Staying Alive Read online

  I sat with McPhee, one of the instructors, on the steps outside the dining area.

  ‘Looks like you made it, Jake, but we knew you would.’

  ‘Can you tell then?’

  ‘More or less. It’s a sort of steel in the way a trainee looks at you, the way they move and shift, the way they react in different situations and you can see some of that on day one. Being ex-military helps, you know. Obeying an order even though you know it’s stupid and can get you killed, but you were special from the start.’

  ‘Me? Special?’

  ‘Yes you. And you’ve just done it again. You ask questions but they’re soft, non-challenging. You make the other person feel good about themselves without bull like praise and stuff. We don’t get many like you here.’

  ‘All the trainers seem very experienced.’

  He smiled. ‘Half of us have served as prison guards, some of us have been prisoners and we’ve all been educated in criminology and psychology. Yes, Jake, you’ll be okay in there.’ He smiled and patted my shoulder as he stood. ‘Two more days, Jake, two more days.’

  10

  My return home was odd. Well, Sam thought I’d become odd and I suppose I had. What I hadn’t realised was that I had to normalise to live outside of prison and that was essential before I went back into the prison environment.

  I spent three weeks at home and most important was the time I spent with Barrow and with Sam. Barrow was crucial to my rapid recovery because he was my counsellor. He asked me the right question at the right time and gave me jobs that matched where I was in my head. He, being a psychiatrist by profession, helped and I did wonder how people without that form of help recovered their balance. My concern was if the training had screwed me up what would the real thing do to me? Barrow pointed out that there were a number of pressures in the training situation that I was in that were very different from a normal prison situation, if any prison was normal. We weren’t only learning to live in a prison but to do an undercover job. He also mentioned a very odd thing; people in prison don’t want to be there whereas we, in training, had the threat of being thrown off the course. That hadn’t dawned on me. Sam was a rock, she asked, she listened and she understood, and she nurtured me through the bad nights with pure affection.

  Too soon, I was back in the States to spend some time as an observer in Mississippi. I had to gather the sorts of facts and figures that the average inmate would be familiar with and the layout, work regime and general ambience of the state penitentiary, Parchman Farm. Not that anybody was likely to have been there but one never knew in this shrinking world.

  I decided to focus on Unit 32, mainly because my brief discussions with the deputy warden indicated for the particular crime of murdering a member of the FBI a prisoner would be housed in Unit 32. It turned out that Unit 32 was in the process of rapid change (well, rapid for the prison service). The prison authorities were attempting to reduce the number of prisoners held there. In 2009 there’d been about a thousand but most of them were fairly ordinary prisoners who didn’t need special confinement. Unit 32 had now been reduced to those that were considered dangerous to other prisoners or prison staff or were likely to be escapees. The issue was where to house those that should be moved and how to restructure this area to best make use of the facility. The result was that it wasn’t quite chaos but each move threw up a myriad of problems. The number of prisoners had dropped from the thousand when the reform started to about five hundred when I was there and the proper number calculated for the high security facility was about two hundred. One wing was empty and being restructured as a death row and prisoners were being employed to do the work so it was a rehabilitation project for them. One of the issues was people who weren’t, as individuals, considered dangerous but fitted a category that dictated special incarceration, such as revolutionaries, those with very dangerous mental health problems and some forms of protective custody, the basis of which seemed to be unclear.

  The prison as such was unlike anything in the UK and probably unique in the USA. In the old days, Parchman was, and still is, in prime cotton-growing country. Inmates laboured in the fields raising cotton, soybeans and other cash crops, and the production of livestock, pigs, poultry and milk. To some extent that happened while I was there and it was one of the things I felt gave an old-fashioned feel to a prison that, in the main, was run on modern lines.

