The me in prison is not the same as the me before I entered this country club. I have had to adapt and change to find my own personal comfort zone, a process I think we all go through consciously or otherwise. Being a Billy Big Bollocks may work in one place, whereas being a nerdy programmer may be effective in another. The ‘just be yourself’ mantra may not be the best way to go.
The inspiration for writing this article was a list of 10 survival tips for prison doing the rounds that someone outside had downloaded off the net. What struck me is how little of it applies to where I am now. It was written by an American and the cultural differences are immense. For example, attitudes towards LGBT, sex offenders and conflict management are poles apart.
If you are recently incarcerated and reading this, you may find some of it helpful. Those in prison a while will have already developed their own coping strategies relevant to their particular correctional facility and be dishing out advice to newcomers. These are purely my opinions, based on nothing more than observation and personal experience. I could have written 20 tips but that would only have given folk more to disagree with, so have stuck to just 6 of the best.
I have no right to tell anyone how they should behave. I’m just an average bloke with nothing better to do whose sense of common decency is getting rotted away when I could be outside paying taxes and making a useful contribution to society.
Managing personal relationships in prison is arguably our biggest challenge next to retaining our sanity. Conflict resolution (or damage limitation) is another, for which I have no advice apart from try not to get into difficulty which I admit is not easy. You can get into trouble through no fault of your own.
A foreigner is not necessarily your friend
“Us foreigners must stick together,” said the Canadian, after once again asserting in a hurt manner that he could not afford to pay back a relatively high loan outstanding for over 2 months. He was learning fast. Make the person asking for their money back feel bad for asking. If he’d borrowed off a homie there would have been a weekly 20% interest to pay on top of the original amount. His affirmation was one of the top tips in the American article I mentioned (Identify with a group for your own protection). As foreigners we are not part of the inmate hierarchy so in that sense are in a class of our own but with more social mobility.
If friendships with people we choose to be with sometimes fail to survive outside prison walls, how can we expect a friendship with someone we didn’t choose to be with to work out in the clink! A person’s ethnic origin should have very little to do with whether we like them or not (but unfortunately it often does).
We all have a tendency to be drawn to other foreign prisoners, especially if their culture is closer to our own than the locals’. Whether we like it or not, foreigners will always be lumped together as a homogenous group when we probably have very little in common with someone from Albania or Oman. As a Brit, you might actually feel culturally closer to a Dutchman than to an American despite the similarity of our native language.
I believe caution is very important here. When I was relatively new to prison, I felt it my duty to assist other foreigners who arrived after me by giving them clothes, plastic containers, soap, food, fizzy drinks and even cash. To this day, I have never had any of my generosity repaid. In fact the same individuals still try to scrounge stuff off me. I have got over feeling bitter and would probably have refused repayment of any sort anyway, but a token gesture would have been kind of nice. I’m not sure if prisons are the best places to expect kindness to be repaid. Interestingly, I always hear the same complaint from other foreigners regarding lack of gratitude from those lower down in the pecking order.
However, holding grudges is extremely counter-productive. You might need that person’s help one day, no matter what you’d like to do to them if you had the chance.
When a foreigner comes in off the bus now, I keep my distance and observe. How he behaves, who he hangs with. Of course, I may introduce myself and offer to answer any questions, but let the other foreigners who arrived after me deal with the pumpkins which is probably how it should work anyway. Here, making the wrong ‘friends’ in prison can get you ostracized because of association with them.
I think the question we need to ask ourself is, “If I met this person On The Out, would I prefer to talk to him or cross the street?” I would have got run over by now.
When it comes to a local who speaks good English, I am even more cautious. Those guys seem to be the best at gaining our confidence then scamming us. They are not from our hood.
The most audacious scam I witnessed here was an anonymous note in perfect English passed to a foreigner which read something like, “I am a friend of the driver of your prosecutor. If you transfer the following amount to this account, the prosecutor will get all your charges dismissed.” A hefty sum of money was involved. How could he fall for that one, you may ask. When you are desperate, you will clutch at straws. Psychologists have even proved that when you are the object of a scam, your brain conjures up the reality the scammer is wanting you to believe. Luckily for him, he was not short of a squid or two.
I think of all other inmates as associates, not buddies. You will have heard that one before.
Keep a low profile
I have no real friends here. Not a one. If I was looking for friends, I’d join the prison choir. On the other hand, I have no real enemies I know of, or at least no dangerous enemies. You do not have to do anything to make an enemy. You might just remind someone of a school teacher they hated.
The worst thing that happened to me personally was having an expensive item confiscated because a cat grassed to a screw. The next day, I learned from the birds on the line that the snitcher was a local inmate I paid good dosh to for twice-weekly massages. Let me tell you what happened to him.
Last year he had a stroke before he turned 40. There are no doctors on this cramped overcrowded strip of dusty wasteland, no occupational therapist. He can hardly walk and his brain is slightly damaged, but he still remembers my name. No, I don’t believe in karma and yes, I feel sorry for him. We have to learn to forgive or we will forever be stuck in the past. But it does make you wonder, sometimes, whether divine retribution is really at work. What I learned from my dealings with him was to have as little to do with other inmates as possible, especially where any kind of payment is involved. I still think of the guy as a likeable rogue, bad but not all bad. His gritty resilience makes me feel like a nincompoop in comparison.
