The prison industry has become big business – book sales, newspaper sales, employment and the media … all big bucks. Talk about prisoners exploiting the system, what about the others milking it? People talk about the ‘victim’ as if it were a crime to make a penny from the crimes one commits, but the bigger fish are riding on the backs of those committing the crimes. For one, cut crime down to zero and you’d make a billion people lose their jobs. Don’t knock us criminals; we’re keeping one billion people in their jobs, and helping many of them get rich.

A tiepin badge promoting the former Maze Prison (Northern Ireland) Rugby Football Club

Any of you a fan of Lynda La Plante? Did you know that her production company used my character in their The Governor TV series? I include copy of her letters below:

La Plante Productions Limited

Paramount House

1st May 1996

Dear Charlie

Thank you for your letters and especially thank you for your wonderful cartoon book. The drawings made me laugh and cry. They also impressed me because you are still able to joke about your situation. Sometimes when I read what you have written in your letters I have to stop and look away from the page. Thirty years behind bars is hard to comprehend, making your jokes and wit even more poignant.

I’ve just spent a long time in America, but I think Alice wrote and told you I was away. I was actually on a book tour, crossing the United States from New York to LA with seven stops between. Jet-lag is a strange feeling, a little bit like you’ve woken up and are not sure where you are, what time it is, or what day or month for that matter.

I have been told that you are to be the subject of a Panorama. So, your story, your life, will unfold for many people who I don’t think truly believed that The Governor depicted prison life as it is today. The actor who portrayed the character called Tarzan is called Terry O’Neill. I will pass on your best wishes to him as he will be pleased that you approved of his performance.

Terry is very famous as a karate seventh Dan black belt, and three times world champion. He writes and edits his own magazine called Fighting Arts International. He is a man I respect greatly; very kind and thoughtful, and physically a very strong man. I shall pass on your letter and perhaps he will write to you, or you could write to him. I will also ask him to send you some magazines if they are allowed to be handed over to you.

You must understand though, Charlie, that Tarzan is only based on you and some of your background. When writing a drama I cannot ever state categorically that the character is someone in particular and your name is never mentioned. The Governor is not a documentary but a drama series. And therefore sometimes I have to take a certain amount of dramatic licence. I have not put in anything that Lorraine did not approve of. Also, Tarzan does return to the wing and he does prove himself to be a highly intelligent individual. But, you must understand that what I have depicted is probably two to three years ago and all past. Whatever happens to you now is your future. And I hope it will be one with a possible release for you, so that you may care for your father.

I am very excited about your forthcoming book and I think your title Concrete Coffin is a good one. I also hope, Charlie, that because of your talent as a writer it will help you become more settled as a person. And you do have such a talent and you must try not lose it due to anger or bitterness. Writing is a special gift, it will open doors of freedom, if not physically then mentally, and you will, and can, go any place you choose. That is why writing means so much to me. Sometimes I lose myself in words, lose any hurt or pain I feel. I just put it all down and it eases me, as I hope your work will begin to ease you, and calm you.

Thank you for your letters which I appreciate. Thank you also for allowing the character of Tarzan to exist, he really made a great impact on the series. I do not know if I will get another series going as I have not heard from the ITV network yet. I hope so as I feel the series teaches the public about prison life. I also hope it will act as a deterrent for young men watching who might foolishly think that a life behind bars and a prison sentence is something they can misguidedly be proud of.

I think you have a lovely soul sister in Lorraine. She really is a nice lady and we keep in touch. I will write to you again soon but in the meantime I want to ask you to do something for me. I know perhaps you have felt great animosity, anger, and hatred towards Prison Officers, but I also met some truly caring men who want nothing more than to help prisoners. These men have a job to do, whether you like them or not. They have to do their job, Charlie. They have to earn a living and provide for their families. So, I am asking you to stay calm, concentrate on your writing, and not think crazy thoughts.

My grandfather used to have these words printed on a card by his bed and I think of them often. I want you to think of them, too.

Think big and your dreams will grow

Think small and you will fall behind

Think that you can and you will

It is all in a state mind.

Goodbye for now.

Look at some of the projects to emerge using prison and crime themes:

QUOTES

HENRY BRACTON

(Priest and Jurist) died 1268

(carcer ad continendos et non ad puniendes habere debeat) ‘These private prisons developed according to the foibles and idiosyncrasies and the financial and political fluctuations in power, of the grantees, creating a multitude of abuses which of themselves constituted actual punishment.’

ANGELA DAVIES

(Activist)

‘Jails and prisons are designed to break human beings, to convert the population into specimens in a zoo – obedient to our keepers, but dangerous to each other.’

LORD DENNING

(Then head of the Court of Appeal (Civil Division), in the case of Becker v Home Office 1972)

Lord Denning ruled that the Prison Rules did not give prisoners any rights at all and, as a consequence, even if the prison Governor drove a coach and horses through them, that did not of itself give any prisoner the right to complain to the courts.

DWIGHT D EISENHOWER

‘Americans, indeed all freemen, remember that, in the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.

JIMMY HOFFA

‘I can tell you this on a stack of Bibles: prisons are archaic, brutal, unregenerative, overcrowded hell holes where the inmates are treated like animals with absolutely not one humane thought given to what they are going to do once they are released. You’re an animal in a cage and you’re treated like one.’

HUBERT H HUMPHREY

(1911–1978)

‘There are not enough jails, not enough police, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.’

ROBERT KENNEDY

‘Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.’

ROBERT MITCHUM

‘The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I’ve spent more time in jail.’

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT

(1882–1945)

‘Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.’

