Bad Boys Behind Bars: An Anthology of Prisoners’ Narratives

By Binanda C. Barkakaty

This book provides a rare glimpse into the lives of some adult male prisoners in a high-security prison in England together with the infrastructure behind the prison service for safer custody, well-being, and personal development of the inmates. Their emotions, anguish, and frustration are revealed through their own uncanny narratives written in a simple language. It is an attempt to portray the hidden side of the neglected community of captives of our society today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483683423

Binanda C. Barkakaty

The son of a schoolteacher, Binanda Barkakaty was born in Assam, India. He left India in 1966 and came to the United Kingdom for higher studies, and he has been in England ever since. He graduated from Guwahati University, Assam, with a gold medal in physics. He has a PhD from Leeds, an MEd from London, and an MSt from the University of Cambridge. He has been running Christian union in schools and colleges and involved in Christian fellowship and providing Bible courses to prisoners in a prison-education setting. He has been walking with the Lord for more than four decades and has been a worshipper at Sanderstead Evangelical Church since 1982. He married his wife, Puspa, from Singapore, in 1970. His daughter, Santana, lives with her husband, Mark, and two sons, Cade (twelve) and Bailey (ten), in Chippenham, Wiltshire. His son, Biraj, is an opera singer as a countertenor and lives in Astoria, New York City, with his wife, Heather, who is soprano. Since his wife passed away in May 2014, Binanda lives on his own in suburban London.

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Copyright © 2013 by Binanda C. Barkakaty.

   ISBN:   Softcover        978-1-4836-8341-6

               Ebook             978-1-4836-8342-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 08/09/2013

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Bad Boys Behind Bars

Criminal Enterprise And Inquiring Mind Juxtaposed

There Is No Light At The End Of The Tunnel

A Handful Of Hazelnuts

Remorse Came Too Late

Hope Against Hope Is No Hope

Why Am I So Lonely In The Whole Wide World?

Who’s Gonna Feed My Family?

Ego, Ignorance, And Selfishness Lead To Deviance

Can A Convicted Criminal Be A Change Agent?

Is Money At The Root Of All Criminality?

Greed And Abuse Of Position Leading To Criminality

Sex Trade At Its Lowest

Hatred And Violence—Offending Partners

Mental Disorder—Recipe For Criminal Disaster

Homicide In Philadelphia: Incarceration In London

Yours In Love

Guns, Guns, And More Guns

Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Scientist Inmate Who Never Gave Up

Drug Dragon’s Dilemma

It Is Not Fair

A Friend Of The Cjs

Sex Offender’s Blind Spot

The Polish Boy Who Does Not Like To Grow Up

Liverpudlian Lover Boy

Honour Killing Without Mercy

Offenders’ Voice

Desistance Attributes: Change In Self

Employment And Training Needs: Major Needs

Mental Health Attributes: Rehabilitation Needs

Accommodation Attributes

Lifestyle Attributes: Criminality Begets Criminality

System Attributes: Police Coercion

Epilogue

About The Author

Look among the nations, and see;

wonder and be astounded.

For I am doing a work in your days,

that you would not believe if told.

                        Habakkuk 1:5, ESV

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

•   I owe a sense of gratitude to the governor who gave me permission to carry out the mini research, including access to some confidential files for exploring criminogenic attributes of prolific offenders.

•   Without the tremendous cooperation of the prisoners, this book would not have come to the public domain. I am truly indebted to them.

•   I owe a great deal to my wife, Puspa, for her encouragement and patience during the preparation of Bad Boys Behind Bars.

•   Last but not least, I would like to remember the unknown person at Kwik Fit South Croydon, who triggered the first inspiration to write about my experience of working in a prison environment and the enigmatic stories hidden behind prisoners’ criminal lifestyles.

PROLOGUE

An autumn morning dawned at Sanderstead. The sun was just peeping through the beeches spreading the bright electromagnetic spray to wave welcome to everyone. I had just driven into the local Kwik Fit to see to a small problem in my car causing some concern for a few days. A fine young man wearing a sparkling smile booked my car in and told me that it might take about half an hour.

A tall, smart, well-built middle-aged gentleman had just been talking to a few ladies who happened to be there for their car repairs, laughing and joking. In that reception room, everyone could notice that the gentleman was at the centre stage of conversation. Time was passing by; a few cars had been seen to, and some of the customers, including the smart ladies, had left. I sat down to read the adverts in a glossy car mag. There was only a small round table in front of me, one metre in diameter. I quietly calculated the perimeter as 100π cm for no apparent reasons, still browsing through the pages of the mag. I suddenly realised the approach of a tall shadowy figure towards me, and he put his weight on the chair diagonally opposite me. It was the verbose tall gentleman, who was eagerly looking for someone to begin a conversation with.

First we talked about cars and the associated problems. Then we moved on to how many cars we had been driving over the years, which car was the best, which was the worst, and which was the best value for money. His knowledge of cars far exceeded the knowledge I had accumulated so far. No wonder he was so pleased to share his knowledge with me, sitting opposite me at the small round table. Then, in the middle of our conversation, he asked me about my career, what I had been doing, and where I worked. He seemed very interested and fascinated to hear that I spent seven years working as a manager in a prison education setting. Remarkably, he was exhilarated with some comments made by the inmates and their lifestyles behind bars that I explained to him. His car was ready for collection, the young man at the reception just reported. Standing up, he said, ‘You know what? I would like you to write a book on your experience of working with prisoners. I am sure you will be able to throw some light about our misconceptions about our prisons and prisoners. Thank you very much for talking with me. It’s been wonderful to chat with you. Goodbye and God bless.’ So he left with a big beaming smile.

