Episode 39 - The Worst Night Of My Life

As I settled and focused, there was a young inmate slumped on the floor with a bed sheet noose tied around his neck. He was alive, but he was desperate.

During the three and a half years I was in prison I wrote over a million words by hand. Tales From The Jails is a contemporaneous account of my life, and attempts to thrive rather than merely survive, whilst incarcerated.

Most names have been changed. The events have not.

This is a Jekyll & Pride production.

Producer: Trevessa Newton

Title Music taken from The Confession, on the album Crimes Against Poetry (written and performed by The Shadow Poet, produced by Lance Thomas)

Copyright Jekyll & Pride Ltd 2025

@talesfromthejailspodcast

@jekyllandpride2023
@theshadowpoettsp

Transcript

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During the three and a half years I was in prison, I wrote over a million words by hand. Tales from the Jails is a contemporaneous account of my life, and attempts to thrive rather than merely survive whilst incarcerated. Most names have been changed, but the events have not. Episode 39 The Worst Night Of My Life It's October. 2016. I'm on top bunk and my new pad mate is below. He's a breath of fresh air to cell 3-17, has a great sense of humour, laid back, not a numpty. Never tries to talk it big or act tough. Working in reception together for the last few weeks has solidified our relationship. Macca is clean and really tidy and does not mind getting stuck in. More than anything, he wants to do his time as straight as possible so that he can leave as soon as possible. Neither of us want hassle or to be caught up in the prison bullshit. We're the same age, although very different, and we both received seven years and so are serving three and a half in prison. He arrived here before Christmas and I a month after. Big Reeve was the perfect padmate at the right time and my instincts tell me so is my new one. Presently cell 3-17 feels like an oasis in the middle of an asylum. And the two inch steel door sadly protects us as much as it is designed to imprison us. I contemplate as I write, observing. We're all watching, observing each other in here. It's unavoidable, such is the environment we inhabit. A personal observation now some nine months in, is wondering how I'm doing compared to my fellow inmates? Somehow I'm doing all right. I do not see many lads managing their days and time as well. Many are struggling to cope. Life and time stuck on the wings is tough, and 23 hour bang up for half the prison is akin to leaving your favourite pet caged in the back of a small van every day. Jobs are limited and courses and education are not taken seriously amongst the general prison population unless enforced. Believe me, binging on reality TV and old episodes of Only Fools and Horses is not a luxury. Cells with lads stuck behind the door are pressure cookers and doom pits. Loads of the lads are emotionally stretched to their limits, which eventually results in a short fuse. Internal dilemmas affect most of the prison population and inner turmoil manifests in either anger and aggression or depression. All of us to one degree or another are managing fears, anxieties, and grappling with hope and despair. Few, very few seem happy, more stable. Compared to most around me, I'm doing all right. Day after day, I see guys making a call to a loved one only to feel worse afterwards. I watch men have their spirit eroded as days turn into weeks, but there are years ahead, no better or different than this. Big characters and notorious criminals become shadows of their former selves as time and hopelessness and powerlessness consumes a person. Family, once children, parents, friends, and life as you know it, all slipping by as you have to face each day with the futility of prison. What happens to anyone when their spirit is either broken or worse, drained to empty? What or who do you become as a result? Some guys connect or reconnect with their faith, and although some lads only go to church on Sunday to get out of the cell for an hour, something resonates. But as they say, all the prayers in the world can't help you much in here, especially if you are exposed or vulnerable or not handling your prison time well. It pains me to say it, but most of the guys in here are bad actors in a B movie where the script is either the same lines over and over or making them up as you go along. I'm here with a ringside view of chaos, violence, treachery, head fucks and depression, all converging and colliding at any given time. Presently, there is chaos and screaming in the block, and as such, it is difficult to hear exactly what is going on, but it's madness and for real. I was in the middle of writing when suddenly we heard the footsteps of a guard slowing down as he came closer. The chain is another distinctive giveaway. Then the key in the door, and then the flap pulled back. In he came, it was 7.35. I put down the pen and Macca switched off the TV. Ian Lavender was on The Chase. I knew the officer, but only by sight, not name. He is mature. He was dressed in black and with the look of a man with serious news. Alright lads, nothing to worry about. Are