This excerpt is from a chapter called Get in Line.  It takes place on the first day of a five day work placement after the first 5 weeks of prison officer training.

*A tall Jamaican offender strutted into the dining hall. Tall, thin, long dreadlocks, and wearing dark sunglasses indoors. He was wearing the baggy, plain, light grey, prison regulation tracksuit. He walked straight in and placed himself into the middle of the queue and nobody gave a fuck. Officer Marks looked at me. “You must of seen that. Go on. Go and send him back to the end on the queue”. I had approximately 10 strides between myself and the dreadlocked, thin, sunglass wearing Jamaican. I needed to think fast.

“Excuse me”, fuck me. I actually said excuse me. “You need to get to the back of the queue”, sure, politeness was going to work. That was my plan. Just be a polite prison officer and everything would turn out rosey. The Jamaican don’t move a muscle. He just kept his body still, face forward. He didn’t acknowledge my existence. Bloody hell, how am I going to get out of this one. I really didn’t want to touch him. From the corner of my eye I could see other offenders starting to watch me struggle.

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*This excerpt is a first draft, unedited version.