Spice up your Sex Life, reads the condom awareness poster stuck high above the door in the "hold and search" area of Lindholme prison's reception area. From what I can gather the authorities actually give prophylactics out as part of every man's release package. Along with a bar of soap, a tube of toothpaste, a disposable razor, a sachet of shampoo and a stick of roll-on deodorant, these little going-home presents are packed neatly away ready to hand out to discharges in those blue nylon BEA-type shoulder bags which were all the rage with schoolchildren back in the late 1960s.
I wasn't going home myself-not quite time for that. I had just been called down to reception to sign my first cheque in my brand new cheque book. My National Union of Journalists' subscription needed paying, but there had been the usual bureaucratic delay. Whilst I waited for the safe to be opened, I sat on a very hard wooden bench under very harsh fluorescent strip lighting, watching that morning's discharges being duly processed. A long row of open cubicles ran along one wall. A row of anxious prisoners sat fidgeting and impatient along the other. The three screws in charge of the operation, long-faced and begrudging, wore white laboratory coats. They were passing a stack of prisoners' records around, from one table to another in what seemed to be a meaningless, never-ending circle. There was an aura of mad serenity about this place.
A lifer stood by, expressionless. The lads for discharge had begun to peel off their clothes. There is always a lifer in reception, helping out at this moment. I do not know why this should be, but wherever I have travelled in the system he is always there. Watching. Assisting the screws. Longing maybe. Following the backs of young prisoners as they leave and the door shuts fast behind them. Growing old in their shadows. Whatever must be going through this man's mind as he repeats the procedure day after day after day after year after year...
It was bad enough for me, forced to watch the mise en sc?ne unfold, observing as dispassionately as I could, knowing it was a mere... a mere?... a seemingly endless 20 weeks before my own discharge date. Trevor, nervous and unstable, from the back streets of Manchester, was sitting next to me biting his bottom lip waiting for his name to be called. Trev had only been inside for a few months but this was his sixth sentence in as many years. He told me he couldn't wait to get back home because he had arran-ged to pick up a parcel at the crack dealer's fortress flat in Moss Side. The deal was already lined up; and, apparently, a bird. With the best will in the world I could not see Trevor lasting more than a few weeks out there.
His turn finally came. A frisson of excitement ran through him. He was visibly shaking now, perched on the edge of the bench in his prison boxer shorts, drawing hard on the bitter end of a wetted roll-up. The screw took him through the motions slowly, deliberately, wringing every last drop of self-respect from Trev's emaciated body.
Back on the wing, glad to see Trev gone but sad as I considered his intentions, I collected my mail from the office. There was a let- ter from Steven, my friend through correspondence-a fellow prisoner in Full Sutton top security "dispersal" prison. Through a tragic quirk of fate, and circumstantial evidence flimsier than lace tulle, Steven recently found himself on the receiving end of a triple life sen-tence imposed for three murders he vehemently denies committing. Poor sod. He won't be going anywhere at all for the next 20 years unless we can interest a great campaigning lawyer in his case. Labelled "Gay Serial Killer" by the newspapers, Steven has been cast out from the world. Stigmatised, vilified then abandoned by friends and even by his lacklustre solicitor in Sunderland.
I call him Braveboy because of his fortitude, his strength of mind and purpose, his determination to fight his case and clear his name. Steven is 25 now. Young, fit and handsome. Innocent or guilty, by the look of things he had it coming to him from an early age. They had him "in care," they sent him to approved schools and detention centres and young offenders' institutions. Inevitably he embarked on a career of petty crime. Steve was a well known local rogue but nothing more.
When I read his letters, always optimistic, always full of his latest efforts to prove his innocence, never self-pitying, genuinely concerned that I am keeping my head above water, pleading with me not to return to heroin-I feel proud to call him my friend. When I get out I am going to do everything I can to help Braveboy claw his way out of the fetid chasm into which he has sunk. Twenty-five years. That is a lifetime. I have done 17 all told, and have come dangerously close to insanity on more than one occasion.
In the quiet of my cell, I read his letter several times. I think about Trevor (now, presumably, maxed up to his eyeballs on crack cocaine), about the next 20 weeks, the next 20 years, Steven's Sisyphean task. Before drifting off to sleep, I think about cockroaches, complimentary condoms and my own chances of survival. The following morning the prison day begins all over again.
