TWITTER & BISTED...
...describes the Mirror's coverage of the aviary at HMP Albany and the fact that prisoners (shock, horror) in general can keep birds as pets. Never let it be said that a tabloid missed an opportunity for a bit of sensationalism whilst putting the boot into prisoners.
[24/01/12]
FALSELY CATEGORISING PRISONERS
Another facet of the ongoing guerilla war between prison officers, aided apparently by governors, and the government that is essaying massive cuts in the Prison Service budgets (alongside their programme of privatisation - see below) has been revealed in an article on the TheOpinionSite.org: the false categorising of prisoners to a higher risk level, thereby ensuring that they end up in much more expensive to run high or maximum security prisons. It's a simple equation: more higher category prisoners = the need for more staff. The incentive is obvious.
[24/01/12]
WINSON GREEN KEYS ARREST
It appears that what many of us suspected at the time that it occurred - the timing was far to much of a coincidence - might just be about to be confirmed. Namely that a disgruntled screw half-inched the master keys at HMP Birmingham because he was more than a little bit cheesed off that his beloved Winson Green had been privatised... [Read More]
[23/01/12]
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
As the POA continues its propaganda offensive against staff cuts in the guise of continued warnings about the potential for riots across the prison estate [surely a question of 'if they cry wolf often enough one is sure to come along eventually and prove their point'?], and prison officers staging a walkout at HMP Nottingham yesterday in protest against... [Read More]
[20/01/12]
A MODERN FIT-FOR-PURPOSE PRISON?
It is one of the few points of common ground between the last two governments to plan to provide a modern, fit-for-purpose prison estate (though it could be argued that the exact purposes envisaged by New Labour and the current Tory party are somewhat different despite the urge to do it all as cheaply as possible). It was the driving force behind the then government's... [Read More]
[19/01/12]
VICTIMLESS CRIMINALS?
In yet another move in the Coalition's increasingly vicious demonisation of anyone who falls foul of the law, be it people caught up in rioting and facing the prospect of being hosed down by water cannon and even shot (baton round or even live fire) or housebreakers becoming a legitimate target for any or all forms of vigilante action, now it seems that anyone serving time... [Read More]
[27/12/11]
SLOPPING OUT NOT A BREACH OF HUMAN RIGHTS
In a judgment yesterday the High Court decided that the practice of slopping out, basically prisoners having to shit in a bucket, was not a breach of prisoners' human rights, contrary to a previous decision by the Court of Session in Scotland held that the conditions at HMP Barlinnie breached the pursuer’s rights under Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights... [Read More]
[21/12/11]
SCOTTISH PRISON TEACHERS TO STRIKE
Lecturers at Carnegie College, which has recently won the contract to provide prisoner education in the east of Scotland, are planning to strike over the College's plans to reduce the numbers of qualified teachers on the new contract, replacing them with unqualified staff. Education Institute of Scotland General Secretary Ronnie Smith said, "Lecturers are staging this day of strike action... [Read More]
[08/12/11]
NEWS FROM THE STATES
Research commissioned by the Minnesota Department of Corrections has found evidence for something that we've always known, namely that the more contact prisoners have with their friends and family, the less likely it is that they will be alienated and be likely to end up back inside from having been sentenced for a further crime once released... [Read More]
[07/12/11]
MUSLIMS NOW 70% OF FRENCH PRISON POPULATION
Muslims, who make up between 5-12% of the French population (estimates vary), now officially top the 70% mark in French prisons! And we thought that there was something wrong in English and Welsh prisons where MoJ statistics claim they make up 12% of the population (four times that of the general population compared to the 11% of prisoners that are black, 2.8 times the outside population).
[For more on this subject see this article on Racism in the Close Supervision Units.]
[24/11/11]
PRISONS CHIEF: JAILS MUST STOP BEING 'VICTORIAN WAREHOUSES'
So says Nick Hardwick. The problem is that that is exactly what they were designed to be: Victorian warehouses for the poor - the feral underclass of the likes of Edmund du Cane and Edwin Chadwick. It doesn't matter how much you pimp up a clapped-out Ford Anglia with alloy wheels, go-faster stripes, a new upholstery job and fluffy dice: it still remains a clapped out old banger.
[24/11/11]
W(H)ITHER THE REHABILITATION REVOLUTION?
It is a question many of us have been asking since we have been able to examine exactly what has and what has not (lost to the siren calls of the Tory right) made it into the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. Here is one view on the outcome. [Read More]
[19/11/11]
FILE ON 4
Just to put Gerry Northam [An Inside Job?] straight on one thing, there is one organisation that is against prisoners having to work a 40 hour week, particularly as the plans for the scheme currently stand, and that is the Campaign Against Prison Slavery. And the reasons for our stance are comprehensibly set out across this website.
