Gate-Fever

• By LAIN SCARLET

Mosr people who have been to prison seem to have experienced 'gate-fever' in one form or another. I know I have. Old lags warned me that a man is more likely to lose remission for misconduct during the two or three weeks immediately preceding his earliest possible re- lease, than at any other time of his sentence. I heeded such warnings– based as they were on personal experience rather than cold statistics— and was able to exercise self-control when my turn came up. But I suffered enough to be able to sympathise with the man who, with less than twelve hours of a twelve-month sentence left to do, found that he could stand the strain no longer: on a sudden impulse--and for no reason that he could afterwards remember--he shoved his fist through a window. He lost seven days.

Of course, the old lags can explain away such acts of apparent irresponsibility just as easily as they can explain everything else away--including sometimes their own delinquency. 'He's afraid Ole Bill will be waiting to pick him up at the gate,' they say. But I don't believe this any more than they really do. A man can have every charge in the book 'taken into consideration' at the time of his trial, and have a conscience that so far as the police are concerned is as clear as crystal --yet he'll still suffer from gate-fever.

To define gate-fever simply as 'a condition to which all convicts are prone towards the end of their sentences, when they have to drop the protective masks they have adopted and face up to the realities of their impending discharge'-- is neither simple nor particularly explanatory. Yet that is exactly what it is. And to understand it more fully. I think one has to know something of the basic mechanics of the penal system.

Thus, when a man has been `weighed off' by the presiding judge or magistrate, he is immedi- ately taken -- probably in a state of shock—to the cells below the court. Thence, just as quickly as the police can arrange it---for the police dis- play a remarkable benevolence- towards those whom Ahey have just prosecuted and sent down, rather in the fashion of a heavy-weight cham- pion embracing the challenger whom he's just k.o.'d in the second round—he is transferred to the prescribed prison. Here the pace slows down considerably. Reception screws are notoriously sadistic in prolonging the agony of a man who is surrendering his civil rights and liberty and dress for convicts' grey.

It is here, then, in a cell starkly furnished with chairs, that he first makes contact with his fellow admissions. It is here. too, still suffering from shock, that the new prisoner speaks the truth for the only time during his sentence. Tomorrow, after a night's sleep and a brief introduction into the prison routine, he will begin to build up a pro- tective armour against all the petty humiliations. And by tomorrow, too, the punishment he is en- during .will have ceased to bear any relationship to the crime for which he has today been sent down. So today he will be more than usually honest. If he is a lowly clerk outside, or a labourer, he will admit this without any of the embellishment that will soon become a part of his second –prison—nature. He will also admit his crime and guilt. It is a relief to do so.

Yet within a week, that lowly clerk will have become an 'accountant.' the labourer a 'ganger.' Their personal histories, wealth and social position will shortly be upgraded to match. The day eventually comes when they are either un-

willing or unable • to distinguish between truth and fantasy. In short, they have become insti- tutionalised. It is pathetic to think about : worse to experience.

The individual's crime takes on a different aspect, too. In prison –as everywhere else—men are conveniently labelled, and there are varying degrees of 'respectability' attached to types of crime. It is better to have blown a safe, for in- stance, than to have robbed a gas-meter; more imposing to have defrauded the public of thousands, than to have pinched thirty-two and six from the petty cash. And each man up-grades or side-steps his own crime so that he eventually becomes labelled with one that has the hall- mark of this respectability. (Sex offenders keep very quiet, for obvious reasons. And debtors— easily picked out in their brown uniforms—are the lowest form of prison life: even lower than drunks.) In my own case, having admitted to 'credit by fraud' whilst in reception--and been labelled a 'dud-cheque merchant' for my pains--I gravi- tated to becoming a smuggler. And worse, be- cause perhaps I felt that I had forfeited all my friends outside, I invented for myself a com- pletely new background which bore no relation- ship to truth, but which involved all the things I had so long wanted– peace, quiet, a little money, a publisher, and a loving wife.

For others fantasy took different forms. Many men find it necessary to their self-esteem to go through their sentences carrying the banner of their innocence like a bleeding heart. One financier whom I met, and who was at that time still preparing his appeal, actually spoke of his innocence in no uncertain terms. 'My dear old boy,' he said in the manner of one old school tie to another, 'the Home Secretary is begging me to accept a free pardon! But counsel has advised against it. "Stay in as long as you can bear it, sir," was his advice to me, old boy. Of course, he's trying to work up the amount of compensation they'll have to pay me . .

He really believed all this. SO did I.

Thus, most convicts serve their time. Reading, sleeping, sewing mail-bags, making mattresses, reading and sleeping again. And all the while, their brains dulled by defeat and their bodies weakened by bad food, they seek to escape into the glamour of fantasy. The longer the sentence, the greater the degree of retreat. The months that have passed by may seem to have passed quite quickly: but the week that lies ahead--if you think about it stretches into eternity. So you don't think about it.

And then, quite suddenly, your impending dis- charge hits you. A date that has hitherto been only remotely connected with your dream be- comes a tangible reality. Just as the reception screws once stripped you of your personality and individuality to turn you into a numbered zombie, so now the reality'of release strips away the protective mask that time and circumstance have established. You fall to earth with a bump.

And it can happen so casually. In my own case, a chance remark of the governor—When will you be leaving us?"Friday, the eleventh, sir' was enough to strip me bare. Within hours I was tense and nervous, easily upset and utterly unprepared for what lay ahead. The old lags grinned and said, `Afraid of Ole Bill, Iain?'—and there were moments when I wished that the police could be there to meet me at the gate.

One of the screws summed it up best. 'We've punished you,' he said, 'but we haven't done anything to help you rebuild your own life. You'll hate it outside--for a week at least.' He was right.

This was gate-fever. And I had it badly.