Shaun Attwood Interview

HARD TIME, by Shaun Attwood

Born in Widnes. Educated at Liverpool University. Stockbroker in the US. Rave organiser in the US. Sent to the toughest jail in the US....Arizona’s Maricopa Jail is run by the notorious Sherriff Joe Arpaio, who feeds his prisoners on 30 cents a day. He openly brags about feeding the dogs on 60 cents a day because the dogs “are working for a living and haven’t committed any crimes”. He makes the prisoners wear pink underwear and bee-stripe coveralls in chain gangs. Some of them live in tents. The illegal conditions include infested cells where the cockroaches crawl all over you in sweltering heat and a bloodlike carroty slop for dinner known as “red death” in which the origins of the meat content are questionable, to say the least.

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It’s all about race and gangs. The Aryan Brotherhood, Blacks, Mexicans and alike will kill-on-sight (KOS) for an initiation tattoo and don’t expect the guards to rush to your rescue, because they are known for murdering inmates too. Shaun Attwood exposed the truth by smuggling out his diary extracts written with a golf pencil sharpened on the wall and having his family upload it to the web, creating jonsjailjournal.com to international acclaim. HARD TIME is his first book, and is now available on Amazon.

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Question 1

I like your choice of understated sports cars such as the Toyota Supra and twin turbo Mazda RX7. What would your ideal vehicle be at the moment?

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S.A

My ideal vehicle at the moment is my old Ford Fiesta, which gets me to the schools I do my talks to and back. Supposedly, Mazda is designing a new RX7 for 2011.

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Question 2

Doing bulk deals of quality Ecstasy on foreign soil must have been exciting at the time. What you were doing is worlds apart, in my view, from the modern climate of nasty legal high shipments, or shady crack and smack transactions. If you were a judge, would you show sympathy to the raver?

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S.A

If I were a judge in America I would not be able to show much sympathy due to the statutory sentencing framework. Historically, judges have been more lenient in the UK, but unfortunately we are adopting more US legal practices.

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Question 3

Reading about how you were living on the odd Snickers made me crave Snickers. Do you still munch Snickers, are you totally revolted by Snickers, or can you take ‘em or leave ‘em?

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S.A

As soon as I got out of prison, I stopped eating some of the items that had sustained me throughout my incarceration. Snickers, peanut butter, milk...

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Question 4

Did the infamous Sherriff Joe Arpaio show his face much about the jail?
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S.A

Not often. When he did, he was surrounded by his own personal "goon squad" - armed bodyguards in shankproof armour. The inmates would hurl abuse at him from their cells - something you never see on his carefully-staged jail documentaries.

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Question 5

I can’t imagine your low points in Joe’s Hole when looking at the prospect of life imprisonment. I know you meditated in yoga positions by visualising triangles around your body and imagining your spine as a shaft of light (or something like that), but did you ever actually pray directly to God?
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S.A

I regularly attended the church services, where we all prayed and sang together. The best services were hosted by Jumping Bill!

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Question 6

Has surviving on rations of spoiled food increased your appetite for supermarket treats/fast food/takeaways, or has it instilled in you a discipline to be more rigorous with your diet now?
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S.A

After the "red death" jail slop with occasional dead rats in it, I am still a yoga practicing vegetarian.

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Question 7

Has been exposed to so much violence, like heads getting cracked like coconuts on the floor, for example, edged you towards a more pacifist standpoint?
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S.A

Yes.

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Question 8

Who is the character in Hard Time you would least like to share a hotel room with, and why?
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S.A

Someone like Bullet, a neo Nazi and a murderer, who wanted to kidnap his prosecutor, torture her with a blow torch, and murder her.

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Question 9

What is the most unorthodox object, or largest quantity of contraband/merchandise, you were ever aware of someone unpacking from their ass (keystering)?
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S.A

The mules prided themselves on how much they could "keyster" (pack in their behinds). Some of them bragged that they could store four "quarter roll" packages without them peeking out during the strip searches. A quarter roll refers to something the size of $10 worth of 25 cent coins placed one on top of the other.

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Question 10

After you have completed the English Shaun trilogy with the upcoming prequel and sequel to Hard Time, do you see yourself staying in the writing business with any other works?
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S.A

I'd like to write the individual stories of some of the prisoners featured at my blog like Wild Man, Two Tonys, T-Bone, Frankie...

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Questions by Andrew Donegan, who read with Shaun at the Royal Festival Hall in London 2009.