[07/11/11]
COALITION MISSING A TRICK
Here's an option that the cash-strapped Coalition government have so far failed follow, but one that a number of states in America are pursuing: making prisoners work as firefighters - killing two birds with one stone by cutting back on the cost of maintaining fully manned fire stations (with their unionised labour) whilst putting prisoners to work, and in the US case, for no pay... [Read More]
[20/10/11]
PELICAN BAY HUNGER STRIKE OFF BUT CONTINUES ELSEWHERE
On October 13, after nearly three weeks on hunger strike, Pelican Bay prisoners announced the suspension of their current protest following the publishing of a CDCR memo detailing a comprehensive review of every Security Housing Unit (SHU) prisoner in California whose SHU sentence is related to gang validation.. [Read More]
[15/10/11]
PELICAN BAY HUNGER STRIKE II WEEK 3
The second round of the Californian Secure Housing Unit (SHU) hunger strike protests that resumed on September 26 is now well into its third week as the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) continues to ratchet up its attempts to break the resolve of the participants. At end of 1st week, the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition... [Read More]
[12/10/11]
MORE TABLOID STUPIDITY
Not to be outdone, the Daily Mirror came up with its own stupidity on the subject of prisoners' wages yesterday, claiming that:
"Prisoners have been paid more than £70million over the past two years – some of them for doing nothing. Murderers, rapists and robbers..." [Read More]
[11/10/11]
MORE SYNTHETIC TABLOID OUTRAGE
Today's Scottish Daily Record is carrying a story about a planned increase in Scottish prisoners' wages: 'Fury as prisoners' wages increase by 100 per cent' bellows the headlines in default tabloid fashion.
"PRISONERS in Scotland's jails are enjoying wage rises of up to 100 per cent as the rest of the country flounders in recession. Some convicted criminals are raking in almost DOUBLE..." [Read More]
[10/10/11]
A POINT OF VIEW: PRISONS DON'T WORK
An interesting 10 minute programme on Radio4 from Will Self on prisons and punishment. [Text] [iPlayer]
[10/10/11]
WITH ADVOCATES LIKE THIS...
"...the 30,000 adult men serving long sentences who spend 20 years lying on their bunks in pyjamas..." - Francis Crook on Today, Radio 4.
...who needs the rhetoric of the Mail/Express/Sun/Mirror? [see also]
[26/09/11]
SHU HUNGER STRIKE RESUMPTION STATEMENT
Prisoners in the Pelican Bay Secure Housing Unit (SHU) have confirmed that they will resume their indefinite hunger strike on 26 September and have released a statement outlining the reasons for their actions here.
[20/09/11]
PELICAN BAY HUNGER STRIKE TO RECOMMENCE 26 SEPT.
Prisoners in the Pelican Bay Secure Housing Unit (SHU) are to resume their indefinite hunger strike on 26 September that they had suspended at the end of July in order to carry out negotiations with Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) representatives... [Read More]
[14/09/11]
THE HIGH COST OF PRISON VISITS
Arizona, the American state notorious for Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tent city and the proposal to use unpaid prison labour to build its own $50 million subscription-funded Mexican border fence, has introduced a $25 prison visitors fee. The one-off non-refundable levee is charged to adults wishing to visit prisoners in the state's 15 prisons and is ostensibly to cover background checks on the visitors. However money raised will also go towards the upkeep of the 10 state-run prisons (5 are privately-run) and opponents have filed a lawsuit seeking to have the fee declared an illegal tax.
[13/09/11]
PIMPING CATEGORY D PRISONERS
Category D prisoners across England and Wales learnt at the end of last month that they have been selected as the first victims of Ken Clarke's new take on the Tory default nostalgia for all things Victorian: making prisons places of 'real work'. A key component of the so-called 'Rehabilitation Revolution', 'real work' is designed both to be a sop... [Read More]
[08/09/11]
IKEA AND PRISON LABOUR
Stasi files have revealed that in the 1970s and 1980s IKEA used slave labour in some of its 65 East German factories to produce parts and furniture under miserable working conditions. According to the German public broadcaster WDR, these included political prisoners from a prison in Waldhiem who were forced to work in the next door IKEA factory building the company's popular Klippan sofa.
[06/09/11]
PELICAN BAY SHU HUNGER STRIKE TO RESUME?
Following abortive discussions with CDCR officials which raised no substantive offers of changes to the SHU regimes, it now appears that Pelican Bay SHU prisoners will recommence their suspended indefinite hunger strike. In a letter to the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, Mutope Duguma outlined the prisoners' determination to continue their protest despite the fact that many of them suffer from debilitating and often life-threatening illnesses. The protestors feel that the prison authorities will not take them seriously and refuse to "remain under this tortuous treatment" and are willing to provide "the body count that they seek or a bunch of hospitals filled up throughout the state."
[03/09/11]
CAT O' NINETAILS WAGS THE DOG
The Coalition's stupid knee-jerk (verging on elbow-jerk) reactions to the recent 'civil' disturbances are threatening not only to transfer the street riots into the country's already overcrowded jails but are also doomed to hole below the waterline the projected 'savings' deemed to be gained via the 'Rehabilitation Revolution' and cutbacks in projected Ministry of Justice spending... [Read More]
[18/08/11]
CAPTIVE CONSUMERS
According to Inside Time, a leaked confidential Ministry of Justice directive signed by the "Head of Prisoner Retail" from the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), an entitled 'Choosing items with higher margins', "Each establishment retains the profit margin made between the purchase price and the selling price of items as a contribution... [Read More]
[12/08/11]
HMP BIRMINGHAM ON LOCKDOWN
According to the Birmingham Mail, HMP Birmingham is on lockdown due to increased tensions on the wings paralleling those on the streets outside in Winson Green together with the expected influx of new prisoners who have been involved in the civil disturbances. According to an inside source (read: screw, who no doubt received a nice backhander for the information or who is on the paper's unofficial pay role), “All wings have been on lockdown. We are on the highest level of risk.” [11/08/11]
