Last Updated on 2 May 2026 by Alf
Get in the fucking water!
There were 5 of them. I was standing completely naked on a sickly coloured tiled floor and they weren’t happy, they really weren’t happy. I think it was a result of them not being able to give me the shaven head treatment. Unlike my fellow victims, I didn’t have any curly locks to chop cos I was a skinhead back in 1980. The water was hot; very very hot, and they knew it.
I lowered myself into the tub, cringing with the pain of the heat and began to wash with the green carbolic soap they had so kindly provided.I wasn’t exactly in need of a bath, but it was all part of the ritual humiliation visited upon young miscreants at the newly created short sharp shock establishment of HMP Haslar, a former naval hospital in Gosport, just outside of Portsmouth but now a Detention Centre for kids like me. I had just been transported from HMP Exeter, where I had commited my crimes and was on remand over the Christmas period whilst awaiting the beak’s to finish their festivities.
The home secretary of the day, Little Willie Whitelaw adopted a hard-line approach to law and order. He improved police pay and embarked upon a programme of extensive prison building. His four-year tenure in office, however, was generally perceived as a troubled one. His much vaunted “short, sharp shock†policy, whereby convicted young offenders were detained in secure units and subjected to quasi-military discipline, won approval from the public but proved expensive to implement.
Courtesy Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whitelaw
How the fuck did I end up in here?