On the inside

It took the suicide of Harold Shipman to re-ignite the debate over conditions in Britain's jails. But for a rapidly growing number of people, prison is a daily reality. So what is life really like for the 85,000 men and women being held at Her Majesty's pleasure? Peter Stanford spent 24 hours on the inside at HM Prison Brixton, officially Britain's worst jail, to find out

HM Prison Brixton, the day begins...

6.30am, breakfast Nightshift officers wake those remand prisoners who are going to court. A bang on the metal cell door is usually enough. There are 52 of Brixton's 800 inmates due in the dock today. They get up, use the stainless-steel toilet that is inches from their bunk, wash in the sink and dress. Their cellmate will do well to stay asleep. Breakfast - a packet of cereal, carton of milk and a roll - was handed out in a sealed parcel yesterday at 5pm.

7.15am, reception Those due in court head from the prison's four wings - A, B, C and G - to the reception area. Every move by a prisoner requires an officer to escort them through the endless locked doors. This constant rattling of keys could be the prison service's signature tune.

The horseshoe-shaped reception block next to the main gate is run like a production line. It is the only way to process so many men and make sure they arrive at the seven different London courts Brixton serves, before the judges start consulting their watches.

The operation kicks off in a holding cell - less formidable than it sounds, more like a 1950s train-station waiting-room with a lockable door. Most inmates sit silently on the wooden-slatted benches, but one cheerful soul is singing. There is an odd edge to his voice. No one looks at him.

Men are called forward one by one and go to a hatch to collect a large black box containing their civilian clothes. Before they put them on, they pass into another room where they are strip-searched by two male officers. It's cold and inhospitable, with two cubicles and a yellowing shower on the back wall. The men are never completely naked - the bottom half is done while they keep their tops on and vice versa. A measure of dignity is preserved.

Some emerge in suits. Others look more dishevelled. A few forlorn figures appear to have no alternative to their off-blue or off-red prison sweatsuits. An officer completes more paperwork and the inmates pass one by one along a corridor with bashed white walls and aged lino to another checkpoint. It's the fourth of five times this morning that they will be asked their name. Securicor staff in yellow shirts load the men into vans. Each sits in a locked cubicle with a moulded seat and enough legroom for a small child.

8.30am, Administrative Wing The governor, John Podmore, arrives. A sandy-haired * ex-prisons inspector, he was appointed last February and is credited by many with giving Brixton a new-found sense of purpose. "What I see here everyday," he says, "are society's problems concentrated in one place. I can't change those problems, but I can try and deal in a decent and humane way with the people sent here. Many have had chaotic, disordered lives and for some this may be their first chance to change."

8.40am, the Gate House The last Securicor van leaves. One of the "performance standards" used in drawing up the Government's league table of jails - which Brixton currently props up as, officially, Britain's worst - is efficiency in delivering prisoners for court appearances. Like all such yardsticks, it makes no allowance for reality. Because Brixton was built in the early 19th century, its gate was designed for a horse and cart. It takes considerable skill to squeeze a 24-seat van through. One slip of the steering wheel and every prisoner will be late for court.

9.15am, 'B' Wing Back inside the jail, the wings are beginning to buzz. Prisoners in B Wing have earned privileges such as wearing their own clothes. Most have jobs in the gym, the chapel, the kitchen or on the cleaning rota that tries to keep on top of the dirt and rubbish, but there are still plenty of inmates just on the landings hanging about around pool tables. Neatly dressed in a blue Ralph Lauren sweatshirt, Barry is in his early thirties, his thick black hair slightly receding. He was a DJ, he tells me. He's got 13 months to serve for a drugs offence, but - like most people who are willing to talk to me - is determined never to come back here. He shows me into his cell to see his exam pass certificates, carefully filed in a folder. Literary, numeracy and computers.

His greatest fear is being transferred. But Brixton is meant to be the worst. "Nah. There's plenty worse. And if I move I won't be able to carry on with my courses." The sheer powerlessness of prisoners in an overstretched system is quickly apparent. Brixton is a local jail (meaning it holds remand prisoners and those serving short-term sentences only) and if the London courts lock up too many people on any given day, inmates such as Barry may be shunted elsewhere, regardless of the consequences for his efforts at rehabilitation.

Is he off drugs now? "Yes. There's plenty of help for detox if you want it." And could he still get drugs if he wanted them? "Of course. There's no problem with supply here." He raises his eyebrows as if to say, "Get real."