‘No man is above the law, every man is below it, and we need ask no man’s permission when we require him to obey it.’

JOHN RUSKIN

‘Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons.’

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

‘It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.’

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

‘The thoughts of a prisoner – they’re not free either. They keep returning to the same things.’

MOTHER TERESA

‘What you do to these men, you do to God!’

MARK TWAIN

‘There was a proposition in a township there to discontinue public schools because they were too expensive. An old farmer spoke up and said if they stopped the schools, they would not save anything, because every time a school was closed a jail had to be built. It’s like feeding a dog on his own tail. He’ll never get fat. I believe it is better to support schools than jails.’

OSCAR WILDE

The vilest deeds like poison weeds

Bloom well in prison air;

It is only what is good in man

That wastes and withers there.

PRISON GHOSTS

HMP BROCKHILL

Location: Redditch, Worcestershire.

Capacity: 170 beds.

Category at present: Female Local.

Opened: 1965.

History: This prison was originally a remand centre for male and females serving HMP Winson Green in Birmingham. After two years, all of this changed and the place became a YOI Remand Centre and then it was earmarked for closure in the early nineties. But, as always, these decisions, based on cost, are often overruled, and the place became an all-male Cat ‘C’ training prison. All change! Again, the place changed status and became, due to female overcrowding in the penal system, an all-female local prison, which it remains at the time of writing.

After reports that a ghostly monk was walking through walls at this prison, inmates were offered counselling. Even some of the prison officers also reported feeling uneasy after spotting ghostly goings on while on their night shifts.

The jail, with a small population of less than 170 prisoners, stands in the grounds of Hewell Grange Estate, a former manor house owned by the Earl of Plymouth. There is also a male open prison nearby.

Such a sighting of a monk could be due to the past history of the estate and the fact that it is near Bordesley Abbey in Redditch, which would account for the apparition being a monk. On seeing the apparition, both staff and inmates admit to having had strange sensations. Sleep well, girls!

HM PRISON DURHAM

All old jails have to have a ghost or two. Durham Prison also, apparently, has its own ghost. The story goes that in December 1947, an inmate stabbed a fellow prisoner to death with a table knife. Then, a few days later, another prisoner was put into this same cell and, the next morning, was found in the corner of the cell in a huddled up state of fear. What he told the screws sent chills of fear down their spines; he had seen the murder re-enacted. Eventually, the cell was converted into a storeroom due to prisoners refusing to be put into it.

HM PRISON OXFORD

Although I didn’t stay at Oxford for more than the blink of an eye, I did follow up my stay there by digging around into its past. Well, what is a man to do in his cell all day but read and exercise? There have been many ghostly happenings at Oxford Prison, and I do a like a ghost story or two.

As I’ve already said earlier on, you surely can’t escape hauntings by those who have passed on inside prison. What about all those people executed behind the walls of pain and suffering? What about executing a woman by hanging, isn’t that an evil thing to do, unless it’s Rose West or the like?

Back in the 1700s, they were hanging women like it was going out of fashion. One particular woman to receive the neck bungee jump was Mary Blandy; she was executed in 1752 for the alleged murder of her father. Her ghost is said to haunt the area and has been seen darting across the top of the Castle Mound.

As the prison drew to the end of its life, a group of prisoners held a séance in their cell. Afterwards, it is said, they experienced poltergeist activity. From what I read, a priest was called in to perform an exorcism.

Back in the late 1980s, two security guards were on duty one night, sitting in A Wing offices overlooking the stairs to the basement. As they sat there, they saw a white misty shape rise up the steps towards them before fading away.

A Wing seems to be the most haunted of places in Oxford Prison; this is confirmed from an incident that took place in September 1998.

His dog growling and snarling, as if in pain, alerted a security guard on patrol outside the entrance to A Wing. The guard spotted a pair of black figures; they turned in his direction. These ‘intruders’ seemed to lack arms and legs, and they were hovering above the ground!

Now, I’ve never read about ghosts being able to talk, but the guard swore that he heard the figures say, ‘We live here, why are you here?’ After running to his van and making for the gate, the figures were in front of him.

The following morning, his wife found him sitting in shock in his van outside their house. The guard couldn’t remember anything between leaving the prison and the morning. In a bizarre follow-up, his guard dog died a few days later.

In another A Wing incident, two members of the cleaning staff were cleaning A Wing when they heard a voice screaming, ‘Help, let me out!’ The voice was coming from the cell area, but when they went to investigate, the voice was coming from the area they had just left.

Another incident experienced by a cleaner who was cleaning a ground-floor cell in A Wing happened when she sensed someone enter the room. Turning around, she expected to see one of the other two cleaners in the block, but later on found them both to be on the third floor.

Other ghostly happenings in or near A Wing include a cleaner’s bucket tipping and spinning by itself, a full binbag lift itself at least 3ft into the air and the sound of a stick being dragged along the nearby railings. Other strange happenings include voices being heard to shout from empty cells, and physical damage to items stored in the empty prison.

One of the other wings reported to be haunted is C Wing’s recess, so no slopping out now!

HM PRISON STRANGEWAYS

The set of ghost stories wouldn’t be complete without old Strangeways Prison having a story to tell. Night duty staff have often seen a mysterious man in a dark suit carrying a small briefcase scurrying about the place, walking along B Wing from just outside the old condemned cell towards the central control area. Some of the staff gave chase to the sinister-looking figure, but as the figure got to the old iron staircase leading up to the main office, he vanished into thin air. Some say that this apparition is John Ellis who committed suicide in 1932.