I greet people politely but keep a distance. I find that just remembering a person’s name is enough to forge a good superficial relationship. Hardly anyone bothers me, presumably because I don’t bother them. The only time anyone wants to talk to me is just after I’ve bought a bag of bread rolls or bananas. Sure, there are racist guards and inmates and I occasionally get teased for having cut myself with the same blunt razor I’ve been using for 2 months, or if I mispronounce the local words, but try not to take it personally. It is far easier to go along with silly banter at my expense than to let myself get upset by it. I am probably viewed as a harmless wobble head, which suits me just fine. I have now become very good at looking gormless and pretending I never heard nuffink.
I try not to badmouth other prisoners but have to admit to failing on occasions. I am human, or at least I think I still am. Among foreigners we will probably get away with it because we do it all the time amongst ourselves. Allegiances between any two road dogs are forever shifting.
Slagging off a local to another local can be a recipe for disaster. Forget the other popular mantra ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ It doesn’t work that way. Enemies can make a truce at any time so where does that leave you. Homies are fickle. People in general are fickle. I judge a person by whether I think he would have joined the resistance or become a collaborator in wartime France. Most people fall somewhere in between. To a large extent, prison is just a microcosm of a sick society.
The path of least resistance is my path to relative peace of mind. We can only do our best but need to swallow our pride – a lot. I am still learning how to take all the shit that goes down regularly but getting better at not reacting to it. It’s not easy. Simple things don’t turn out the way they should. The object you remember holding 30 seconds ago vanishes into thin air. Your water heater catches fire and explodes because you tried boiling some water without using any water. Frustration is immeasurable. Regret and anger can consume you. Fear can literally paralyze you. I will be a much changed person when I eventually get out of this calaboose but not sure if I will be fit for general consumption. At least I have lost my phobia of rats and cockroaches.
Don’t talk about your case
We all have a need to talk about why we ended up in the nick, especially when we are still suffering from the shock of arrest and confinement and an unfair or lengthy sentence possibly. It inevitably starts as an overpowering obsession until we come to terms with it, if that is at all possible. The problem is that, when we start making out we are innocent, even if we are, we are wasting our time because not even the bible bashers will believe us.
We all have our own unique version of events. Many folk will have pre-judged us from rumour and biased newspaper reports, or possibly seen us on TV before actually meeting us in person. Most people outside and in the mainline, I hate to say, believe that anybody in prison deserves to be there. The coronavirus pandemic which ravaged the jail was not greeted with general disapproval. I’m sure many people were hopeful it would rid society of its most evil elements.
In Jeffrey Archer’s non-fiction A Prison Diary first book (a good read), he estimated that up to 20% of inmates in Belmarsh had probably been wrongfully imprisoned. His fellow inmates are mostly sympathetic characters, no different from cheeky chappies we might expect to meet down our local boozer. If that is in the UK, a so-called advanced country, I hate to think what the true number of falsely accused is in the world’s developing nations.
In the country I am in, trials are inevitably of the michael mouse variety and usually last for years (to enrich all those in the legal profession). The prosecutor might just as well be wearing a donald duck hat and bow tie and making quacking noises for all the difference it makes in getting things done promptly and in accordance with the law.
As I sat in tense boredom at the back of the chilly courtroom chained in a line with five other inmates, I could be forgiven for thinking I was watching that vintage sketch by The Two Ronnies. It would be funny if peoples’ lives weren’t being tossed back and forth in a parody of a judicial process :
Prosecutor : Your name is Roderick William Gerbil from Biggleswade
Defendant : No
Prosecutor : So you make artificial beaks for disabled budgerigars?
Defendant : Correct
Prosecutor : Now, how do you explain the fact you bought a 9 inch dagger, a 12 bore shotgun and 6 bottles of concentrated strychnine from a Littlewoods’ shopping catalogue a fortnight before the murder?
Defendant : To control some greenfly, sir
Prosecutor : Is a 12 bore shotgun not rather excessive to rid your garden plants of a small insect?
Defendant : They migrate from Polynesia to Peckham and have been known to grow up to 36 inches in length
Judge : No no no. That’s a kind of Tibetan yak. Its horns are ground down by the locals to make powder for a bedtime drink instead of horlicks
Most of us are technically innocent because we have not yet been convicted, so dwell in jails rather than prisons. Other countries have severely flawed legal systems too but nothing like as slow as here. By the time a decision is made, you could have been inside for 10 years and effectively already served your sentence, if the case is not dismissed. Murder cases can last even longer. Judges retire, new witnesses appear and the suspect is not assigned a new court. Hearings are often postponed because the prosecutor, the judge or even your own counsel fail to show up.
