Heroin, cocaine and crack were all on tap. But when I caught a cold, I couldn’t get paracetamol after 4pm...
Film-maker CHRIS ATKINS was locked up for tax fraud. The result? A must-read book revealing why Britain’s prisons do nothing but make criminals WORSE
WHEN he was jailed over a film tax scam, CHRIS ATKINS kept a prison diary – and the compelling entries are a damning indictment of a system that has simply become a breeding ground for more crime. Last week, the documentary-maker revealed how his life was threatened on numerous occasions inside the intimidating Wandsworth prison, despite his efforts to help vulnerable inmates. Here, in the final part of our serialisation, he explains why criminal justice as a whole is failing on an epic scale.
MY CELLMATE has terrible news. ‘There’s been another suicide,’ he says. Details are sketchy, but the victim is a Lithuanian teenager with severe mental health problems on remand for shoplifting sweets.
He was found hanging after he’d rung the emergency bell in his cell and it had gone unanswered for more than half an hour. Some of those who work here at Wandsworth Prison as Listeners – part of a peer support service aimed at reducing suicide and self-harm – had sat with him before he died, and they’re in a bad way.
My knees go weak when I hear this. I’m just about to start training with the Samaritans as a Listener myself, and I’m suddenly hit by the grim reality of what I’m going to be dealing with. I’m no expert, but it seems obvious that many of these troubled young people need urgent psychiatric care, which they would get in any other walk of life. But in our brutally mismanaged jails, teenagers are shouted at like animals and locked up in a concrete box. Many do not survive.
Staff shortages coupled with inmates being confined to their cells for dehumanising amounts of time mean prisons are now morphing into warehouses for the mentally ill. This is just one of many aspects of our desperate and outdated penal system crying out for urgent reform.
OCTOBER 28, 2016
THE Listener training takes place in the main chapel. We learn that although it’s often counter-productive to try to persuade suicidal people that life is worth living, getting them to talk about their distress can pull them back from the brink.
It’s a lot to take in. Everything else I’ve encountered in Wandsworth has been banal and inconsequential, but Listening is deadly serious.
OCTOBER 29
AN ELDERLY prisoner pops his head around the door. He has severe arthritis and is rudely ungrateful to anyone giving him assistance. ‘They’ve just made me equalities officer,’ he says. ‘What the f*** did they do that for?’
This is a privileged position requiring him to help victims of discrimination. There are, however, two key problems:
1) He is so incapacitated that he can barely get out of bed unaided, so stands no chance of navigating the prison’s numerous stairs.
2) He is notoriously racist, sexist and homophobic, so he may struggle to protect minorities from such abuse.
NOVEMBER 3
JUSTICE Secretary Liz Truss announces that jails are going to get the biggest overhaul in a generation. Wandsworth is to be one of the country’s first ‘reform prisons’, spearheading her radical new policies, with our governor, Ian Bickers, given unprecedented powers to control his own budget. He has pledged to turn the prison around in 18 months. Most unhelpfully to
Ms Truss, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) announces that conditions in our jails are ‘lawless’ and ‘like a bloodbath’.
NOVEMBER 5
GOVERNOR Bickers has come up with a bold solution to address the officer shortages. He is creating a ‘Purple Army’ of trusted prisoners in purple shirts who will take on basic admin tasks, freeing up officers for other duties. It sounds like a good idea, so I apply.
NOVEMBER 7
WE ARE visited by two women from the Rehabilitation Of Addicted Prisoners Trust. One new inmate tells them that he’s desperate to avoid the Substance Recovery Unit, where he’s due to be housed.
‘I was there on my last sentence,’ he says. ‘I’m clean now, and I can’t go back to the rehab wing as it’s full of junkies and drugs. I’ll end up using again.’ This is a common complaint. The very wing where inmates are supposed to get clean is the easiest place to obtain drugs. The women from the rehabilitation trust are unmoved by his pleas.
NOVEMBER 14
WE DISCOVER that Osvaldas Pagirys, the Lithuanian teenager who took his own life, barely spoke any English. Days before his death, he was assessed by a mental health nurse but not allowed an interpreter. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, and decided he was safe to be put in the punishment block.
