On The Outside Going In
“Sunday morning”, I told myself repeatedly, “is a stupid time to be setting out on a train journey”.
This thought was initially the core of my optimism that the journey I was to make would be smooth and relaxing. Who else would be dragging themselves out on a random trip from London to the Midlands at a time when most sensible people are plotting a walk in the park?
The sight of the extensive crowds at Euston station that morning swiftly disabused me of that idea. It was indeed a stupid time to be setting out on a train journey, as clearly plenty of others had the same idea. The place was rammed. And while some melted away as earlier trains departed, it soon became apparent that a large number held tickets for the same service on which I was booked.
Those who are familiar with Euston, or indeed any other mainline terminus, will know all the tips and tricks to apply. Become aware of precisely which platform your train is likely to depart from, enabling you to loiter near the correct barrier. Know roughly how long before departure said platform is announced and opened to the masses and thus how much time you have to scout for a drink and a snack to take on board.
A casual traveller such as myself is blessed with no such insider info. I have to trust what remains of my own youthful athleticism will be sufficient to propel me down the ramp to our assigned carriages with enough haste to beat the rest of the crowds and guarantee me a seat for all of the next two hours or so.
I’m taking the train to Stafford on a bright Sunday morning. And that’s clearly a stupid time to be doing so.
The town of Stafford itself is one of those places which you suspect is loved and loathed in equal measure by those who reside there. A compact, pretty urban centre nestled on the banks of the River Sow, the railway station itself sited just across the road from the extensive surroundings of Victoria Park. An oasis of greenery through whose centre the river winds, the well-appointed pedestrian shopping precinct lying just on the other side.
It is the kind of town centre I’d cheerfully pop into and make myself at home in, I’m just passing through after all, I don’t need to acquaint myself with whatever social problems from which it may suffer. Perhaps it is truly the idyllic enclave it advertises itself to me as I brush away the crumbs of my precious railway snack, gather my bag and set out on foot for the next stage of the journey.
But here’s the thing. I’m not here to sample the delights of the park, river or castle. I’m here to chalk off a curious life first.
I’ve come to Stafford to visit someone in prison.
The friend whom I’ve come to visit is innocent of any crime, never mind the ones of which he was extraordinarily convicted at the start of this year. Of this we are both in agreement, and it is through my loyal support of him in this time of torment that I’ve finally succumbed to his pleading to come to see him face to face.
For now, we both have to park our mutual outrage over his predicament. A continuing assertion of innocence is of no matter in a place where it is assumed all of those are of equal levels of guilt. You are now part of a different game in which the rules apply to all.
I went to university in a town which was blessed with a prison on the doorstep, but oddly enough the presence of HMP Lancaster never seemed to loom large in our consciousness. You had to go looking for it, away from the main shopping area. And in my three years there I never had cause to.
In Stafford, you can hardly avoid it. A few short metres and a pedestrian crossing from the edge of the retail pedestrian centre it looms large over the town, the dark stone walls of its own fortifications possibly even a more commanding presence than Stafford castle itself. HMP Stafford even defines the postal geography of the town, it literally sits on “Gaol Road” as if to hammer home the point that it is the only destination that matters for the population who reside within.
I’m a few minutes early to check in for my appointment, so I take the opportunity to circumnavigate the site, partly out of curiosity, partly because I’m fairly sure this lone stranger wandering the perimeter roads and back again is going to show up on someone’s security log and it will be nice to keep them on their toes. Walk around to the rear and you come across the rows of Victorian terraces that border the establishment. What an extraordinary existence it must be to live there, staring out of your bedroom window at the edifice of brick wall and barbed wire which lies on the other side of the road.
To begin your prison visit you first step inside the property appointed as the “visitor centre”. A building that almost feels like a repurposed doctors’ surgery sat across the road from the main gates. It is here that the sheer bizarreness of the experience starts to hit home, the civilian staff inside doing their damndest to retain the sense of normality about an experience which is as far removed from “normal” as most people will ever encounter.
