Campaign Against Prison Slavery

CIVITAS BITES BACK

It was inevitable that the right-wing pressure group Civitas would be unable to resist defending their 'Prison Works' platform from criticism by Ken Clarke and try to show that the theory that 'community punishment' is not the more financially prudent option. They have done this with the release of ‘Prison, Community Sentencing and Crime’ by Ken Pease of the Manchester Business School. [29/08/10]

TUG THAT FORELOCK OR ELSE!

A judge at Gloucester Crown Court has told defendants that they will either show him respect by addressing him as "Sir" or "Your Honour" or face the consequences and go straight to jail. What he in fact means is that defendants should show their deference to him by tugging their forelocks and keeping quiet unless spoken to, even though it is they that are on trial. Respect surely is something that is earned, not something that is given to someone simply because of their position of power or privilege? [04/08/10]

PRISON EDUCATORS STRIKE UPDATE

The University and College Union have released the full list of the 71 prisons where their member will be on strike tomorrow in protest about the introduction of new contracts (see story below). [29/07/10]

CHINA EXPORTS PRISON LABOUR

The Guardian has reprinted an interesting article by Brahma Chellaney, first published on the project-syndicate.org website, entitled 'Convicts For Export'. We have known for a long time that the backbone of Chinese state industry are the country's prisons, where inmates are exploited in a whole host of industries: the mining of coal and metal ores; in cement and brick works; vehicle manufacture and repair; agriculture; processing tea; making plastic, clothing and tools, much of which is exported and finds its ways into High Street pound shops. Even Adidas footballs. You name it, the Chinese use prison labour to make it. [29/07/10]

PRISON EDUCATORS TO GO ON STRIKE

Education staff employed by The Manchester College in prisons the North-East region are due to go on strike next Wednesday 4 August over pay and conditions. This follows the recent announcement that the college will shed 250 prison teaching jobs because the company under bid for the prisons contract and need to make savings of £3m and plans to de-recognise the University and College Union over it fight against plans for a two-tier pay structure for teaching children and adults. [See the recent Inside Time article '250 Prison Teaching Jobs To Go'] [29/07/10]

PRISONERS IN GULF OIL CLEAN-UP PART 2

In the past couple of years federal and state prison labour programs in the U.S. have been suffering large-scale lay-offs because of budget restraints and the general down-turn in the market. However, in one particular area of the country prison labour has been booming in recent months, with huge numbers of prisoners being secretly bussed in to work on the BP Gulf oil spill clean-up operation. [26/07/10]

PLANS FOR HMP RUNWELL WITHDRAWN

Plans to build a new 1,500 place category B 'mini-Titan' prison on the derelict hospital site at Runwell, Essex have been withdrawn at the last minute. The application was due to go before the Chelmsford Borough Council planning committee on Tuesday night but the Ministry of Justice pulled the plans on Monday lunchtime. The planning committee hearing had already been postponed waiting for clarification from the MoJ on a number of issues and the Essex Wildlife Trust had also asked for a postponement to allow time for a survey of the site to ascertain whether the locally found endangered species the Hazel Dormouse was present on the site, something that the MoJ's Biodiversity Action Plan had discounted out of hand (claiming that, as there was no hazel present on the site, there should be no dormice - a convoluted piece of logic as the hazel is not the dormouse's only food source). [21/07/10]

KEN CLARKE: "I'LL MAKE THEN WORK"

Ken Clarke has revealed in an interview in the Sun that he plans to make "a good percentage of prisoners...do something more sensible in prison. Make them work, give them training - a template to make better people of them. The aim is to give these guys the idea that work is a normal part of life. If they wish to get out of going in and out of prison, they'd better get used to working. It will hopefully form part of our rehabilitation revolution to be published in the autumn." [16/07/10]

THE REINTRODUCTION OF TRANSPORTATION?

Rumour has it that the LibCon government are looking for an island somewhere that is either owned by the Crown, but has been forgotten about, or an unpopulated one that is cheap enough to be purchased by a cash-strapped Home Office. The reason? Well, Ken Clarke apparently has been looking back through old statutes and previous criminological models and, having already rejected prison ships, has come up with the idea of reintroducing transportation as the must-have cost-cutting exercise. So, as there are no longer any colonies that need to be populated (though the government are holding secret talks with the Falkland Islands government with the idea of using South Georgia), they have to find an alternative. A potential solution is one of the cheap Aegean islands that the Greek government are having to sell off in order to pay their massive debts. However, a Greek island is thought to be too close to home and possibly not escape proof enough - no sharks a la Devil's Island you see. [05/07/10]

ASSOCIATION OF PRISONERS - NATIONAL CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

The Association of Prisoners, after a year's worth of discussions and consultations, intended to find the most effective way forward, has launched itself on the world in a new revised form [see: http://prisonersvoice.blogspot.com/ for some background to the organisation]. In doing so its General Secretary, Ben Gunn, has written to the Director General of the Prison Service challenging Prison Service Order 4480: Prisoners Representative Associations, which specifically rejects any organisation on a national level, on the basis that prisoners do not have shared interests!

"The Executive Committee of the Association of Prisoners now asserts the right, under Article 11(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights, to form and operate a national association. We accept that you may exercise your rights under Article 11(2), but we place you on notice that any such restrictions will be legally restricted."

The AoP are asking organisations and individuals to support the AoP's campaign and the principle of prisoners organising into an association. [02/07/10]

A REHABILITATION REVOLUTION?

