<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s against me human rights!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n It was three in the morning and the whole wing had been kept awake by one protester. His screaming and swearing was being punctuated by spells spent kicking his metal cell door. I was in my second week in a British prison and my padmate Scouse Robbie, was taking an altogether philosophical view of events. He was puffing away contentedly on a roll-up and when I asked him why he wasn\u2019t shouting like the rest he shrugged and said, \u201cIs shouting at him really going to make him shut up?\u201d He was right.<\/p>\n The protester was a \u2018self-isolator\u2019, refusing to leave his cell. Some lads took this course of action if they were in debt for drugs; some if they had grassed, while others might be at risk from rival gang members. Either way, it meant that you would be on a very restricted regime. Our protesting friend had not had exercise that day – a process that would have entailed locking the wing down and giving him the exercise yard on his own.<\/p>\n \u201cYou better stay behind that door lad! If I see you I\u2019ll skin you alive!\u201d There were myriad threats being fired at him, yet he was determined to keep going.<\/p>\n Finally, just before 6 he finally gave up the ghost and went to sleep. It meant that the rest of the wing had two hours kip before we were unlocked shortly before 8 am. Despite what you might read in The Daily mail about a holiday camp \/ PlayStation culture in English jails, there was no \u2018lie-in\u2019 option. If we weren\u2019t up and at our designated activity we would be nicked and placed on adjudications, so a tired and cranky population made their preparations and departed for their activities. Scouse and I were wing workers responsible for painting, a Sisyphean task given the prisoners\u2019 proclivity for penmanship in the form of profanities and murals. While we patrolled with our paintbrushes Scouse went up to the protester’s cell door, opened the letterbox shaped observation panel and endeavoured to wake him up. I was sure that Scouse was going to give him a mouthful of abuse, but I was surprised when Scouse simply asked, \u201cHave you had exercise yet lad? They\u2019re taking the piss out of you! Don\u2019t they know it\u2019s against your civil human rights?\u201d<\/p>\n Well the response was instantaneous, \u201cI know lad. They\u2019re treating me like an animal!\u201d<\/p>\n Scouse continued, \u201cI just saw them Kangas (prison officers) down there, they\u2019re laughing at you. They said you would crumble lad. You would never be able to keep it up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll show them lad!\u201d came the screamed reply. Our protesting friend was boosted and re-booted. I threw Scouse a filthy look as the screaming and door kicking resumed. Scouse just smiled as he walked away, \u201cTrust me Moose. I have a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n An hour later things had quietened down again. Scouse returned to the protester’s cell, had a brief chat and sure enough the tirade resumed.<\/p>\n Three times that afternoon Scouse blew the dying embers of his protest back into flame again.<\/p>\n \u201cJesus Scouse, what are you up to? Why don\u2019t you just leave him be? All I want is a little bit of a break from the banging.\u201d I was tired, irritable.<\/p>\n Each time he would smile and reply, \u201cI have a plan. Trust me.\u201d<\/p>\n After our evening diets, Scouse made one more trip to the protester’s door. Once more the volume increased. He was still kicking and screaming at 7PM as we were being locked up for the night. But by 7-30 all of the noise had died down. At 9pm we still hadn\u2019t heard a peep. I looked down from my bunk and saw a smugly contented Scouser puffing away on a smoke.<\/p>\n \u201cGood plan lad. Fair play.\u201d I offered. I finally understood what Scouse had done.<\/p>\n \u201cWell I figured that if I tired the poor sod out during the day we would have a quiet night. Every man is entitled to protest, but that doesn\u2019t mean you have to be an anti-social wanker about it. Night Moose.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIt\u2019s against me human rights!\u201d It was three in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[247,352,364],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prison","category-short-stories","tag-life-in-prison","tag-prison","tag-prison-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}