Hell

  ‘I was caught driving my brother’s van without a licence. My brother usually does the driving, but he was off sick for the day, so I took his building tools from the work site to my home and for that the judge sentenced me to six weeks in jail.’

  Let me make it clear. I have no objection to the sentence, but it’s madness to have sent this man to Belmarsh. I do hope that the Home Secretary, Mr Blunkett – who I know from personal dealings when John Major was Prime Minister to be a decent, caring man – will read the next page carefully.

  ‘Are you in a cell on your own?’ I enquire.

  ‘No, I’m locked up with two other prisoners.’

  ‘What are they in for?’

  ‘One’s on a charge of murder awaiting his trial, the other’s a convicted drug dealer.’

  ‘That can’t be much fun,’ I say, trying to make light of it.

  Are you still with me, Home Secretary?

  ‘It’s hell,’ Peter replies. ‘I haven’t slept for more than a few minutes since the night they sent me here. I just can’t be sure what either of them might get up to. I can handle myself, but the two men I’m sharing a cell with are professional criminals.’

  Are you still paying attention, Home Secretary?

  ‘And worse,’ he adds. ‘One of them offered me a thousand pounds to beat up a witness before his trial begins.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I hear myself say.

  ‘And he’s putting more and more pressure on me each day. Of course I wouldn’t consider such an idea, but I’ve still got another three weeks to go, and I’m beginning to fear that I might not be safe even when I get out.’

  Home Secretary, this hard-working family man is fearful for his own safety. Is that what you’re hoping to achieve for someone who’s been caught driving without a licence?

  I’ve received over a thousand letters of support since I arrived a Belmarsh and even at sixty-one I have found prison a difficult experience to come to terms with. Peter is twenty-three, with his whole life ahead of him. Hundreds of people are being sent to this Category A top-security prison who should never be here.

  But what can I do about it? I can hear the Home Secretary asking one of his officials.

  Classify anyone who is arrested as A, B, C or D before their trial begins, not after. Then, if they’re D-cat – first-time offenders with no record of violence – they can, if convicted, be sent direct to an open prison. That way they won’t have to share cells with murderers, drug dealers or professional criminals. And don’t listen to officials when they tell you it can’t be done. Sack them, and do it. I was allocated D-cat status within twenty-four hours because of my mother’s funeral, so I know it can be done.

  Home Secretary, you are doing irreparable damage to decent people’s lives and you have no right to do so.

  While I’m trying to take in Peter’s plight, the pile of plastic bags has grown into a mountain in front of me. Another prisoner who I hadn’t noticed before, obviously an old lag, slots quickly into the one position that ensures the chain moves back into full swing.

  ‘This place is more about retribution than rehabilitation, wouldn’t you say, Jeffrey?’ What is it about the Irish that always makes you relax and feel you’ve known them all your life? I nod my agreement. He smiles, and introduces himself as William Keane.

  Before I repeat what William told me during the next couple of hours, I must warn you that I haven’t a clue how much of his tale can be authenticated, but if only half of it is true, God help the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Health and the Education Secretary.

  William was born in Limerick, the home of the Blarney Stone, son of a prize fighter (Ireland must be the last country on earth that still has prize fighters) and a local beauty – William is a handsome man. Mrs Keane produced seven sons and five daughters.

  Now William’s accent is quite difficult to follow, so I often have to ask him to repeat whole sentences. His present home is a few hundred yards from the prison, so family visits are not a problem. It’s the family that’s the problem. One of them, the youngster, as William describes him, is on the far bench – marmalade and jam sachets – and at some point, William tells me, all seven brothers and one sister were in jail at the same time, serving sentences between them of one hundred and twelve years. I can only feel sorry for their mother.

  William is completing a ten-year sentence for drug dealing, and has only twelve weeks left to serve. You notice he doesn’t say three months, because three months would mean thirteen weeks.

  He’s actually quite fearful about how the world will have changed when in October he steps out of prison for the first time in a decade. He flatters me, a natural pastime for the Irish, by saying he’s read all my books, as it seems half the leading criminals in England have.

