prison | ukwatch.net

Prisons- The Wrong Philosophy

tim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:21:49 +0000

“Naive” is the kindest word that can be used to describe the decision by crime reduction charity Nacro to get into bed with private security contractor G4S to bid to run two prisons.

Nacro has a commendable record of opposing private prisons with their priority of producing profits and dividends for shareholders.

It has shared with other members of the Criminal Justice Alliance the view that prisons should not be used simply to lock away wrongdoers but should be part of process of turning people away from crime.

Indeed, there has been widespread agreement on the need to prioritise non-custodial sentences with service and supervision within the community taking the place of isolation and deprivation.

However, it is a giant step away from a general agreement on tackling crime that seeks to convince offenders to recognise their behaviour and to make amends for it to a willingness to be involved in a for-profits enterprise with G4S.

Nacro chief executive Paul Cavadino believes that, if reform charities are involved in the planning of a prison regime, prisons would be more likely to provide high-quality resettlement and rehabilitation.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Private security contractors, whether G4S or any other company, will operate whichever regime shows the greater likelihood of generating profits for their shareholders.

Mr Cavadino’s mistake lies in believing that he and Nacro can isolate one part of the criminal justice system and engender a humanitarian regime.

But one look at the government’s approach, with its likely adoption of US-style Titan prisons, indicates that new Labour is pushing for profits to be the deciding factor, as it has done in the NHS and other public services.

Profits are prioritised on the basis of cutting down on expenditure, which is why privateers do not pay the same salaries or contribute to the same pension scheme as in publicly operated jails.

Is it likely that privatised prisons, in these same circumstances, would invest more heavily in rehabilitation, education and post-imprisonment supervision than the state sector?

You don’t get to rake in half-yearly profits of £175 million if you have been doing so.

The main problem with the Prison Service is that the government has not been prepared to invest in humane alternatives to the “lock ‘em up and throw the key away” approach favoured by right-wing tabloid newspapers.

It has adopted in reality the desperate and deceitful philosophy of former Tory home secretary Michael Howard, the absurd view that “prison works.”

If prison worked, we would not have the current high rates of recidivism, the widespread availability of class A drugs in jail, and the majority of prisoners having drugs or alcohol abuse problems.

Our prisons are overcrowded because the message coming from government is that more and more people should be locked up.

The government assures us that this illustrates its toughness.

It does no such thing. It is tougher for offenders to be compelled to confront what they have done and to be helped to find a better way of existence than reliance on crime.

Nacro will either be part of this tougher but more humane approach or it will fall for the privateers’ mantra that, if it brings in profits, it works.

Tough Talk and Failure

Ellie Keen — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:21 +0000

THE Criminal Justice Alliance systematic demolition of the government’s case for building three US-style huge Titan prisons ought to be grabbed as a lifeline by the government.

It could explain that, after consultation, it has concluded that they would be unnecessary.

And there is substantial evidence to defend such a position, from the superiority of smaller local prisons to the potential dangers to prisoners and staff and the strained relations between prisoners and their families denied regular access because of distance considerations.

Family relationships are not to be disregarded since they affect how prisoners prepare for their eventual release and reintegration into society.

Massive institutions, holding 2,500 prisoners, fully merit the Prison Officers Association description as “filing cabinets for people.”

Their justification is cost-based, with the implication of economies of scale, but their sheer size will encourage an ethos of control rather than rehabilitation.

The main problem in the way of Justice Secretary Jack Straw paying due heed to the alliance letter is that his department’s consultation document took for granted that Titan prisons would be built.

That is the fundamental question that has to be addressed first rather than the consequences of doing so.

The government’s apparently already decided position will be backed by advocates of the simplistic “bang ‘em up and throw away the key” approach that has been shown to be an unmitigated failure.

Record numbers of people are now held in jail, but seeking to stem that wasteful and pointless tide is not a government priority.

It prefers to play to the tabloid gallery by talking tough and imitating the Tories’ “prison works” philosophy of despair rather than opting for an approach that is not only more humane but is more effective in tackling recidivism and bringing down crime figures.

If banging people up for longer, making their prison conditions harder and making no preparations for their release did those things, there might be a case for such a harsh regime, but the opposite is the case.

Experience in Britain, as well as in the more enlightened societies of Scandinavia, shows that treating prisoners as human beings, helping them off drugs and alcohol dependency, assisting their personal development through education and training and providing support on release pays dividends for society.

It is not an easy or a cheap option, but neither is the supposed alternative of locking up offenders with thousands of others in an impersonal and anonymous human warehouse.

New Labour’s underlying failure in the field of criminal justice has been its contempt for professional expertise and its hunger for approval from right-wing media commentators.

It disregards the experience and accumulated wisdom of prison staff, probation officers, criminologists, prison reformers and experts on mental health and drug use, preferring the easy, dishonest rhetoric about putting the interests of victims before those of criminals.

Victims of crime are not helped by greater numbers of offenders being locked up and alienated from society. They, like the rest of us, would benefit from resources being invested in efforts to change offenders’ outlook and behaviour rather than being squandered on Titan prisons that will profit only building corporations and private prison operators.

Security Services on trial

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:05:30 +0000

A London court has ruled that the British government must disclose information that could support the claim that torture was used to extract confessions from Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The ruling by the Judicial Review—a special court that considers the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body—is a rebuff to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who had initially argued that he was under no obligation to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with the information.

Binyam Mohamed has now been incarcerated for nearly six and half years. He was first detained in Pakistan, and then subjected to “extraordinary rendition”—Washington’s euphemism for its programme of organised kidnapping and torture—to Morocco. Here he was held for 18 months while his captors used torture—including slicing his genitals with a razor—to wring a “confession” out of him.

He currently faces trial by a US Military Tribunal, charged with conspiring to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism in an alleged “dirty-bomb” plot. He could face the death penalty if found guilty. The judges ruled that the information is “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, who has represented Mohamed since 2005, told the press, “This is a momentous decision. Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed’s innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered. The next step is for the British government to demand an end to the charade against him in Guantánamo Bay, and return him home to Britain.”

In their ruling, the judges state, “It is a long standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.”

The Judicial Review was held at the end of July over five days in both open and closed sessions, also hearing testimony in camera from British Security Service and Secret Service officers who had been involved in the questioning of Mohamed while he was detained in Pakistan and elsewhere. The court’s 75-page open judgement was finally published last week, while a secret “closed” judgement has also been made.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones found there were compelling grounds that the “exculpatory” information should be released in confidence to Mohamed’s legal representatives. No order for the provision of such information has been made until a further hearing considers the issues of “national security” raised by the Foreign Secretary as grounds for its non-disclosure.

