His first job after leaving university was as a volunteer at a museum in his home town.

He was happy there, but soon decided he wanted to return to university. That was when his mother contracted MS and everything began to go badly wrong. After his mother was bedridden, he and his sister took it in turns to help around the house, so that his father could continue to work. All three found the extra workload a tremendous strain. One evening while at work in the museum, Matthew took home some ancient coins to study. I haven't used the word 'stole' because he returned all the coins a few days later. But the incident weighed so heavily on his conscience that he informed his supervisor. Matthew thought that would be the end of the matter. But someone decided to report the incident to the police. Matthew was arrested and charged with breach of trust. He pleaded guilty, and was a.s.sured by the police that they would not be pushing for a custodial sentence. His solicitor was also of the same opinion, advising Matthew that he would probably get a suspended sentence or a community service order. The judge gave him fifteen months. 5 Matthew is a cla.s.sic example of someone who should not have been sent to jail; a hundred hours of community service might serve some purpose, but this boy has spent the last three months with murderers, drug addicts and burglars. He won't turn to a life of crime, but how many less intelligent people might?

It's a rotten system that allows such a person to end up in prison.

My former secretary, Angie Peppiatt, stole thousands of pounds from me, and still hasn't been arrested. I feel for Matthew.

12 noon.

Lunch today is just as bad as Belmarsh or Wayland. Matthew explains that Wendy is off. I must remember to eat only when Wendy is on duty.

2.00 pm.

I report to the hospital and take over Doug's caretaker role, while he visits his daughter. I settle down with a gla.s.s of blackcurrant juice and Evian to watch England slaughter Ireland, and win the Grand Slam, the Triple Crown and ... after all, we are far superior on paper. Unfortunately, rugby is not played on paper but on pitches. Ireland hammer us 20-14, and return to the Emerald Isles with smiles on their faces.

I'm still sulking when a tall, handsome black man strolls in. His name is Clive. I only hope he's not ill, because if he is, I'm the last person he needs. He tells me that he's serving the last third of his sentence, and has just returned from a week's home leave part of his rehabilitation programme.

Clive and I are the only two prisoners who have the privilege of visiting Doug in the evenings. I quickly discover why Doug enjoys Clive's company. He's bright, incisive and entertaining and, if it were not politically incorrect, I would describe him as sharp as a cartload of monkeys. Let me give you just one example of how he works the system.

During the week Clive works as a line manager for a fruit-packing company in Boston. He leaves the prison after breakfast at eight and doesn't return until seven in the evening. For this, he is paid 200 a week. So during the week, NSC is no more than a bed and breakfast, and the only day he has to spend in prison is Sunday. But Clive has a solution for that as well.

Two Sundays in every month he takes up his allocated town visits, while on the third Sunday he's allowed an overnight stay.

'But what about the fourth or fifth Sunday?' I ask.

'Religious exemption,' he explains.

'But why, when there's a chapel in the grounds?' I demand.

' Your chapel is in your grounds,' says Clive, 'because you're C of E. Not me,' he adds. 'I'm a Jehovah's Witness. I must visit my place of worship at least one Sunday in every month, and the nearest one just happens to be in Leicester.'

After a coffee, Clive invites me over to his room on the south block to play backgammon. His room turns out not to be five paces by three, or even seven by three. It's a little over ten paces by ten. In fact it's larger than my bedroom in London or Grantchester.

'How did you manage this?' I ask, as we settle down on opposite sides of the board.

'Well, it used to be a storeroom,' he explains, 'until I rehabilitated it.'

'But it could easily house four prisoners.'

'True,' says Clive, 'but remember I'm also the race relations representative, so they'll only allow black prisoners to share a room with me. There aren't that many black prisoners in D-cats,' he adds with a smile.

I hadn't noticed the sudden drop in the black population after leaving Wayland until Clive mentioned it. But I have seen a few at NSC, so I ask why they aren't allowed to room with him.

'They all start life on the north block, and that's where they stay,' he adds without explanation. He also beat me at backgammon leaving me three Mars Bars light.

DAY 95 - SUNDAY 21 OCTOBER 2001.

6.00 am.

Sunday is a day of rest, and if there's one thing you don't need in prison it's a day of rest.

8.00 am.

SMU is open as Mr Downs is transferring files from his office to the administration block before taking up new responsibilities.

Fifteen new prisoners arrived on Friday, giving me an excuse to prepare files and make up their ident.i.ty cards.