  During his time in six prisons (he’s a post-graduate on such establishments), William has taken a degree, and read over four hundred books – I only point this out to make you aware that we are not dealing with a fool. He adds his condolences over my mother’s death, and asks how the police and prison staff dealt with me when it came to the funeral. I tell him that they couldn’t have been more thoughtful and considerate.

  ‘Not like my brother’s funeral,’ he says. ‘Not only were the whole family in handcuffs, but they had helicopters circling overhead. There were more police by the graveside than mourners.’

  ‘But in my case,’ I pointed out, ‘no one thought I would try to escape.’

  ‘Houdini couldn’t have escaped from that bunch,’ William retorts.

  What puzzles me about William is that if the rest of the family are as bright and charismatic as he is, why don’t they combine their talents and energy and do something worthwhile, rather than settling for a life of crime?

  ‘Drugs,’ he replies, matter-of-factly. ‘Once you’re hooked, you can never earn enough to satisfy the craving, so you end up becoming either a thief or a pusher. And I have to admit,’ William adds, ‘I’m lazy.’

  I’ve watched him carefully since he’s joined the chain, and the one thing he is not, is lazy. He has filled more plastic bags than Peter and me put together. I point this out to him.

  ‘Well, when I say lazy, Jeffrey, I mean lazy about settling down to a nine-to-five job, when you can pick up a couple of grand a week selling drugs.’

  ‘So will you go back to the drug scene once you’re released?’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he says. ‘I’m thirty-five, and one thing’s for certain, I don’t need to come back inside.’ He hesitates. ‘But I just don’t know if I’m strong-willed enough to stay away from drugs or the quick rewards that are guaranteed when you sell them.’

  ‘How much are we talking about,’ I ask, ‘and which drugs in particular?’

  ‘Heroin,’ he says, ‘is the biggest money-spinner. A joey’ – even after an explanation, I’m still not quite sure what a joey is – ‘has come down in price from one hundred pounds to forty since I’ve been in prison [ten years], which is a clear indication how the market has grown. And some people need as many as ten joeys a day. When I first came into prison,’ William continues, ‘cocaine was the designer drug Today it’s heroin, and it’s often your lot who are on it,’ he says, looking directly at me.

  ‘But I’ve never taken a drug in my life,’ I tell him, ‘I don’t even smoke.’

  ‘I knew that the moment you walked in,’ he said.

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘The first thing I check is the pallor of the skin – not bad for sixty-one,’ he says, displaying that Irish charm again. ‘Then I look at the nose, followed by the lips and finally the arms, and it’s clear you’re not a potential customer. But I’d be willing to bet there’s something you need Del Boy to supply you with.’

  ‘Bottled water, still, preferably Highland Spring.’

  ‘How many bottles do you order from the canteen?’

  ‘Four, maybe five a week.’

  ‘Don’t let the screws find
out.’

  ‘Why not? I pay for them.’

  ‘Because while cannabis and cocaine remain in your bloodstream for a month, heroin can be flushed out in twenty-four hours. If it wasn’t you, Jeffrey, the screws would assume you were a heroin addict trying to show up negative whenever you were called in for a Mandatory Drug Test, and it’s all the fault of Ann Widdecombe.’

  ‘How can it possibly be Ann Widdecombe’s fault?’

  ‘Because it was Widdecombe who first brought in the MDT. That single decision has turned some cannabis smokers into heroin addicts.’

  ‘That’s quite a quantum leap,’ I suggest, ‘and some accusation.’

  ‘No,’ says William, ‘it was inevitable, and it only happened because Widdecombe knew nothing about the drug culture in prisons. How could she? Neither did you, before you were sent to Belmarsh. And worse, no one seems to have explained the problem to Blunkett either, because both are indirectly responsible for an unnecessary rise in heroin addicts, and even in some cases their deaths.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I say. ‘That’s accusing Blunkett and Widdecombe of manslaughter and cannot be either fair or accurate.’