NOVEMBER 15
THE POA has gone on strike despite being legally banned from doing so. Liz Truss wins a High Court ruling to stop their action. Their walkout doesn’t seem a very good example for the officers to be setting us criminals.
NOVEMBER 17
SOME European academics visit to discuss rehabilitation. My cellmate Martyn – the former managing director of Deutsche Bank who is serving time for insider trading – and I spend the afternoon chatting to Scandinavian professors. One, a Dane, remarks to Martyn that the landings are quiet. ‘Where are the prisoners?’ he asks. ‘Banged up,’ replies Martyn.
The professor is perplexed. ‘What is “banged up?”’
‘The cells are locked all day.’
‘So where are the prisoners if the cells are locked?’
‘In their cells.’
‘But how do they go to classes and workshops?’
‘They don’t.’
Our visitor looks amazed. The Danes have a progressive attitude towards incarceration, focusing on education and training rather than punishment. Only 27 per cent of Danish prisoners reoffend, compared with 48 per cent in the UK.
NOVEMBER 22
I ACCIDENTALLY slice my finger on a razor blade while trying to repair my glasses. I call the night officer who says he’ll try to find a
plaster. Half an hour later he tells me: ‘Bad news. We don’t even have a first-aid kit.’
I’m extremely fortunate never to have needed serious medical treatment at Wandsworth. At one point, though, I catch man flu and head to the meds hatch. I wait while all the recovering addicts are given their medication, then say: ‘I’ve got flu. Can I have some paracetamol?’
The nurse shakes her head. ‘We can’t dispense it after 4pm.’
‘Why not?’
‘Those are the rules.’
‘But you’ve just handed out weapons-grade meds to those other guys. I only need something for a cold.’ ‘Not after 4 o’clock.’
‘But I work for the education department and don’t get back until half four.’
The nurse shrugs. The irony is that if I wanted spice, heroin, coke, weed, speed, skunk or crack I could source it in seconds, but I’m not allowed paracetamol as I’ve volunteered to work.
The flip side is people suffering serious health problems are using illegal drugs to self-medicate.
DECEMBER 9
MY SON Kit, his mother Lottie and my parents are coming to see me. I arrive at the visits hall to find my mum looking flustered. The scanner didn’t recognise her fingerprints when she arrived, and she was so stressed that she forgot her own date of birth when they asked her. An officer took advantage of this and claimed she wasn’t really my mother.
Quite why a 72-year-old woman would enter this place for any reason other than visiting her son is beyond me. This is not unusual behaviour from the screws, who often treat relatives as if they’re criminals as well – as indeed sometimes they are.
DECEMBER 10
LIZ TRUSS is visiting tomorrow and Governor Bickers wants to show her the Purple Army, of which I’m now a member, in action.
We must report at 2pm wearing our purple shirts and put on a good show. ‘Just make it look like you’re doing something useful,’ says the officer in charge of the briefing.
DECEMBER 11
IT’S the day of Ms Truss’s visit and twice the normal number of screws are on duty – the male officers have brutally shaven faces and slicked back hair and the women are wearing too much make-up and perfume.
A gym session is called for the first time in weeks – I suspect this is to prevent Ms Truss visiting an empty gym. The whole place is alive with prisoners feverishly scrubbing floors. It’s like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene in the Disney movie Fantasia, but with drug-dealers instead of dancing broomsticks.
I change into my Purple Army uniform and muster with the rest of the troops. We stand around pretending to advise prisoners, clutching clipboards for dramatic effect.
Suddenly the organiser of the Purple Army appears looking distraught. It turns out Ms Truss won’t be visiting our wing. ‘She isn’t even meeting any prisoners,’ he says.
But then, out of nowhere, Governor Bickers and Ms Truss suddenly appear and I jump back in surprise. The visitors seem equally shocked at encountering real prisoners and Bickers hustles them away.
I can hear snippets of the governor’s spiel: ‘Reform… turning a corner… Purple Army.’ Ms Truss appears to be counting the seconds until her ministerial car whisks her back to Westminster.