I present myself at reception and am handed a clipboard with a form attached. The form itself is on an A5 sheet and bears all the hallmarks of being a tenth-generation photocopy, the original master clearly having vanished beneath a pile of filing some time ago and with nobody ever completely sure it is their responsibility to construct a new one.
There is barely any space to cram in the required detail, who you are, where you are from, the serial number of the photo ID you are about to present, who you are visiting and what their prisoner number is. All details I’ve already submitted as part of my online booking and which they surely hold on the computer already. But I’m required to submit them all again, and woe betide the unsuspecting applicant if any of the details fail to match.
I’m photographed and fingerprinted after reading the laminated card which indicates my consent to this is non-negotiable and handed the key to the locker in which I must stow all the worldly goods with which I’ve come armed. It was a stupid time to be making train journey after all, I had to have things to occupy myself with. But you enter jail with little more than the clothes you are standing up in, regardless of status.
It is here that I run into the first awkward roadbump. The lockers require a refundable £1 deposit to activate them, a detail curiously absent from the otherwise extensive briefing document on the website. I rummage helplessly in my pockets for the required coinage and come up short, rescued from my predicament by the elderly couple sitting nearby who offer the required words of advice and allow me to swap out my change. They are careworn veterans of this process and their guidance back into something resembling a comfort zone is enormously welcome.
It is at this point that the other human side of this becomes only too apparent. There’s one detail I omitted to mention earlier. HMP Stafford is a designated sex offenders prison. There is no “nonce” wing here, the whole establishment is one. None of the men inside represent a threat to anyone’s life. Just to the safety and dignity of others. But such is the nature of that threat that they must still be sequestered away even from other criminals.
I find myself wondering just what the stories of the people around me would be were it even appropriate for them to tell. The aforementioned elderly couple who had come armed with pound coins were almost certainly there to see their adult son. Incarcerated for who knows what, but still reliant on the love and compassion his parents retained for him.
As I took my seat amongst the other gathered visitors so many of these stories began to hammer home. At the table across from me is a woman with two teenage girls in tow. Just who are they here to see? Their father? An uncle? An older brother? Do they know what he is supposed to have done? Do they believe he did it? The forgotten, human side of the criminal justice system is suddenly laid out in front of me. I’m no longer party just to the torment of my own wrongly incarcerated friend, there are 20 or so other family and personal tragedies occupying the same space as I.
My friend has no family to speak of, his adult children having disowned him once the nature of his charges emerged, changing their entire identities the moment he was convicted. His immediate family show no interest in his plight, only the prospect that they might eventually get their hands on his financial assets, safely invested by his support team ready instead for his release. That’s why it is so important that people like me are here. If I did not visit, there would tragically be precious few others prepared to.
And that’s why I’m here.
I mentioned the urgent need for the visitor centre to maintain a stern grip on normality. Despite the formality of the procedures and despite the fact that the budget for furnishings cannot prevent the environment from resembling a cross between a hospital waiting room, there’s at least a suggestion that our comfort here matters.
There’s a tea bar, hidden away behind a closed hatch but which the staff are only to happy to open up for anyone who needs a beverage and a lukewarm Kit Kat. There’s a soft play area for those who have come with children, and a noticeboard festooned with drawings and cartoons from previous younger visitors. There’s an all-pervading air of forced, almost apologetic jollity about it. But I wonder just how else it could be presented.
I wind the time away by leafing through one of the copies of prison newspaper Inside Time which litter the tables, and finger the wooden fob on which is embossed a number — my position in the queue to be admitted inside the forbidding black walls that lie across the road.
There is no part of this next part of the process which is dignified. We are summoned forward in blocks of five, hustled across Gaol Road itself to queue conspicuously outside the oak door which separates the real world from one that is altogether very different.
A small lobby awaits us, dominated by a stern noticeboard listing the extensive list of contraband items in possession of which we are all foridden to attempt to enter. Living examples perhaps of what people have tried and failed to smuggle in on previous occasions.
Another door clangs open, and the reason for our admittance in small blocks becomes apparent. The security lodge is cramped and claustrophobic. We line up for our second fingerprint scan, and our barely-legible scrawled forms scrutinised and checked once again against the register of expected guests.
