PRISON CAMPAIGNER PAULINE CAMPBELL FOUND DEAD NEXT TO DAUGHTER'S GRAVE

It is with great sadness that CAPS learnt that prison campaigner Pauline Campbell has died. She was found early this morning [15/05/08] beside the grave of her daughter Sarah at Malpas in Cheshire.

Sarah, Pauline's 18-year-old daugher, died three days before her 19th birthday, at Wythenshawe hospital in Manchester from an overdose of anti-depressants taken soon after she arrived in Styal women's prison in January 2003, the third of six women to die at HMP Styal over a 12 month period there.

An inquest jury said that she died as a result of a toxic level of anti-depressants in her bloodstream, and that her death had been unintentional - not suicide but a cry for help. It also said that there had been a failure in the duty of care by the prison which had contributed to her death in the jail.

Pauline, a former college lecturer from Whitchurch in Shropshire, became a staunch campaigner for improvement in jail conditions following her daughter's death, often holding solitary vigils outside of womens' jails around the country to highlight the deaths of prisoners. Even suing the Prison Service under Article Eight of the Human Rights Act. The case was settled out of court in 2006.

Ms Campbell suffered continuous police harrasment on these protests and was arrested on 15 seperate occassions. Never to be convicted.

Earlier this week the Crown Prosecution Service decided to drop the latest charges of obstructing the highway following a protest rally at Styal prison after the death of 32-year-old mother Lisa Marley, who was found hanged in her cell in January this year.

In a statement earlier this week, Paula said " From start to finish, this senseless prosecution was a waste of the court's time, a scandalous waste of public money and an enormous drain on my emotional health.

"Yet another attempt to criminalise and punish me has failed and the CPS and the Attorney General have met with a barrage of letters complaining about the vindictive nature of the case, demanding to know how the prosecution could be in the public interest."

"This prosecution has felt like an attack on my reputation."

"But I believe in standing up for principle because it is one of the few ways in which people can make a difference. I refuse to bow to pressure and will stick to my resolve to hold prison death demonstrations outside jails in England when women kill themselves in the so-called care of the state."

Deborah Coles, co-director of Inquest paid tribute to her saying, "Her death should remind everyone not just about the many unnecessary and preventable deaths of women in prison but also of the impact on the families they leave behind."

Pauline will be sorely missed by by all those that knew her personally and by all those in the prisoners' rights movement who knew her solely by her formidable reputation.

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GORDON BROWN VETOES PRISONERS'
4P PER HOUR PAY RISE

Political expediency has resulted in controversy over an 11th hour intervention from Gordon Brown which resulted in the Prison Service Management Board (PSMB) having to withdraw a planned increase in prisoners' pay rates, the first since the Incentives & Earned Privileges Scheme (IEP) was introduced in 1995.

"An increase of £1.50 for each pay rate for a prisoner was agreed by senior officials and a Prison Service Instruction (PSI) was issued by Michael Spurr, the deputy director-general, on Monday. Under the instruction the minimum pay rate for an employed offender would rise from £4 a week [1] to £5.50 – a rate of £1.10 a day; the unemployed rate from £2.50 to £4 a week; short-term sickness rate from £2.50 to £4 a week; long-term sickness and retirement from £3.25 to £4.75; maternity leave from £3.25 to £4.75 a week." [2]

Needless to say the mainstream press headlined the idea that prisoners were due to receive an "astonishing 37 per cent pay increase." "15 TIMES the 2.5 per cent rate of inflation", screamed the Sun. [3] However, if they had just stopped and thought about it, they would have realised that this would have amounted to an increase on the basic rate of just under 2% a year over the 13 years since 1995, exactly in-line with the government's own current pay rise limit.

Minilv or Minitrue

The controversy started on Tuesday afternoon when No. 10 apparently spotted the relevant PSI and informed Gordon Brown. In a fit of Calvinist pique [4] he instructed officials to quietly withdraw the PSI. And we would have been none the wiser but for a BBC reporter trawling through the prison service website noticed its removal and broken the news.

In what appears to be a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, the Ministry of Justice claimed that ministers had not "approved" the increase, despite David Hanson, the Prisons Minister, being currently involved along side departmental officials in talks with the PSMB on the issue of improving incentives to work. This appears to refer to the current review entitled "Strategic Plan for Reducing Re-offending 2008-11". [5] If this is the case, then it raises a number of important questions.

If Hanson was involved in the discussions with the PSMB, why did he and his immediate superior Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, apparently know nothing about the issuing of the PSI? Why did the PSMB wait until 2 days before the increase was due to make it public? And why is the issue of prisoners pay or the IEP mentioned nowhere in this consultative paper? All very strange for a government that likes to boast of its 'joined up thinking'.