North Sea Camp, whose capacity is 220, rarely has more than 170 inmates at any one time. As inmates have the right to be within fifty miles of their families, being stuck out on the east coast limits the catchment area.

Two of the spurs are being refurbished at the moment, which shows the lack of pressure on accommodation. 6 The turnover at NSC is about fifteen prisoners a week. What I am about to reveal is common to all D-cat prisons, and by no means exclusive to NSC. On average, one prisoner absconds every week (unlawfully at large), the figures have a tendency to rise around Christmas and drop a little during the summer, so NSC loses around fifty prisoners a year; this explains the need for five roll-calls a day. Many absconders return within twenty-four hours, having thought better of it; they have twentyeight days added to their sentence. A few, often foreigners, return to their countries and are never seen again. Quite recently, two Dutchmen absconded and were picked up by a speedboat, as the beach is only 100 yards out of bounds. They were back in Holland before the next roll-call.

Most absconders are quickly recaptured, many only getting as far as Boston, a mere six miles away. They are then transferred to a C-cat with its high walls and razor wire, and will never, under any circ.u.mstances, be allowed to return to an open prison, even if at some time in the future they are convicted of a minor offence. A few, very few, get clean away. But they must then spend every day looking over their shoulder.

There are even some cases of wives or girlfriends sending husbands or partners back to prison, and in one case a mother-in-law returning an errant prisoner to the front gate, declaring that she didn't want to see him again until he completed his sentence.

This is all relevant because of something that took place today.

When granted weekend leave, you must report back by seven o'clock on Sunday evening, and if you are even a minute late, you are placed on report. Yesterday, a wife was driving her husband back to the prison, when they became involved in a heated row.

The wife stopped the car and dumped her husband on the roadside some thirty miles from the jail. He ran to the nearest phone box to let the prison know what had happened and a taxi was sent out to pick him up. He checked in over an hour late. Thirty pounds was deducted from his canteen account to pay for the taxi, and he's been placed on report.

2.00 pm.

I go for a two-mile walk with Clive, who is spending a rare Sunday in prison. We discuss the morning papers. They have me variously working on the farm/in the hospital/ cleaning the latrines/eating alone/lording it over everyone. However, nothing beats the Mail on Sunday, which produces a blurred photo of me proving that I have refused to wear prison clothes. This despite the fact that I'm wearing prison jeans and a grey prison sweatshirt in the photo.

After our walk, Clive and I play a few games of backgammon. He's in a different cla.s.s to me, so I decide to take advantage of his superiority and turn each session into a tutorial.

6.00 pm.

I write for two hours, and then sign in for roll-call with Mr Hughes.

9.00 pm.

Doug, Clive and I watch a magnificent period drama set in Guildford and Cornwall in 1946.

Mike (lifer) appears twenty minutes into the film, with a chicken curry in plastic containers part of his cookery rehabilitation course. Doug serves it up on china platesa real luxury in itself, even though we have to eat the meal with plastic knives and forks.

I eat the meal very slowly, and enjoy every morsel.

DAY 96 - MONDAY 22 OCTOBER 2001.

8.30 am.

I've been at NSC for a week, and am beginning to feel that I know my way around.

I report to work at SMU. Matthew shows me how to make out an order form for any supplies that are needed for the office, which will then be sent to the stores, who should see that we have it the same day. We discover an outstanding order from 5 October for files and paper, marked urgent, and another for 15 October, marked very urgent. Inefficiency is endemic in parts of the Prison Service. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is wasted every year. The departments responsible for this differ from prison to prison, but to give you a small example: some years ago there was a prisoner at HMP Gartree who was a vicious killer and needed to be transferred from one cell to another, a distance of less than a hundred yards. Fifteen officers arrived to move him, an operation that took five minutes. All fifteen officers claimed four hours overtime. How do I know this? A senior officer who previously worked at Gartree told me.

12 noon.

Matthew and I have lunch in the canteen with the other orderlies, and are joined by Roger (lifer, murdered his wife), who berated me about England losing to Ireland on Sat.u.r.day.

'But you sound Welsh?' I venture.

'I am,' he replies, 'but I don't care who beats the English. It's one of the few pleasures I get in here.'

1.00 pm.

Mr New arrives in the office, having spent the morning in court on a domestic matter.

One has a tendency to forget that prison officers have problems of their own.