10.10am, the Learning and Skills Unit The days of sewing mailbags are gone, but only just. Now it's disentangling the wires and changing the ear sponges on aeroplane headsets. If prisons, as some campaigners suggest, house the debris of society, then these prisoners are sorting out an affluent society's waste. Today, the headsets are British Midland's. The pay is £18 a week - the best in the establishment - which can (officially) be spent on cigarettes, stamps or cards for the pay-phones. Mobiles are banned because calls from them can't be monitored and they could be used to contact dealers or intimidate witnesses.

The workshop is housed in the recently refurbished Learning and Skills Unit which shares the old D Wing with the healthcare centre. With locks on every door and bars at the window, you couldn't quite call it homely, but its cream and pistachio paintwork and arty posters struggle towards informality.

Along the corridor some inmates are being checked for undetected dyslexia. The link between low educational achievement and criminality is well established. Although they are all over 21, as many as three-quarters of prisoners at Brixton have trouble reading and writing. Yet with six weeks the average stay, there is a limit to how much help they can get, even if they want it.

Katharine Hamilton, a no-nonsense New Zealander with a reassuring voice, has just been appointed head of learning and skills. "Prisons have a dual role," she reflects. "Public protection and rehabilitation. Marrying them up can sometimes be incompatible." Under recent Home Secretaries, Hamilton's part of the equation has taken second place to rhetoric about prison being a place of punishment.

10.35am, Segregation Unit, 'B' Wing The governor is doing his disciplinary adjudications in a little den off the section of the prison reserved for difficult or disruptive inmates. However humane he wants Brixton to be, there has to be discipline. Before him today are two prisoners caught making hooch from fruit peel. The result - presented as an exhibit - smells disgusting. It would be punishment in itself to drink it. Instead, one gets 14 days' loss of earnings, the other seven days' loss of association with other prisoners. "No play-time," as the governor puts it.

10.55am, the exercise yard Staff shortages are a constant source of grief for prisoners. Without sufficient officers on each wing, inmates are either banged up in their cells for as many as 23 hours a day, or miss classes or work because there is no one to escort them there. The new governor has prioritised recruitment and, as a result, staffing levels have increased to an almost-full complement - 200 officers. The percentage from ethnic minorities - given Brixton's past reputation for racism among staff - is up at 25 per cent, ahead of the target set by Brixton's diversity manager. But high levels of sickness remain a problem. Being a prison officer is stressful and, unlike teachers, the governor can't summon up "supply" replacements.

So breathing the fresh(ish) air in the newly landscaped exercise yard is becoming more routine for prisoners. But not always a daily ritual. Landscaped may be overstating it. It is grass, a few conifers and some circular paths, but you can at least see the sky, albeit * through a series of razor wires strung across the area after an attempted helicopter escape just a few years back.

11am, the gym Josh is pounding away on the treadmill. He's in impressive shape and has enough energy to talk and run. "I come here to get my mind sorted," he says. He is a typical user, says the officer in charge, ex-Army man Steve Daire.

Daire is a classic lesson in not judging by appearances. Everything about his shaven head and military stance suggests old school, but Daire is something of a pioneer for change. He has worked at Brixton for 14 years and has built its gym - motto: "It's all about freeness" - from scratch. He started off going round the wings with weights, vests and shorts on an old laundry trolley. "I sometimes see myself as like the doctor in that Michael Caine film Zulu. I patch these guys up and send them back to the battlefield. When they come in their bodies are wrecked by drugs. I help them build them up again. Then they go out - and most of them come back. For them, the streets are a war zone."

He also used to organise outward-bound trips for soon-to-be-released prisoners. Then the News of the World tracked one such excursion and ran a photo spread on how taxpayers' money was being "wasted". A phone call was received from the Home Secretary. There have been no trips since.

11.30am, lunch, 'A' Wing A and G Wings are at the bottom of the prison pecking order. G Wing, in particular, carries a stigma because in days gone by it was where mentally ill offenders were held. A is in worse physical shape - crumbling plaster, the stench of decay and too many men (260, the population of a small prison) held in too cramped a space. Many are on remand and, without jobs, spend more time than most in cells. As they clatter downstairs to lunch, the noise is overwhelming.

Like most people who grew up watching Ronnie Barker in Porridge, I assume that having collected their food from a hatch (the prison service allots £1.50 per head per day for catering) they will head off to a communal dining-room, but there is neither the room nor the staff here - as in many British jails - for such facilities. Too much potential for incidents, one officer points out. So all meals are eaten perched on bunks, off trays in cells, just inches away from the toilet.