Even David Blunkett, hardly the most liberal of Home Secretaries, thought that the pay rise was a good idea. "I should have increased prisoners pay ... Coming out at the end [or a prison sentence] with something and keeping in touch with their families, it helps to avoid their reoffending." [6] Not that the government would ever agree to pay rates across the board that would mean that prisoners could afford to save towards their release.

What about the IEP?

Both the Prime Minister and the Prisons Minister appear to display a startling lack of understanding of prisoner pay issues. Hanson claims that the pay increase interferes with his proposals for a "compact, balancing the opportunities we give to offenders to turn away from a life of crime with what the community is going to expect of them in return." Yet isn't that exactly what the IEP was meant to be when it was introduced in 1995? The IEP already links education, drugs testing and offender management schemes directly to rates of pay, as he claims that this 'compact' will also do.

In fact, if you do not participate actively in the regime accepting whatever work you are given, you get nothing and, as an "administrative measure" [punishment to you and me], your access to private money can be limited to the current minimum of £3.50 per week in addition to confinement to your cell or being placed on segregation [7]

Ulterior Motive?

Maybe there is some ulterior motive to all this? Could the proximity to the local elections be the reason? Surely it can't be that the controversy over the 10p tax rate is taking its toll on the government? According to the Times "It would also cost several million pounds across the Prison Service, and Mr Brown insisted that the money could be better spent elsewhere." [8] Maybe it will be used to replace some of the money that the government are now having to pay out in compensation to those who lost out when the 10p tax rate was axed?

Yet just this month a new "standard core week", which has reduced the average time spent out of cell each week by each inmate to its lowest level for nearly 40 years, has been introduction across the prison system. [9] Prisoners are now confined to their cells from Friday lunch time till Monday morning, except for a total of 2 1/2 hours for slopping out and meals. This was introduced by the government specifically to save £60M a year from prison budgets. And you can guarantee that that wont be ploughed back into education and welfare provision for the poor banged up cons.

An alternative view would be that so few prisoners are actually employed doing any form of meaningful work that it is in fact the increase in the unemployed rate (60%) that Gordon Brown was so concerned about. When you consider that the 80% of the current prison population that can work have only 10 000 workshop places available, and that the average nick can only manage to keep 20% of its population on administrative tasks, that's an awful lot unemployed prisoners. [10]

Too Cushy?

All this comes on top of what appears to be a blatant bit of union electioneering when Glyn Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, caused outrage by accusing prisoners at one prison of spurning the chance to escape because they and all other prisoners led such a “cushy” life inside with regular access to mobile phones and drugs. Ironically, this was on the same day that we learnt that the Prison Service had agreed, in an out of court settlement, to pay more than £120,000 to 15 former inmates at Leeds prison who had suffered beatings and racial discrimination by prison officers there. [11]

An interesting footnote to the 37% figure for the proposed increase in basic rate pay is that it mirrors exactly the figure for the increase in suicides in prisons in 2007 (the last year for which figures are available). [12] Many think that this is a direct result of the increase in the prison population and that the situation will only be exacerbated by prisoners having to spend yet more time banged up.

The Bottom Line

The basic problem is that prison itself does not work. Not even the most ardent of the "hang 'em flog 'em" brigade thinks that it does what it says on the box. If it really did, crime would have been a thing of the past long ago. And forcing the prisoners themselves to work doesn't either. In the past it meant sitting down all day sewing mail bags, that were then transported to another prison where the poor cons there then had to unpick said mail bags. At least that was an improvement on breaking rocks. Today things aren't actually that much different. Where work is available, it is by and large mind numbingly repetitive manual work designed merely to keep the prisoners busy for what is now only 32 hours a week.

It is time that the Prison Service either did away with the pretence that prison work holds any educative or training value at all and went back to sewing mail bags. Or do away with prison work completely and introduce a comprehensive skills training system offering the widest possible range of opportunities for prisoners that will be of some actual benefit to them at the end of their sentence.

In the end, even this will not do away with crime. We all know that the vast majority of white collar corporate crime goes undetected and its only at the 'lower end', the unsuccessful working class criminals who can't afford to pay for their own legal representation or use their contacts to avoid prosecution, that get caught and sentenced to time inside.

The sad thing is that, even if the prison system were able to create a cohort of highly trained prisoners upon release, the jobs just wouldn't be there for them. And even if they were, societal prejudice would be against employing prisoners in them.