It is here, in our first interactions with actual prison guards that the strange tension of the process becomes apparent. Prisons, by their very nature, are designed to keep those on the inside in and keep those from the outside out. Yet here we are, violating that one deeply held principle. We, the visitors, are being permitted entry into this otherwise impenetrable sanctum and at every step the people involved are clearly inwardly seething at the compromises required to allow this.
And you feel it in the demeanour of the prison officers themselves. The authority they have over their charges does not extend to us, the permitted outsiders. And yet we still have to conform and submit on pain on of… well, here’s the fun part. A prisoner who does not fully comply to the edicts of the be-uniformed hulks is punished with the threat of remaining in. Failure by us to comply is punished by the one thing that is anathema to everyone there — we are the ones who get kicked out.
Fortunately nobody seems in a hurry to test the boundaries of this authority. “Do you consent to being searched by a female” drones the lady who has been assigned pat-down duties. Once expertly (and consensually) groped we put our loose change in a box and pass through a security arch. If I’ve “accidentally” left a SIM card in my sock this will be the moment it is detected.
All clear, we await our instructions for the next part of the process. Another gate is unlocked and we pass once more into the fresh air. It is here that the uninitiated get a glimpse of the way all prisons are constructed. The imposing brick wall is but a facade, a first or final barrier depending on your attitude to it. We have emerged into the air-gap, a perimeter courtyard across which any determined potential escapee must first traverse. We are hustled across at some speed. They cannot stop us from observing the detail but they really don’t want us to look. But what I can see is the startlingly ornate entrance to what must be the governor’s block, an ivy-clad entranceway almost like the portal to a stately home. The Victorian designers of this establishment had a two-pronged brief. The place must be secure, but it must also look magnificent.
Another door is unlocked and we are finally admitted inside the prison itself, not that you would know it from this angle. It is a stairwell, like you might find inside any sixties office building. Those of us who are able (a lift is also provided) march up a single flight of stairs and await our admission to the visiting hall at last.
There’s one final security check, just by the entrance a personable female officer in a glass booth of her own examines our rumpled forms one last time and another fingerprint scanner checks that no illicit substitution of bodies has taken place between the security gate and here. The lady looks at my details and clocks my home address, the one from which I departed several hours earlier at a stupid time on a Sunday morning.
“My goodness, you have come a long way haven’t you?”
I find my tongue for the first time in an hour. “Well, thank you for acknowledging my dedication”.
She laughs, which is good. Because I’m still determined to retain a sense of humour over the ludicrous formality of the proceedings.
“Table 36, over the far side”, I’m told. My friend spots me striding across towards the soft bench on which he is seated and does his best to retain his emotional composure. It has been quite the journey for both of us.
The visiting hall is packed out already, I was one of the third batch of bodies to come through after all. I’m tempted to look around, to pay attention to the mini human dramas playing out in front of me. Maybe to spot just who it is my waiting room friends have come to visit. But to do so feels inappropriate, intrusive, and people-watching isn’t why I’m here. Besides, the presence of the circulating prison officers and the ones sat atop a podium in front of a bank of monitor screens is all-pervading. You are aware you are here on pain of not violating some small part of visitor etiquette, even if there is no way to determine precisely what that should be. I feel I should raise my hand just to sneeze.
The inmates themselves welcome their one or two permitted visits a month. For a start, it is a break from the usual routine and naturally a pleasure to greet their supporters outside face to face. But there is also a snack bar available, and it is for this reason that we outsiders are permitted to bring in £20 in cash. The fare is tuck shop level stuff: crisps chocolates or — best of all- Magnum ice creams. But it is the closest thing the incarcerated get to a treat in their otherwise monotonous diet of stewed meats and boiled veg.
We order twice during the time I am there, our orders for teas coffees and ice creams taken by a large elderly gentleman in an apron.
“The staff here are all prisoners too,” my friend notes, “this is one of the jobs you get to do if you’ve behaved yourself enough.
