And now we get to the moment when the violin starts to play and you get your handkerchief out to wipe the tears away. But I don’t want any of that. I will just give you facts, thousands of them … all dead!

Prison is no holiday camp, regardless of what these politicians tell you … look at how they lied about the Iraq situation and saying we were all going to be fizzed out by chemical weapons … bollocks! And so the same is true of our penal system!

I would hope that you now have a grasp of what it’s like being a prisoner. Even if it’s just being an armchair prisoner, then you will have learned something.

A life of hard labour was imposed on prisoners when they were given such tasks as turning the crank machine, shot drill or climbing the treadmill. Man has always taken delight in imposing such punishments on his fellow human beings. These useless and exhausting activities were thought to act as a deterrent and discourage prisoners from committing further crimes on their release … as well as giving great pleasure to those imposing such punishments. Haven’t you heard of masochists?

It was common to impose such brutal punishments as every prisoner being expected to walk six hours a day on a treadmill in twenty-nine-minute increments with five-minute breaks, covering the equivalent of a 6,000ft incline. The tread wheel was rather like the elongated wheel of a paddle steamer with twenty-four steps instead of paddles. Prisoners stood, hanging on to a bar or strap, in individual compartments over these steps. The wheel turned under their weight. Prisoners had to keep climbing or fall off. Though they were widely used in English prisons, few tread wheels were built in Scotland and all were removed by the 1840s. Nowadays, these brutal punishments are outlawed in the UK.

Such punishments as the illustrious crank machine formed part of a useless labour regime that was introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century to make prison life tougher for those prisoners sentenced to hard labour. As I mentioned earlier, the prisoner (male) had to turn the handle some 14,400 times a day forcing four large cups or ladles through sand inside a drum. The number of revolutions was registered on a dial, so no one could cheat. The warder could, and usually would, make the task harder by tightening a screw – hence the slang word for prison warder. In Inveraray Jail, there was only one crank machine and little evidence that it was, in fact, used.

Another form of hard labour was the shot drill, which was practised in certain English prisons. The drill consisted of stooping down without bending the knees, picking up a heavy cannon-ball (much like the Atlas stones used in the TV competition The World’s Strongest Man) bringing it up slowly until it is level with your chest, then taking three steps to the right, replacing it on the ground and then stepping back three paces … and then starting the whole mundane procedure all over again. All of this was done while the screws shouted and bawled at you!

Moving away from the self-inflicted punishment of the treadmill and other highly exciting machinery, what about when screws dish out the punishments? Screws assaulting us cons? Nah, that can’t be true! Well, here is some proof for you; a prison officer from Barnet was jailed for three-and-a-half years for his part in beating up a convict for his own ‘bizarre and sadistic entertainment’.

You are going to say that I’m making this one up … wrong. The screw’s name is Darren Fryer, of Barnet; he was sentenced with two other screws for assaulting Steven Banks, an inmate of Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in March 1998. You’ve read about my claims of prison brutality in HMP Wormwood Scrubs; well, here is the proof.

The court heard how Fryer, Robert Lawrie and senior officer John Nicol, who both received sentences of four years, subjected inmate Steven Banks to a beating, crying, ‘There’s going to be a death in custody tonight!’ With that, the three screws then smashed the con head-first against a wall before repeatedly punching and kicking him.

Passing sentence at Blackfriars Crown Court, Judge Charles Byers, said, ‘You three men are guilty of not only an appalling assault but also of the grossest breach of that authority, responsibility and trust.’

The screws, as usual, claimed that Banks had attacked them with a mop handle! This is the normal ploy used by bent screws, but the jury rejected this and convicted them of assault and actual bodily harm.

At the end of the trial, The judge added, ‘Not only did you commit the assault, you sought to cover the matter by charging him with assault on you, and saw to it his record was endorsed as a violent prisoner, particularly violent to prison officers. I can only conclude this episode was done for your own bizarre and sadistic entertainment.’ So there was also proof that these screws were falsifying inmates’ records and putting them down as ‘violent’.

The court cases involving twenty-seven prison officers from Wormwood Scrubs who were accused of assaulting inmates took fourteen months to conclude. Only three others were found guilty with the twentyone remaining officers being acquitted. Why wasn’t my case put in with the multi-party action against the Home Office?

DEATHS IN POLICE CUSTODY TO 2001

A total of ninety-four prisoners took their own lives in Britain in 2002, 9 compared with seventy-three the previous year, a rise of 29 per cent. Many more prisoners across the world have died in uprisings and fires caused by overcrowding.

DEATHS IN PRISON 1990 – MARCH 2002
(ENGLAND AND WALES)
Source: Inquest monitoring – Figures to 26 February 2002

OVERCROWDING KILLS PRISONERS

As the prison population increases then so will the suicide rate among prisoners rise.

In an uprising against overcrowding in Lincoln Prison, one prisoner, Lee Blake, died. At the current rate, the British prison population is set to reach close to 100,000 by 2009. In a survey conducted by the London School of Medicine, it is revealed that black people are six times more likely to be sent to prison than white people.

The current Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has noted the situation of having inmates locked in cells for twenty-three hours a day, and states that ‘prison overcrowding threatens all four of the Inspectorate’s tests of a healthy prison – safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement.’

Believe it or not, Scotland only has one women’s prison, Corton Vale. You would think all would be cosy at such a place, but it has seen three suicides since May 2001 and it only has 290 inmates. The population in Corton Vale in 1996 was only 180; maybe now you can see the correlation between the increases in population and the suicide rate. Former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Clive Fairweather, has said that overcrowding contributes to a ‘recipe for disaster … a large proportion of the women at Corton Vale are more of a danger to themselves than they are to the public.’

Take a moment to think about Richard Jones, a remand prisoner who hanged himself in Gloucester Prison, the third suicide in the prison in two years. A report on Gloucester Prison from the Prison Service said overcrowding there was creating unacceptable living conditions.

DEATHS OF BLACKS, ASIANS AND 9 MIXED-RACE PRISONERS 1969 to November 2001

Key

Po: Police

Pr: Prisons, Young Offenders Institutes, Remand Centres

Ps: Psychiatric Hospitals

The year 2002–03 saw the highest number of suicides on record – 105.

Prison is not the answer to crime, it is a soft option. Something more radical is needed! I will end now with a quote – I can’t recall who came up with it originally, but it just about says it all:

‘THE ONLY PERSON WORSE THAN THE FELON WHO COMMITS A CRIME IS THE MAN WHO LOCKS HIM UP.’

For more information about my other books, access my website: www.bronsonmania.com