A Move South

I have been kept occupied this week by another move. The new wing consists of two units, the West and my new home, the 'enhanced' South.

The atmosphere is pleasingly different over here, quieter than my previous abode and thankfully even the youngsters treat everybody with respect.

Being encamped with a new set of faces, my reputation as a good advisor has travelled with me and I have three new clients already.

My shift to the South hasn't been insufferable now that I have my parole review representation in its final stages.

I try to avert my mind from the lack of willing solicitors and instead to the fact that my representation is good.

The big hurdle is still the fact that maintaining my innocence renders me unsuitable for 3 of the courses that were recognised on my risk factors, but that will never change.

So with my 30 page portfolio of references, achievements and positive reports I can only hope the board will look on it with a modicum of common sense.

Whispers from Hell

I've been holding my breath over the vital report by the Probation Service about whether I will be allowed to be a semi-human again by going to a D Category prison where one can go out to work and mingle with the population.

Like just about everything else, you have to wait an enormous time for anything to happen. Even saints don't possess the patience necessary for this life. ('Life' did I say?)

The probation officer from outside what's called the prison service arrived, and asked questions and spent time with me, and came to the conclusion that Yours Truly is perfectly safe to be allowed the slightly more relaxed life of D Category, open prison, status. She was very positive about recommending 'D' cat this time.

I had been worried that the inability of the prison to experiment with me on a 'town visit' might be another excuse to bar me from Category D. But she said it's not a prerequisite for the improved category. What a relief that piece of news was - probably as good for me as it would for the Prime Minister to hear that his parliamentary colleagues love him after all, and were just kidding before.

The officer's comments were really cheering, and one of the best bits of encouragement that's come my way since the life of Hell that has followed the jury's decision to throw me into prison and allow the fellow who murdered my wife to continue as if nothing happened.

Then came the probation person under the influence of the prison service - the 'inside probation officer.'

This one wasn't sure at all that Category D would do me. After all, she said, I should stay at a Category C prison before that step.

Naturally, I pointed out that I wasn't in a Category C prison only because my dear prison landlords built a C Category wing to save the trouble of sending people away to an actual C Category nick. As I have to keep saying - about everything to do with this nightmare - 'Not my fault.'

She'd have to confer with her manager, she said. Tut tut, really. Oh, dear. Frowns. She didn't know at all.

So Roger isn't the happy bunny he might be. You'd think that the prison would have made sure that a C-Category wing would be an acceptable alternative to going to a C Category prison. And if they did get that okay, which presumably they did, you might think they would pass the word onto Probation.

Before the lady left the cell, she asked about my health. 'My blood sugar levels are erratic, they range from 13.7 to 2.0.'

'You must follow your health plan,' she said. 'And it's important to avoid stress.'

I smiled, but not necessarily from her apparent concern. Avoid stress here? It'd be easier to avoid fire in Hell. The real Hell, I mean, rather than this overdone, over-realistic mock-up.
My sweet niece Collette had a birthday the other day. I was glad I could get her a nice card. All the world seems against you in here, all except family. Thank God they are there and in constant contact.
- Roger Gordon

Friends or foe?

I'm off the cholesterol tablets and that feels good. My cholesterol level is down to 3.4 and they say that's good. They say - when you're in this shadowy hidden away, locked away world, you can only go on what they say - they say that because I had diabetes, the treatment is to go onto the tablets right away.

(Course, it's a joke, really. They diagnosed me with diabetes three years ago and only passed on the news this year. So I should have been on the treatment back then. Well, I suppose three years late is better than never.)

Now they say I can come off the pills because the level is right. I hope it's the right decision. Happily, I feel it is. Half the time it feels as if they wouldn't care whether we live and whether we live feeling healthy or not. Course when you are trapped in this weird unjust system, you have to accept that those in authority - medical and uniformed - mean well.

And then I say to myself, 'Come on, Roge. If they meant well, why would they keep you locked away when they must know that you are no murderer?'

I had a really pleasant visit today from three wonderful friends, Lyn, and Ann, and James, a great brother. I don't mean to be unkind to my fellow wretches, bless em', but it is so good to talk to and share the company and gaze upon the faces of other humans. The lovely Lynn, by the by, is partner to James.

For one trapped in this hell, it is wonderful to be visited by those fortunate enough not to have to bear this particular cruelty of the whips and scorn of time, as Hamlet puts it.

If truth be sold, as I now know at enormous cost to my life as a man, we are all vulnerable because of the immense flaws in the adversarial system of Britain's so-called justice.

Link:
James's speaks out against Roger's trial
Call-This-Justice.com

- Roger Gordon

I'll tell you who is destroying our justice system

When you meet so many people inside who obviously are wrongly convicted, when like me you are serving a life sentence for killing your wife - a murder that some free person out there committed - it is encouraging to hear that Sean Hodgson has been freed by the appeal court.

But in another way it is most disturbing. What about the multitude in here who shouldn't be here?

I like the way that Helen, my wonderful sister, put it in a recent letter. 'It's a very interesting and a very sad case. It was sad to read that people are not generally given parole unless they admit guilt and say sorry,' Helen wrote.

'That scares me. So you would have to lie so you could be freed? You're being punished for being honest.

'Every time a miscarriage of justice is proved it must make people think, which can only help you and others. At least I hope it will.

'It is a rotten system.'

Thanks, Helen. It is.

And note that not one voice has been raised about that fellow's prosecutors. When a huge question mark hangs over cases, wouldn't it be interesting if prosecutors had to explain why they push so hard for convictions.