At the Judicial Review, Dinah Rose QC, representing Mohamed, told the court that by cooperating with the US in its unlawful treatment of her client, the security and intelligence agencies were “mixed up in wrongdoing”. It was also alleged that the US “provided the UK with the fruits of his interrogation”.

Rose said that a British agent—identified only as “Witness B”—had made a “veiled threat” to Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan, to encourage his “cooperation”, with the implication that “we won’t help you unless you confess”. She also asserted that MI5 had “repeatedly” provided the US authorities with detailed information about Mohamed’s life in the UK, information that was then used by his captors during interrogation.

In his summing up, Ben Jaffey, another of Mohamed’s legal team, highlighted the contradictions in MI5’s accounts; one MI5 officer had said that British security and intelligence agencies “did not know” Binyam Mohamed’s whereabouts after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002, whereas an MI5 representative had explicitly told the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee that it believed he was in US custody.

Seeking to justify its refusal to hand over information that could uphold Mohamed’s claim that he was tortured, the government told the court that the UK was “hugely dependent in a number of areas on US intelligence”.

Moreover, it was a “fundamental principle” that information passed between the countries not be disclosed to a third party without the consent of the country which had provided it. “Any disclosure, however limited, would seriously undermine this principle to the point that future cooperation between the UK and its most valuable intelligence partner, the US, would be severely jeopardised”, posing a “very serious risk to UK national security”.

Judicial Review findings

Binyam Mohamed’s case makes a mockery of the Labour government’s pretensions to oppose the use of torture and uphold human rights.

While claiming to uphold the Geneva Conventions and international treaties outlawing the use of torture, British military personnel, as well as officers from the various intelligence agencies have been implicated in the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Binyam Mohamed, they have been caught red-handed.

The judgement records that “it was accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary… that BM [Binyam Mohamed] had established an arguable case (i) that over the period April 2002 to May 2004 he was first held by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer or a court or tribunal in Pakistan, and then detained there or elsewhere by the United States until his arrival in Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 (ii) that he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States during such detention and (iii) that he was subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Moreover, the legal hearing and court ruling establish conclusively that not only did the British government know about the mistreatment of Mohamed, British agents also facilitated this “wrongdoing”. The judges found that “The relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing”.

Even more damning, the court found “that on the basis that what was done was arguably wrongdoing, the SyS [Security Service] facilitated it in the manner and to the extent described.”

The court concluded that the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when BM was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan in the period April 2002 until at least May 2002… The Court also concluded that the Security Service continued to facilitate the interviewing of BM by providing information and questions after 17 May 2002, in the knowledge of what was reported to them as to the circumstances of his detention and treatment in Pakistan.”

The Security Services then continued to provide further information and questions to their American counterparts, even when they knew that Mohamed had been moved from Afghanistan to a third country, where he faced serious mistreatment.

Mohamed’s lawyers have been pressing the government to release information and documents they held that might sustain his claim that the “evidence” against him had been extracted under torture. After an initial request for information was lodged by his legal representatives in April, government lawyers responded by saying the “UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted”.

Binyam Mohamed’s case was finally accepted for Judicial Review at the beginning of June. Recognising the urgency of his plight, Mr Justice Saunders agreed to an “expedited” hearing, saying, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [the British government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”

It was not until this application for a Judicial Review was accepted that the Foreign Secretary then grudgingly acknowledged government documents “could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of proceedings before the Military Commissions”.

Geneva Conventions

In its deliberations, the court considered whether the British government or its agents had contravened the Genva Conventions.

“The United Kingdom Armed Forces are trained in the laws of armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions. The Joint Services Intelligence Organisations’ training documentation states that the following techniques are expressly and explicitly forbidden: (a) physical punishment of any sort; (b) the use of stress positions; (c) intentional sleep deprivations; (d) withdrawal of food, water or medical treatment and three other specified techniques.”

Citing a 2007 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service (SyS), Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the court found that the SyS and SIS “must have appreciated that it [rendition] was contrary to the rule of law.”

The ruling also documents the fact that the government knew of the ongoing and persistent mistreatment of detainees being held by the American authorities, or those acting on their behalf.

From December 2001, British intelligence operatives were able to interview detainees in Afghanistan, if permission was given by the US authorities holding them. The first SyS officers arrived at Bagram airbase on January 9, 2002 to begin this interrogation.

A report from one such officer dated January 10, 2002 contained certain “observations” about the conditions under which the detainees were being held. As a consequence, on January 11, 2002, instructions were sent to all SIS and SyS officers in Afghanistan that all prisoners, “however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection.”

Despite claims that this merely represented an “isolated case”, the judgement records that there were reports of a “further isolated case” in March 2002, and in April 2002 an SIS officer was present at an interrogation of a detainee by the US military, who complained of being kept “in isolation”.

In June 2002, according to an ISC report cited by the court, the SyS had discussed with Foreign and Commonwealth officials a US report that referred to the “hooding, withholding of blankets and sleep deprivation of a detainee in Afghanistan”.

Again, in July 2002, a SyS officer reported to his senior management that whilst in Afghanistan, “a United States official had referred to ‘getting a detainee ready’, which appeared to involve sleep deprivation, hooding and the use of stress positions.”

The court ruling cited an official document that was sent to all Security Service and Secret Service officers in Afghanistan in January 2002: “With regard to the status of the prisoners, under the various Geneva Conventions and protocols, all prisoners, however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection. You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this. That said, HMG’s [Her Majesty’s Government] stated commitment to human rights makes it important that the Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it.”

Such is the Labour government’s venal double-talk: not only has the British government tacitly accepted the use of torture by the US authorities from the beginning of the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and benefited from the “intelligence” it produces), British agents have actively facilitated it. All that counts is that HMG must not be “seen” to condone it!

Louise Casey is tired of human rights

Ellie Keen — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:55:00 +0000

In the government-commissioned “Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime” report Casey argues, among other things, that people doing community service should have the added shame of wearing high visibility jackets stating that they are being punished. She also argues that websites, leaflets, posters and public meetings should be used to name and shame those guilty of crimes such as vandalism and tell people what their punishment will be. She also suggests giving community support officers the power to detain and fine people – a bit like budget versions of Judge Dredd.

