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 at Her Madge's pleasure are now also to be considered fair game for any form of physical 'retribution' - at least when it comes down to the payment of compensation by the perpetrator(s) of any crime that involves physical injury or criminal neglect (be that fellow prisoners, individual prison officers or the State itself).
What next in the list of possible exemptions of serving prisoners from human rights legislation (they are already denied the right to vote, for what it's worth)? Maybe screws, as the POA has long wished for, will finally be granted the right to once again flog those consigned to their care or at least be returned to the heyday when a prison officer's word was holy writ (and they didn't have to video every potential use of force) and, if they said that a prisoner had fallen down the stairs, they were of course believed despite all evidence to the contrary.
The ultimate irony of this is that Ken Clarke is trying to force all prisoners to pay a victims tax (currently Category D prisoners in paid work in the community have 40% of their paid income purloined by the Ministry of Justice before their hard earned wage ever reaches them. So now if they become a victim of a crime they will have no right to compensation even whilst they are strong-armed into paying this victims' tax. Who's kidding who? [27/12/11]
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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.
Some US state already have prison fire crews that cover surrounding rural communities and California has long had a system whereby thousands of prisoners are used by the Forestry Service on firewatch and firefighting details, but Georgia are considering doing just that and, in the case of Camden County, Ge., they could be "saving the county more than $500,000 a year by some estimates". The next step in the 'Rehabilitation Revolution'? [20/10/11]
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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 pick up an average £9.60 a week to graft behind bars, with a guaranteed £2.50 just for making themselves “available to work”." [Note that it always murders, rapist, robbers and/or child molesters and not fine-defaulters, expense-fiddling MPs, those with serious drug addiction and mental health problems and/or those found guilty of victimless crimes such as public order offences, soliticiting and prostitution.]
All based upon a Freedom of Information request. Now the £70m might be fresh information but the £9.60 figure comes from a 2007 Prison Service ’snapshot survey’ of wages [the details of which are examined in Box 4 of Separate Agendas, Separate Reports], which in fact does not take full account of all prisoners (including those that have made themselves “available to work” but are banged up 23 hours a day in a local prison where the only work is a very limited number of cleaning, cooking and laundry jobs).
A quick back of a fag packet calculation shows that this £70m could clearly not amount to an average wage of £9.60. Taking an average prison population for the last two financial years (April 2009-April 2011) of 84,800:
£70,000,000 / 2 / 52 = £673,000 per week in wages paid out. Which amounts to £673,000 / 84,800 = £7.94 a week average wage. Somebody has gotten their figure wrong somewhere!
Also, the tying in of the announcement that prisoners on day release paid employment from open prisons by the author of the article is totally spurious as these wages are paid by the employers themselves and not the Prison Service, though they are seeking to have these prisoners wages paid directly into HMPS coffers. [see: Pimping Category D Prisoners] And he cannot even get the prison population record high right... It was 87,673 as of last Friday and will no doubt be higher this Friday. [11/10/11]
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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 what they got this time last year. And prison guards facing wide-ranging public sector reforms - including the slashing of pension funds - are said to be raging at the decision."
As CAPS understands it, certain (Status 2) prisoners are having their potential weekly wage doubled but what the Record does not say is that their previous pay increase was in July 2003 when SPS' prisoners earnings policy was last revised. To then compare the proposed Scottish prisoners' pay increase with that needed for "anyone on an average salary of £25,000 a year in Scotland [who would] need to get a rise of £900, around 3.6 per cent" to receive a 'comparable' pay increase is totally dishonest. The Record also appears to be rather confused about the supposed pay increase for Status 6 prisoners, those who "refuse to work or attend therapy classes" or are under cellular confinement - it is claiming that their pay will now be "£5 a week - up from £4.50." This is incorrect and Status 6 prisoners receive no pay at all. [NB: The paper's reporters here may have mistakenly identified Status 5 prisoners - those unemployed or not yet allocated work - and who currently are awarded £4.80 (not £4.50) a week]. [10/10/11]
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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 to the right wing of the Tory party who see any changes to the prison regime short of compulsory flogging and bread and water as full-bloodied socialism, and as a way of generating much needed cash to offset the swingeing cuts to the prisons' budget.
Yet rather than waiting till there was any new provision of these mythic new jobs that he thinks employers are going to want to create in prisons across the country, Clarke has gone for the easy option and targeted those already working for outside employers: Category D prisoners in the final stages of their prison sentences as they reacclimatize themselves to the outside world after serving a long sentence at the same time as desperately trying to scrape together a few quid to ease that transition when they are finally released from the 'care' of the Prison Service.
No doubt the unveiling of this new scheme at the end of the month will provide a yet another self-serving PR opportunity for Ken and his coalition cronies to publicly trumpet their commitment to 'improve' the rehabilitation of 'offenders'. Yet in reality all this new scheme is achieving is the screwing over of a small number of vulnerable long-term prisoners, vulnerable in that they are so tantalisingly close to release yet are the least able to complain or fight their corner under threat of a potentially catastrophic knock-back; all for some temporary headlines in the yellow press. Thanks a lot Ken.
