Written on: Sunday 8th February 2009

It came, as these things always do, out of nowhere. It ended, 13 hours later, in a flurry of shouting and stomping, of broken glass and riot shields, of batons and razor blades. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.
Sunday February 8th, 15:05. It is rec time in Craiginches, that special time when all 200 inmates are afforded the privilege of recreating with one another. For some, this involves partaking in such wholesome activities as pool and snooker. For most, rec involves recreating the sort of chemical world they have become accustomed to, one in which life’s harsh realities are softened by the consumption of hard drugs. In ones and twos, cons scuttle across the walkways like cockroaches in a kebab house, scouring every available corner for proscribed morsels. Men duck furtively into cells and alcoves and hold whispered conversations in booths and shower areas. ‘Got any hash min?’ ‘Ken anybdae wi ony B’s [smack]?’ ‘Got a bag [smack] fer us? I’ll swap you for ma difs [DFs; prescribed medication].’ Conspiratorial whisperings aside, the hall is a sea of tranquillity. Only the clank of snooker balls and the loudmouthed Yardie patois emanating from the black quarter, where every conversation must be held at 100 decibels, belie the calmness. In a few seconds time however, a dorsal fin will break the surface, causing a wave of excitement that will ripple around the hall. As the narrator of America’s Toughest Jails is prone to warn, rec time, when the prison population are allowed to mingle freely, is the most dangerous time of day. If the shit’s gonna go down, you can bet it’s gonna go down here and with little warning. Without the element of surprise, violence rarely works. ‘Excuse me mate, mind if I stab you for your medication?’ ‘Actually I’m kinda busy just now pal, can you come back in an hour?’ This outbreak is no different.
Out of nowhere, a convict on the second floor grabs his startled cellmate off the landing and drags him into their cell. The door is then kicked shut and an almighty ruckus ensues. (When the incident is eventually dealt with in court, the PF will no doubt refer to it as ‘an altercation.’) The aggressor, an unassuming bespectacled man in his early thirties, is mightily pissed off. The reason for his pissed off-ness, as I understand, is the Prison Service’s decision to transfer him to Perth the following day. If it was me, I’d have been overjoyed; Craiginches is hardly the epitome of good living, even by jail standards. Although he doesn’t look menacing, the con boasts some heavy previous; as well as being on remand for attempted murder, he has formerly dodged a murder rap. What he is about to do, in comparison, is but a fly swot. Before the screws realise what’s happening, the door to the cell is slammed shut and its contents trashed; windows are broken and the TV is hurled to the floor, its cathode ray tube exploding into 1000 pieces. Glass shards litter the floor. Incandescent with rage, the transfer-listed con then produces not one, but two shanks and proceeds to take his cellmate hostage. The first weapon has been constructed out of a razor blade, the second from a tuna can lid. Used rightly in the wrong hands, they are both lethal. The con grabs hold of his cellmate and pushes the blades into his neck. The two men will remain in this awkward embrace for the next eight hours. As the commotion alerts the screws, staff are summoned from all corners of the jail. The rest of the cons are immediately ordered to ‘Check up!’; return to their cells for an early lock up. With a serious incident in progress, the screws don’t have time to police the rest of the prison population, even if they have been recreating peacefully. Rec time is over.
From behind our doors, it is hard to tell what is happening. In jail, rumours spread faster than hepatitis, but beyond the basics, no one is too sure if blood and guts will be making an appearance. We hope so. All we catch are snippets of shouted dialogue, the clatter of footsteps urgently ascending and descending the stairs and the incessant ringing of fones. The screws erect a large plastic canopy around the cell door to shield the proceedings from the prying eyes of the cons, who have been peering out through the cracks in their doors and shouting encouragement. After a while, the hall quietens down again. No one is sure if the incident is still in progress or if a truce has been secured. Eventually, we get bored of listening at our cell doors and return to our TV viewing. Then, at about midnight, we hear raised voices again followed by screaming. It would appear that there is life in this one yet. The level of activity is stepped up again; telefones ring off the hook, radios crackle into life and there is a constant to-ing-and-fro-ing of staff; prison officers, nurses, presiding officers. Then, as I watch through the crack in the door, I hear the entrance to A-Hall clatter open and the ominous sound of marching boots. An army of riot police (or maybe it is riot screws) trudge up the stairs, their protective gear rattling against the railings and echoing round the hall. Their faces are obscured by the protective masks that cover them, their bodies clad in stab-proof clothing. They look like cricketers sent out to the crease, only instead of bats they wield truncheons and shields. One of their number is videoing the show on a digital camera. I’d like to think it’s so he can show the highlights to his family later (‘Look what daddy did at work today – I bashed an idiot’s brains in!’) but the reality is more prosaic; if the hostage-taker later alleges rough treatment, the video should repudiate his claims. It is only once the camera has been turned off that the screws will administer the kicking he so richly deserves. No matter how justifiable their reasons for being here, there is something sinister about watching the full weight of governmental authority prepare to swing into action and crush the rebellion. The black-clad heavies could be straight out of a Robocop film.
The terrified inmate has now been held hostage for eight hours. His neck is marked by the pressure of the blades pushing against his throat. For the next two hours, the riot crew wait on standby as negotiations and ‘dialogue’ takes place. The turtle suits could just charge in and overwhelm the captor, but that would risk harming the ‘innocent’ victim. Eventually however, after much shouting and pleading, the exhausted con stands down his weapons. The riot crew enter and cuff him with zip ties. He is marched off to the digger [solitary confinement] to await his inevitable transfer to Perth. The hostage, remarkably, is also led away in cuffs and placed in one of the bare sui-cells in B-Hall. There are no warm blankets, cups of tea and cigarettes for him. This is not how freed hostages are treated in the movies. His ordeal is far from over; after all, he still has a three-year prison sentence to serve. In due course, he will probably launch a claim for compensation. In due course, his former cellmate will certainly appear in court and be charged for his aggression. He will probably end up serving an extra four years. With the riot crew gone, the rest of the staff gradually trickle out of the hall. Calm returns to the jail once more. I step away from the crack in the door and get into bed. The show is over. Just another quiet evening in A-Hall.