As I am writing this book, his smile has shone on each section of the book, inspired, encouraged, and blessed. I do not know his name, neither do I know his address. I only wish and pray that the book will reach him one day in not too distant a future to remind him of the conversation we had at Kwik Fit South Croydon which has resulted in the production of this book.

I also owe a great deal to the prisoner clients who are the major players in this anthology for enabling me to expose their side of the story to the general public, the criminal justice system, the policy makers, social services, prison, and the probation services. Their pent-up feelings, anguish, and open voices would have never reached the general public without the publication of this book. I honestly hope this book will provide a fresh insight to the readers about prisoners’ life, their lifestyles, and their criminal career, together with the systems that are in place to provide safer custody and promote personal development and employment opportunity for the prisoners towards reducing reoffending.

BAD BOYS BEHIND BARS

Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow-prisoners, and those who are ill-treated as if you yourselves were suffering.

Hebrews 13:3, NIV

The most powerful evangelist, the apostle Paul, knew about the conditions under which the prisoners of the Bible time had to serve their sentences, because he was a prisoner himself. He knew what it was like to be persecuted and to endure sufferings. Paul was a persecutor of the highest degree before he came to be the follower of Jesus Christ. Therefore, he had the knowledge of a persecutor and as a persecuted bearing all trials and tribulations for the sake of the truth which brings salvation to all human beings.

I have started with the quote from the Bible which spells out clearly how we should feel for and treat the ever-increasing number of prisoners in our country today. I am about to unfold the pent-up feelings, burnt-out emotions, and mountains of anguish of some inmates in a high-security prison in England. If everyone working in the prison and probation services were like Paul, who would do all in his power prayerfully to bring fallen, despised, and suffering people to normative human fold, then we may be able to see a streak of sunshine at the end of the tunnel for reducing reoffending.

Let me introduce some of my clients. Don’t worry, they are people just like you and me. Just sit down and relax and try to feel the world they live in and that from which they came. They are behind bars, away—far, far away—from their loved ones because they broke the law. We call them prisoners, inmates, incarcerated, and the castaways. We call the place they live in Her Majesty’s Prison, and the prisoners call it Her Majesty’s Hotel. Yes, for some poor guys the penitentiary could be a haven where they can cast away their day-to-day problems and tuck into a three-meals-a-day service. For the majority, however, it is a place where they are doing their time, having lost their liberty, self-esteem, and personal dignity. The criminal justice system (CJS) has found them guilty of the crimes they have committed.

As you can see, that does not make them inhuman, or does it? They are a small ‘community of captives’ cast away from a larger community of all other human beings. We are a social creature, law abiding, rule conforming, perpetuating a social structure which we all believe will always follow the norm. One millimetre off the norm-line and we can no longer call ourselves normal. So we can very easily fall into the group of people with antisocial behaviour, especially if you are young, or into the group which has the intentions to carry out criminal offences whatever might be the outcome. The standard of what we call norm is very fine, and it depends on the view of the person who is making the judgement. A crime is a crime defined by law. Activities carried out by deviant motivation are crimes. The criminal offenders are still a part of our society. They fell short of the standard set by the CJS of our country.

CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE AND INQUIRING MIND JUXTAPOSED

At first, meet my very clever and vivacious friend Amos. He is a technocrat and an intelligent person with some sound scientific knowledge. He is presently starting a life sentence for a crime he says he never committed. Don’t take his word for it because all prisoners do not believe that they have committed any crime. Isn’t it interesting and surprising? It has been shown in research that, especially for the sexual offenders, they would never confess that they have committed any crime; neither would they show any remorse. Anyway, read on what Amos has to say in his open letter to me. Although I have corrected some of his spellings, I have left the grammatical errors for you to grasp his ideas as they appear in the letter. I do not know what motivated him to write this document for me, and I don’t claim that I had any influence in making him embark on producing this document. But one thing is sure, Amos is a thinker, and his scientific thinking makes him stretch his mind to enter into many a field which we may not even imagine about. Below is his document handed over to me while we were in prison! You will soon be able to see that prisoners are capable of thinking divergently as any other entrepreneurs.

We will put to prisons, hospitals, schools, churches, leisure centres, parliament buildings, Buckingham Palace and many more buildings’ roofs solar panels and wind turbines. Also we will do the same for council blocks and private houses. We will take small amount deposit and we will take every month bill payment but we will put interest. When all payments paid we will stop to take monthly bill payment.

A few German solar and wind energy system producers said we want to give to you UK’s distributors and we will send to you our products which of those you will need. But you will not pay any money unless you started to earn. When you started to earn and you will start to us with monthly payments without interest.

Railway systems:

1.   Digger machines will dig pits (wells) for bedding.

2.   Frame worker teams will be fitting structural frames.

3.   Electricians will be fitting solar and wind systems. Teams will work three shifts a day seven days a week but labourers will take off two days a week. One team will take off first week, second team second week. We must finish fifty miles per month.

4.   Ten digger machines will work (minimum).

5.   Ten frame worker teams will