How could the prosecution have worked on the jury so tenaciously when they knew that they had the wrong man?

When my conviction is shown to be completely wrong, I am going to ask publically for the prosecution to explain themselves.

It's that attitude, that unconscionable twisting of the minds of the jury, that helps to keep the system rotten. I smile when I hear people going on about banker's fees. It's about time they started looking at prosecutors' rewards for utter deception.

Every time they cause a jury to convict an innocent person, they are destroying the system. And what do they get for these 'successful' prosecutions? Praise, and a fortune. If they were genuine humans, they would never be able to sleep.
- Roger Gordon

Links
Sean Hodgson
Roger Gordon's story

Doctor knows best

You may recall that your Blogger has been trying to see the prison doctor. Three years ago they discovered I had diabetes, but they only got around to telling me the other day. Well, they are very busy and one has to remember one's humble station (thanks to a deliberately misled jury).

So at last Prisoner Gordon has been invited to meet the good man. There he was seated at his smart table, a mountain of files at his right hand, glasses on nose, and occasionally quizzing me at the level of the well-bred bridge. Me, like a private before the commander, standing loosely in front of the desk.

'Ah, yes,' he says. 'Gordon, I presume. Look, Gordon, you're new to prison...'

'Not exactly, doctor.'

'Ah, been in before?'

'Never been in trouble before,' I say. 'But the jury was mistaken, not exactly accidentally. '

'When did you come in then?'

'October 2003. Almost six years ago.'

After a little silence, our man says, 'Why have you asked to see me?'

I mention the diabetes. Discovered three years ago. Told about it last month.

'You should have been put on cholesterol control pills,' he said. 'Not because your cholesterol is high...'

'No, it isn't.'

'... but because it is routine when diagnosed with diabetes.'

'So I should have been on the medication for the past three years?'

A prisoner mustn't complain. The poor old taxpayer is picking up all our bills - and presumably the undertaker's when this mob gets things wrong. Someone said it costs 50,000 a year for every prisoner. Makes us feel like bankers.

And thank you, Taxpayer, for another bonus. I now have a machine to monitor my blood sugar levels. I'm very grateful. I am grateful that it is for something I am actually suffering from.

The other day I was called to Healthcare and given new medication. This seemed an extra bonus and a surprise. But when I looked closely at the label, there was someone else's name, in bold 14 point Arial. Tyrone Gordon of this parish. The ingredients looked interesting. Anyway, despite the years in this crime college, I remain basically honest and let the chance to sell the medication pass me by.

'Not me, Guv',' I say in the lingo and hand it back. For a moment, it looks as if I might be put on a charge for insolence. Then, after a few days, I am summoned back for the self-same medication.

'Yours!' the geeza says or commands, and offers it with a defiant look that says hand this back and you're dead.

'Thanks, Guv',' I say again. 'But this is for one Tyrone Gordon. I'm Roger Gordon.'

He's not amused. 'Look, it's for Gordon. There, in black and white. Aren't you Mister Gordon?'

'I'm Roger. This is forTyrone. ' I say and stand back a bit when he looks almost outraged that this mysterious other Gordon and I have first names.

'Well, how do you spell it?'

I tried to think of a variant of 'Gordon.' But I couldn't.

The population of a city behind bars

Doctors know best, of course. I am a mere number among the numbers cramming full the dungeons of England and Wales. (We used to be a nation of shopkeepers. How interesting that we seem to have become a nation of 'criminals'?)

There's me and 82,486 others. The population of a city. Considering that diabetes is a serious condition, it'd be interesting if 82,487 of us suddenly died because of the, well, rather lacking medical organisation.

It just might become a bigger political issue than bankers' bonuses, the economic crisis, the developing situation in Afghanistan, those poor wretches trying to survive in the Iraq we destroyed, and even than the burgeoning new marijuana factories of England.

Roger Gordon
call-this-justice.com

Not depression exactly

I wouldn't call it depression, not really, because I know through Anita's depressive states how it manifests itself. No, it isn't depression, I don't think so, but I haven't been able to get myself motivated.

Perhaps the death of Dave English is playing on my subconscious. Even with my experience of counselling I didn't notice the exterior signs of problems that would drive him to suicide.

I try to remind myself of the support that I do have and how it has helped me to stay strong. I am amid one of the inevitable black moods that I face every week.

Whatever it is I'm experiencing, I wouldn't call it depression. I fully believe that when I can return to work in the library my usual hopefulness will bounce back.
- Roger Gordon

Walls within walls

I put in a request to see the doctor this week and as I am now back at work too, I hope to be back up to my usual optimistic self. I also requested an audience with my 'personal officer', the officer assigned to know me better.

I hope to get some confirmation on the status of this new wing, my new home. Will it be C Category, as the establishment hopes? It's important for my record that I am seen to be perfectly safe in a C Category place.

Of course, wouldn't you know, the officer is on sick leave. Seems to be no end of brick walls.

I was thinking this morning of Dave English, the fellow who hanged himself the other day. Strange, can't say why it is, but I think of him as Mr English. Maybe it is the way he treated people. Always the gentlemen, even to those who would find it difficult to understand words like please and thank you.

Dave was a strange mixture. Physically, well, to be kind, he looked a real skinhead yob. But talk to him, and he was polite and sociable, and there was nothing to suggest that he was about to do himself in.

Poor old Dave, poor old Mr English. I don't feel that his death has troubled me – in these dungeons we seem to live constantly with death (or something you couldn't call life), but who knows what the subconscious suffers.
- Roger Gordon