Written on: Wednesday 28th January 2009

Ever since finding enough crumbs in my pocket with which to fashion an SS [single-skinner] in the holding cells on Monday, the entire population of A-Hall has become convinced that I am the holder of all things THC-laced. If the rumours are to be believed, I am currently sitting on a stash of Marksist proportions. (That’s Howard Marks, not Karl Marx by the way.) Cons who had previously not given me the time of day – Yardies, junkies, YO’s [Young Offenders] – now made a beeline for me, to savour my delightful company, gaze upon my handsome features and, of course, to pester me for drugs. In exchange for furnishing them with the tiniest knot of hash, I was offered tobacco, a shot of a PS2 and – had I pushed my luck – quite possibly sexual favours.
‘Here min, you’ve got hash tae sell, hiv ya?’ exclaimed the squeaky-voiced YO’s.
‘A’right man, wots dis bout you avin sum ganja?’ lilted the Yardies. At one point I looked up from using the communal fone to see a con making a smoking gesture in my direction. He certainly wasn’t after a rollie. Everywhere I walked I found myself being summoned into peters [cells] for hush-hush conversations about hash. If I still had my big bag of weed that is currently under lock and key at Filth HQ (assuming the pigs haven’t smoked it), I could have become fabulously rich in GV [Golden Virginia], the standard jail currency. If smoking was my game, I could receive enough tobacco to puff my way to an early grave. If the custard cream cons don’t kill me, the baccy will. In the police interview following my arrest, I had done my utmost to convince them that I wasn’t a dealer and that I certainly didn’t possess any weed. Now that I was in jail, where I should be free from such aggressive interrogation, I found myself on the defensive again. A dealer with weed is wanted by everyone; customers, pigs, rival dealers and thieves. But a dealer without product? Who wants to know? I deal therefore I am. Without my raisson d’etre, I fear I’ve become obsolete.