1 For what had been a 37.5 hour week until this month (April 08). See [9]
2 Gordon Brown scuppers prisoners' 37.5% pay rise. Timesonline, April 30, 2008 [possibly the most balanced and factually accurate piece of reporting in the mainstream media].
3 PM blocks lags’ 37% pay rise. The Sun, April 30, 2008.
4 "There have got to be rights. But there have also got to be responsibilities, and its the responsibilities of prisoners that I'm interested in." Brown blocks prisoners' pay rise. Guardian, April 30, 2008.
5 Working in partnership to reduce re-offending and make communities safer: A Consultation.
6 World At One 30-04-08. He also echoed the fact that it was poor decision making to allow the announcement the day before an important election.
7 The removal of earned privileges is specifically excluded under IEP rules but any prisoner or [truthful] screw will tell you "it happens".
8 See [3]
9 Prisoners to spend more time in cells, Guardian Society, December 13, 2007.
10 This of course excludes those prisoners receiving some form of education course. But, as those are often for only a few hours a week and some prisons only have 10% of their population attending such courses, that takes not too many others out of the equation. NB. 20% of prisoners are on remand and unavailable for work.
11 Jail inmates win £120,000 payout over abuse claims, April 25, 2008.
12 Overcrowding blamed for 37% rise in suicides among inmates in 'failing' prison system, January 2, 2008. There were 92 self-inflicted deaths in prison in 2007, 25 more than 2006. These figures breakdown as: 84 males and 8 females. 7 young offenders, 1 juvenile, 4 on indeterminate sentences, 18 other lifers, 23 foreign national prisoners. 90 occurred in public prisons and 2 in private run prisons.
"The suicide rate in prisons is almost 15 times higher than in the general population. In 2002 the rate was 143 per 100,000 compared to 9 per 100,000 in the general population." Mental Health Foundation website.

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BBC HIGHLIGHTS PRISONER'S WAGES ISSUE

In response to David Cameron's latest attempt to steal Labour's thunder and introduce the Tories' own plans to expand the Prison-Industrial Complex, the BBC have picked up on the ludicrous nature of his suggestion that prisoners use their paltry wages earned through prison work to compensate the victims of their crimes. [See] Clearly the man does not have the first idea about the day-to-day realities of existence in the British prison system.

Both parties want to radically expand the size of the prison estate and are looking to their friends in private industry, the GSLs, Haliburtons & Sodexhos, to help solve the problem. Cameron even wants to sell off ageing prisons located in cities and towns around the country in return for new 'super-prisons' in the green belt. Yuppie flats in the Reading's new Oscar Wilde Apartment Complex anyone?

But as we all know, these private prisons still cost the tax payer vast amounts of money. PPP prisons have not proved the magic formula successive governments have thought they would be and even where services to run prisons have been contracted out to private companies, these have often failed e.g. HMP Blakenhurst.

Even in the USA, the country that provided the world with the privatised prison system blueprint, many states see the privately owned and run prison as not being the answer. California [which has the third largest prison population in the US, 1 in 8 of all Americans are prisoners & the US imprisons more people than Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore and the Netherlands combined] and suffering a financial crisis, cutting back on its education budget in order to finance the recent increases in its prison population, is resisting the private prison route. Yet British politicians seem to be committed to ever more privatisation of prison services.

The Figures Just Do Not Add Up

Whilst the BBC article manages to point up the fallacy of Cameron’s argument, it also fails to make the figures it presents add up and it also perpetuates a commonly held myth about prison work.

There are currently about 82,000 prisoners held by the EPS at any one time. Approximately 20% of these are remand prisoners, and as such are unable to work and be paid prison wages. Prison Service figures for 2006-07 show that approximately 35,000 prisoners undertook training and employment. Of these, according to the article, the minority would have been in the 10,000 places that exist in the 370 prison workshops.

Yet the article also states "It is entirely the choice of prisoners to earn". This is plainly not true. Whatever way you look at he figures, a lot of people are clearly unable to work simply because the places are not there. There are only a certain number of mops and brushes to go round for the 55,500 inmates unable to get into the paltry number of workshops that presently exist.

Yes, some of those people will be in education. The current Prison Service education budget is £164m and, given that 130,000 people pass through the prison system each year and over 50,000 of those are remand prisoners receiving no educational privileges, this works out at about £2340 for each of these prisoner for his/her education. However, the lion's share of that will of course be spent on staff wages and administration costs. Even allowing for this there should be more than enough left in the budget to allow for the provision of a decent educational provision, with out of cell time and higher wages rates.

Yet the lot of a vast amount of prisoners remains that of being banged up for most of the day, with little or no meaningful activity in their prison lives on the minimum unemployed rate of £2.50 per week. How is anyone of those going to be able to compensate their victims whilst paying for toothpaste, loo paper or buying stamps, writing materials and phone cards to help maintain a prisoner's contacts with their family and friends outside, which any prison psychologist will tell you is an essential step in helping prevent a prisoner re-offending on their release?