  ‘When you take an MDT, they test you for marijuana [cannabis], cocaine, crack cocaine and heroin,’ continues William, ignoring my comment. ‘It’s a urine test, and your sample is sent to an independent laboratory and then returned to the prison a week later with the result.’

  ‘I’m with you so far.’

  ‘Marijuana can show up in urine for as long as twenty-eight days. You may well have smoked a joint three weeks ago, even forgotten about it, but it will still come up as positive on an MDT, which is not the case with heroin. Because if you drink pints of water immediately after taking the drug, you can clear any trace of heroin out of your system within twenty-four hours, which means you won’t test positive.’

  Pay attention, Home Secretary.

  ‘If the test comes back positive for marijuana, the Governor can add twenty-eight days to your sentence and take away all your privileges. Twenty-eight days for one joint,’ says William. ‘So in prison some marijuana smokers who are on short sentences turn to heroin as an alternative because there’s less chance of their sentence being lengthened. Result? They often leave prison as heroin addicts, having never touched a hard drug on the outside. Fact: a percentage of them die within weeks of being released. Why? Because the heroin in prison is considerably weaker compared with the gear you can get “on the out”, which causes them to overdose when they inject the same amount. This is a direct result of government legislation.’

  ‘So what would you do about it?’ I ask.

  ‘The Mandatory Drug Test should be for Class A and B drugs only [heroin, cocaine], not for marijuana.* This simple decision would cut down the desire to experiment with heroin among twenty per cent of the prison population and would also save countless lives. If any your officials are stupid enough to suggest this isn’t true, Home Secretary, tell them not to rely simply on statistics, but to spend a few weeks in prison where they’ll quickly find out the truth.’

  ‘I presume, however, it is true that drugs are the direct cause of our prisons being so overcrowded?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s a myth that heroin is the main cause of street crime. Crack cocaine is just as much of a problem for the police.’ I don’t interrupt. ‘Crack cocaine,’ William continues, ‘is for crackheads, and is far more dangerous than heroin. If you take cocaine you are immediately satisfied, and can be on a high after only one dose, and as you come off it, you may well fall asleep. If you take crack cocaine, once you’ve run out of your supply, you’ll do anything to get your hands on some more to prolong the experience. It’s the crack-cocaine addicts that rob old ladies of their handbags and young girls of their mobile phones, not heroin addicts; they’re more likely to beg, borrow or shoplift. The problem the government hasn’t acknowledged is that Britain is now the crack-cocaine capital of Europe, and if you want to set up an award for European drugs city of the year, you wouldn’t have to look any further than Bradford. That city would win first prize, year in and year out.’

  ‘Do you have a solution to the problem?’ I ask.

  ‘We should go down the Swiss route,’ William suggests. ‘They register addicts, who can report to a doctor and immediately become part of a detox programme and get their fix of methadone or subitrex. The Swiss recently held a referendum on the issue and the public voted overwhelmingly in favour of the registration of drug addicts and tackling the problem head-on. Result: street crime has fallen by 68 per cent.’

  Well, what do you know, Mr Blunkett?

  ‘Do you also want to learn about the National Health detox programme?’ asks William. I nod. ‘If you’re a heroin addict “on the out” and report your addiction to a local GP, it will take you eight to ten weeks to get yourself registered. However, if you commit a crime and are sent to prison, you don’t have to wait, because you’ll be put on a detox programme the following morning.’ William pauses. ‘I’ve known addicts who’ve committed a crime simply to ensure they get themselves into prison and onto detox overnight.’

  What about that, Home Secretary?

  ‘And worse,’ William continues, ‘most of the addicts “on the out” who go as far as getting themselves registered, fail to turn up ten weeks later to begin the course, because by then they’ve either lost interest, or are too far gone to care.’

  Enter the Secretary of State for Health.

  William looks around the room at the fifty or so workers packing their little plastic bags. ‘I can tell you every one in this room who’s on drugs, even the gear they’re on, and it often only takes a glance. And you’d be surprised how many of your friends “on the out”, even one or two of those who have been condemning you recently, are among them.’

