There were opposing worlds in prison. There was the communal one we were all involved in. The constant piss-taking, the laughing at and general mocking of the prison officers that were dicks, of which there were a few. Playing chess, going to the gym, complaining about the food. Then there was your private world. The one we all had inside our cells, inside our heads and hearts. Each man had his own, of his own making and dealt with it in different ways.
The communal world was funny in Jurby prison, no doubt about it, I had so many laughs each day that one could be forgiven for assuming we were all having a great time and enjoying our stay. This was true for those times, but it was in juxtaposition to the time we were forced to be alone. Because we had so little time with other people we were determined to enjoy it. We made the best of it, and if you were gonna be a downer you were unlikely to get sympathy among the herd. More likely you would get jokes hurled at you until you laughed or got so pissed off you left. I should say it wasn't all heartless. If you had some serious bad news like a family death, or you had just received a long sentence, people cared, but if you were sad just because you were alone in prison? Most weren't so sympathetic to that, considering they were in the same place.
I love a joke at my expense and am happy to invite it, and expressing my views on vegetarianism, religion, spirituality, homophobia, sexism were all likely to get me verbally attacked and laughed at in a place like that. I enjoyed it. I liked to challenge their petty-minded views and get to the core of what them made them feel the way they did. I liked to expose their own biases and show them where they came from. I had to do this after summing up each individual and earning their respect first, you can't just question a stranger's beliefs in prison, there's fucking violent loons everywhere. It was not only fun for me, but for some that were listening (and it was often debates between the 4 or 5 most confident with another 10 or more watching/listening) I hope it may have had minor impacts on their thinking.
I've often been asked whether I got any 'bovver' in prison, and the answer is no not really. If you are neither a threat nor a victim there is little energy there to engage with. The worst I encountered was a young broad shouldered guy with a very fragile ego. He was bragging about all the women he'd slept with, we all knew this wasn't true and I just burst into laughter, what else could I do? So later he literally pulled my hair while I was sat having lunch, so I elbowed him in the arse (not exactly Shawshank is it?). Oh and once a smackhead came in my cell and said he was gonna kick me in the face because I didn't buy him some tobacco, I told him he better go put some shoes on then, so he did, and I locked my door. But importantly at these moments, you don't cower, you don't stay in your cell at lunch. You carry on as normal and don't give them any power. These guys are weak minded and insecure, they only go after those they know they won't lose against. And that means their ego, not a fight. There is a danger I will show you up, by being smarter or funnier or more liked. These guys don't like that, most of them won't risk it.
The other stuff worth a mention was the interesting power exchange between the inmates and the guards. Jurby prison is a weird place. The Isle of Man is a small island and inmates and guards had often been to the same school, or were cousins, or their siblings or parents had fucked each other. In some instances we literally had the bullies from school as inmates and the bullied as guards. The guards had a kind of power over us, they could make us clean up, they could lock us up and generally boss us around. They could take your stuff off you if they had a reason. But we also had power over them in small ways. We could make them get us forms or take complaints further up the chain, and they had to accompany us if we needed to go somewhere. The dynamic between me and my few closes friends and the guards was the most fun thing we had.
We all had our own ways of pissing them off, it was a game we took pride in and egged each other on in. There was Peeler, he was blunt and crude but effective. As a guard we disliked walked by he would loudly shout as if in mid-sentence 'yeah he's a right fucking cunt int he, I heard he gets wanked off by his mum the creepy little fuck'. The comments were directed in subtle ways to have meaning to the particular guard so he knew it was for him but couldn't say so without defining himself as the very insult that was thrown.
My best friend in Jurby was Ian, he was in for murder. He killed his wife's lover in a fight at his own home when the guy turned up drunk and attacked him. He kneed him in the body and burst his spleen. He would enrage the guards he had issues with by completely ignoring them. he would literally act like they weren't there no matter what they said. Some younger guys would likely be dragged into a cell, locked up and had priveledges removed for this kind of thing. But Ian was middle aged, very smart, quite a big guy with a lot of presence. They didn't know what to do. He was stronger mentally than the guards (who were not particularly smart, or brave) and they would end up walking off and another guard who Ian respected would have to come and ask the same question and he would answer immediately as polite as he could, under the gaze of the ignored and infuriated onlooker. Ian is still in prison, 14 or 17 years to go, minimum.
I had a more direct and seemingly the most enraging style of pissing off the bullies of the staff. I would watch carefully and mentally log how they had acted and I would wait until we were in close proximity to their superiors, most often the head guard who was actually not a bad guy. Then I would politely ask the offending officer to explain why he thought it was ok to use his power to bully the younger and more troubled inmates. Shouldn't you be trying to help them? I would ask. Isn't it part of your job to help these men prepare to go back to society? Don't you have any sympathy for a 21 year old kid with mental health issues? Do you think it was the right thing to do to take all his privileges away because he smoked a cigarette even though you let everyone else get away with it? It was a non-smoking prison, but it didn't stop anyone. they smoked dried banana peel soaked in nicotine from patches, rolled up in pages of the bible, no shit.
This led to much amusement but also had me hated by a couple of staff and they would try and get to me by having my cell searched more often than normal and having me clean up other peoples mess. I would just always comply with a smile. Sure thing, no worries, anything else I can do? I think that got to them more. Yes we were petty, and mean to these guys. We would taunt them that we were leaving soon and they were there for life. But it was our way of not only passing the time but bonding over a shared experience. It was tribal, and kinda fun.
I am sure I'm in danger of waffling on this one so I'm sorry about that and I'll leave it for now. Please feel free to comment or question me, thanks for reading.
To be continued...
