A Prison Diary is a series of three books of diaries written by Jeffrey Archer during his time in prisons following his convictions for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Each volume is named after a part of Dante's The Divine Comedy. The volumes become progressively longer due to his stay being longer and longer at each prison in which he was confined. Volume 1: Belmarsh: Hell This book, written under the nom de plume FF 8282, documents Archer's introduction to the prison system. He was to spend the first 22 days and 14 hours in HMP Belmarsh, a double A-Category high-security prison in South London. Although Archer spent less than a month there, Belmarsh is described as a real hell-hole. Despite this, many of the inmates are extremely kind to him and regale him with anecdotes, which he duly records. One such prisoner apparently spoken of is the inspiration to one of his short stories from Cat O'Nine Tales, "It Can't Be October Already". On the other hand, some of the information Archer learns in his three weeks at Belmarsh is extremely disturbing, and he makes great play of imagining that the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, ought to be reading it and asks for his attention. One theme is the fact that some inmates are thrown into cells for first time offences even though the cellmate is a hardened criminal or murderer and/or drug addict. Further, it seems there are more heroin addicts coming out of prison than going in. This is because of both random and compulsory checks in which the inmates have discovered cannabis does not leave the system any time soon, but heroin is flushed out of the body in 24 hours providing large quantities of water have been consumed. They want a drug and this is the one they can obtain. Other inmates he talked with include an experienced Listener (for the Samaritans), who had been sexually abused through much of his childhood, existing as a sex-slave, and only knew crime. The very people set up by the institutions to protect him like social workers and magistrates, judges and policemen, let him down, and also paid to abuse him. He also describes how an inmate who professed to love his books casually offered to arrange for the witness whose testimony was the main factor in Archer's conviction to be murdered in revenge. Archer