  It had beds for nearly five thousand prisoners. Prisoners worked on the prison farms and in manufacturing workshops, and the senior staff were statistics mad. They were very proud and often said things like we produced this many carrots or whatever and we provided umpteen hours of labour for the local communities. To some extent, the buildings reflected the history of a pre-Civil War plantation of fifteen work camps. Because of the sale of produce and cotton, Parchman Farm was consistently profitable for the state. This was very different in concept to the UK and, strangely, the trade unions accepted this.

  Despite its size, Parchman didn’t house general female offenders but it was the location of the female death row. That was the general information. I then had to get to grips with the impact of solitary confinement, so I joined a shift to observe the prisoners and the way they were handled. I would have to behave like some of the inmates and it was soon clear that the people transferred out of solitary were, in the main, nutters. This deterioration occurred after a relatively short time in solitary. They displayed agitation, self-destructive behaviour and overt psychotic disorganisation. When they returned to the normal prison regime they tended to be intolerant of social interaction, which is a real handicap to readjustment as the more normal prisoners excluded them. I gave up trying to replicate that behaviour and prayed that it was accepted that I wasn’t in solitary, but I did the Unit 32 statutory five days just to understand what it was like.

  The staff referred to solitary as ‘AdSeg’, the abbreviation of Administrative Segregation. Prisoners used two terms: either ‘the hotbox’ or ‘the hole’. The first day wasn’t that bad, the main problem was what was I going to do. Clearly I had to have a routine but with no clock, how long I did things for was the first problem I met. What to do was less of a problem at first. I exercised - press ups and sit ups and, well, you name it: with only a bed in a bare cell, innovation was the name of the game. Now what? I decided to sing, that was fine but even I got bored of my singing. I needed to keep my mind active so I went over things I had learned but I needed some writing materials and I had none. By day three I found I was talking to myself. With nothing to read, nothing to write on, no stimulation, life was getting tough. I realised I was sleeping more. So I exercised, sang, slept and thought about things. Being with only me was becoming purgatory. I suppose it was day four when I heard voices for the first time, so it was then I realised I had to stay in control of myself, but a new horror started and that was the fear that they wouldn’t let me out. I was also scared that I had lost track of the days; was it day three or four? Or had we actually reached day five and they had decided to leave me in the hole? On day five I was released from solitary and this was a massive relief.

  I was learning. Every day I walked in the prison, different parts of Parchman prison, and saw how some prisoners fell into a pit of despair. I wasn’t sharing this but I was observing it. I realised it takes a lot of energy not to drop into the black hole and those that coped well were working at it. I talked to some of these prisoners and they, in a kind of embarrassed way, said how they replaced negative thoughts with positive ones. It was something they had learned to do and they knew it was paying off for them. For some it would be years before they tasted freedom again. Some, it seemed to me, wanted to be in prison. They were fed, clothed, protected from anything that was changing in society, if not always protected from the violence of other prisoners. For them release was something to be feared. I learned so much in the time at Parchman, things I hadn’t learned on the survival course, and that was the difference. The course taught me about survival and the skills requi
red for it, but Parchman got me in tune with prisoners, what it felt like, the emotional mix that different prisoners faced. A course could not do that, only the reality of a prison can give you that and I was getting a flavour of it without suffering it.

  It was soon very clear that if I did run into somebody who knew about Parchman, just saying I was in Unit 32 would register deeply and if the person had been a prisoner it would give me status. I would have to add the rider that I was only in Unit 32 awaiting repatriation. However it was with some trepidation I approached my incarceration in a real prison.

  11

  I came home and Sam and I knew that soon I would be away again. Sam decided she would like us to go on holiday before I left for my incarceration. It was difficult. I hate holidays but, it seemed, Sam loved holidays. I suppose, for me, disliking holidays started as a relatively young boy when I was sent to aunts who didn’t really want me and cousins who I actively disliked. Of course there was an exception and that was my aunt Lil, who had no children and she grossly over indulged me.

