The Secret Prisoner: Welcome to life on the inside

As a rare middle-class professional in jail, I believe we are all capable of doing things that could get us banged up

As Britain is gripped by a prisons crisis, the Telegraph is publishing dispatches from an inmate at a Category B jail – the second highest level of security – to discover what life is really like inside. Recently, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) found the jail to be chronically overcrowded and understaffed, with self-harm and drug use rife. 
The inmate, a British professional and entrepreneur on the outside, is on remand awaiting trial charged with non-violent crimes which he denies. To protect his identity, he is not named. Other names and nicknames have been changed.
If before I’d come to prison you had asked me what proportion of prisoners in the UK deserve to be inside, I would have had a punt at maybe 85 or 90 per cent. To my shame, I would not have cared very much either, because the prospect of ever being in prison myself seemed so utterly remote – not for people like me. But now that I have been in prison for several months, I honestly wonder whether the true figure is even 50 per cent. 
Perhaps surprisingly, though, prisoners can be quite self-critical about their punishment. We generally adhere to the adage: “We’ve all done something wrong, otherwise we wouldn’t be banged up”. And, as you would expect, there are some pretty dangerous people here, people who should not be walking the streets. I was assaulted a few months ago by one murderer, so I am perhaps lucky to be able to tell my tale to you. 
The stereotypical hardcore, hard-wired prisoner who simply takes what he wants and leaves a trail of destruction in his wake does indeed exist. A couple of weeks ago I was queuing for the bread ration (usually two slices, three if you’re lucky) behind one inmate, Crazy Kall, who ignored the queue, stepped in front of me, stroked his chin and said aloud: “Can’t remember if we’ve got any bread in the cell – better make it a loaf.” 
To my amazement, even though others would go without (because there is never enough bread), the prisoner on servery duties simply capitulated. And heading back to the spur [a prison wing holding about 70 prisoners] Kall breezed past at least two officers swinging his bag of bread, no one dreaming of drawing attention to it. If such characters carry an aura of terror on the inside, inside is no doubt where they should be. 
Naturally, some prisoners disguise or, frankly, lie to each other about what they have or have not done. One of the amusing things that happens every couple of weeks is that there will be a TV news item about someone we actually know and see every day. On rare occasions you discover from the TV that rather than being in jail for a burglary, like he said, Wilko has been convicted of armed robbery with GBH; or that instead of being convicted for a bit of coke possession, Barry had been involved in a brutal gangland stabbing. 
And yet, perhaps more commonly, it works the other way too: some overstate their crimes to other prisoners because they know that there is a sort of perverse status attached to, especially, crimes of violence. A drunk driver who killed someone in a crash might imply he has been done for murder; a cannabis user who sells on the side might lead you to imagine he was dealing in kilos rather than ounces. 
But, on balance, I think prisoners are pretty honest with each other. Prison is not a judgemental environment: to other prisoners, factors like your age (there are prisoners in their late teens and lots of prisoners over 60), your race (almost a third of the prison population is mixed-race), your class (I am, almost uniquely, educated and middle-class and very fairly treated by other prisoners), or your crime (provided you are not a nonce [child abuser], for whom prisoners reserve special savagery) don’t really matter. 
Prisoners deeply value sharing their experiences and giving or receiving sympathy. I am not saying ethnic or social groups like Albanians or Travellers (between whom tensions quite often kick off) don’t stick together, but I am certain that when you are banged up 18 hours a day for weeks or months with the same person – and hear all each other’s phone calls, and see each other’s tears and rages – that prison is not an easy place to hide the truth. 
In fact, the principal reason why a prisoner would be ostracised is when we suspect him of being a fantasist (there are high numbers of severe psychotics and bipolars in here, usually unreliable narrators) or so stupid or dishonest that they get a rep for being not worth the time of day.
For what it’s worth, I feel I have fairly good antennae for fibs, of which I have been told a great many. And what I am now certain of, from the prisoners I believe, is that huge numbers are inside on flawed evidence (almost always exaggerated by the police), on brutal informal plea-bargaining tactics by the CPS and because of the extraordinary incompetence, and sometimes nonchalance or cruelty, of lawyers (among whom I regret that I must include judges). 
Of course, no prisoner is entirely blameless. But I also believe that many people in prison are very ordinary, decent human beings: because ordinary, decent human beings make mistakes and do stuff which is stupid, or reckless, or cruel, or all three. I have learned that we are all capable of doing things that could get us banged up. 
Next time, the Secret Prisoner will reveal the details of the jail economy, and the perils of falling into debt inside.