“We’re all a little tired of hearing about the human rights and civil liberties of people who break the law,” said Casey.

While there is little evidence to suggest that public humiliation would stop crime, that doesn’t seem to be the reason for the new measures.

“More offenders than ever are brought to justice and punished more severely – partly reflected in a doubling of those now locked up in prison and 93 percent of offenders being made to pay their fines,” Casey acknowledges. But the public still “don’t believe wrong-doers face adequate consequences for the crimes they commit. They don’t believe that crime has fallen when they are told so.” So crime is going down and sentencing is going up – but since people don’t understand that, it’s time to make life even more intolerable for graffiti artists and litter bugs.

Plastering a town centre with someone’s mug shot would seem to serve as an attempt to show that the government is being tough on crime. No more of this politically correct nonsense about being “tough on the causes of crime” – this is the modern equivalent of being tarred and feathered.

Casey is a long-term friend of New Labour. She can boast being one of the brains behind the anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), and Tony Blair’s “homelessness tsar”. In 1999 she accused charities of “perpetuating homelessness” by giving out sleeping bags and soup (how are we expected to rid the streets of the homeless if people don’t just let them freeze to death?).

Home secretary Jacqui Smith is said to be enthusiastic about the report, always salivating at the opportunity to make Britain a pioneer in ineffective draconian punishment. But these tactics have not always gone down too well. In Shenzhen, China, 100 people convicted of offences related to prostitution were paraded through the streets in yellow tunics in 2006. This caused such a wave of public revulsion that the government didn’t dare use the punishment again. So the question is: can crime fighting duo Smith and Casey succeed in offender humiliation where the Chinese government has failed?

Young People, Violence and Media

tim — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:58:12 +0000

Crime, violence and young people out of control – is this the true story of Britain or is it a media exaggeration of problems we have always had? Here is a simple test. As a researcher, I am aware that all the people I know, plus the ones that they know actually constitute a very large sample if I chose to ask them questions. It is a rough and ready sample and distorted in some ways, but it will still illustrate trends. I don’t know anyone who has been in an air crash, but if I ask about car accidents, then almost everyone has a story. From this I can deduce that one is much more likely than the other. Now try crimes of violence.

Here are some of the ones I know about: A young relative of mine was attacked on the council estate where he lived; in the street behind me a local boy was attacked outside his house by a wandering gang; the son of another neighbour was beaten by a group of boys in a local village; a colleague at work told how her son was beaten by a group of boys who wound belt buckles around their fists; the son of another work colleague was chased and stabbed in the face by a group of skinheads; my daughter described how the brother of a close friend was killed. He was standing in a taxi queue and a stranger apparently on drugs and drunk struck him on the head with a baseball bat. A boy from a local school stabbed a relative to death, another with his father kidnapped a drug addict and brutally assaulted him.

Gang fights now spill over into the school. A teacher told how a terrified boy had taken refuge in the staffroom while the gang trying to attack him was in the corridor outside (shouting ‘get a knife’). I mention these to friends and they give their own catalogue of horrors. Their children speak freely of the dangers they face. In London, the night 29 bus is spoken of with awe as the one you do not go on alone. Word of mouth is not necessarily more reliable than media accounts. Stories must be checked, but direct experience does have a certain power to convince.

I grew up in south east London on the borders of Bexleyheath and Erith. In the 60s, I walked about places like Abbey Wood with my friends or alone, and at weekends wandered all over London. I was once pushed by a guy who was showing off to his pals, but that was about it. There were no knives or guns and no gangs that I, or any of my friends saw. There were remote tales of mods and rockers fighting but these were largely media constructions¹. So my experience is of a quite decisive change and the available statistics bear this out. Between 1979 and 1997 recorded crimes of violence increased by two and half times. In the following ten years they doubled again². The figures need qualification because sometimes different crimes are being counted and some types may be going down- for example, domestic violence if women are leaving abusive relationships earlier. But the trend has been clearly upward with well over a million recorded offences in 2005-6 with young males most at risk. So what has happened?

Important changes came in the 1980s with the rise of new right politics and the release of the free market. This signalled the movement away from regulation and planning by the state in what was seen as the public interest, to a new philosophy which reduced the role of government and focused on the encouragement of individuals to make money and prosper. The ‘wealth makers’ would pay less tax and their enrichment would supposedly trickle down to benefit others. This political approach very rapidly divided Britain into a society of winners and losers, and exacerbated the economic difficulties which already existed. The traditional industries were already in decline but without state organisation and investment the decline became terminal. This laid waste many communities and produced sustained, structural unemployment. Children experienced growing up in families where no-one had officially worked – parents or grandparents.

Currently, about 11% of 16-18 year olds are not in employment education or training³ (estimates put the figure for 16-24 year olds at 1.2 million people). As apprenticeships and links to industry declined, school became increasingly irrelevant to many working class children. Classroom discipline problems come in part from the inability of teachers to link good behaviour to future references and the possibility of jobs. One teacher described how some 16 year old boys are only in the classroom because they are being paid around £50 a week by the local authority to be there. They have no interest in the school, are disruptive and sometimes violent. But they cannot be excluded, for as the teacher put it: “their parents are desperate for the money, for drugs, so if you stop them coming the parents will wait to get you as you leave the school”.

There was an instability produced by the displacement and movement of populations. In the 1980s, youth unemployment meant that young people were targeted for cuts in benefits and were pressured to move in search of work. The transient population also included new migrants moving from the poor to the rich world – a process intensified by the de-regulation of the international economy and the effects of conflict and war. The free flow of capital is followed by the flow of labour as people search for jobs, and the children of migrants and disadvantaged groups grow up in the poorest areas of cities like London. The vulnerable population was then added to by the policy of emptying the traditional long term mental health facilities, which in practice left many people on the streets or moving in and out of prisons.

In the new service economy, those with money and property or who traded in these did well. The top 1% doubled their wealth between 1996 and 2002. But by 2002, the bottom half of the population owned only 5% of the total wealth (down from 10% in 1986⁴). Some unskilled, low income groups were effectively excluded from the mainstream economy. One response to this amongst young people is depression and anxiety, so suicide rates especially for young males rose sharply. But this excluded class can also generate an alternative economy with its own entrepreneurs – people trading in fake designer clothes, car parts or drugs. Another response in the council estates and low income areas is the traditional human behaviour of forming into groups and fighting for what resources and territory do exist. Success goes to the toughest young males who lead in the culture of aggression and machismo. Gangs, guns, knives and drugs then tend to overlap. Research from the University of Leicester shows that gang members are more likely than non members to deal in drugs and are five times more likely to carry a gun – though street gangs are more likely to prefer knives⁵.

