Jeffrey Archer was sentenced to four years' imprisonment at 12.07pm on Thursday 19 July 2001. Within six hours, Prisoner FF8282, as he is now known, is on suicide watch in the medical wing of Belmarsh top security prison in south London. This, he discovered, is standard procedure for first-time offenders on their first night in jail. By 6am the next morning, Archer has resolved to write a daily diary of everything he experienced while incarcerated because "I have a feeling that being allowed to write in this hellhole may turn out to be the one salvation that will keep me sane".
Hell (first published in 2002) is a diary of Archer's first three weeks in jail and a raw account of life in a top-security jail in Britain. It is also an indictment of the British penal system. The tales of his fellow inmates - many of whom are in for life - are often moving tales of hopelessness. But there are those too, who, no matter what their previous histories, attempt to live their prison lives with dignity and integrity.
Hell should be of interest to anyone concerned with the improvement of our penal system, whether they are concerned citizens, politicians or workers in the prison service.
The other two books in the Prison Diary series are Purgatory (Volume 2, 2003) and Heaven (Volume 3, 2004).
Happy Christmas Eve!
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