Matthew and I discuss how to improve office efficiency. I'd like to clear out every drawer and cupboard and start again. He agrees. We're about to begin, when the door opens and the governing governor walks in.

Mr Lewis greets me with a warm, jovial smile. He asks Matthew to leave us and wastes no time with small talk.

'The press,' he tells me, 'are still camped at both ends of the prison.' And he adds that a prisoner has been caught with an expensive camera and long lens in his room. Mr Lewis has no idea which paper smuggled it in, or how much money was involved. The inmate concerned is already on his way to a C-cat, and will not be allowed to return to an open prison. Apparently several prisoners have complained about the press invading their privacy, and the governor has given his a.s.surance that if a photograph of them appears in a national newspaper, they have legal recourse a rule that doesn't seem to apply to me. We then discuss my move to Spring Hill before the governor calls Matthew back in.

Mr Lewis grants him a further two days compa.s.sionate leave, which will allow Matthew to spend five days with his father. Mr Lewis appears to have combined compa.s.sion and common sense, while remaining inside the Home Office guidelines.

4.00 pm.

Mr New arrives back in the office, anxious to know what the governor wanted to see me about. I don't mention the camera as Mr Lewis specifically asked me not to. I tell him that Mr Lewis intends to speak to the governor of Spring Hill, but he's leaving all the paperwork to him.

'It's been dealt with,' Mr New replies. 'I've already sent all the doc.u.ments to my opposite number.'

4.30 pm.

I ask Matthew, on a visit to his room in the south block, if he could redo the 'officers list of needs' presently listed on the back of the kitchen cabinet, so that it's as smart as the one Doug displays in the hospital. I glance up at Matthew's bookshelf: Pliny the Younger and Augustus Caesar. He asks me if I've read Herodotes.

'No,' I confess, 'I'm still circa 1774, currently reading about John Adams and the first Congress. I'll need a little longer sentence if I'm ever to get back to 484 BC.'

5.00 pm.

I return to my room. I hate the north block.

It's noisy, dirty and smelly (we're opposite the pig farm). I lock myself in and write for a couple of hours.

7.00 pm.

I stroll across to Doug (tax avoidance) in the hospital. He allows me the use of his bathroom. Once I've had a bath and put on clean clothes, I feel almost human.

Clive (fraud) joins us after his day job in the fruit factory. He tells me that his fellow workers believe what they read about me in the Sun and the Mirror. I despair.

8.15 pm.

I leave the hospital and return for roll-call before going back to my room to write for a couple hours. The tannoy keeps demanding that Jackson should report for roll-call. He's probably halfway to Boston by now.

10.00 pm.

Final roll-call. Mr Hughes waves from the other end of the corridor to show my name has been ticked off. He's already worked out that I will be the last person to abscond. I certainly wouldn't get halfway to Boston before being spotted.

DAY 97 - TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER 2001.

6.03 am.

All the lifers at NSC are coming to the end of their sentence and are being prepared to reenter the outside world. The very fact that they have progressed from an A-cat, through B, C to D over a period of twenty years, is proof that they want a second chance.

One of the fascinating things about murderers and we have a dozen or more at NSC is that you cannot generalize about them. However, I have found that they roughly fall into two categories: those who are first offenders and unlikely to commit another crime, especially after twenty years in jail, and those who are evil and should be locked away in an A-cat for the rest of their lives.

Almost all the lifers at NSC fall into the former category; otherwise they would never have made it to an open prison. Bob, Chris, Mike and Roger are all now middle aged and harmless. This might seem strange to those reading this diary, but I feel none of the fear when I'm with them that I do with some of the young tearaways who only have a few weeks left to serve.

8.30 am.

Matthew starts cleaning out the cupboard and drawers, while I concentrate on the new inductees. There are fifteen of them, and it's lunchtime before the last one has all his questions answered.

12 noon.

Lunch is memorable only because Wendy says my menu sheet is missing. She suspects it's been stolen and will appear in one of the tabloids tomorrow. She supplies me with a new one, but asks me not to put my name on the top or sign it, just hand the sheet over to her.

2.00 pm.

While clearing out the drawers, Matthew comes across a box of biros marked 1987, and a ledger with the initials GR and a crown above it. Two hours later, every shelf has been washed and scrubbed.

All the doc.u.ments we need for inductees are in neat piles, and we have three bin bags full of outof-date material.

4.45 pm.

I join Doug and Matthew for supper: vegetarian sausage and mash.

5.00 pm.