The cover boldly announces that this is the diary written by
Prisoner FF8282 - which must be a rare moment of anonymity from
Jeffrey Archer. He's always been renowned for his ability to
reinvent himself, but Archer the prisoner must surely have been one
of his more difficult reincarnations. This is the first in a series
of three diaries all written from prison, and it offers a
day-by-day account of his first 22 days as a prisoner at Belmarsh
high-security jail. Presenting himself in the most flattering light
throughout, Archer gives us insights into his day - the hours he is
locked up, the institutional food he struggles to eat, the
bartering system and the creative-writing classes he is asked to
run for other prisoners. As you would imagine, he remains centre
stage throughout, but he does use the diary to highlight other
people's stories, many of which are moving in themselves and shed
important light on Britain's underclass and criminal justice
system. He also addresses the massive problems of drug problems and
staffing shortages, the fine line between punishment and
rehabilitation, and the statistics that show people often leave
prison suffering from more problems than they entered with.
Whatever your attitude to Archer the man, his prison diaries will
certainly reach a wide audience, which can only be a good thing in
terms of generating knowledge about the social and prison reforms
that could go some way to reversing the miseries he relates.
(Kirkus UK)
Hell, the first volume in Jeffrey Archer's The Prison Diaries, is
the author's daily record of the time he spent there. The sun is
shining through the bars of my window on what must be a glorious
summer day. I've been incarcerated in a cell five paces by three
for twelve and a half hours, and will not be let out again until
midday; eighteen and a half hours of solitary confinement. There is
a child of seventeen in the cell below me who has been charged with
shoplifting - his first offence, not even convicted - and he is
being locked up for eighteen and a half hours, unable to speak to
anyone. This is Great Britain in the twenty-first century, not
Turkey, not Nigeria, not Kosovo, but Britain. On Thursday 19 July
2001, after a perjury trial lasting seven weeks, Jeffrey Archer was
sentenced to four years in jail. He was to spend the first
twenty-two days and fourteen hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double
A-Category high-security prison in South London, which houses some
of Britain's most violent criminals. This is his illuminating
insight into prison life.
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