The gist of the plans laid out in PSI 48/2011 [issued on the 4th August 2011, though not yet available online] is that the Prisoners Earnings Act 1996, which has sat dormant since passed by Parliament, has been 'commenced' and will come into force on 26 September this year. Those Category D prisoners currently working for outside employers and earning more than £20 will have 40% of their net earnings [i.e. the amount left after income-tax, national insurance, court order payments, child maintenance, etc. have been deducted] paid over to Victim Support. And in order to achieve this NOMS are forcing all employers to pay individual prisoner's wages into the NOMS Shared Services bank account and not directly to the prisoner him/herself as currently happens. Prisoners will be provided with a monthly statement as to how much has been deducted from their wages.
Whilst CAPS have not yet seen the text of the relevant PSI, from what UNLOCK have revealed about its contents and the text of the Act itself, whilst the new regulations could apply to all prisoners across the prisons estate undertaking paid work for an outside employer, only those currently in open prisons and working in the community will be effected. According to UNLOCK, the guidance in the PSI also recommends that Governors do not impose levies on people with less than one month to service at the point at which they start outside employment.
Prisoners will still be required to pay out of their greatly reduced wages for their own transport to and from work (where none is provided by their open prison - most open prisons are located in rural areas with little or no available public transport provision), meals and drinks whilst at work, their work clothes and tools, fares for home leaves whilst at the same time still having to save 50% of their net wages (minus the 40% levy) in their account, as most prisons require, to support their post-release resettlement. This money is meant to provide for such items as a rent deposit, furniture, transport and, in the case of many women prisoners, to help create a home for any children returning from foster care.
How is this policy going to help enhance this category of prisoner's chances of doing all this? Many prisoners in these circumstances are only able to find part time paid work in the community and, whilst earning more than the £20 cut-off limit, are not earning much more and, post-deduction and having paid for items such as transport, will either be earning nothing or even effectively subsiding their employers as well as having to pay the levy. Unfortunately, any prisoners deciding to cut their loses and give up their job would be deemed to be refusing to work and they would loose their earned privileges, such as home leave and could end up back in the closed estate and additional years from release.
Of the 4,500 or so Cat D prisoners, roughly 10% are likely to be in paid work in the community [using most recent HMIP announced inspection data]. Even if all are working a 40 hour week at the minimum wages rate, that would only raise around £2m a year and, given that probably more than a half would only be working part time, that figure would be more to be closer to the £1m mark (excluding admin costs). The scheme is therefore likely to generate few funds but will place a massive burden on the very prisoners who face the most difficulties of post-release resettlement and rehabilitation - long-term prisoners, who additionally will already have spent a period of time doing unpaid voluntary work in the community before they were ever allowed to apply for paid work.
UNLOCK, in a letter to Ken Clarke on the subject, state that: "It has been reported that since learning of this PSI, morale amongst people in resettlement prisons is low and outrage is high. Anecdotal evidence suggests that rather than effectively working for nothing (potentially even a net loss) people will refuse to undertake paid work. This completely undermines the purpose of resettlement prisons and the development by the individual of personal responsibility and an active role in their communities. That people in prison are so severely disincentivised from work is of no benefit to them, prison staff, resettlement activities, family cohesion, re-offending rates or past victims."
Interestingly, the Act states that it is effectively at an individual Governor's discretion as the whether s/he imposes the levy and, as UNLOCK claim, that many governors are already struggling with the practicalities of this policy, it is likely that many open prisons will be forced to opt out of the policy, further decreasing the amount of money raised by this ill thought out policy and potentially threatening any comprehensive application of the levy. However, the final straw in this policy might just be the employers themselves, a number of whom, again according UNLOCK, do not wish to turn over to NOMS the hard earned wages of the prisoners they employ. The companies are perfectly willing to recompense their employees for their work but they are damned if they are going to pay those same monies to NOMS instead. [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]
POA ADMIT THEY ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM
In evidence at the Commons committee stage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill Steve Gillan, general secretary of the POA, admitted that Ken Clarke's plans to introduce a 40-hour working week into prisons in England and Wales would not work because the Prison Service do not employ enough of his members and those that they do do not work a long enough day to be able to cover an 8-hour day [Bulletin 8 sets the prison officer's average working week at 39 hours].
But even then, he was a little free with 'the actuality' when he said that "prisoners work activity show that, on average, it was about 13.9 hours in 2009-10" when it was in fact purposeful activity, which includes education and attending religious services as well as work, that averaged out at 13.9 hours. Plus it wasn't too surprising to find out that even that what passes for a relatively state-of-the-art modern public sector training prison like HMP Holme Hose could only manage to get less than 10% of its prisoners into workshops for a 34 hour week, and that only after getting around the standard 2 hour lunch lock-up.
Gillan also goes on to say that: "[The POA] are broadly supportive of prisoners working, but it has to be meaningful, constructive and worthwhile, not putting knives and forks in plastic envelopes for airlines, which does not assist at all", putting the POA unsurprisingly, like almost every other commentator on the subject, firmly in the 'work as training' (as opposed to the 'training for work') camp.
Yes, we certainly should not be forcing prisoners to do those sort of jobs for a rate less than the average kid gets in pocket money a week but replacing that with (being forced to do) more demanding jobs for the same same rate of pay with or without any meaningful training out come is still not an acceptable outcome. Training yes, exploitation (whether for the profit of the Prison Service or for some private company as Clarke proposes) definitely not. [13/07/11]