When the practice of slopping out - emptying chamber pots - was banished in the 1990s, toilets and sinks were crammed into already cramped cells. Toilet into cells or cells into toilets as one inmate puts it. Imagine two standard cubicles in your average public toilet. Take down the wall, replace one toilet with a bunk bed and you have a Brixton cell.

As they collect their food, the prisoners chat and joke freely with the officers. Those who have been locked up in other jails report that the relationship here is one of the best in the system, in contrast to Brixton's reputation as a byword for racial incidents, deaths in custody and IRA escapes, largely the legacy of what went on here in the 1980s and 1990s.

12.30pm to 1.30pm, staff lunch-hour The prison officers lock all inmates in their cells for an hour in the middle of the day while they have their own lunch.

1.45pm, reception The first batch returning from court arrives back at the prison. They walk up to the officer at the desk, are asked their name and what has happened to them at court. Most appear to have no idea. So much for a transparent legal system. The officer checks through the paperwork that has come with them. One man has been sentenced to three years but is oblivious to the fact and anxious only to shuffle off down the corridor to more familiar surroundings. The rest have been remanded to appear again. For such routine appointments a video-link might be a lot less trouble and could hardly be more confusing - but it raises the ire of the legal profession who want justice to be seen to be done.

2.15pm, 'C' Wing Those wanting cells on C Wing have to submit to a drugs test. It is described as voluntary, but if you don't take it and come out clean, you can't be one of the 160 inmates who enjoys the regime here. It is less rigid and the place is quieter, with the bonus of separate toilet cubicles. "They'll make nice flats when we do away with crime," one inmate says with a smirk.

In a ground-floor meeting-room a charity worker is running the latest session in a week-long Crack Awareness Course. It's one of an array of initiatives on offer. The style is a candid exchange of experience without officers present. A drawing of a male body from the morning session is covered with notes written at the appropriate place by participants about the effects of crack. The words "impotent penis" jump out.

You don't see many healthy looking prisoners, but here the ravages of long-term drug use are all too obvious in a sea of grey faces, bad skin, twitches and premature ageing. Matthew is typical. "I've spent the last 25 years in prison. I was here in the 1980s and it was a different prison. Then it was full of criminals. Now 90 per cent of it is drug-related. I took my first class-A drug in prison. I can do sentences standing on my head, then I go out and do it again. But I'm almost 40 now and I don't want this shit any more. That's why I'm on the course."

While many come in as crack users, once behind bars they prefer heroin or marijuana because crack tends to cause hyperactivity and that can be a liability here.

At present prisoners are not, as a matter of policy, checked on entry or re-entry into Brixton for drugs hidden in condoms and then swallowed or pushed up their anuses, but officers believe that this is one main route for getting illegal substances into prisons. The inmate then sells them on to other users in cash-free transactions. "The wife of prisoner A will pay the girlfriend of prisoner B outside," says Governor Podmore. "It's a bit like City trading - the deal is done first and the debts are collected later."

Over in his office, Graham Pittaway, the prison's drugs-strategy officer, has learnt to be cautious about individuals' promises of reform. "I'd estimate that 80 per cent of people came here with a crack-cocaine habit. The same number has mental-health problems. The two are linked. It's very hard to tackle them effectively. If you have no home, no job and no family to go to outside, what incentive is there not to go back to drugs? We offer them a chance and support - but outside it is another matter."

The prison service does not monitor recidivism rates for individual prisons - inmates are moved around so much it would be hard to arrive at anything accurate - but according to the Government's Social Exclusion Unit, 58 per cent of all prisoners are convicted of another crime within two years of release. Among 18- to 20-year-old male prisoners, the figure is 72 per cent. Poverty, poor housing, educational under-achievement, * drug abuse and mental-health problems seem to lie at the heart of most individual stories. The problem is huge and, some officers here would say, intractable. Certainly it is naïve to expect prison to wave a magic wand.

3pm, the visits room Prisoners are allowed at least one visit a week and you would need a heart of stone not to be moved by the sight of young men struggling in a clinical, closely monitored environment to maintain contact with their partners or their bemused children.

Fear of anything being smuggled into prison dominates proceedings, so visitors queue up to undergo extensive searches. Even small children are checked by a sniffer dog, and a CCTV camera monitors everything.

A small boy in blue and yellow dungarees sits on the floor with his teddy looking out of the corner of his eyes at his dad. Next door, a couple kiss as if on their own. Yet the only privacy they have is in their heads. "We allow it to go so far," says the officer-in-charge, sounding unwittingly like a nun at a school prom, "but then we have to intervene. We can't have them having sex in here."