Written on: Tuesday 27th January

‘Fit did ya go to the Evening Express for the last time you was in?’
The voice whined through a crack in the door, flooding my cell with indignation and ire, while an eyeball eyeballed me through the peephole, demanding that I account for my previous sins. From the restricted view afforded me, I couldn’t put a face to the pinned pupil, but I didn’t doubt that it was toothless, scarred and emaciated.
‘I didn’t,’ I replied to the disgruntled stranger. ‘It was the Press & Journal.’ My accuser, who could have been any one of a hundred identikit junkies, dwelt on this for a moment.
‘Fit did ya dae ‘at for, saying a’ the cons wis junkies?’ continued the junkie, who clearly had a bone to chew – or rather gum – on.
‘Because most of them are,’ I replied truthfully. At present, two thirds of the inmates in Craiginches are on methadone. That means two thirds of them are junkies. I was never any good at fractions, but by my reckoning, two thirds could safely be classified as most of the sum total.
‘Yer a fucking bam,’ grunted the junkie, unimpressed with my reasoning, and sloped off in search of some foil with which to chase his pain away.
The next day at rec, another junkie approached me in the hall. (Or perhaps it was the same one, who knows?) ‘Here – you’re the boy that wrote that stuff aboot the custard creams!’ he shouted. (The headline in the News of The World article that had published my weblog was ‘Stabbed In The Neck Three Times…Over A Packet Of Custard Creams’.)
‘Yeah. And?’ I shrugged insolently.
‘I’m gonna fucking do you,’ came the swift reply.
Retribution and Revenge? Ah, do come in, I’ve been expecting you. To be honest, I’d been anticipating those two rearing their ugly heads for some time. Ever since The Boy Who Wrote That Jail Weblog got the jail again, it was only a matter of time before the inhabitants of said jail confronted him about his previous thought crimes. Why anyone in Craigie should give so much weight to my thoughts on prison life as opposed to those of my fellow cons baffled me. Still, it was strangely flattering to learn that they had been hanging on my every poisonous word. I had thought that three years of hard drugs and hard jail living would have blunted their memories (and that’s just the screws I’m talking about), but I was clearly wrong. Clearly, Custardgate (as the News Of The World article shall henceforth be dubbed) was still A Big Fucking Deal. The way things were going, I was in serious danger of being stabbed in the neck three times over a blog about being stabbed in the neck three times. It was enough to make anyone want to reach for the custard creams and indulge in some comfort munching.
‘Fuck it,’ I shrugged to myself. If I’d intended to spend my whole life looking over my shoulder, I’d have asked the Good Lord to reincarnate me as an owl. As I was thinking these resolute thoughts, another con approached and proceeded to quiz me about Custardgate. He wanted to know how much I’d gotten for selling my story. I explained to him that I hadn’t sought any money for it. ‘Fuck sake, ya coulda got two grand for that!’ he exclaimed, mentally trying to work out how many tenner bags that would buy.
I could understand a few of the cons being pissed off if it was their personal indiscretions that had been daubed across the The Press & Journal and News Of The World. What I couldn’t quite comprehend was their anger at my portrayal of the prison in general. It wasn’t as if I’d dissed their own homes and families, although to many, Craigie was a home from home and its inhabitants were their family. All I’d done was tell it like it was. What were they expecting, a narrative in which Craiginches was like something out of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, with chocolate rivers and glass elevators whisking the cons o’er the water to court every morning? Junkies, dressed like Oompa-Loompas, dancing arm-in-arm down the hall to collect their meth?
And it wasn’t just the cons who were queuing up to have words with me about my words. The screws were also eager to find out if The Trash Whore Diaries would be making a reappearance, no doubt anxious to see what dirt I would be dishing on them and what jail scams I would uncover. Sadly both groups are out of luck. Do they really think I’d be stupid enough to start my jail blogs again, with the entire prison population looking over my shoulder? Actually, yes, I am that stupid. Only this time round, I’ll be publishing my blogs in time delay, using the same technique they employ to bleep out the swearing when the Oscars are screened live. I’m writing these words in January 2009 but if it’s still January when you’re reading them, it’s more likely to be 2010. Hopefully by then my neck will be sufficiently far from jail to avoid being breached thrice over on account of a story about a story about a packet of custard creams.
Although it feels like the entire jail intake is out to get me over perceived slights to their fine, upstanding reputation, thankfully I still have one ace to call upon at the turn. In the Sheriff Court holding cells on Monday, one of the cons from B-Hall started mouthing off about me being ‘a bam’, quite possibly on account of a weblog I once wrote about…yeah, you get the picture. Although I wasn’t there to hear his denigrations, unfortunately for him, someone much scarier was; an acquaintance of mine whose reputation precedes him in jails the length of the country. Upon overhearing the mouthy con’s diatribe, my boy swiftly covered the CCTV camera with his left hand and hooked the complainer with his right. ‘Sorry,’ sputtered the busted coupon, ‘I didnae ken you knew Kai.’ Sometimes it’s good to have high friends in low places like these.