  Sam wanted to go to Italy. Fine, I would go to Italy but only because Sam wanted to go. Of course if you are going on holiday you have to get there so why not make the travelling part of the holiday? So we went on a ‘Great Trains Holiday’. What could be simpler? First class from Waterloo to Stresa on Lake Maggiore, with overnight stop in a four-star hotel in Dijon, France, and through Switzerland to Lausanne and down to the final destination. What could possibly go wrong? After all, the continental trains, we are told, are wonderful. Well, delays, engineering works and strikes meant that we arrived exhausted and in need of a holiday, having had an adventure that I, for one, didn’t sign up to. It was with some trepidation that I contemplated the journey home but the next two days in a deck chair watching Sam chatting and organising made me believe holidays are fun.

  We had adventures. We went on the lake in a little boat and, in glorious sunshine, wandered around the streets and alleys and ate fantastic food with names we couldn’t pronounce. We bought wine and ended up with little art things that we didn’t know what to do with, it was just fun. It was a honeymoon without the wedding. The great one was the language. We bought a guidebook to the Italian language and had great fun attempting to buy stuff and get into places only using Italian. We were walking down a lane and Sam spied a silk blouse in the window and we worked out how to buy it using Italian. We tossed a coin and I lost so I had to do the business. Sam, the shopkeeper and me ended up in fits of laughter but after about half an hour Sam had her silk blouse. She tried it on and she was parading around the shop. The shopkeeper quietly said to me, ‘You did real good, mate, an’ she is bu’iful.’

  I was flabbergasted. It turned out that his father was Italian and he had been brought up in the East End of London. When his mother died he had brought his father home. So the three of us went to his local regular hostelry and had a couple of the finest bottles of red wine.

  How I’m supposed to relax surrounded by people who speak a language I don’t understand, do things in ways I find totally incomprehensible and who treat me in a kind and friendly way as if I was the local village idiot, I don’t know, but with Sam it was just great. When it went wrong it was just funny and when it went right it was just fun. Travelling home went as smooth as silk and I decided I loved holidays but only with Sam.

  Now I had to say goodbye and go to prison. I think we both hit the depths. Sam tried but I walked into the bedroom and she was crying. She was hiding how she felt from me and I headed for the phone to resign. Sam stopped me. Tears ran down her face, and tears ran down mine. Sam didn’t want me to go but knew it was something I had to do. A big black cloud filled me. I wanted to stay with my Sam. I had lived an independent, dangerous life but Sam had changed that.

  Authenticity was going to be vital if my undercover status wasn’t to be revealed. I was to be flown back to the States and spend a few nights in Oxford, Mississippi and from there start the route to incarceration proper.

  I travelled to Jackson in cuffs. From Jackson I was flown to Washington still as a prisoner. In Washington I was handed over to British prison service personnel and flown into Heathrow with two officers, cuffed to the seat, with a whole row of seats at the back of the aircraft reserved for us – the whole nine yards as the Yanks say.

  One of my escorts handed me a Daily Telegraph folded to page five. The Telegraph’s crime correspondent, Edward Richards, had produced a short column that raised the issue of one Jake Robinson who it appeared had been convicted inappropriately of killing an American federal officer and due to the excellent work of Sir Nicolas Ross QC, was repatriated to the UK. The opposition in Parliament were questioning the legitimacy of this repatriation as the European Court of Appeal had been bypassed, although the shadow Home Secretary didn’t go so far as suggesting this decorated army officer had actually committed the crime he’d been accused of.

  It was on landing at Heathrow that the whole plan went pear-shaped, as I was transferred to Brixton. Why Brixton? Apparently I was a Londoner and as such I should be in a London prison. Oddly, the nearest prison to my home was The Scrubs but that isn’t how the bureaucratic mind works. Well, I’m not sure bureaucrats have minds. So I travelled from Heathrow to the M4, A4, through my part of London, south on the A3220 onto the A3 and to Brixton Prison. You might imagine my concern. I’d heard the reputation of Brixton and it wasn’t good and it wasn’t meant for long-term prisoners.