The number of times I have heard (foreign) inmates changing the details of their case from week to week is embarassing to listen to. “I only met her twice, and always in shopping malls …. I only met the girl once …. I met her three times in the same shopping mall …. We were not in a relationship ….” blah blah blah. If an individual chooses to monkey mouth it is their prerogative, but they should at least ensure for their own sake that the facts are consistent. Some listeners have very good memories for details and will delight in starting a game of chinese whispers.
Gaining a reputation as a fibber can work against you. Like the boy who cried wolf, you may not be believed at a crucial moment. I have even been told that things you tell other inmates in private can telepathically travel all the way to your court. In this treacherous nation of miscreants anything is possible.
The less said the better. The UK embassy will jot down details of your case and tell you what they can’t do to help (the consular staff generally do a good job with scanty resources. Their government is the problem). Embassies of certain other English-speaking countries are even more toothless. The first consular visit I received was from the Norwegian embassy. Very nice chaps. Case of mistaken nationality. I often wish I had a Korean passport. I have heard of the Korean embassy interceding at very high levels of government and get blatantly guilty citizens off the hizzle. Evidence dismissed due to lack of evidence.
The only opinion that matters is the opinion of your judge.
Avoid getting into fights
Not sure about this one. A lot will depend on the culture of conflict resolution in your particular hotel. I can think of situations where if you don’t fight back you risk getting badly molly whopped.
Here, I have seen people self-destruct. Frustration can easily boil over into violence. You might even get badly injured, especially if the mob decide you, the foreigner, was to blame for the dispute. Or the person you fought with is a psychopath and hell-bent on revenge at a later date.
The system here is that two inmates seen fighting are given a ‘trial’ by an inmate committee. Apparently the penalty used to be raps with a lump of wood over the knuckles. Public flogging 20 or more times (150 maximum) on the backside using a thick rubber belt is now the most common form of punishment but more often than not, both commandos are thrown into a dark dungeon for at least a couple of months with other bad apples and that can be a very unpleasant experience. Say goodbye to your DVD player and spare cash and fresh air. Even if you were not the one who started the argument. You are best to hold your hands down and dodge the punches, hoping other cats will step in and stop things escalating. Self control, however difficult, is paramount.
Famous last words : “They’d never flog a foreigner because they’d get trouble from his embassy.” The following day, he was given two lashes for being late for headcount.
Don’t touch stolen goods
If you know something has been stolen, do not even look at it. You might just be unlucky and the person holding the stolen item when the owner shows up.
I was once “pawned” an item which turned out to be stolen. Amazingly, I got my money back.
Paranoia is the better part of recklessness.
Be careful with drugs
I am not anti-drug, but appreciate many readers are. I could write an epic bore about why I think drugs should be decriminalized but will save everyone the propaganda. The temptation to use crystal meths or something worse in prison is greater than at any other time in our life, if only to get a temporary escape from the drudgery.
I am always amazed how many inmates manage to take drugs regularly without getting addicted. Addiction or overdose or getting the ninja through sharing needles is not the most serious issue here, but drug debt.
Typically, a group of homies will invite you to join them for a session and refuse payment, telling you it is all for ‘friendship’. Yo give us five my man. Your first two or three sessions will be free, but suddenly it is your turn to pay and the price is higher than the going rate. Once identified as a drug taker, you will be constantly hounded by your new friends and the dope boys, who are part of the gang that unofficially runs the prison. Failure to pay your way can result in a good beating and transfer to the bad boys’ box I mentioned earlier.
Being caught with drugs during a cell search by your resident kangas or outside agencies can result in severe consequences if you are unlucky. The worst is removal of your good time allowance, which is a 50% reduction of your bid if convicted. That could mean having to max out and stay inside up to 12 years more than you should. Booty checks of inmates are rare but not unknown. Visitors are all subjected to one.
A final note about outside searches. They are scary affairs. Literally dozens of police, army and drug squad hacks with sniffer dogs, dressed in full combat gear and armed to the teeth with assault weapons (that’s just the dogs) pour in around midnight. The commotion and barking hounds always wakes me up. Often but not always we get a tipoff about the incursion which gives us time to try and hide any valuables. The ingenuity of some prison safes would
challenge Einstein. On one raid, the bandits ransacked the cells, misappropriating anything of value. Cash, stereos, sneakers, TV sets, even musical instruments belonging to the jail band. None of these items are prohibited although jail rules can change from week to week. Although officially very little contraband may be discovered, wardens and their deputies have a very high incidence of being ‘moved on’ and replaced within days of these raids. ‘Nuff said.
The dangers of gambling, better known as ass betting, require no explanation.
This article is a bit grim so I’ll finish with two things that brought a rare smile to my glum lips.
Two dudes in the next cage got a large pizza delivered. What the …. ??? This was in the midst of yet another totally incompetent coronavirus lockdown. We can assume the transaction was done by racing pigeon. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t get to eat much of it themselves.
The other was a present from a kindly guard, of hamburger and fries. He’s worried that I never come out of my hole. The chips were cold and soggy but boy, did they taste good! Let us be grateful for small mercies.