you two Listeners? We are, we told him. Good. There's been a major incident downstairs in the block. Follow me. As we followed him along the landing, lads were up on their feet and ears to the doors. You can hear everything as you walk by. The officer stopped at the entrance to the block. It's a steel security door. The Penguin, another Listener, was waiting. We were told there is a dead body, and asked if we would be okay with that. My first thoughts were, is it the Frenchman who wanted to take his own life? Did he somehow end up in the block? The wing is an eerie place at night, but it suddenly takes on a whole new meaning when on this side of the door. It's a big steel and concrete tomb at night. He explained that a young man had committed suicide. He'd hung himself and he was dead on the floor. It was like stepping into a cavern of dungeons, descending the narrow spiral staircase into the bowels of an old Victorian prison. It wasn't like entering The Cavern where the Beatles used to play. No, it was a dungeon. Dark, flickering emergency lights barely glowing, but worse was the smell. It was like a morgue laced with sewer, and it stuck to the back of your throat like tar. The spiral staircase was dark and the concrete stone steps cold and wet and deathly slippy. Crouched and awkward we shuffled down each step, years of pain and sorrow embedded into the stone. Nothing prepared us for what lay beyond. Lying on the floor face down and with a filthy orange prison blanket thrown over his head and shoulders. He'd obviously been dragged out of the cell dead and left on the floor here by officers. However, we were not here for the dead occupant. No. We were here because the rest of the lads in the block were going crazy. I've often said that prison and the wings are a cross between the zoo and asylum, but this was next level stuff. Cell 3-17 was paradise compared to this sub world and these conditions. The cells were more like dungeons in the 1700s. It was dark except for the officer's torch light, each cell set back. Honestly, it was like being in a zombie movie, and behind each door was an inmate in distress of one kind or another. The officer said that lads needed to be calmed down for their own safety and that they were not being cooperative with the officers. He warned us of not getting too close to the door, especially if the glass had been smashed out. We could be spat at, swilled with filth or blood. Then he flashed the torch towards particular cells. It was terrifying, but we had a job to do. Some of the lads were shouting out that the kid had warned them. He told them he was suicidal. And they did nothing. They're to blame. I approached the cell two up from where the kid lay dead. The glass was out. The officer appeared like a dementor and whispered to me, be careful. As I stepped forward and peered through the slit in the door, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I tried to work out what was inside. Where was the inmate? Was he suddenly going to appear out of the darkness and attack me? No. As I settled and focused, there was a young inmate sat slumped on the floor with a bed sheet noose tied around his neck. He was alive, but he was desperate. There was enough light to notice he'd been self-harming and cuts from a blade were fresh and still bleeding. It was a harrowing sight and took my breath away. I asked whether we could go in, but there was no way, not without more staff. Then he left me to get on with it. I was staring at a dead inmate on the floor and another behind me in a dungeon, dripping in blood, and halfway to hanging himself. It's strange. I could not help but go into parent mode. This poor kid, whoever he was, doesn't deserve to die like this. It was so sad and lonely and inhumane, as much as degrading. What a sorrowful, pitiful ending to a person's life down here. I introduced myself and went from there. Slowly I asked him normal things and waited patiently for any response. He mumbled a few things and I asked him would it be possible to make it to the door. I asked him whether he had a family, did they know he was here? I explained that the officer could not let me in, and if he'd got the strength to try and make it to the door and tell me what's going on and would he like me to pass a message onto his parents? Slowly the kid started to move. I watched him remove the noose from around his neck and then suddenly appear out of the darkness, almost nose to nose with me. In less than 10 minutes, the young man from Manchester explained that he'd been in psychiatric care. They took him off his meds and he was restrained by staff. Then he was shipped out from there into the block in Walton. He hadn't spoken to his mother in six months. It was clear that he was a casualty of a broken system, and he was lost in this system. I felt helpless. I wanted to cry. I wanted to wrap my arms around him like a father, and say, everything's going to be all right, son. Here was a kid, 22, who quite clearly needed psychological help and medication, not devoured by the worst of the state. I felt like I was the only person who cared in the world and could help, but I was helpless. It was the most insane experience I've ever endured. Wanting