Another de-stabilising factor was the increased availability of cheap alcohol and drugs, and the targeting of young people by the drinks industry. In the eighties and nineties, the tourist areas of Spain, Ibiza and Crete showed the possibility of having whole villages largely filled with young people drinking. In my youth I would probably have favoured the idea of drinking a large amount and misbehaving with my friends in my local pub. But the adults there would have thrown us out. The drinks industry solved this problem by putting loud music in the bars to drive away the grown ups and packing young people vertically, into what were streamlined alcohol delivery systems. This, together with the growth of violent subcultures turned town centres into the Wild West, and quaint old pubs in St Albans now have bouncers on the door.

I want to finish by commenting on some of the points that have been raised in this conference. It has been mentioned that people sometimes look back to a golden age that perhaps never existed. The suggestion is that current concerns about the young and violent crime are influenced by such rose tinted views, while in reality the same sorts of behaviour are with us all the time. I don’t accept this argument. My view is that behaviour changes in relation to a variety of social and economic conditions and these can be affected by political policy. It is not true that people always look back to a mythical past in which times were thought to be better. Look for example at the end of the nineteenth century, when British society was seen to be calmer and more settled than in earlier periods of industrialisation. The Criminal Registrar noted in 1901 that, since the 1840s, ‘we have witnessed a great change in manners: the substitution of words without blows for blows with or without words…a decline in the spirit of lawlessness⁶‘.

There has also been discussion here about the accuracy of media portrayals of young people and crime. I was interested in a comment made by one delegate that there had been a long campaign in his area for a youth club, but it was only when someone was stabbed that anything was done about it. Many other people complained about the persistently negative images given in the press and on television. But is there not a contradiction here? Media reports of a knife attack can actually push politicians into thinking about the problems of young people and solutions such as setting up youth clubs and other facilities.

We need to face the issue that there really are problems which have to be dealt with. On the other hand I accept that there are issues of balance in representation. To present only negative images would lead to a false stereotyping of very large numbers of young people (and play to right wing political solutions such as simply building more prisons). So there is a need for a more sympathetic account in the media of what is happening in youth culture and how young people think, believe and act. There is a great lead in this being given by local media groups such as The Mouth That Roars (www.mouththatroars.com).

My main point is that the changes to our culture, which I have spoken of here, are not a media fiction. In fact the bulk of violent acts are not covered. They become like car crashes – horrific, but just too many to report. Another key conclusion is that the changes are a result of political and economic policy. The negative consequences were not always intended, but they are the result of bad government.

Gangs and violence did not begin in the 1980s –people have attacked each other with knives and other weapons for long periods of our history. But decisive intervention by the state and the building of alternative cultures has at times markedly reduced this. The challenge for social scientists is to identify possible solutions for the problems which we now face. Some of these will require a large scale re-allocation of resources and good planning. Those who worry about the nanny state and regulation forget that we either plan or put up with what the jungle delivers.

Notes:

1. See the account by Stanley Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Routledge, 2002
2. Home Office, ‘Violence against the person’ – long-term national recorded crime trend,http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page38.asp. For Scotland the figures from 1997-2006 show a one third increase( See Scottish Parliament written answer by Cathie Jamieson 23 March, 2007) http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/webapp/wa.search
3. Department for Education and Skills, Departmental Report 2007, TSO
4. Office for National Statistics, Social Inequalities, December 2004, HMSO
5. University of Leicester, ‘Gang Culture’, ebulletin, based on article in National Community Safety network News, Spring 2006.
6. Cited in H.C.G. Matthew and Kenneth O. Morgan. (1992) The Oxford History of Britain, Oxford University Press, P32-33. For a longer account of this argument see Greg Philo and David Miller, ‘The Effective Media’ in Greg Philo, 1999 (ed) Message Received, Pearson, London (http://www.gla.ac.uk/centres/mediagroup/Effective%20Media.pdf)

Prisons of war, furnaces of radicalism

tim — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:20:22 +0000

A long-term consequence of the Iraq war is the production of a new generation of young paramilitaries with combat experience in urban environments against the world’s best equipped army (see “Afghanistan in an amorphous war”, 19 June 2008). Even if the conflict in Iraq does ease in the coming months, the experience of combat there will serve well an al-Qaida movement that measures its aims in decades rather than years.

The battalions of paramilitaries in Afghanistan that fought against Soviet conscripts in the 1980s war operated in a largely rural environment, in a conflict very different from its successor. Indeed, in one of the many “blowback [1]” effects of the “war on terror”, the methods and technologies that have been learned in Iraq have now been exported back to Afghanistan. The use of roadside-bombs, for example, has escalated alarmingly in the first half of 2008, demonstrating the skills of Taliban militias as they develop their guerrilla tactics.

The jail blowback

If the combat experience gained in Iraq has been one aid to the paramilitary movements, another has been the unexpected effect of the holding [2] by the United States and its allies of large numbers of people without trial, sometimes for years on end. The overall figures are difficult to assess, although there were indications in 2007 that at least 120,000 people have been detained since 9/11. The great majority of these have been in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the incarcerated [3] also include some thousands of people across the middle east and south Asia, and hundreds in Europe.

Some details surface [4] from time to time. It is known, for example, that the United States forces in Afghanistan are building a new prison at Bagram capable of housing 600 longterm and up to 1,100 short-term prisoners (see “A world beyond control” [4], 22 May 2008). This is in addition to, and outside the control of, the Afghan prison system. The numbers are far higher in Iraq, where the US forces are currently detaining 21,000 Iraqis – a number exceeded by thousands more held in Iraqi prisons. The American-held number represents a decrease of 4,000 from mid-2007, though US contractors are in the process of building new prisons in the country, such as one in Taji near Baghdad (see Walter Pincus, “U.S. Official Cites ‘Hardening’ Of Iraqi Detainees [5]”, Washington Post, 10 June 2008).

In addition, there is a constant throughput of detainees as new people are imprisoned and others are released. At present, thirty people are detained and imprisoned by US forces every day, while fifty are released. This explains the net drop in overall numbers but also means that, at current rates, about 10,000 more Iraqis experience detention in the US system each year.