So the affable man in a pinny is a sex offender too. He did something to somebody at some point in the past, whether recent or distant. And here he is paying penance to society by fetching my change for me. I’m politely thanking a man whose peccadillos or error of judgement might have once been the subject of an online sting.
We are supposed to have two hours to chat, although the process of winding one’s way through security eats into some of that. Our discourse in some way resembles those of our frequent telephone calls, even if ten minutes this time gets to be one hundred. A mixture of him wanting to learn about events on the outside and his prospects for appeal, me just wanting to satisfy my own curiosity about how he is forced to live right now. And just what happens when your cellmate really needs to take a shit late at night.
“Time’s up ladies and gentlemen, if you could be wrapping up and making your way to the exit”.
Technically visiting time is supposed to be until 4pm, and the large clock on the a wall indicates that there are still ten minutes left before that deadline. What purpose does it serve to be there if its display is not being respected? But something makes me think twice about pointing this out to the large man in uniform who is clearly gasping for a cup of tea of his own and wants us all out of his hair. I’ve played the game so far to be allowed here in the first place. At stake is still the prospect of not being invited back.
So we, and my fellow visitors who have not already knocked things on the head, say our goodbyes and make our way back to the lobby from which we came.
At this point the tension and paranoia ramps up again. The philosophy of the prison officers tested to the core as they violate all of their principles and training and prepare to let people out of the prison.
Not that this goes completely smoothly at first. We make our way back down the stairs to the doors to the courtyard to find them bolted. A random group of strangers who have spent two hours trying to filter everyone else out suddenly find themselves standing awkwardly waiting for someone to arrive with a key.
I decide I’ve had enough of the tension. “Bit rude of them to make us wait to be let out,” I remark to the room, “don’t they know we’ve done nothing wrong?”
Half of them chuckle at the absurdity. Half probably wishes the wanker in the check shirt would shut up. I’ll take both.
Salvation (a doorman) arrives, keys jangle and the locks slide aside. We emerge back into the air gap, this different aspect allowing me to observe the barbed wire which surrounds every potential window ledge or other means of egress. If this is indeed your working environment I guess you can’t help but become institutionalised yourself to some degree. This is all normal to these people. I’m counting my lucky stars that to me it is not.
We find our way back to the security lodge where some of us, myself included as I clearly have a lucky face, are subjected to a random further round of fingerprinting. I mean, it isn’t impossible that people might try to do a surreptitious swap or try to sneak out in the guise of a visitor, however unlikely. But once more this is an example of the paranoid tension surrounding the whole process. Prisons are there to keep specific people in. Not only have we randoms been briefly allowed inside too, but now they are required to set us free again.
We return to the visitor centre, the surgery suddenly bereft of its previous life, the staff cloistered away in an office completing whatever paperwork is required of them. My locker key has survived the trip inside the prison and through the security scanners.
Nobody is around to wave goodbye or thank us for our visit. And I guess exhorting us to “please come again” is beyond inappropriate. We strangers, thrust together for this brief experience of supporting the kind of people who attract angry discussions in local Facebook groups, are to melt away to live our lives once more.
My last task for the day is to while away the hour before my train home exploring the now slowly closing-down town centre. I delight in locating its largest Wetherspoon’s bar, built as all the best of them are in a repurposed historic old building. In this case, it is the former town cinema, the bar nestling at the bottom of a stepped and cavernous auditorium. I eat my scampi and chips where the most expensive seats must once have been sited. And remind myself to pay silent thanks for the freedom to do so.
Then it is one final walk back to the railway station and its waiting room only marginally less well-appointed than the one I’ve already spent part of my day in, awaiting the train home and my return to the arms of a family I’m suddenly only too glad to be able to see once again.
The train when it arrives is formed of rolling stock that isn’t quite as comfortable as the one on the outward journey and one perhaps more suited to a local trip rather than the cross-country itinerary it is timetabled for. There are seats but no tables and so rather than sitting and writing I do the kind of fitful doze one does on journeys that take place at the end of a long and surprisingly emotionally exhausting day.
Sunday evening is, after all, a stupid time to be setting out on a train journey.