to help, desperate to help, but utterly helpless. What would become of this kid? Would he make it through the night, but worse, what had he got to live for? He was in the worst, most desperate place and position I have ever experienced in my life. I felt ashamed having to leave him, but the officer insisted. There was another inmate, and this one was wilder. Again, the glass was smashed, and it was face into the darkness and hope. It was like Jack Nicholson in The Shining as he squeezed his face against the slit in the door. A flashback to, Here's Johnny... Manic, jabbering a Scouser. And then I recognized him. His voice. Is that you David? It was. He'd been on the nets a few weeks back. The place was in lockdown because of him. And now he was a distorted figure of a guy who used to bounce around on the wing larger than life. He was gone. Whether it was Spice, he was psychotic, or just a plain psycho, he'd crossed to madness. His cell was bleak and dark and wet. Flooded in fact. He went on about the dead lad and then started dancing like an Indian warrior. David was fucked and I feared he might not make it back either. He's not handling his prison well and his 12 year sentence has flipped him over the edge. That and Spice. A person loses all sense of time and existence down here. How the Governor is overseeing this is a scandal. Everyone down here tonight is, to varying degrees, traumatized by the whole situation. Through the manic jabbering, David was clear about what happened with the kid. It wasn't the case David needed a Listener, no, more he needed somebody normal to speak to. My pad mate appeared on his way to next door. He looked shocked and somber. I wondered if he felt the same as me, like I was having a head fuck on acid. We are not watching a nightmare, we're in it. Tonight I saw men in worse conditions than in Aleppo, worse than how hostages or prisoners of war are treated. How do officers go home and believe any of this is normal or right? How can there be job satisfaction? I can honestly say that we three Listeners cared more about the desperate plight of the lads in the block than any member of staff. It's worse than inhumane. It's criminal. We were silent as we returned upstairs to the wing, but the wing heard us returning and lads already knew someone was dead. It's the worst case scenario. Witnessing the trauma downstairs and then bombarded with questions from the lads. By the time we reached our cell, the wing and prison was in pandemonium. Macca and I just wanted to decompress, drink coffee, and share a packet of chocolate digestives. It really is difficult to put into words what we witnessed and experienced. Smurf was itching to know what went on. Other lads shouting over for details. Tonight, we saw how the worst of the prison and justice system are really treating people. Those lads are abandoned on every level. Lost in a system that does not care. Living in squalor. It's horrendous, on an epic level. It's the day after the night before. Neither of us slept well and the block was howling crazy until three in the morning. I haven't stopped thinking about the kid. Did you make it through the night or did you return to the noose and end the pain and desperation? The worst part of these situations is we never get to find out if these guys survive. Mr. P was coy about the Frenchman. All I know is he's still alive and on the hospital wing, but the caring Mr. P only lasted as long as it took to process the big guy. 24 hours after the caring granddad it was, he's a crier, not suicidal. If he'd really wanted to do it, he'd have done it. Criers. You see loads of them in here. I think this morning we were still numb. We knew there would be lots of questions and loads of attention once the door opened, but I left that to Macca as I disappeared to the morning love call, although that sounds surreal, more like love mixed with recovering from the events and emotions of the night before. I told T what I could. We were on the prison phone, but I told her I felt helpless, truly helpless, unable to help in what was the worst event I've ever witnessed. I've experienced many traumatic moments in life, but nothing comes close to this. The best I could do was to be calm and practical. T said, that's what makes the difference in a crisis. As the day went on, I reflected more than I worked. The Frenchmen, the guys in the block, one dead and hundreds of other inmates in here, mentally and emotionally struggling to the point between desperation and despair. Men in pain, feeling isolated and helpless. Self-harming and suicidal en masse, and no one is saying or doing anything about it. Tea time around the table was predictable. The wretched creatures were scoffing at the events and said that the dead lad was weak. Toenails asked me whether I was scared down there. I told him, scared, it's medieval down there. It's no badge of honour, because they're either suicidal, psychotic, or insane. One kid dead, another with a noose around his neck. And David unrecognizable from the lad bouncing around on the wing three weeks ago. Scared does not come close to what we experienced last night. Terrifying and brutally sad would be a more honest description.