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No Half Measures is a biography of Alan Jones on his experiences smuggling cannabis and being incarcerated in North African, Spanish and British Prisons.
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August 1978, Los Rosales prison, North Africa. Naked, bruised and battered Alan is put in solitary confinement for being the ring leader of an attempted prison escape. If only he did not get caught on what was to be his last trip smuggling. Danny would not be feared dead and Alan would be living his lavish life style. Attending celebrity parties and matching his cars, by the colour of his Saville row suit. Maybe this would not have happened if he had taken up the offer from Howard Marks.
On his 5000 mile journeys smuggling from Britain to Oslo via North Africa he had survived a great deal. Being held at gunpoint five times, attacked by an angry mob, preyed on by armed bandits, mugged and stripped by a Moroccan gang wielding carving knives. He also managed to escape suspicion from custom officers, police officers, Secret Algerian police, King Hassan II security guards, Algerian Airport police and Algerian security guards at the British embassy. His luck finally runs out when he has to leave North Africa by Ceuta port, as the Algeria border is closed due to war. At Ceuta, passport officers uncover kilos of hashish, worth half a million pounds in today's money.
From the age of 16 Alan has spent time in borstals and prison in the UK. He had served sentences alongside John Straffen, Edwin Bush, Mad Frankie Fraser and members of the Birmingham six. However his British experience could not prepare for him the darker and more chaotic world of the Spanish judicial system, where torture is rife. He has to endure the violence and squalor whilst touring prisons on the Spanish mainland and in North Africa.
After serving three years of his sentence, Alan thinks he has a handle on the Spanish prison system. That is until he does the unusual prison job of working as a psychiatric nurse, in the asylum for the criminally insane at Carabanchel prison. At the asylum he medicates and locks up rapists and mass murders such as the infamous serial killer Manuel Delgado Villegas. Alan notices the majority of the nurses he works alongside are not Spanish but Europeans of different nationalities. He soon realises the dark secrets the Spanish guards want to hide from their fellow Spaniards.
