chance. Some of us ended up with broken noses, dislocated shoulders, cracked ribs, and the wing was completely destroyed. And all over a sausage …
To you outside it probably sounds ridiculous, but that’s how it is in prison. It’s not the soft, cushy place that the media try to make out. It’s a tough violent, brutal place. You have to fight every day – just to survive.
Christmas is the worst time. That’s when you feel it the most. You miss your family so much the pain inside you cuts like a knife. Or when someone gets a ‘Dear John’ letter, which often happens with long-term prisoners. It affects the whole wing. You can’t go and talk to your wife and sort it out; you just have to swallow and brood on it.
In writing this book, I spent many hours talking with lifers and they all seem to have the same look in their eyes – a look of despair and regret, a look that cries out: ‘If only…’
Sitting, talking with them over a cup of tea in the visitors’ hall, I often found it hard to believe that these people really had committed the horrific murders they were so calmly telling me about.
None showed much remorse for what they’d done, in as much as they were sorry and guilty for having stolen someone else’s life, but they all regretted their crimes – because it meant a life in prison for themselves…
There’s been a lot of political talk recently about life really meaning life, but the cons would argue that a life sentence already means just that. It stays with them until the day they die. It can never be revoked.