CHARLES BRONSON - MONSTER?
by
GREG
18 July 2007

Greg is an ex-Prison Officer, who worked with young offenders. He was appalled by the way those young people were treated by the system and by the people charged with their rehabilitation. He was also startled at the way Charlie was portrayed to trainee Officers. There are not many people with the bottle to tell such tales, but this is the story he tells of his first couple of weeks in the job:

Through the first week of my Prison Officer training, our two instructors, both female, kept referring to certain inmates they have had dealing with throughout their careers. All sorts of names kept popping up; one, for instance, was Robert Stewart, who was openly racist and very violent. Now, in the prison service’s great wisdom they saw fit to put Robert in the same cell as 19 year old Zahir Mubarek, who was Asian! Great idea! Robert Stewart took it upon himself to beat Zahir to death with his broken cell furniture and try to pass it off as an accident. Obviously Robert’s lie did not take.

A name that was always popping up was that of Charlie Bronson! They referred to Charlie as if he was the most dangerous man in the world, like it took twenty officers to unlock him and he would always come out swinging! The image of him they gave us was that this man is so dangerous that if he was ever released he was going to go around the world destroying everything!! I mean for fuck’s sake, are we talking about a man here or Godzilla?! Anyway, our special treat was something we were told to keep quiet, something they shouldn’t have even thought about showing us! Building this up now, I know I’ll get on with it. What they brought in for us was a CCTV videotape of Charlie’s last kick off. The entire room was shocked to say the least. I mean, I was expecting to see Godzilla on this video not a man!

So the video starts off with Charlie stood in an enclosed space with his top off and wrapped around his head. He is bouncing up and down, probably a combination or nerves and excitement! The man is kept in solitary confinement, so he’s probably looking forward to human contact, even if it does result in wave upon wave of people getting there digs in. Anyway, Charlie’s stood bouncing up and down facing the door. You can feel that the climax is near, due to the grins appearing on our instructors’ faces. They keep looking at each other with sly smiles and then back at the TV.

I can see that there’s something happening at the door Charlie is facing. He’s not bouncing as much now, he’s sort of leaning forward, like a sprinter would before setting off. Then all of a sudden the doors fly open and four heavily kitted out officers with shields burst in to the room and charge at Charlie! Now most would have maybe just waited for the obvious beating coming towards them, but this is Charlie Bronson, the man with a heart like a lion and the pride of every other inmate in any establishment behind him: he charges them back!

BANG! Now these two great forces collide and its like two waves clashing, two bulls locking horns, neither is willing to budge an inch. But unfortunately for Charlie numbers are not on his side! He’s giving it his all, but unlike the officers he cannot switch places with someone else in order to gain a rest. So as these officers pile on Charlie he’s not lying down and taking it. This is an epic struggle. You can see the officers getting tired and looking back towards the queue of kitted up officers at the door. Then one steps back as he’s too tired to continue, but unfortunately for Charlie there is not enough time for him to gain momentum, because as soon as one officer falls off too tired a fresh officer takes his place. Eventually Charlie is restrained and put in handcuffs and taken away. Our two instructors turn and look at the class with smug looks on there faces, almost like children who have gotten their own way.

Now, I’m sat there looking around the class at my fellow recruits, some of who are smiling back at our instructors and some who have a frightened look across their faces. A look as if to say “I surely cannot be expected to do this.” And I’m sat there in my chair with a blank look on my face! I honestly cannot believe what I’ve just seen. You see that sort of behaviour in your local and then people are getting arrested for assault. I mean we was never told why it all happened that way, what was the reason for Charlie to be willing to go through this, all they said is he’s always doing this, always kicking off for no reason! So once again we are dealing with Godzilla instead of a man!

Then our instructors proudly announce that one of them has earned themselves a commendation for being one in a team of twenty officers that once bent up the legendary Charlie Bronson! For fuck’s sake, what’s to be proud of? You haven’t just earned yourself a medal for fighting in a war or helping people in a crisis! You have just been rewarded for giving a man (yes, a man not a monster) a hefty kicking along with nineteen other people!! Yeh well done to you. Maybe we should start rewarding people who get arrested for assault: “So sir, you and your friends all ganged up on this one man and gave him a kicking? Well I must reward you for this action.” It’s a fucking joke!

I mean, I’m not saying that Charlie has not fallen off the rails at anytime in his life, that would be stupid of me to say that, but who hasn’t fallen off the rails at some point? But too portray him as such a threat to humanity is a joke. Everyone I have spoken to who has done the Prison Officer training has told me that Charlie was referred to at some point! Do these people not want him to change? Do they not believe in second chances? NO they don’t! That’s why they are constantly trying to push his buttons! They want to keep him as he was. Heaven forbid that he should reform himself. How else would they fill the time then? They might actually have to teach people something useful and lose their Charlie Bronson glory stories!

Everyday between glory stories and actually attempting to teach us all something that might matter we had tests on certain subjects that we had apparently been taught about that day or the day before. What would happen is they would give us our test papers and then show us the answer papers they were holding. Then it would go like this: “Right you now have twenty minutes to complete this test where you must get at least 8 out of 10, we are now going to place the answer sheet on this desk and leave the room for 10mins! YOU MUST GET 8 OUT OF 10! Good luck” and then they would leave the room. Obviously you can guess what happened next. When they returned everyone would be sat at their desks with their finished test sheets in front of them. We would then swap test papers and mark them. What an amazing class, you’re all passing with flying colours! This is supposed to be HER MAJESTY’S PRISON SERVICE and we’re all been giving the answers so that their stats look good.

