A former Strangeways prison officer has revealed how he 'lost his rag' at a prisoner amid the pressure of working in the jail. The incident is revealed in a second book written by Neil Samworth, about his time working at HMP Manchester.
He explains how it was pre-empted by a period of 'modernisation' at the prison which disrupted the Strangeways routine and his own mental health. It happened in 2015 on the servery one dinner time in 'a blaze of red mist', he writes.
Neil recalls: "A prisoner kicked off, attacking the SO (senior officer) and a female colleague of ours the wrong side of a locked electronic door. It took ages to open, but once it was, and I was able to get through I lost my rag. Afterwards I could hardly remember a thing about it. Both my knees and my right fist were a mess - I displaced a knuckle - but the guy's face was in worse shape."
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He adds: "I'm not proud of what I did. It was unprofessional behaviour, and up to then professionalism was something I'd prided myself on." After another injury a few weeks later it was decided with medical consent that his years as prison officer were over.
"Strangeways in particular will not let me rest. My darkest days there are never far from my head," says Neil Samworth, in the introduction to his second book on the jail with a "Colditz walls, and scary trademark tower" on the edge of the city centre.
For the new book, Strangeways Unlocked: The Shocking Truth About Doing Time, Neil has spoken to 'ex-customers' to get an a true inside take on life there. After his first book he was contacted my many former inmates wanting to give him an insight into their experience.
Despite admitting how he 'lost it' one occasion the memoir also shows how he, and other officers, did their best to help prisoners. One prisoner, who got in touch with Neil after he wrote his first book, describes how just being listened to saved his life.
He told him how one Friday night he was feeling like he had had enough, when a prison officer he didn't know, who was doing the nightly count, popped his head into his cell. Noticing he was down in the dumps he asked if he was okay and the prisoner just nodded.
Not long after the prison officer went back into the cell and asked "are you really all right"? The prisoner remembered: "‘I told him to f... off, Mr Samworth, but he didn’t.’ 'What’s up?' he said. 'Talk to me.' So I did, let him have it for an hour. Boom! The idea of killing myself left my head. If it hadn’t been for him..."
Attacked over a samosa
Another ex-prisoner to feature is 'Johnny Mo' who, as the suspected key player in a £15m cocaine importation conspiracy, ended up on remand in the infamous maximum security Category A wing. It was his first time in Strangeways and he was in the section where inmates who are considered a threat to the public, police and/or national security live.
Neil recalls: "Coming into Strangeways is enough to make anyone nervous, and I include myself in that. I’ll never forget my own first day – guts churning, couldn’t quite believe I was there – but at least I could go home and watch Emmerdale . If your entry point is Cat A, your unease must be off the scale. "
Through his story, Neil Samworth explores the quiet, eerie tension of the Cat A wing, where "everyone looks like they can fight'. He describes how Johnny kept himself to himself an landed a job serving meals. But that didn't stop him getting hit.
"Most of the lads didn’t give a f... mate. They were either looking at big sentences or were already serving them, so thought themselves untouchable. There was always this tension...it felt like anything could go off any moment," he writes.
During his year-long stay on the wing Johnny Mo had a run-in with a 'notorious' gangster from a well known Liverpool crime family, serving an indefinite sentence for conspiracy to buy firearms and threats to kill.
Around Ramadan, when he had just lost his job on the servery, he sneaked the last of the samosas back to his cell. The Scouse gangster was pretending to be a Muslim at the time having 'changed religion' for the food. Everyone on the unit called him Hamza because they didn’t dare call him anything else.
He found out what Johnny had done and accused him of taking the samosas. Jonny claimed they were pies and told him where to go. He recalls it was "one of the biggest mistakes I ever made in jail".
Ten minutes later the door to Johnny's cell opened. It was the gangster and he received a crack to the head, striking the edge of his bunk as he fell. He still has the scar to his day. His attacker spent a week in segregation but Johnny, knowing the survival code on Cat A, never made a complaint and never had any more trouble from "the monster" of a Scouser.
Johnny ended up serving two and a half years, and ended up being attacked a second time. Cat A. He had a game of pool with another inmate who was an escapee and appeared to be 'a decent lad'. Johnny beat him 3-0. As the game ended the other prisoner smashed on the back of the head with his cue "for taking the p..."
Three hours later the attacker was brought by from segregation and put in the cell next to Johnny. He told him he was sorry for what he had done but said he had wound him up by beating him, before adding: "Couldn't lend us a teabag could you"?
Born into crime
Another prisoner whose story is told in the book is that of 'Lee Marvin'. It appears he was destined to end up behind bars - he was born in prison. His mum, who gave birth in the mother and baby unit at Styal Women's Prison in Wilmslow, Cheshire, gave him away soon after.
His story, including rejecting offers to join both Moss Side's Doddington or rival Gooch gangs, commands a full chapter in the book. He was asked if wanted 'DOG' tattooed on his chest, short for 'Doddington Original Gangster' but declined, reflecting: "I'd have made 50 per cent enemies already. All the Gooch would wanted to have me killed."
He got probation for his first ever street robbery, aged 13 to 14. He recalls: "This would have been 1987, before Moss Side gang wars of that period really got going. All the kids who turned into big-name gangsters were around. We had the Cheetham Hill Boys, the Moss Side Boys..
"Every Thursday night all of us used to go to a hip hop night in Ashton. Groups of local lads used to lie in wait and brick the bus. We'd have to pull the seats off use them as barricades. Sometimes the bigger lads used to jump off and chase them.
"Good times, and this is what used to mystify me. We had all these lads who were mates in the city centre, but who'd go on to be well-known gangsters, serial killers, and arch enemies up the road."
After a childhood marred by time in an orphanage, physical and sexual abuse, petty drugs and crime, he began selling drugs at clubs, encountering the likes of the late Damien Noonan, and figures from Madchester's clubland.
"We was going in clubs and even Tony Wilson, the king of Manchester, would come up to us: 'All right lads, how you doing? Still selling the pills?' It was all just a laugh and a joke for a while," he says.
Now, after a life in which was sent to prison 20 times, shot in the leg, stabbed, beaten up and savaged by a bull terrier, he is away from drugs and reformed. Meanwhile, Neil makes a poignant observation about the 'forgotten' victims of crime - those 'caught in the crossfire of a prison sentence.'
As he was amongst staff who looked families visiting, he would see toddlers grow to teenagers. He writes: "They are the forgotten victims of all this, the children. During prison visits, the kids sit quietly and everyone thinks they’re being really well behaved, but that’s not how it is in their head.
"The jail environment is intimidating for adults, so imagine how it must be for children. And there’s the fact that it’s a parent – theirs, the only one they’ve got, who they love – is in there. That really hurts."
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson: : “Violence against our hardworking staff is completely unacceptable and will never be tolerated. Any complaints involving prison staff are always fully investigated”.
Strangeways Unlocked: The Shocking Truth about Life Behind Bars, is available now.
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