From carrying around a “protective” kettle full of boiling water to brewing hooch using his socks, one prisoner knew he had to go to extremes if he wanted to survive the chaos behind bars.

Andrew has served time in jails across the country. This is his story of how being locked up changed him forever.

The first mistake Andrew made while banged up was to grass up his cellmate for smoking notorious drug Spice in their shared space.

Soon after, he was in the shower when “lads came at me, one with a sharpened toilet brush and others with lids from tuna cans.”

He’s not a fighter, he says, but he stood his ground and emerged with “just a few scars”.

This was his introduction to the mayhem reigning behind bars, where bullies and brutality are rampant and black markets thrive.

“I was attacked that often that I ended up carrying a kettle of boiling water around with me, to scald people with if I had to,” he says with a nonchalance suggesting he’d been witness to much worse.

Sparking much of that violence are drugs and contraband that are bartered for and sold at eye-watering prices. When the drugs run low, robberies and attacks soar, Andrew says.

Some prison dealers are earning up to £10,000 every week from exploiting their fellow inmates, he claims.

“Drugs are everywhere in there and if people know there’s a batch of Spice or whatever that’s led to someone dying, that’s what they’d want, it’s seen as the good stuff.”

Andrew can list several ways in which prisoners get contraband into jail, from visitor handshakes to parcels at the perimeter and drug drops by drone.

As prisons become more adept at interrupting supplies, inmates are turning to more inventive smuggling methods.

Two inmates were disciplined at a North East prison recently over a plot that saw one hide in a bin before being wheeled out with rubbish to collect packages of prescription drugs reportedly worth a fortune on the inside.

Some people will reoffend immediately upon release to be recalled back to jail, having swallowed contraband, ready to profit from their fellow prisoners.

And profit they do – whether it’s from flogging crack cocaine, cell-made hooch or phone calls to loved ones.

“There’s a heroin substitute that’s £2.50 a tablet on the outside but in jail, it’d go for £250,” Andrew says.

“I’d pay £50 to use a phone for a ten-minute call –it’d cost you around two grand to buy an old phone.

“It’s also dead common for prisoners to use phones to post videos online, but the screws will find them within days.”

We found both TikTok and YouTube awash with prisoner content, from inmates rapping to fights and aspiring chefs posting grim-sounding recipes – like mackerel cooked in a kettle or prison hooch – from their cell.

Andrew’s own hooch recipe involved orange juice, sugar, bread and his own socks. He made £40 a litre from the concoction.

But those days are behind him now, he says. He got clean while inside and turned his back on his old ways, desperate never to return to prison.

He said: “I never thought I’d end up in jail and it was a huge culture shock.

“I don’t ever want to go back in, I’d go on the run instead.”