Goodbye to all that

Being released from prison is something that ought to be celebrated. The end of a sentence, the end of captivity, the end of a regrettable time in anyone's life, should they have the misfortune and/or poor judgment, to have found themselves incarcerated. Job done, the price paid, all square with The House (to quote a line from the movie: The Green Mile).

In my case, stepping out of a prison on my last day as a prison officer (in 2013) was not the release I might have expected. In fact, I don't even remember my last day at HMP Pentonville in North London. Once ranked among the worst prisons in the country by Her Majesty's Inspector of Prisons. For me, the sentence did not end then and I am not sure it has ended now.

The reason for such reflection on my part is that I have just stepped down as a member of the Editorial Board of the Prison Service Journal, PSJ. When I joined the Journal, some 15 years ago, the credit panel listed me as: Ray Taylor, prison officer. more recently: Ray Taylor, former prison officer. I guess I will never cease to be a former prison officer but it is in many ways something I am proud of and want to recall. I also feel the need to let go, and this is part of the reason for my standing down from the PSJ.

I was reminded recently of something I always said about my prison officer role when asked about it.

"The best job I have ever done," I said, as I have said many times since I first drew keys in July 2007.

"Really?" was the usual and frequent response and 'yes,' has always been the answer. Why? Because being a prison officer was, to me, very much a people job. I liked working with the people I worked with. Prison officers, some enthusiastic and hard working, some less so. I liked working with nurses and other care providers. In British prisons, a prisoner is entitled to the same level of health care under the National Health Service that any other person is entitled to. So that I would interact with the many 'resident' nurses, and peripatetic doctors, mental health care, and others who would make professional visits to the prison.

I liked working with prison managers at various levels, with admin staff, with maintenance staff and anybody else who found themselves working within the prison walls. I liked working with the various prison chaplains of Christian, Muslim and other religions. And of course I liked working with the prisoners themselves and, from time to time, their families.

Were the prisoners easy people to get on with? No, of course not. They were the most difficult people I have ever dealt with and I could not possibly have imagined how difficult before I took on the officer role. If I tried to explain how and why they were so difficult, I don't think I would be able to. Prison is such a strange and unreal place that it is difficult to imagine what it is like without experiencing it for yourself. I would not recommend giving it a try, either as a prisoner or as a prison worker. Things have changed drastically in British prisons since I was an officer.

Did I think of any prisoners as friends? Absolutely not. I tried to be 'friendly' with any of the residents I came into contact with, but never to be their friend, which is how the relationship was explained during officer training. Friendly, polite, respectful, but equally assertive and maintaining what I regarded as professional distance.

I remember some individuals with something like a fondness. Sometimes the difficult ones who always seemed to be in trouble were the ones that got to you, like naughty schoolboys who might give teacher an endearing cheeky smile.

One such individual went by the nickname among prisoners of ‘killer,’ presumably because of a reputation for extreme violence. Though I don’t recall him committing any act of violence in prison. And I no longer recall his real name. I do remember an incident on one of the wings. It was time for the men to return to their cells for the night and the few officers on duty were having a hard time getting them to do so. The prisoners, ever sensitive to atmosphere, probably picked up on the fact that we were short staffed at the time and were taking full advantage by having a few more precious minutes out of their cells associating with their friends.

This was a part of the job that required patience. Ultimately we relied on mutual goodwill to get prisoners back into their cells. Or for that matter to get them to do anything. Most of the men would wander back to their 'Peter' (a reference to the saint with the keys to the gates of heaven) after a short while. The more prisoners we were able to lock up, the easier it would be to get the rest 'behind their doors.' Still, we had too many, not so much refusing to return, as generally ignoring our pleas to 'bang up.'

After an exasperating twenty minutes I noticed that one of a group of men talking to each other, completely ignoring the instruction to return to their cells, included the man known to other prisoners as 'Killer'. At this point there were only a dozen or so men still wandering, chatting and generally ignoring the lock-up time command.

My solution was to walk up to 'Killer' as if he were an old friend.

"Come on, Killer," I said to him, using the name he went by among other prisoners. "I'm desperate for a cuppa tea. Bang these guys up for me will you (indicating half a dozen or so dubious looking character)."

He laughed, as did the others, at the use of the 'secret' nickname and the very thought that this hard man might agree to assist one of the officers, the white shirts, the men on the other side.

"Okay, guv," he said, still chuckling, as he started to move in the direction of his cell, spurring the others to do the same.

Why is this important? Well, apart from my personal need to 'say goodbye to all that,' to let go of a life that no longer has anything to do with me, there is a question of my role as an author.

When I joined the prison service as an officer, I thought that one side benefit would be that I would have lots of stories to convert into fictional form. It didn't work out like that. Despite the numerous small and big human stories that went on every day, I never really made use of them in my fictional writing. Quite apart from the need to preserve confidentiality, and not talk about things that might prejudice the security and safety of the prison, I never found a way to write about what I saw in a way that people would understand or even believe.

They say that truth is stranger than fiction and, in the case of life in a London prison, that is very much the case. If I told the stories I witnessed from my time in prison, nobody would believe them. They would just be too bizarre and would just beggar belief.

I have written one or two short stories and flash fiction set in prison or about prisoners. I have even featured a fictional prison: HMP Brompton Park, to allow me to do so. But mostly I have steered clear of referencing my prison life in my fictional writing.

Really, the point is that, as writers of fictional stories and of verse, we write about people all the time. Do we understand the people we write about? Often we do not. We make our characters so that they fit the story. They obey our every command as the author of their lives. We make them conveniently fit the personalities we think we are trying to portray.

We often, however, fall into the trap (I know I do at least) of making our characters, the people in our stories, too wooden, too two-dimensional and too predictable. People are not like that. Good people have a propensity to do bad things, even if only on a small scale. Bad people have redeeming characteristics. In short, people are complex in a way that often does not fit the story line we are trying to fit them into.

Yet people are our bread and butter as writers, our meat and two veg, the backbone and framework of all we write about. Understanding that there is nothing simple and predictable about people is one of the keys to good writing. Observing how people speak, behave, approach the challenges of every day life, is how we become better writers.

Do we need to spend time in prison to understand people in all their complexity? Of course not. We just need to listen to the people around us. Family, friends, strangers in the street and on the train. We need to put aside our prejudice and give those people who are not the same as us the time of day. Judge not, lest ye be judged. Be open minded. Listen, observe learn.

For me, working in a prison was the best job I have ever done because it was a job dealing with people. I don't do it any more and do not regret leaving when I did. Quite the opposite. Can I release myself now from this particular bond with the past. I think and hope that I can. I also hope that I have learnt something about people during my time inside and that I am able to use this knowledge to inform and to authenticate my writing practice. Not to mention my relationships and day to day interactions with other people at all times. In short I hope that my time inside has made me a better person.

Thanks for reading and for being patient with an old man's ramblings.

Linked here is my last article to be published by the Prison Service Journal. A review of a book on prison ministry by Dr Henry G. Covert

Oh, and what was the best part of the best job I have ever done? Escorting a prisoner to the gate to be released. Chances were he would be back again in no time but there was always the hope that he would not. A new day stepping out of captivity into freedom. A new dawn, a new chance, a new opportunity to get it right, and a whole life ahead of him.