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The closed world that
is prison cries out to be dragged into the light of public
consideration. There is an endless list of reasons for this, all of
which lay behind my decision to begin blogging several years ago. Top
of my personal list of reasons is that power exercised in secret
always risks becoming abusive; and that knowledge of prison could
only improve the pathetic quality of public and political debate.

It is sad, then, that
no blogger has taken my place in the year since I was released. Not
that it is an easy path to take – it is a continual battle, even
though legal, and the number of vocal, campaigning prisoners is
always a very limited pool. It was with some pleasure that someone on
Twitter – @Prison_Diaries – began to tweet, seemingly from the
depths of the High Security Estate.

Obviously there were
doubters. This involved an illegal mobile phone, and accessing social
networks, even second hand, is against prison rules. Added to the
difficulty of perpetually hiding a phone, it is no surprise that some
thought that this was a fake account. If you like that sort of thing,
The Queen has an excellent one.

As the days passed, I
decided to pose a challenge – to take and post a particular picture
that I thought would be very hard for someone not in prison to take.
Prison Diaries came through. Alas, someone promptly faked a similar
photo to make the point that the proof wasn’t in. Ho hum. But on the
basis of Prison Diaries efforts, I gave him my conditional support as
being genuine.

Not that I was
sanguine. All too often PD seemed to give away personal information
that I would never do in his position, to the extent that I felt the
need to warn him more than once. Without even re-reading his tweets I
can recall that he is serving Life with a 24 tariff, has served
between 3 and 4 years, his crime is a gun-murder, and he works on the
wing servery. With just that information any decent Security
Department should be able to uncover him in hours.

That they haven’t found
PD has been a source of increasing discomfort for me. I know that I
had a mobile for four years, but I wasn’t in High Security and had a
very sophisticated system to keep myself safe. Even so, I would never
have dreampt of tweeting. The Prison Service hated my legal blog, you
can only imagine their response to illegal tweeting – every effort
would be expended to shut it down, out of sheer embarrassment.

I must admit to losing
interest in Prison Diaries. It was slightly entertaining, but lacked
any depth of meaning or thought and so I wandered off. Only to have
my attention grabbed yesterday by the accusation that Prison Diaries
had been detected tweeting from an Ipad. Hiding a mobile is one
thing; an IPad is another. The alternative explanation, that a screw
brought in an Ipad for personal use and allowed PD to use it briefly,
is one I cannot believe for a single moment. Staff are utterly
forbidden from bringing such items into prison, may be randomly
searched on entry, and to then allow a prisoner to use it…. That’s
not just the job and pension down the drain, it’s criminal
prosecution. I’ve known some dumbass screws, but even they would balk
at such stupidity.

Prison Diaries has yet
to deny the IPad claim, which is disappointing. The best he has come
up with is to say that he has a corrupt relationship with staff which
gives him forewarning of any action to find the phone (or Ipad). And
this is another claim I cannot accept. It relies on public ignorance
of prison life but to someone with my history, it doesn’t stand up
for a moment. It is absurd.

Mobiles are found in
essentially two ways. The first is randomly; by a random search by
wing staff, or by wing staff getting a reading on their mobile
detectors and kicking the door in. Secondly, it can be found by way
of a targeted search, following intelligence such as another con
grassing, information revealed through tweets, or staff detecting it
on their equipment.

Only one of these
avenues of finding a mobile is even theoretically amenable to
interference by corrupt staff. The random wing searches etc are not.
Unless one has every member of staff in their pocket. The second,
through targeted intelligence, is amenable if one happens to have
the Security Manager in your pocket. In a High Security prison. It
has never happened, and I know a lot of heavyweight criminals who
would love to throw millions at that manager.

My doubts about Prison
Diaries, then, are solidifying. I would love an explanation as to how
he accessed an IPad. Of how he evades phone detectors and searches.
And how he has the Security Department of a High Security prison on
its knees.

Until then…. Prison
Diaries has clearly spent time behind bars. But I doubt he is who he
claims to be now. Sorry dude.