US sources report that their own personnel are getting more efficient at determining which detainees are the most radical and will be kept in prison for long periods of time. They estimate that there are approximately 8,000 detainees who cannot be proved to have committed crimes under the Iraqi judicial system and cannot therefore be handed over to the Iraqi for trial. These are people, though, who are deemed to pose such serious security threats that they must be incarcerate even without judicial process.

What this means is that there are many thousands of “hard-core” detainees in the prisons who are interacting repeatedly with much greater numbers coming through the system. It has to be remembered that all of these people are being detained without trial [6] by what is seen as a foreign occupying force. The potential for radicalisation within prison, let alone the impact on their friends and families, is therefore considerable.

In a related issue, there has been recurrent concern within the British prison system that convicted Muslim prisoners will do their best to proselytise fellow Muslim convicts in prison for non-political offences (see Jamie Doward, “Extremists train young convicts for terror plots [7]”, Observer, 15 July 2007). The chief prisons inspector, Anne Owers, drew attention to this issue in supporting the work of Muslim chaplains while highlighting a lack of training for prison officers (see Dominic Casciani, “Warning over jail radicalisation [8]”, BBC News, 14 April 2008).

The enemy effect

The worries reflected in the British reports are shared elsewhere. The most striking example comes from the most closely guarded and controversial detention centre – Guantánamo in Cuba (see David Rose, “Guantá [8]namo: America’s war on human rights [8]”, 23 September 2004). A remarkable report by one of the best informed of US journalists, Tom Lasseter of McClatchy Newspapers, gives some indication of the extent of the problem (see Tom Lasseter, “How Guantánamo became a terror training ground [9]”, Miami Herald, 17 June 2008).

He starts with an example that is worth quoting in full: “Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.” “US troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al-Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from the Guantánamo Bay detention camp the following year, however – after more than twelve months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers – he’d made connections to high-level militants.” “In fact, he had become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 ‘most wanted’ playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan – with Osama bin Laden at the top – Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.”

The detention

In a detailed survey by the McClatchy newspaper group [12], sixty-six former Guantánamo detainees were interviewed and gave a picture of abuse and mistreatment of prisoners that served to build up considerable anger, resentment and above all, a pervasive anti-American mood. What also became clear, both from former detainees and some informal contacts in the US defence department, was that convinced Islamists were adept at using the prison system and the feelings of ordinary detainees to build up a group of potential recruits to their cause.

Some of the techniques were sophisticated, even if they were exploiting the kinds of structures and lines of communication that exist in most prisons. After the original Camp X-ray at Guantánamo had been replaced by Camp Delta, the detention-centre [13] was organised into a series of units that varied in the severity of treatment depending on the perceived security threats from detainees. Those considered most dangerous and difficult were assigned to the most secure units whereas others, including many prisoners with no jihadist connections, were assigned to easier units.

However, even middle-ranking al-Qaida supporters were sufficiently experienced to avoid drawing attention to themselves, so that they could end up in an “easy” unit where they could concentrate on proselytising other inmates. As Lasseter puts it: “An angry cab driver from Kabul… may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three [high security] than an al Qaeda militant was.” Furthermore, senior al-Qaida leaders could order middle-level supporters to cause trouble so that they would end up in a high security unit, enabling them to deliver messages as part of an effective communications network.

Lasseter’s report is primarily significant because it is describing circumstances in a particularly high-security detention centre that is very well resourced and has a substantial staff of guards and detention specialists. In Iraq, the US military are dealing with tens of thousands of detainees, the great majority of whom do not turn out to be dangerous insurgents or paramilitary radicals. If even Guantánamo, with all its security and organisation, can be a paramilitary recruiting-station, then much larger and more loosely organised prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan may well be far more potent.

What this suggests, yet once more, is that yet another part of America’s “war on terror” – the detention of over 120,000 people – stands to be deeply counterproductive. The end results may not become clear for years or even decades but, once again, the United States is inadvertently doing al-Qaida’s job for it.

Links:
[1] http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101facomment84601/peter-bergen-alec-r…
[2] http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=usa_detentions
[3] http://www.gulfnews.com/world/U.S.A/10213354.html
[4] http://www.ghostplane.net/AboutTheBook
[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/09/AR200806…
[6] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/detainees/index.htm
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/15/ukcrime.prisonsandprobation
[8] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7347643.stm
[9] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation/story/572714.html
[10] http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/paulrogers.htm
[11] http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745641966
[12] http://www.mcclatchy.com/102/story/354.html
[13] http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/27970res20070111.html

Man of Straw

Ellie Keen — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:41:14 +0000

If anything epitomises the vacuous posturing which disfigures modern politics, it is successive governments’ policies on criminal justice – or to give it the tabloid treatment, “law’n‘order.”

Analysis and reason go straight out the window, in favour of “toughness.” This, however, is the brittle toughness of the school bully.

It doesn’t matter how many times the government’s own figures show crime to be falling, it doesn’t matter how many times the people who actually know anything about the issue explain that prison does not prevent crime, as far as both new Labour and the Tories are concerned, there is only one priority – appeasing right-wing media proprietors and their fearful “middle England” constituency.

New Labour has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences since it came to power in 1997 and judges have found themselves increasingly restricted on sentencing.

As a result, Britain’s prisons are currently groaning under the weight of an incredible 81,000 people.

But the capitalist media still screams that Britain’s justice system is “soft” on criminals and prison numbers continue to soar.

Such nonsense informed the misnamed Justice Secretary Jack Straw last December, when he announced that the government would deal with the problem of our groaning jails by, er, building more of them. With predictably headline-chasing machismo, he declared that these PFI-financed monstrosities – to cost at least £1.2 billion – would henceforth be known as “Titan” prisons. Gosh, how impressive.

But even this misconceived policy appeared to be in doubt yesterday. Straw popped up on BBC radio to talk about a damning report from the chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers, who insisted that a building programme should not supersede reoffending schemes, reform of women’s jails, probation and mental health.

“We haven’t got planning permission for these places. We are not definitely going ahead with them,” admitted Mr Straw, just hours before the Prime Minister, with the decisiveness that has marked his tenure, told MPs that they would go ahead – after a “consultation.” This does not inspire confidence in the government’s ability to formulate sensible policy.

“Do we really want to go down the Californian route, where the prison budget is greater than the higher education budget?” asks Howard League director Frances Crook and it is a key question for the future shape of government policy.

Sensible policymakers would listen to Ms Owers, probation officers and reformers like Ms Crook. They would also try to flesh out Tony Blair’s soundbite on being “tough on the causes of crime” – poverty and despair.

