A Prison Diary Vol-2

On 9 August 2001, twenty-two days after Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury, he was transferred from HMP Belmarsh, a double-A Category high-security prison in south London, to HMP Wayland, a Category C establishment in Norfolk. He served sixty-seven days in Wayland and during that time, as this account testifies, encountered not only the daily degradations of a dangerously over-stretched prison service, but the spirit and courage of his fellow inmates...

Day 37, Friday 24 August 2001, 3.00 pm

After two weeks of walking round the perimeter of Wayland prison, I can now spot evil, fear, helplessness and sadness and thirty paces. But even now I am puzzled by a crouching man who always sits alone in the same place every day, huddled up against the fence. He can't be much more than thirty, perhaps thirty-five, and he rarely moves from his solitary position. I ask Darren about him.

'Tragic,' he says. 'Alistair is one of your lot – public school, followed by university, where he graduated as a heroin addict. If he doesn't kick the habit, he'll be in prison for the rest of his life.'

'How can that be possible?' I ask...