After receiving your prison kit, you will be escorted to your cell (pad). You could be with a single other inmate or possibly two. However as the prison staff do not know how you will take to incarceration they keep an extra eye on you for the first few days.

As in military life, the operation of a prison runs on similar lines, both in the planning and maintenance, time is the key. Therefore, I will run a simplified timetable past you so that daily life within four walls is easier to understand.

Mon-Friday

0715 First check by the incoming staff, to make sure all present and alive. They just look into the pad through the view slot. Head count.

0800 open all pad doors to allow inmates to obtain breakfast. (See 10 ref.: Food) Some prisons you eat in a canteen, some you take it back to your pad to eat.

0830 If you have a job to do then you will be allowed out to do it. If within a holding prison then you get out for exercise for one hour per day outside.

0900 start work. All manner of jobs are available, depending on security risks, sentence length, abilities and other vagaries. Pay is disgusting, like 36p per hour!

1130 Head for your pad again, cleanup and wait for lunch at 1200.Head count

1330 Same as the morning, out to work, if working or put your feet up if not.

1630 back into your pad clean up and await evening meal. Head count.

17.00 Open for evening meal. Stay open until final shut down at 1900 when pads are locked up tight. Staff is on duty until 2100 and normally looks into pads again before going off shift.

2100 till 0715 night security patrol, normal checks every two hours, depending on the security level of the prison, they have key sites to press on there rounds, but they will also look in on prisoners to confirm they are still there.

Saturday-Sunday. Open from 0715 to 1700, except during meals and any "panics" by staff when they need to count heads.

Windows, doors and locks, are checked twice a day, as is the general state of your pad. You can have a "cell spin" anytime, which is a full strip search of you and your pad, just in case they think you have a 30mm cannon or M61 hidden under the bed! Indeed maybe someone has got in overnight.

Each prisoner, depending on his level of conduct will be able to have some or all of the following: - a colour television, his own food, kettle, reading and writing material. You are allowed various bits of kit to be sent into you from outside, but again restricted to your level of sanity.

I will explain within other sections the telephone system and all the complex systems put in place to control your environment.

However, while an idiot developed all the systems, with nothing between his ears, change is on the way. Some of the procedures for obtaining a visit or indeed the visit itself can be very difficult to understand, but then it is designed for maximum discomfort to the recipients, as the prison would prefer to keep visits to the minimum allowed or less.

You find within the prison system a marked degree of inefficient use of resources; no one does anything about it, because the job they have is ok, all the time they all agree not to make waves.

Once a week you obtain your "canteen", which is what you have ordered from your own personal monies. You receive monies while inside as follows: -

2.50 per week, for being on the dole and not working. However, you would also be "on basic" which means a reduced spending ability as well. This is imposed on people who break the rules and is a way of punishing abusive individuals, who make life for everyone else a pain.

I know this tiny amount seems unjust, but it is one of the things kept from public view. They are looking at the amount of monies you can spend within prison, but I can only speak from my own experience. Earning 36p per hour was very difficult to understand and in no way can anyone say they are making use of the available human resoures. to say nothing of helping reestablish self-esteem

You can only spend a maximum of 15 pounds per week on "canteen", things you can buy are on a sheet which you fill out and hand in. Sweets, tobacco, cigarettes, milk, tea, coffee and all manner of stationery are generally available. Again, you could spend only 10 pound this week and 20 pounds next week. No matter how much you have in your account, sent in and via your job, you can only spend 15 pounds per week. It is a good leveler and is supposed to reduce the so-called "barons" within the population.
NOT So, for they will give out a half once of tobacco this week, on tick, but require an extra payment of use to their "stall" next week when you pay it back.

Stamps are available, but the prison has to supply you writing material and envelopes and frank them for free, if asked. Two a day if you have a need. Stamps are getting more difficult to be allowed to be sent in, as the prison believes inmates will be sitting in a circle, licking stamps and chanting love poems! Bless them, makes you wonder who gets the most paranoid!