Killers Behind Bars. Kate Kray
longest-serving Category A prisoner. Being a Cat. A prisoner for more than 20 years means that Harry was considered a high risk and treated accordingly. He was monitored 24 hours a day, something which not only affects the prisoner but also his family and friends. For instance, if someone wants to visit a Cat. A prisoner, the prisoner must first ask their wing officer for an application form so that the visitor can be included in their list of approved visitors. The visitor must fill in their full name, address, occupation, phone number and relationship – if they are not a relative then they will have to state how and when they came to know the prisoner. The Governor will then write and ask if the person wishes to visit and the visitor will have to send two passport-sized photographs to the prison. Once the prison has received them, they will ask the police to go to the visitor’s house and check that the photographs are valid. After all that, and for security reasons, visits with Cat. A prisoners take place in a separate room, in the presence of two officers.
At Broadmoor and Rampton security is slightly different. The forms are still sent to the visitor’s home and still have to be approved by the Home Office, but the photographs are taken at the hospital. All the visitor’s personal information is then put on a special card, a bit like a credit card. After that, each time a visit is made, the visitor must produce the card or entry will be refused.
In 1992, card phones were introduced in most category prisons. Using their earnings or private cash, prisoners are allowed to buy these special Prison Service phone cards from the prison canteen. Of course, for lifers who have been locked away for a long time these new card phones were amazing! Ordinary phone cards are no use as prison phones don’t take them, nor in-coming calls for that matter.
In most prisons, phone calls are only occasionally listened in to by the screws, and this is done at random. If you are Cat. A, however, the calls are always listened to and are also sometimes tape recorded. Cat. A prisoners may only call a telephone number on their approved list, once again only after stringent checks have been made, and all Cat. A calls have to be pre-booked.
The governor of each prison sets a limit on how much a prisoner can spend each month on phone calls and prisoners are normally only allowed to buy two phone cards at one time, but this does vary from prison to prison.
In all the years Harry Roberts has been inside, he’s tried to escape – and failed – 22 times. That’s why I was very embarrassed when, on one of my visits to Harry, I took him a present. I had asked Harry if there was anything I could get for him and he had said that he would like a track suit – large size and preferably a dark colour like navy blue or black.
I searched high and low for a plain track suit and couldn’t find one but I did find a really great navy blue track suit with a broad yellow stripe down the arms and legs. Harry was very grateful. When he took it out of the bag in the visitors’ hall, however, he howled with laughter. ‘It’s a fucking escapee’s track suit!’ he said. Only then did I remember that prisoners who persist in trying to escape are made to wear a suit with wide yellow stripes down the side, presumably so that the screws can spot them easily, especially if they’re clambering over the wall!
I offered to change it but Harry wouldn’t hear of it. Even so, I’ve never seen him actually wearing it!
Harry helped me a lot in writing this book. It was while Harry was in Long Lartin Prison, that he introduced me to Colin Richards.
I had just finished writing Harry’s chapter when he phoned and asked me if I needed anyone else for this book. He sounded upset and that wasn’t like Harry who is normally so cheerful. I asked him what was wrong.
‘I thought I had problems,’ he said. ‘Well, I’ve just come out of the cell of a bloke here who’s in a wheelchair. Problems! I don’t know the meaning of the word!’ Harry explained to me how bad it was for Colin – he said he couldn’t even turn his wheelchair around in his cell. ‘He can’t go to the TV room because it’s on the top landing.’ Harry said it was bad enough spending the rest of your life in prison but to be in a wheelchair and still be a lifer was a nightmare.
Harry told Colin about my book but at first he didn’t want to take part. He had been in prison for ten years and had been suffering from deep depression so he didn’t want to talk to anyone. A week afterwards, he changed his mind. Later, he told me that the only reason he had agreed to talk to me was that for the ten years he had been away he had always had the same number sewn into his property – 394 – and he thought that maybe, in the third month of 1994, things might change for him. It must have been fate because Harry Roberts was at a different prison at the time and was only moved to the same prison as Colin for one month, the third month of 1994. If Harry hadn’t moved, I would never have met Colin. So maybe there was something in Colin’s prediction – who knows?
My journey to Long Lartin Prison in Evesham was a nightmare, after three of my trains were cancelled. Eventually, I met Colin Richards on a cold, wet afternoon in March 1994, and that visit will always stay with me.
Patiently, I waited for prison wardens to bring Colin into the small, grubby visitors’ hall. Harry Roberts joined us and we all had tea and chocolate biscuits. Colin is a big man with a bushy beard and looks like a Vietnam vet. At first he was quiet and shy and found it hard to talk about his crime and his own appalling injuries.
Harry had told me about Colin but I wasn’t prepared for what I found. Colin seemed such a sad, lonely figure, his eyes full of regret and despair. He’s a paraplegic, paralysed from the chest down. Until then, I didn’t know there were any disabled people in prison but there are, and Colin Richards is one of them.
Having had some experience with disabled people, I am aware of many of the difficulties that they face every day of their lives but Colin’s difficulties are tenfold. He confided many things on our visits but one of the most poignant was just horrible.
He explained to me that one of the worst things about being a paraplegic, other than not being able to walk, was the difficulty of not being able to go to the toilet. Instead, he has to evacuate his bowels by hand. When he wants to go for a pee, he has to insert a small plastic tube down his penis – a terrible thing to have to do by anyone’s standards. For Colin, this unenviable task was made much worse.
While he was in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight, the rubber gloves and plastic tubes that Colin needed were denied to him. He was told that he was only allowed five a week, while he needs five a day! When he asked why, he was told: ‘We will not give you any more plastic tubes in case you hang yourself with them!’ Colin pleaded with the authorities and tried to explain that he really did need the tubes and rubber gloves. In the end the authorities gave in and said that he could have ‘new for old’. Colin must hand in his used tubes and gloves and then he can be issued with new ones.
Colin’s cell was 12 feet by 7 feet, just big enough for his wheelchair. He is not able to turn his wheelchair around nor move it about. There are no handrails fitted in the cell but every day Colin is expected to drag himself in and out of bed.
The communal TV room is situated on the top landing, which makes it impossible for Colin ever to watch TV. All he has to take away the boredom is his small radio. At one time, a friendly inmate would carry Colin on his back up the iron steps to the TV room but the screws stopped this. They said that it couldn’t be allowed in case the inmate dropped Colin, because the prison authorities were not insured for such an accident.
That goes for the screws too. They are not supposed to lift Colin in case they injure their backs. That’s fair enough; Colin is a big man and very heavy and the screws shouldn’t have to risk injury by pulling him in and out of his wheelchair. But Colin needs help. If the inmates aren’t allowed to help, and the screws can’t or won’t help, who the hell will?
On one of my visits to Colin, he told me that the National Health Service does not apply to prisoners. While you’re in prison, your health care is the responsibility of the Health Care Service. Prisons are allocated a sum of money for health care each year. When the money runs out, so does the dental and medical care.
When they first go into prison, all prisoners undergo a medical examination in the reception. Medical records only follow you into prison if the medical officer