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On the VPU point above, my personal experience is that prison staff will say anything to get rid of you and go back to drinking tea. DO NOT rely on them to have your best interests at heart!!
On my very first night in prison I was assured by a matronly screw "not to worry, we'll look after you". Complete BS, the only way things got done (including getting on the waiting list for the VPU) was to fill in forms ( the whole place ran on paper) then badger them at every opportunity till they got tired of you. I had to find this out the hard way, no-one tells you anything, and I spent a (very nervous) 7 weeks on a Cat B reception wing before getting moved to the VPU. Luckily, the prison was some way away from the town where I was tried, so face & name didn't trigger any local recognition among the Mains.
Ironically, I saw more violence in that VPU than the wing I'd come from, though luckily I avoided getting caught up in it. Don't get me wrong, the VPU was more relaxed, but the uneasy mixture of SOs, drug-debt defaulters and snitches meant there was quite a lot of verbal abuse towards some of the SOs whose cases were better known.
After a while I got transferred to a Cat C, in a VPU again, and this one was pretty chill, owing I think to the fact that 95% of the population were SOs. This prison was notably better run than the previous Cat B and in a much better state. I did the majority of my time there and found myself reasonably comfortable (and entirely unmolested). I spent my final year in a mixed Cat D (Mains & SOs living together) and though the Mains were often a bit painful to live with, I survived 100 trips to the houseblock kitchen without any hurty words being thrown at me (let along boiling water) !!
So the moral of this long ramble is: screws are not your friends - grip your own situation and be persistent. Things can and do improve as you go through your sentence. Good luck!
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