This book is quite unlike any other memoir I've ever read. It seems to be written for someone with a reading age of about 8 apart from that fuckin' is the most (over) used word, closely followed by several other expletives that add nothing to the memoir but quite a lot to what you might think of the author. Like a playground bully denying his transgressions in words, he makes sure you know he was in the thick of it, he was the protagonist, the enforcer.

The author says he has a close relationship with the mother of his son and works with several female prison officers but the females in the book are just paper-thin cyphers, they scarcely exist in his world of machismo, when compared to his long and almost loving descriptions of the hard, brutal men he works with, his mates. I wouldn't dare suggest such a hard man has conflicted sexuality, but it sure reads that way.

'Hard man'? Despite his protestations to the contrary he seems to be one of the bully-boy prison officers he so dislikes for their casual violence towards prisoners. He does, however, admit to a little 'private' violence on certain inmates who 'need it' to help them 'straighten out' when words haven't worked. Every bad attitude of prison officers you have ever seen on tv documentaries about 'correctional facilities' is confirmed. And with pride.

Nonetheless it's an interesting book and makes one realise that in working in an understaffed prison with professional criminals, many of them extremely violent and abusive, it must be extremely hard to maintain a gentle touch and want to help correct rather than punish behaviour. Thompson isn't a bad guy, he would like to do his best to keep order and help those who are easily reached and does try, but only to a certain level. One of the problems of prison is that the inmates do not interpret the word 'respect' as most of us do. To them it means only to have the correct stance to a fellow prisoner or officer who has proven that they don't tolerate anything but submission to their will, and anyone who stands out against that will be punished, and usually in a very violent way.

A prison officer doesn't have to use aggression to enforce obedience, he can use rules and punishments, but perhaps that is too time-consuming a procedure when a punch, a kick, a headlock will do the same job when a verbal correction isn't working. Or, to use a cliche, to talk to them in the only language they understand.

Worth reading if you see it around. Worth buying? For a short plane flight maybe but for an addition to your library? Nah. ( )

I enjoyed it, even if nobody else did. The author is clearly quite a young man and some men of his age and class do like to swear. I still think that the author did want to be a good prison officer and found that the system failed him. I'm sure every prison officer, and in fact everyone doing similar jobs, feels the same way. He just wrote it down as a stream of consciousness. ( )