The room itself is long, scruffy and unwelcoming. There is a crèche, but it is only open when there are volunteers. Today, there are none. Brixton has, in the words of its governor, the worst visiting facilities in the prison service - a blight on his efforts to build better links with the community. Yet within his £18m annual budget there is little slack for improvements, and the £100,000 he needs for an upgrade will have to come out of an already overstretched budget.

One of the resettlement officers, Kate Quigley, tells me about a family day she organised before Christmas in more informal surroundings, so dads could get down on the floor and play with their kids. Some of her colleagues had objected that there would be drugs passed, but the governor backed her - and there has been no evidence to support the protests. Indeed, since then, it has been a prison officer who has been arrested for bringing large quantities of drugs into the prison.

3.45pm, the healthcare centre In 2000, the Prison Inspectorate came to Brixton and damned its healthcare. A major upgrading followed. Mental-health issues are the biggest challenge the health team faces. Each quarter, Brixton sends 20 inmates to secure mental-health units, but many have to wait up to six months to get a place. Brixton has to cope with them in its hospital wing in the interim. Some are judged so dangerous that the hospital cells can only be unlocked when there are three officers present.

There are classrooms where a range of therapeutic activities - from yoga through to art - are offered. This afternoon it is drama and there are four inmates sitting in a circle meditating with their teacher. She comes out to explain that my presence is disturbing the class and asks me to move on. "That's therapists for you," one officer snorts.

5pm, teatime It's back on bunks to eat. Soon, the nightshift will be on and the day will wind down - another one to cross off the calendar. If there are sufficient officers on duty, cells will be left open after teatime until lights out. If not, they are locked for the night.

7.30pm, lights out All cells must now be locked. All but a few on A Wing have televisions that can be rented for £1 a week.

Over in reception, the last new arrivals and returnees are being processed. Some look terrified to be in a place with the reputation of Brixton as they are escorted to the cell they will share with a total stranger.

10pm, suicide watch On average, two prisoners a week kill themselves in British jails. Those in Brixton on 20-52 - the code of the official form that places an inmate on suicide watch - are checked every 15 minutes at night. Tonight, there are 33 on the list - and a night staff of eight officers. There have been two deaths in custody here in the past 18 months; and one of those was from natural causes. The governor defines his first priority as to keep the prisoners in his care alive. He does not say it lightly.

Prison is a noisy, echoing hellhole at night, with many unexplained sounds. For the skeleton team on duty, there are often agonising dilemmas. One officer tells of an inmate calling out and threatening to harm himself. "He was a big lad and two of the officers I was on with were - no disrespect - ladies. If I opened the door and he was having us on, he could have easily overpowered us. If I didn't and he was serious, I'd be crucified. You're damned if you do, damned if you don't. Nine times out of 10, you give them the benefit of the doubt, but it can be quite hairy here at night."

2am, 'C' Wing Robert has served a series of sentences for drug- and alcohol-related crimes - the scars of this past life are all too visible on his face - but this time he is determined to go straight. He has taken various counselling courses and has joined the prison's Listeners scheme (which is linked to the Samaritans). If an inmate is agitated, he can ask to talk to a Listener at any time. There is a rota and tonight Robert is on duty and has been summoned. Despite his trusted position, he has to be escorted by an officer like any other prisoner. "Many people here are depressed, suicidal, self-harming," he says as he dresses. "We do what we can. It's not about stopping them, but just getting them through." What can he say, I ask. He pauses. "I try to help them see this place in another way." *

HM PRISON BRIXTON

ETHNICITY 43 per cent of prisoners are white, 27 per cent black-Caribbean, 10 per cent black-African, 9 per cent black other or mixed race, and 5.4 per cent Asian

PRISON EXPERIENCE 61.5 per cent have been in prison before

OFFENCE The most common offences are: theft (19 per cent), burglary (10 per cent) and drink-driving (7 per cent)

HOUSING 20 per cent are homeless on arrest. 40 per cent say their housing is not secure on release

FAMILY 5 per cent are married, 2.5 per cent cohabiting

EMPLOYMENT 63.5 per cent were unemployed on entering prison, 20 per cent self-employed, 9 per cent employed and 2 per cent in education or training. 12 per cent say they have secured employment on release

Taken from a preliminary needs analysis conducted with 553 new prisoners arriving at Brixton between June and August 2003