It is extremely difficult to keep anything secret in prison. Whatever the police don’t notice, other inmates will. And once other inmates know something, the police will know it soon.
A few months before I entered the Central Prison some inmates tried to organize an escape by digging a hole through the wall of their cell. There were three or four prisoners involved in this, and while they chiseled away at the wall, one of them would sit in front of the cell loudly reciting Qur’an to muffle the sound. Despite their efforts to keep the escape plan secret, eventually so many other prisoners knew about it that they had around thirty men ready to escape with them. When I was told this story, I said “if you had thirty men, why dig a hole? You could walk out the main gate.” But, even though they were able to overcome the psychological obstacles enough to attempt an escape, they still held the police in awe.
Of course, if thirty men knew about the plan, it was inevitable that the police would find out about it; which they did. Their cell was raided, the hole discovered, and the plan was ruined.
As I have said before, the biggest danger in prison is informers, and you would be surprised at how cheaply the police can buy their treachery. Like Nifaq, being an informer is a disease. They will betray you for something so insignificant as a sandwich.
Like the Munafiqeen, part of the mukhbers disease is that they think they are very clever. They think they are fooling everyone; they think no one knows they are informers
If the police suspect that you pose any sort of threat, they will assign their informers to monitor everything you do. In my case, there were mukhbereen keeping track of who I talked to, when I slept, when I woke, when I went to the bathroom and how long I was in it. And this went on for years, and of course, the mukhbers did not know that I knew what they were doing.
Because I was in fact planning an escape, i had to tolerate this, and I tried to deliberately behave in a way that would assure the police when their informers reported to them about me. In this way, I was able to utilize
If, may Allah forbid, any of you have to endure imprisonment, take note of any prisoners who seem to enjoy any extra privileges. If they have more phone access, more or longer visits with their families, if they possess contraband, and obviously, if they seem to be on friendly terms with the guards; assume these inmates are mukhbereen. You have to beware of them, and anyone who chats with them.
I am not saying that you should avoid them. Once you have identified them, and know that you cannot trust them, use them to deliver false information to the police; this way they can become a tool for your own safety, even while they are trying to endanger you..