But, with all three main parties wedded to the idea of increased private-sector involvement in our public services, the future looks bleak. If it becomes profitable to lock people up, then big business will lobby for even more “tough” sentencing policies and, if this coincides with the neoliberal government’s need for more control over their citizens, then that is what they will be given.

It is vital that socialists and trade unionists campaign for a genuine display of toughness from a Labour government – the sort of toughness that can stand up to the likes of the Daily Mail and its billionaire handlers.

Treating people like cattle

JamieSW — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:46:55 +0000

The abusive conditions in which live farm animals are transported has rightly provoked immense outrage. But the inhuman conditions in which prisoners are transported around the country merits no outcry at all. Why the double standards?

Prisoners, many of them on remand, who later will be found innocent of any crime, are packed into claustrophobic sweatbox prison vans. Victims describe the experience as dehumanising. Some say they felt like sheep in slaughterhouse pens or like slaves on the Atlantic crossing.

These prison transit vehicles are run by private companies such as GSL. They operate under contract on behalf of the prison service.

Inside many of these Home Office-approved human cattle trucks, each prisoner is locked in a tiny coffin-like cubicle measuring about 34in by 24in, with a 10in square clear plastic window. The cubicles have a height of around five feet, which means that most detainees are unable to stand up. They have to remain seated on a small hard metal seat with no seatbelts. Every time the prison van swerves and brakes, they get shaken around. There is no protection from serious injury or death in the event of a traffic accident.

Many prisoners spend long hours in these vans as they are transported, sometimes hundreds of miles, between courts and prisons. They usually get no fresh air or exercise, no food or water and no toilet facilities. They are expected to piss and shit in their cubicles.

No one expects five-star prison vans, but a minimum standard of basic decency – like toilet facilities, water and food on long journeys – seems a reasonable expectation of a civilised society.

Even children and teenagers have been subjected to these depraved Victorian asylum-like conditions. Baroness Anelay of St Johns expressed to the House of Lords “significant concerns that we have about the conditions and treatment of children during transportation from both court to custody and between establishments. The conditions in which the children are transported are often very poor. Young people report spending lengthy periods in what are only, after all, sweatboxes, without access to food and water or regular toilet breaks.”

Following an inspection of Onley young offender institution last year, the report of the chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, stated: “It is deplorable to find, as we did, that some young people were not only reduced to urinating in the escort vehicle, but also had to clean it out on arrival”.

Retired midwife and peace campaigner Olivia Agate told the Guardian how she spent five hours in a prison van: “During the journey, a woman shouted out that she was going to be sick but the staff ignored her … We could hear the poor girl retching but the van carried on. When we got to Durham, the smell was awful.”

I think we can all imagine the effect that transportation in these barbaric conditions has on people who are physically ill, traumatised, mentally unstable or claustrophobic – especially the many thousands of people who are innocent victims of wrongful arrests or convictions.

Moreover, even if the people in transit are guilty of crimes, this is no excuse for the Home Office and prison service, in our name, to stoop to the level of criminals and degrade their fellow human beings in this way.

Peter Simon, a black activist, was arrested following a protest in support families and young people last month. He has firsthand experience of how Serco treats prisoners in transit. This is part of his account of what he alleges happened to him:

“The attendant gestured toward the opening of the chamber and mumbled, ‘crouch in’ while directing me to step upwards into the little booth … (He) began battering his shoulder hard against the door of my cubicle from the outside, compressing me further within, ramming again … I was now beginning to feel like a black-skinned slave tight-packed (as of old, albeit in a different variation of the hell) out of some kind of sadistic lust for human degradation and profit … My mouth was drying up even more and a slow panic was beginning to ensue. My chest was getting tighter … my heart rate had risen to just over 95 bpm and getting to 100 and I was floundering … the sickness churned again in my stomach. I suffered a cramp attack in the left leg. But I could not in any way stretch to alleviate the agony, and I found myself groaning out in despair. I called out to the attendant to let him know I was ill. He lifted his head but remained seated. The lack of ventilation (too). I was feeling so light-headed, tight-packed and boxed. I gasped, lost consciousness.”

These are symptomatic of the wider abuses of the prison service, which Juliet Lyon, Director the Prison Reform Trust, discussed when I interviewed her for my Talking With Tatchell online TV series. You can watch the interview here. The fact that abuses are endemic in the whole prison system is no excuse to ignore, downplay or accept the abuses in the transportation system.

The humiliation and degradation of the prison van system happens with the knowledge of the home secretary Jacqui Smith and the director of the prison service, Phil Wheatley. They are aware of the squalid conditions, yet they continue to license companies like Serco and GSL which perpetrate this abuse.

These state-sanctioned human rights abuses are a criminal enterprise. The home secretary, director of prison service and the heads of GSL and Serco should, in my opinion, be prosecuted and put behind bars.

It is this kind of government-authorised inhumanity that has driven me and thousands of other people to leave the Labour party we once loved and served. It is now a party that all too often panders to the lynch mob mentality and authorises the brutalisation of other human beings in order to grab a few more tainted law and order votes. Shame on Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith. New Labour. New abuses.

UK: No extension to pre-charge detention limits is acceptable

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 23:15:37 +0000

No extension to pre-charge detention limits for terrorism suspects is acceptable, said Amnesty today (6 December) as the organisation reacted to Home Office proposals to raise the limit to 42 days.

Amnesty International UK Campaigns Director Tim Hancock said:

‘Granting the power to detain suspects for 42 days without charge would rob people of their basic rights. No amount of parliamentary window-dressing can disguise that fact. The ‘consensus’ is against extending pre-charge detention, not in favour.’

Amnesty recently published a briefing outlining ten arguments against extending pre-charge detention.

UK: Ten good reasons why extending pre-charge detention is a bad idea:

1. UNDERMINES one of our most basic rights, enshrined in UK law as far back as Magna Carta and now at the heart of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which UK is a signatory: the right for anyone who is detained by the state to be told promptly why they are being held and what they are charged with.

2. COMMUNITY relations will suffer if the Muslim community appears to be particularly targeted for prolonged pre-charge detention. This could have an impact on intelligence gathering and policing, and could undermine positive efforts to engage with Muslims in the UK.

3. IMPACT on any individuals detained for such a long time – in terms of their job, family, house, friendships and relationships within their community – would be devastating.

