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Your support makes all the difference.Dave Smith (not his real name) describes life in the Paras' own version of the 'Glasshouse'.
I was given a sentence of 28 days for going illegally out of bounds when I was in the Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland. That was what most of the soldiers were in the glasshouse for: drunkenness, fighting, going out of bounds, the kind of misdemeanours that officers prefer to call high spirits when they do it themselves.
It was in the barracks in Holywood, Co Down, outside Belfast, and although not as big or as established as the regime in Colchester, it was physically much more intense. It was designed to sort out members of the paras, to teach them a lesson. Those from other units whose training was less physically demanding found it a terrible shock: in a matter of days they were usually reduced to tears of pain and humiliation.
You slept four to a cell, and were woken up at 6am. The first thing you did was an hour's PT, usually what is called log training, which is basically running around the camp in a team carrying a telegraph pole. From that start it went downhill, slog all day and every day. One day we spent from dawn till dusk filling sandbags, another day we broke rocks with sledgehammers. Not for any specific purpose but just to make life miserable. Also, we would do the dreg work around the camp - in the kitchens and the latrines. And every evening we would endlessly clean kit for three hours at a time. Lights out was about 9pm, you couldn't wait.
And all the time you would suffer what might be termed military verbal abuse from the warders who were members of the regimental police: you were sworn at constantly and treated like vermin.
There were no privileges, no recreation. If you were a smoker, like me, you were allowed two cigarettes a day, which you were obliged to smoke while standing to attention. The slightest misdemeanour and they would delight in taking even that away from you.
It was designed to act entirely as punishment, not rehabilitation. But I have to say it worked. It was not my intention to go back in there, and I put my head down and got through it, and was released with four days' remission for good behaviour. I came out much fitter. I believe, honestly, that for the right sort of young offender - a hot head, basically - it would work.
Interview by Jim White.
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