After being led away from the dock to start his 10-and-a-half-year jail sentence, Russell Brand will clamber on board a prison van and into a plastic cell known as a "sweatbox".
Smaller than a toilet cubicle, the claustrophobic, airless chamber is used to hold individual prisoners en route from court to jail. While it keeps the convicts apart, it still offers a hint of the kind of company they may be keeping for the foreseeable future.
"The van will take everyone sentenced that day, so you can get murderers, burglars, gang members, the lot," says one ex-prisoner who was held on remand at a London prison. "You can hear some of them doing their nut, saying they're gonna stab people, or top themselves. It's pretty scary."