There’s no wonder that most new recruits don’t last three months. We’re just thrown head first in at the deep end without a clue. Sent in to these prisons expecting to come against Godzilla and King Kong, mindless monsters. We were never expecting to come across human beings with feelings and emotions just like us. Humans who bleed and cry just like we do. In between our training we all got sent back to our selected establishments for two weeks in order to gain information for our course work. Well our management didn’t look at it like this. They just saw one more body they could put on the landings, another number to their growing herd. I was sent straight out on to the landings of the wing I was assigned. I remember it being a two landing wing with thirty juveniles aged 15 – 18 on each landing. When I first walked onto the wing I wondered what the hell I had got myself into. It was anarchy. These young men who had been sent to us to gain direction were just running amuck, doing what they wanted to do whenever they wanted to do it.

Obviously at first I was seen as an outsider to these young men, possibly a threat to the way of life they had got used to having inside. I looked around the wing and saw one officer downstairs trying to get a handful of youngsters to do some wing cleaning. Every time he turned his back they retreated to another inmate’s cell and had to be chased. There was another officer sitting in the office doing what appeared to be paperwork, oblivious to the madness outside the office, and on the upstairs landing I saw the Senior Officer I had been sent to report to. He was having what appeared to be an in depth talk with an inmate. This inmate was obviously not listening to a word that was being said to him, just stood there acting like he was in order to distract the S.O. from what the other inmates were doing.

I stood there with the S.O. listening to every bit of bullshit coming out of his mouth knowing that none of it applied to the practical side of the job, You will come across these people who can talk your bollocks off but when it comes to the practical side of things haven’t got a clue. I knew what the wing needed without him trying to fill my head with bullshit. The wing needed discipline! Just when I was struggling to come to terms with all the madness already on the wing it was time for them to come back from work/education. Firstly, all the inmates out on the landing already had to go back behind their doors. This was a task in itself. Here’s me not even fully trained telling these young people who I had never met before to get behind their doors. As you can probably imagine I didn’t get a lot of them responding to me.

Now originally there was four Officers on the wing including myself and the S.O, but one Officer had to leave the wing to go collect the trolley with their lunch time meals on it, so this left three of us. But, conveniently, the S.O. remembered a job he needed to do which required him to go in his office and lock the door. So now there’s a fully trained Officer and me expected to lock up 60 inmates. It was fucking anarchy! It felt like it took us forever to bang everyone up. I think it took us half an hour, which anyone who works the landings will tell you, is disgraceful. The only reason we got them all away is because the Officer with me had quite a good standing with the inmates. It also helped that he was about 6ft tall and built like a brick shit house. So we managed to get everyone behind their doors and the servery set up and I was even starting to come back to ground when the S.O. appears from his office and shouts for us to let them out for lunch! Thirty at a time!! “FOR FUCK SAKE” rang in my head, “Does it ever end?”

We managed to get the bottom landing all fed and banged back up with little problem and was just starting to bang the top landing up when a particular inmates decided he wasn’t going to go back behind his door! I thought to myself “I know where this is going” and thought back to the Charlie Bronson video. But then I thought to myself, he’s just a kid. It’s not going to be handled the same way as Charlie was. Firstly everyone was locked up except this one inmate. He stood on the steps between landings. Once everyone was away there was a call put out over the radio for Oscar 1 to attend our wing. Now there’s myself, the S.O and two other officers already stood around this young man and I can see the fear in his eyes, then Oscar 1 then walks on to the wing with three other officers! If this kid could have fallen in to a hole he would have gladly. Sorry Oscar 1 is the principal officer in charge that day! This kid was well and truly fucked. There was no way he was going to be able to talk his way out of this. He tried but Oscar 1 had been put out having to come down to the wing from his office so there was only one ending to this story. This kid knew this, so he wrapped his arms around the railings and held on for dear life. BANG! Three large officers on him in an instant. As they were bending him up I saw the pain and fear in his eyes. How could this be helping him? He’s come from violence to more violence! Shouldn’t we be showing him other options?

Once he was thrown behind his door the three officers walked back down the wing with such pride, like they had just stopped a terrorist attack or something. One of the officers turned and smiled at me, he gave me a little wink and put his hand on my shoulder. “You was too slow there kid, you should’ve got your hands on him. He was a good one.” I just stared blankly. Have I made a huge mistake taking this career? I spent that afternoon just mindlessly wandering around the wing. My head was a shed. All of a sudden it was dinner time and the S.O. calls me over: “You’ve had a good day today. Get yourself off and we’ll see you in the morning.” I was out of that prison in a flash and home to Katy. I just gave her a big hug and told her about my day. She knew I hated it but, Katy being Katy and having a positive outlook on life, just said to me “Don’t give up on it yet, things are always bad on your first day. Give it a chance.”

I smiled at Katy knowing that I was going to give it another go. I couldn’t let it beat me so easily and I couldn’t let Katy down. We had just moved 200 miles away from both of our families because I had got this job. I had to stick with it. I sat down and had a few drinks, trying to forget my day and I was that knackered I was asleep after a couple of hours, getting ready for my second day.