4. QUESTIONED widely by experts – Lord Goldsmith (former Attorney General), Stella Rimington (former MI5 Chief), Sir Ken Macdonald (Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service) and parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights.

5. UNDERMINES presumption of innocence -Two months in prison is roughly equivalent to the length of time someone might serve in prison for assault. Lengthy pre-charge detention would impose what is in effect a ‘sentence’ of two months on somebody who may never be charged with any crime.

6. UK ALREADY has by far the longest pre-charge detention period for offences related to terrorism of any common law state.

7. INTERNATIONAL STANDING – it is much harder for the UK to criticise the human rights records of other countries that lock people up without charge when we are doing so at home. This measure would give other countries a ‘green light’ to curtail civil liberties.

8. HISTORY – from Northern Ireland and Amnesty’s experience all over the world – shows that locking people up without charge doesn’t work.

9. STATEMENTS obtained from suspects could be deemed inadmissible at trial if detention conditions are considered to be unduly harsh.

10. SAFEGUARDS discussed are insufficient – the kind of judicial oversight proposed is in no way the same as charging someone and giving them the chance to defend themselves in a fair trial.

Prison Works

Tim Holmes — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 15:36:45 +0000

The French philosopher Michel Foucault, reflecting on the history of penal reform and prison in Western Europe made the remark that ‘failure never matters’. It was an acute observation. Despite masses of empirical evidence that prison is expensive and in regards to recidivism, counter-productive, the British government continues to incarcerate, both the adult population, and for the purpose of this article, young people, at an alarming rate. Labour, after ten years in power has continued to promote the political chimera, which has become a shibboleth of modern government, that ‘prison works’. Surely it is time to question this orthodoxy and ask why, that under a Labour government, which talks a great deal about social inclusion, are so many of our young people are being incarcerated? To understand the origins of Labours fixation with incarceration it is necessary to turn the clock back to the 1990s and the dying days of Conservative Britain, when the architects of New Labour positioned the party as being ‘tough on crime’.

The context of mainstream political life in 1990s Britain was one in which law and order issues rose to the top of the political agenda. Right wing thinking on crime became hegemonic and the left was routinely described as being ‘soft’ on law and order. In any opinion poll regarding political priorities, crime was never too far behind traditional concerns such as health, education and the economy. In the early 1990s, public debate and opinion was undoubtedly drifting towards the right. This in part, reflected the ascendancy of the view promoted by the Tories and the mainstream media, and echoed by Labour, that British society was in the grip of a moral crisis. This moral crisis, according to the right, had been caused and exacerbated by the welfare state which had fostered a dependency culture.

Right wing sociologists theorised that a new ‘underclass’ had emerged in society. The ‘underclass’ were portrayed as an infectious and dangerous sub-group that lived on welfare benefits. It was an extremely gendered discourse. The ‘male’ was constructed as violent, predatory and habitually criminal. The ‘female’ was sexually promiscuous, bore children out of wedlock and in the main was responsible for nurturing a new and dangerous generation of youths, particularly young men. In the race to demonise young people the tabloid press quickly picked up the baton; stories of joyriders and inner city gangs wreaking havoc in housing estates became commonplace. For the tabloids, moral panics, once the unintended outcome of journalistic endeavour now seemed to have become a goal.

The outcome of moral panics was a return to an authoritarian populism and the creation of a climate in which public pressure to make children accountable for wrong doing increased. Moreover, there was a growing concentration on the needs of the victims, prejudiced by the unsubstantiated claim, repeated like a mantra by populist politicians and the press, that the rights of the criminal had superseded the rights of the victim. The political and social consequences of this tough law and order discourse, was to shift the public focus from the welfare of the child to offending behaviour and its consequences.

In the midst of this climate the Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger was murdered by two ten year old boys. The Bulger killing sent the tabloid press into a feeding frenzy and they realised quickly that child killings and abductions could sell newspapers. In the aftermath of the murder, the press encouraged a demonisation of two small children who they held up as ‘evil’. Chased as they went into court by a lynch mob baying for blood and revenge, Robert Thomson and Jon Venebles, both aged ten, were tried in an adult court, without recourse to psychological support and counselling, with little concession given to their status as children. This case, albeit an extreme example, highlighted just how far welfarism and the rights and well being of the child had slipped off the political agenda.

The Labour party has at times perfected the art of studying and manipulating public opinion. The architects of New Labour (Tony Blair, who before the death of John Smith in 1994 was Shadow Home Secretary) recognised that a drift to the right regarding law and order was taking place. Moreover, Labour were not just interested in pandering to the tabloids, or the readership of the Daily Mail and so called ‘Middle England’, they were also keen to respond to their heartland vote which was to be found in working class housing estates. The 1998 British Crime Survey revealed that three out of every four respondents believed that the police and the courts were too lenient on juveniles. Research has indicated that forty per cent of recorded crime takes place in just ten per cent of areas, the majority of which are poor. Furthermore, more than half of the people who show up in official statistics as victims of crime are repeat victims; the majority are from poor backgrounds. This means that the poor as a proportion of the population face a disproportionate amount of crime (Hughes, et al, 2002).

In the midst of decaying housing estates and the fragmentation and dislocation of the nuclear family compounded by generational unemployment, communities turned inwards upon themselves. In this context, public opinion moved to the right. Fear is deliberately manufactured and then politically exploited, which Labour performed to perfection. Once the political project became that of responding to offering various gestures of popular vengeance, a return to incarceration was inevitable.

New Labours slogan in the 1990s was education, education, education; in terms of crime and justice it could have been jail, jail, jail! Although Labours reforms have introduced a mixed economy of criminal justice, the government has presided over an increase in the number of young people being locked up. Believe it or not, during the Tory years, the incarceration of young people actually fell. The fear on the left and by concerned practitioners who worked with vulnerable young people, that the coming to power of Thatcher, who fought the 1979 election campaign on a strong law and order and anti-youth ticket, would lead to child incarceration spiralling out of control was never realised. The primary reason for a decrease in confinement was a commitment by the Treasury to reduce public expenditure. It was in this context that punishment in the community and alternatives to court and custody began to emerge. However, as we have seen in the nineties when the law and order pendulum swung towards the right, the rate of youth incarceration shot upwards. In 1993, the number of 15-17 year olds held in young offender institutions in England and Wales was 769; by 2002 it was 2,089 (Muncie, et al, 2002).