  ‘Taking cannabis can hardly be described as a major crime,’ I suggest. ‘My bet is it will be decriminalized in the not too distant future.’

  ‘I’m not talking about cannabis, Jeffrey. The biggest crisis the government is facing today is the rapid growth of heroin addicts. I can name three lords, two Members of Parliament, and two television personalities who are on Class A drugs. I know because a member of my family has been supplying them for years.’ He names all of them. Two I already knew about, but the other five come as a surprise. ‘In theory they should all be in jail along with you,’ he adds. Check on all the young criminals coming into prison and you’ll begin to understand it’s a problem that few people, especially the politicians, seem willing to face up to. ‘On your own spur alone,’ he continues, ‘five of the lifers are on heroin, and still getting the skag delivered to them every week.’

  ‘How do they manage that?’ I ask.

  ‘Mainly during visits,’ he says, ‘mouth, backside, ears, even secreted in a woman’s hair. Because of the Human Rights Act, prison searches are fairly cursory.’

  ‘But this is a Double A Category high-security prison,’ I remind him.

  ‘That’s not a problem if you’re desperate enough, and there’s nothing more desperate than a heroin addict, even when he’s locked up in the segregation block.’

  ‘But how?’ I press him.

  ‘Don’t forget that most A-cats are also remand prisons, and so have prisoners coming in and out every day. If the new young criminals didn’t already know, it wouldn’t take them long to discover the economics of supply and demand, especially when such large sums of money are involved. A gram of heroin [a joey] may be worth forty pounds on the street, but in here it can be split up into five bags and sold for a couple of hundred. At those prices, some prisoners are willing to risk swallowing a bag of heroin just before they’re taken down; then they simply have to wait to retrieve it; after all, there’s a toilet in every cell. And,’ he adds, ‘my brother Rory can swallow a lump of heroin the size of a small eraser – five hundred pounds in value – hold it in his throat and still carry on a conversation. As soon as he’s safely back in his cell, he coughs it up.’


  ‘But despite your brother’s unusual skill,’ I point out, ‘if, as you suggest, sixty per cent of inmates are on drugs, you’ll need more than the odd prisoner who’s willing to swallow a packet of heroin to satisfy the demand.’

  ‘True,’ said William, ‘so stay alert during visits, Jeffrey, and you’ll notice how much transferring of drugs is done by kissing. And whenever you see a baby dangling on its mother’s knee, you can be sure the little offspring’s nappy will be full of drugs. That’s how the visitor gets it into prison. The kissing is how it’s transferred from visitor to inmate. And there are still a dozen or more ways of getting the gear in, depending on which prison you’re sent to. If you ever spot someone coming into jail wearing an Adidas tracksuit, look carefully at the three stripes. If you unstitch just one of them, you can fill it with five hundred pounds’ worth of heroin.’

  My only thought is that I have an Adidas tracksuit in my cell.

  ‘My brother Michael,’ continues William, ‘discovered that in some prisons Waterstone’s have the book franchise, so a friend of his would select an obscure title, fill the spine with drugs, and then ask Waterstone’s to donate the book to the prison library. Once it had been placed on the shelf, Michael would take it out. Amazing how much heroin you can get into the spine of James Joyce’s Ulysses. But in my last nick,’ William continues, ‘the Sun’s page-three girl was the most popular method of getting the skag in, until the screws caught on.’

  ‘The page-three girl?’

  ‘You do know what a page-three girl is, don’t you, Jeffrey?’ I nod. ‘Most A- and B-cat prisons allow an inmate to order a morning paper from the local newsagent,’ continues William, ‘and because you’re locked up for twenty-two hours a day, they even deliver them to your cell. One enterprising dealer “on the out” supplied the entire prison’s needs, by sprinkling any orders all over the page-three girl in the Sun. He would then cut out another copy of the same photograph and seal it carefully over her twin, making a thin bag of heroin. He ended up supplying a grand’s worth of heroin a day to one prison, with an officer unwittingly delivering his wares to the customer direct. He was making far more with his built-in customers than he could ever hope to make “on the out”.’