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Letters Page

Downsized to More Secure Accommodation
- The Connoisseur’s Guide to HMP Liverpool

Dear Nerve,
Managed to pick up a copy of your latest edition in my new domicile. I am a writer and musician who became so exasperated with the work programme and anti-social housing that I torched my gaff and downsized to more secure accommodation here. I have just been sacked from the prison radio for printing subversive literature, so I thought I’d send you a copy … use any of it, edit it to your heart’s content.
Best wishes – Mark Diston

Prison is essentially the paramilitary wing of the dole … a waste of life on an epic scale … reminiscent of the all-boys grammar school I attended in the 1970s and my father’s tales of National Service … that is, state prescribed boredom, and futility of monumental proportions. If you have lived a life of unemployment and shite housing it is home from home, without the indignities of means testing, the work programme and remote officials controlling your life by proxy. And that is the great thing about prison: the agents of the state are not simply some sad inaccessible jobsworth in a distant office – they are on hand 24/7. Let me introduce you to that strange creature in its natural habitat … the screw …

I prefer to treat them as I would like to be treated. That is as a fellow Homo sapiens who’s made an unfortunate career choice and erred from the path of righteousness. True, they are making a raise out of other people’s misfortunes but as Monsieur Bastiat once said: “The state is a great myth whereby everyone tries to live at everyone else’s expense.” I think any self-respecting crim can relate to that. And if you really want to feel superior, just remember: they chose to come here; most of us didn’t ... I heard a screw remonstrating: “This jail is a fucking joke,” - a sentiment I’ve heard uttered countless times by us punters, but it was nice to hear it confirmed by the opposition, so to speak. Pity the poor screw: trapped in this most meaningless of situations … cursed with wanker’s cramp from endlessly turning keys in locks for a living … the money is better but the kudos is zero. Turn on your TV: screws are bit players … whereas stand up all we clichéd arch-villains and anti-heroes … rappers think they want to be us; vicarious viewers can’t get enough of us. But generally speaking, the screw is your brother in suffering … as trapped as you are.

Female officers … are always called “Miss”. I’m not sure whether that is to infantilise us, whether we are addressing them as a submissive should a dominatrix or whether it is a subtle torture to make them sound more available … whatever it is, it works … Female officers were enthusiastically exchanging volumes of Fifty Shades of Grey and I got to wondering whether it was suitable reading for women who lock us up. I guess you have to be a masochist to end up here.

I think it was Socrates who said: “Knowledge acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind”. Work or Education is compulsory in prison once you are sentenced, which not surprisingly leads to half-hearted punters, woeful standards and institutional manipulation of levels and qualifications. When I took my literacy and numeracy tests on the computer I achieved levels 2 and 3 but couldn’t remember which was which. “I’ll just put down 1 in both,” the nice induction lady said.

If you are looking for a challenge, try picking your nose left-handed …

The sad thing is that many inmates are eager to turn their lives around; these activities prey on their misfortune … keep them subdued and occupied until they return to the outside world and discover their certificates aren’t worth a wank.

You have to admire the chaplains though, ministering amongst “the wretched of the earth” … after all we crims come with purgatory inclusive … The Catholic fella has the largest flock … the Muslim fella you have to feel for, pursued around the wings by catcalls of “Bacon!” and “Taliban!” from snidy scalls with Tourette’s who learned their NVQ Level 1 in Multiculturalism from Nick Griffin and The Sun. The Proddy fella … says, “We really should look at our lifestyles.” Really?

It’s said we know more about the origins of the universe than we will ever know about the Probation Service. Their criteria and decision-making are veiled in obscurity … it is rumoured that … their auguries are determined from the intestines of gulls caught on the roof of HMP Liverpool on Walpurgis Nacht. A simple formula is then applied to determine your date of release … then dutifully ignored. You’re more likely to have sex with the Queen than get a straight answer from Probation.

There is a disturbing degree of censorship of inmates’ expression. For example, with regard to the output of Walton Radio we are not supposed to broadcast defamatory material about individuals or groups which will: “tend to lower them in the estimation of right thinking people generally”… Show me a “right thinking” person and I’ll show you a hypocrite of the first order.

This decree can only be described as fascistic and reveals the totalitarian face beneath the masque of rehabilitation.

Rob Saven our regular prison correspondent will return next issue.

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Comments:

Comment left by dazza on 11th February, 2014 at 22:29
great letter. Should have been an article.

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