Labours drive towards incarceration has been exacerbated by two major developments, namely the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act (CDA Act), the central piece of their legislative crime agenda, and the implementation of polices under the ubiquitous term anti-social behaviour. The CDA Act enabled the courts to have power to lock up children between the ages of twelve and seventeen for ‘non-grave offences’ (Muncie, et al, 2002). The act also introduced parenting and anti-social behaviour orders and curfews. By 2000, as a consequence of the CDA Act, Britain was sending a greater proportion of its young people to prison than any other European Union state. Anti-social behaviour (ASBO) legislation has contributed towards an increase in child incarceration; breach of an ASBO can lead to prison even when the original offence was non-prisonable. According to the organisation Statewatch, 42% of ASBOS are breached and 46% of those breaches result in a custodial sentence. As a consequence of anti-social behaviour legislation, fifty children a month are being incarcerated in the UK.

The increased incarceration of young people is an issue which needs to be addressed by the left and all those concerned with the welfare of the child. Despite all the available evidence that prison does not work, Labour continues to lock up young people at an alarming rate. In England and Wales, the incarceration of young people, is at a higher rate per one hundred thousand of the population, than any other country in Europe. In 2002, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed ‘deep concern’ at the number of children in custody in England and Wales’.

The ‘prison works’ manta of Labour and neo-liberal governments alike is one which the left needs to challenge. Prison does not impact on the overall crime rate, nor does it reduce the likelihood of re-offending, and neither does it decrease the public’s fear of crime. Instead of rehabilitating people, prison actually manufactures criminals. Contemporary discussion on a ‘crisis in prison’, and ‘over-crowding’ amidst reports of jails ‘bursting at the seams’ will not stop the flow of people entering detention. Instead the response of the government will be to build more jails and detention centres; the development of Private Finance Initiative prisons means that the private sector can make a profit out of jail.

All of the empirical evidence points to the fact the prison is the first step on the road to a life in criminality. Re-conviction rates of young people discharged from custody are high. Regular reports, like those produced by the Children’s Society reveal that the great majority of young people in custody, often for non-violent offences, posed no serious risk to the community prior to incarceration, but became a significant danger on their release. Custody, according to Muncie, et al, leads to broken links with family, friends, education, work and leisure. Moreover, incarceration causes stigmatisation and labelling, which in turn reduced the chances of employment and results in increased alienation amongst young people. Consequently the risk of offending is increased.

Labours talk of ‘early intervention’ is window dressed in progressive jargon. Scratch beneath the surface and you find something more sinister. ‘Early intervention’ has resulted in a ‘net widening’ of the criminal justice system and has drawn traditional welfare orientated sites such as education, health and social work into the business of crime control. Moreover, early intervention has brought about a new penal realm whereby ‘guilt’ is no longer the founding principal of justice, which has resulted in ‘interventions’ being made into the lives of children and young people without the necessity of offence behaviour.

In terms of penal reform, Britain, as in so many other areas, the most obvious being foreign policy, continues to follow a pan-American model. When you compare the UK with Scandinavian countries the difference is striking. Finland, for example, has reduced its young offender population by 90% since 1960 without any consequent rise in offending. This was achieved by suspending imprisonment on the condition that a period of probation was successfully completed. Consequently, immediate ‘unconditional’ sentencing to custody is now a rarity. It is also important to note that Finland has not pursued rigorous neo-liberal winner takes all policies like the US and the UK. In the main, the Finish experience has been successful because they have long recognised that social development policy is also the best crime reduction policy. Britain on the other hand continues with the tried and tested mantra of ‘prison works’. The question in terms of the Labour government is obvious: why given the contemporary emphasis on ‘evidence based’, ‘what works’ and ‘best value’ policies does the state continue with incarceration. The answer is that prison has long been based on political expediency rather than pragmatism. British society is being placed under tightened surveillance, control and fear. Prison is a necessary component of this system and since the eighteenth century has been the states legitimised form of punishment. The continued presence of prison in our society is based on symbolism rather than on any actual usefulness. Prison is a reminder of the states brutality and need for control. The fact that prison does not reduce crime or recidivism is irrelevant; because as Foucault observed, when it comes to the history of prison, ‘failure never matters’.

Gary Fraser has recently completed a Masters in Social Policy and Criminology and is a member of Solidarity.

No Votes in Jails

christian — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The high level of deaths in custody in Britain is a condemnation of a society that likes to proclaim itself as civilised.

When people are held in police cells, sent to jail or placed in secure mental health hospitals, the state has a duty of care to them.

Political neanderthals may attempt to wash their hands of this segment of society, but the standard of care given is a measure of our society’s humanity.

And the fact that 114 people in these institutions were able to take their own lives last year indicates an inadequate level of care.

Prisoners Officers Association leaders, whose members care for inmates of prisons and secure mental health hospitals, have noted the huge increase in the numbers of prisoners who are inside because of drink and drug-related problems.

Many have mental problems associated with traumas endured while serving in the armed services, especially in the plethora of overseas wars in recent years.

Former paratrooper Christopher Alder’s needless death in a police cell and the uncaring and racist treatment that he suffered provides a graphic illustration of the depth of this problem.

While the prison population is rising partly because of the government’s addiction to the outdated prescription of former Tory home secretary Michael Howard that “Prison works,” it is also because greater numbers of addicted, mentally ill and homeless people are roaming the streets.

The prisons are used as human filing cabinets to tidy up communities and to keep society’s flotsam and jetsam out of sight and sound of the rest of us.

But these are not flotsam and jetsam. They are people like us, who have particular problems for which they need help not incarceration.

When the government closed down the NHS network of mental hospitals, it did so by offering an alternative, more humane system of care in the community.

This proposed new system had much to commend it, but it cannot be carried out on the cheap, which is precisely what the government has tried to do.

Without advice and support, patients can get into difficulties, can fail to take their medication and can cause harm to themselves and others.

The response of the right-wing media to such tragic events is to demand that people with psychiatric problems should be locked up for longer periods in harsher conditions.

In reality, what is needed is an entirely different, more caring approach.

For a start, there should be greater numbers of trained, unionised prison warders to ensure security and support for vulnerable prisoners.

There should also be rapid progress in modernising existing facilities to make it more difficult for disturbed prisoners to harm themselves.

There should also be enhanced medical support, both inside institutions and in the community, so that patients with mental health problems do not become alienated or unstable.

It is said that there are no votes in jails, but the government has to rise above political opportunism and take the steps necessary to make prisons safer places to be and to also cut down on the number of people being sent there.