DECEMBER 12
I’M ASKED to see a lad called Dean, who is on a programme for prisoners at high risk of suicide. He has tried to hang himself several times, and has been placed in an observation cell with a thick sheet of Perspex in place of a door and he’s watched constantly by a health worker sitting outside. The cell is situated on the main thoroughfare through our wing, so hundreds of prisoners pass by every day and have a good gawp inside.
To me, this shaming of the mentally ill is reminiscent of putting lunatics in stocks in the village square. Dean is only 19. I offer him some magazines but he mournfully admits he can’t read.
He hasn’t eaten anything for two days except for razor blades, and won’t touch prison food as he’s convinced he’s being poisoned. I offer to bring him something to eat and promise not to poison him.
I return with Dean’s supper and he gives me a weak fist-bump. It strikes me that this lad is closer to my four-year-old son’s age than mine. I swear to myself that when I get out I’ll try to stop the system brutalising youngsters in this way.
DECEMBER 20
THE prison is full of tramps and rough sleepers who have been admitted over the festive period. They’ve usually committed a minor offence just to get a roof over their heads and some food.
DECEMBER 21
AN EMPTY brown envelope is shoved under my door. Attached is a note that informs me that its contents have been confiscated – it turns out that these were Christmas decorations posted by a friend. I add ‘paper stars’ and ‘snowflakes’ to the burgeoning list of unauthorised items, which does not seem to extend to illegal drugs.
DECEMBER 25
WE SPEND Christmas Day sitting in our beds watching TV. The Shawshank Redemption [about two prisoners who find solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency] is often on, and my new cellmate Gary compares the on-screen facilities to those in Wandsworth. ‘They’ve got four washing machines in their laundry,’ says Gary. ‘Lucky bastards.’
DECEMBER 31
WE WATCH Match Of The Day. Our wing is full of Chelsea fans and whenever their team scores, there is an explosion of doorkicking. The night-screw furiously tries to stop the noise, which just provokes more thumping.
The clock chimes midnight and New Year. I have spent exactly six months in prison. I’m amazed at how quickly time has flown. I no longer crave alcohol or nicotine, I actually like the taste of instant coffee and I don’t find the hard bed uncomfortable.
JANUARY 6, 2017
I LEARN details about my forthcoming Proceeds of Crime hearing [where convicted defendants are ordered to repay the amount of their benefit from crime]. An accountant has been hired to calculate my financial gain. They accept I wasn’t paid personally, but I am on the block for money retained by the production company I used to fund a film I was making. My personal liability is calculated at £100,000.
FEBRUARY 1
THE verdicts are in on the big HBOS fraud trial that has been going on in London. Six bankers have been found guilty of a £230 million fraud. A few hours later they stumble into Wandsworth, one with a massive Louis Vuitton trunk which apparently needed two screws just to pick it up.
FEBRUARY 13
I POP in at one of the victim awareness schemes, where prisoners convicted of violence or drug crimes have to consider the impact of their actions. Chaz, a career criminal I vaguely know, is speaking. ‘I used to be a right scumbag, God’s truth,’ he says. ‘I didn’t give two f***s about anyone. But thanks to the victim awareness course, I now understand the full impact of my offending. Not just on my victims, but on wider society and my own family. I can honestly say that I’m never going to commit crime again.’
He sits down to enthusiastic applause. I tell Chaz I’m impressed with his honesty. He gives me a wink and whispers: ‘Load of old c**p, innit? Got to play the game.’
I later ask if he’s learned anything from the course. ‘Loads,’ he replies. ‘I picked up all the lingo they like to hear – “offending pathways”, “mitigating risk”, all that stuff. You trot out the buzzwords and you’re off to open prison in no time.’ Chaz is already planning his next crime.
FEBRUARY 23
LIZ TRUSS is on TV talking about her plans for prisons, insisting she’s in the job for the long haul. ‘This will take time,’ she says. ‘It’s not something you can sort out in weeks or months.’ Three months later she is replaced.
FEBRUARY 24
AT ANOTHER confiscation hearing, I’m told that I must also pay