It has been enlightening watching the debate on sentencing both north and south of the border in recent days, and not just because of the strange bedfellows revealed. In England and Wales, if Ken Clarke is to be believed, the Tories, with a little help from their Lib Dem friends, have declared themselves to be reformed characters, leaning half-heartedly towards cutting short-term sentencing, increasing the use of community 'penalties' and a general retrenchment from the 'prison works' position. [01/07/10]

BITTEN BY SUN-BAITING SNAKES

We felt we could not let this typical tacky little Sun prisoner-baiting non-story, rather strangely entitled 'Jail-snake!' (clearly not up to their usual low level of excruciating puns - so no Sun pun fun with this one), pass by without comment. The paper obviously felt it was time that it fed its news-hungry readers a story of the perils of imprisonment to counterbalance the daily diet of 'prison is so cushy and everyone has 32" flatscreen TVs and PSIIs' stories, otherwise why print a piece about a prisoner at HMP The Verne being bitten by an adder, the only venomous snake native to the British Isles? [28/06/10]

SHOCK HORROR: LIB-CONS MAY CUT PRISON SENTENCES

The outrageous (for them anyway) news that the coalition government may go against decades of Tory policy and right-wing press tub-thumping and jail fewer people by upping the provision of community sentences and cutting the length of sentences certainly seemed to have caught the Daily Mail unawares. So much so, that in its coverage of the interview that Ken Clarke, the new justice secretary, gave Sky News it pulled out all the stops to try and paint the possible plan as some sort of pinko posturing from someone who has gone 'soft' on crime and who is trying to betray the Tory faithful. [15/06/10]

ONE RULE FOR 'THEM', ONE RULE FOR 'US'

A little birdie (obviously sitting on the garden wall) has told us that a number of prison officers, plus one or two psychologists and the odd nurse, have been regularly visiting the prisoners horticulture area at HMP Frankland whilst they think that no one is looking. Now, the horticulture area is where prisoners get a bit of fresh air and are allowed to grow vegetables and soft fruit to supplement what passes for prison food nowadays, so to have members of staff visiting it and filling up black bin liners with the sweat of the prisoners' collective brows behind their backs is particularly galling. But what can they do about it? After all, the prison staff know that it against prison rules, but the prisoners daren't complain. As everyone knows, "there is one rule for 'them' and one rule for 'us'." [14/06/10]

P.O.A. - AL QAEDA'S CHIEF RECRUITING OFFICER IN UK PRISONS?

It now appears that Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, has come to the conclusion that HM Prison Service is in danger of becoming the number one recruiting agent for al Qaeda. In her recently released report 'Muslim Prisoners’ Experiences', she highlights the fact that prison officers tend to treat the estimated 10,300 Muslim prisoners in England and Wales (roughly 12% of the prison population) all as terrorist, despite less than 1% of them actually having been convicted of any terrorism-related crimes. [10/06/10]

WORLD CUP - "PRISON BREAK-INS OUT OF CONTROL"

The Home Office has discovered that record prison overcrowding is not due to successful conviction rates but innocent members of the public breaking-in to 'bagsy' seats for the World Cup. [02/06/10]

PRISONERS IN GULF OIL CLEAN-UP

US prisoners are being used in a desperate attempt to find people to fill the workforce need to help with the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico coast following the BP oil disaster. For example, 200 are working for SG & S Oil Recovery Product LLC, a new business started by Jay Graddick after the leak first occurred. Hoping to cash-in on the environmental disaster, he placed an ad in the local Press-Register newspaper looking for oil relief workers at $8 to $10 per hour, but "didn't get a single phone call for somebody looking for a job." [02/06/10]

SUNNY PAINSTATION

The Sun is at it again, displaying both the gross ignorance that its journalists are renown for and its standard editorial trope of putting the boot in to prisoners at each and every opportunity. Under the headline 'Sony PainStation', the paper claimed that a "lag (sic) was caught offering tattoos at a detention centre - using a machine he rigged up from a Sony Playstation." Except that it wasn't a PS1, as the accompanying photo clearly shows. The Sun was rather presumptuous in also claiming that it was confiscated from a so-called 'foreign national' prisoner, as Brook House IRC is also used to hold non-FNP deportees. Besides that, prisoners have long used small electric motors such as those found in tape and cd Walkman to fashion improvised tattoo machines, so its not particularly newsworthy (in April news came of a commercial tattoo machine found in HMP Kennet) and the accompanying picture looks much more like part of a personal cd or dvd player rather than that of a PS1 anyway. [25/05/10]

SPS JUNKET REVEALED

The lavish junkets and expense accounts that senior Scottish Prison Service personnel seem to enjoy have long been a bone of contention amongst rank and file staff. Now, according to the sometimes less than reliable News of the World, ex-SPS chief executive Mike Ewart along with 2 senior managers, a prison psychologist and "an employee from HMP Shotts" "lived it up for six nights in a luxury hotel in Thai capital Bangkok at taxpayers' expense" at the 2007 annual conference of the International Corrections and Prisons Association. The correspondence between prison officials and the Scottish Government, and marked "restricted", was released last week following a Freedom of Information request. [17/05/10]

PLAN FOR INDIAN PRISON CALL CENTRES

It has long been a gripe of many people that you spend ages on the phone waiting to get through to speak to somebody on the end of a phone to sort out some problem with a utility/pay a bill/book an air flight or similar, only to end up speaking to someone in India. Many of the less tolerant of society end up slamming down the phone or start talking louder to (as they think) try and make themselves understood, often becoming abusive. [15/05/10]

MINISTRY OF JUSTICE PERFORMS POORLY IN FOI ACT STAKES

The latest Freedom Of Information Act statistics have been released and they show that the Ministry of Justice is currently the fifth worst performing Department of State (behind the MoD, Scottish and Home Offices and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills) in the numbers of responses it managed on time (70% of requests responded to within the 20-day limit) and fourth with the rate of 'in time' responses i.e. meeting deadline or with permitted extension (72% behind the MoD and the Scottish and Home Offices). [11/05/10]