  My first sight of it wasn’t reassuring. It looked like an old factory with chimney stacks surrounded by a 15-foot brick wall. The G4S transport wasn’t the most comfortable as I was in cuffs and it seemed like it hadn’t been cleaned for months. It stank, in fact. Was I getting special treatment or was this the standard? Later, I was assured that the vehicles were inspected before each job but that clearly wasn’t the case. We passed through the gate but it took two tries, so I assumed that the gates were very narrow or the driver was a trainee.

  Once inside, I was parked in a cell and left. It wasn’t an attractive cell. It also stank. I’d been in much worse places but they were in battle zones; here it was just plain unsanitary inefficiency. My bag and personal effects had been taken so I was without toiletries, even a razor to shave with. I also had a sense of dread. Had The Family taken the opportunity to royally screw me?

  After three hours of incarceration, I was taken to see the governor and this wasn’t a joyful experience. He was a tall, gaunt man named Wexford with a pallid completion and he needed a shave. He had a rosy red nose and veins showed on his pallid cheeks. I might assume he was a drinker. He sat at his desk and I stood on the other side and anybody in range, as I was, would suffer from his halitosis. I wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Prisoner Robinson it says here.’ He looked at me expecting a response. He was fiddling with a pen and it was clear that he bit his fingernails; they were painfully short and the flesh of the fingers bulged up in front of the edge of the nails.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It says transferred from the United States of America to England.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘A murderer.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Oh, one of those “I didn’t do it” arseholes.’ His language surprised me, particularly as he was what might be called well-spoken apart from the lisp that I bet was mimicked when he was at school and probably by his staff here when he was out of earshot. He wasn’t a happy bunny. ‘It says you should be in Peasmarsh but for some reason they don’t want you and you’ve been dumped on me.’ He was taking this personally. I said nothing. ‘Well?’

  ‘I was told I was going to Peasmarsh, sir.’

  ‘So you want to go to Peasmarsh.’

  I did but I hadn’t actually said that.

  ‘I want you to go to Peasmarsh but some spotty jerkin of a brainless office clerk has changed your destination to here.’

  I didn’t know what a jerkin was but I could guess.

  ‘I don’t want you here and I expect yo
u don’t want to be here.’ His exasperation boiled over. ‘Well, you have a cell so you’ll stay there until this cock-up is sorted out. Any questions?’

  ‘May I have my belongings, sir?’

  ‘No, you can’t. I don’t know what the world is coming to when a commissioned officer in the Royal Military Police goes around killing American FBI agents. I think the best thing would be to send you back to… Where are you from?’

  ‘Parchman Farm, Mississippi, sir.’

  ‘I suppose your daddy pulled some strings to get you home, ay?’

  ‘Sir Nicolas Ross QC did, sir.’

  ‘Oh and why would he do that?’ The voice resounded with sarcasm but there was some uncertainty.

  ‘Because I’m not guilty, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Christ, not on that again. Give him what he needs and we’ll sort this out tomorrow. Oh, and you better feed him,’ he said to the senior prison officer who had brought me in. ‘And shift him to a reasonable cell.’ His tone had changed. I had the feeling that the mention of Sir Nicolas’s name had created a shift in the governor’s thinking; it’s wonderful the power that rests in a name.

  ‘May I make a phone call, sir?’

  ‘Yes, if it’s to somebody who will get rid of you.’ It was a question but he wasn’t speaking clearly.

  ‘My solicitor, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  He looked at the senior prison officer, who said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  I was taken from the governor’s office to another office where I was searched and interviewed. I had to fill in some forms and also signed lots of papers that I didn’t have time to read. I was fed with some cold, inedible rubbish that I didn’t eat, given a breakfast pack and made a call to Keith Todd who wasn’t there but I left a message. I was given a rolled blanket, my travel bag and the instruction I got was simple – Cell 24, C-Wing.