6 - A Night Inside

Summary

Passing time was a major preoccupation at Midtown. The conditions and constraints of prison lent the hours a warped and distorted quality, fluctuating between extended periods of nothing at all and short, clipped intervals of frantic activity. While much of prison life is conducted out of view, and beyond my personal line of sight, I could hear and feel much of the activity on the wing. Once the evening meal had been collected and all returned to their cells for the night, this was reversed. Coming on to the wing after bang-up, I felt a return to those early days of listening around the periphery and wondering about the mysterious occupants within. Then I wandered around the outer perimeter making sense of what I was hearing from the outside, now I would largely be locked inside, on the wing. As night took hold and the prison moved towards patrol state, time and space took on an unfamiliar quality, stretching into dark and shadowed corners, defying its usual dimensions.

I made tentative enquiries about the possibility of spending the night with the full expectation I would be refused. As far as I knew there was no precedent in England and Wales. While I knew this would deepen my understanding of the place and its routines, I did not imagine my motives would be clear to those for whom this was a mundane aspect of working life. I was surprised when my tentative enquiries about doing so were greeted positively, and a sympathetic commanding officer sought out so that I might shadow her. Prior to beginning fieldwork, I had spent a year volunteering with the IMB1 at another prison. I was taken aback when informed by our chair that we would need to make arrangements with the No. 1 in order to conduct unannounced night visits. At the time I interpreted this as a case of blind institutionalization, accepted as a means of saving everyone bother regardless of the potential cost – particularly to those in Care and Segregation. I still do, though my cynicism is now nuanced by an understanding of how these impediments come to be. While officers carry keys at night, they do not ‘break the pouch’2 unless faced with dire emergency.