Barbed

One other interesting thing highlighted in the article is the graphic design company Barbed operating out of HMP Coldingley. This project was set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform as a social enterprise. It has trained and employs 9 inmates paid at minimum wage rates, paying tax & NI. The project also employs a highly skilled studio manager but there are no directors exploiting a captive workforce to build their own private fortunes or shareholders to have pay dividends to. Instead all the profits go back into the project.

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POACHER TURNS GAMEKEEPER

Just what is happening at SPS Industries? Our sources tell us that Paula Arnold, the woman responsible for the day to day running of that enterprise, is off to a new job starting some time in April. As we understand it, the powers that be have asked her stand down as Deputy Head of Prison Industries and to conduct a full review of SPS Industries itself. This review will almost certainly result in a radical restructuring of the SPS Industries set-up and involve the long mooted demise of the Central Stores at Fauldhouse.

Ian Timmins, currently Head of Production, is supposed to be reluctantly stepping into the breach from Production to try and maintain a steady hand on the tiller as the whole shebang heads further up shit creek.

Other members of staff are jumping ship to. Stores Manager Patrick Martin & his assistant Helen McGarry are off to pastures new. And stranger still, the very recently appointed (was the ink dry on the contract yet?) Head of Prison Industries Nigel Ironsides has had second thoughts and we are told has not even had a chance to unpack his desktop executive toys before he's out of the door in a cloud of dust. Clearly he didn't know what he was letting himself in for! [See]

And why all this panic? Maybe this explains it? A search though the financial returns for SPS Industries reveals a crash in income from sales. From a high of almost £3m in the financial year 2002-03, the figure has fallen by nearly two thirds to £1.131m in the last available annual financial returns for 2006-07.

CAPS strongly believes that any review and any restructuring that results from it, should be focused on creating a regime that provides comprehensive and meaningful training for prisoners. It should give them the educational opportunities and genuine transferable skills that the prisoners themselves demand, within a system that prioritises literacy and drug rehabilitation schemes rather than the one that at present appears to merely use the prisoners as a cheap source of labour to help maintain some notional competitively with manufacturing industries in third world countries.

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STRANGE BUT TRUE:

BRITISH NATIONAL PARTY NOW OPPOSES PRISON LABOUR!

An article entitled "Prisoners Used As Cheap Labour" dated 14th May on the BNP website appears to signal the far right coming on board the prison labour abolition bandwagon. Although we here at CAPS are sure the tone of their article is more 'hang 'em and flog 'em' than prisoner welfare or class solidarity lead.

Convicts, some of whom have been convicted of violent crimes such as attempted murder, are being employed to maintain Britain's railways.

The West Coast Main Line, linking London with Glasgow, is one line where the criminals are working night shifts on various maintenance tasks. This is the same line where a Virgin Pendolino train derailed in Cumbria, killing one passenger and injuring dozens of others. This crash happened where many nuts and bolts were found to be missing from the track.

The scheme is part of an unpublicised government idea to prepare criminals for work when they are released from jail. It has been condemned by crash victims' groups, railway unions and safety campaigners. However, the scheme is to be expanded to cover the whole country.

The criminals are collected from Moorlands Open Prison, near Doncaster, and driven 120 miles to their work site in Northamptonshire. The criminals are given the chance to train towards an NVQ qualification in rail maintenance, and seven are already working on the railways. So far, 48 criminals have completed training, and 36 more are due to start their training this week. Some of them are undergoing their training in closed prisons.

While jobs are being given to criminals, others who apply for work are being told there is none available. People are expressing grave concern that criminals are allowed to work in an industry which relies so much upon safety and proper workmanship.

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CAPS ARTICLE IN THE 'INDEPENDENT MONITOR' MAY 2007

The Association of Members of Independent Monitoring Boards have published an article in their May 2007 issue of the Independent Monitor' by CAPS' very own Joe Black putting our "controversial view of the incentives and earned privileges scheme". Below is the text of that article.

This year sees the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, with a collective bout of mutual backslapping. However there are voices off reminding the celebrants that there are still millions of men, women and children around the world today forced to lead lives as slaves: the sex-trafficked women and children who are bought and sold like objects; the ‘sanspapiers’ fleeing persecution from around the world, ending up in this country and, having been denied asylum, working in rotten jobs for a pittance, constantly in fear of arrest and deportation.
Another group of people that are increasingly being treated as modern day slaves are prisoners. Various legal exemptions allow for the enslavement of individuals within any state’s prisons, where they often provide cheap (if not free) labour for corporations. US prisoners have long been a source of free labour: we recognise the image of the chain gang, but prisoners and the institutions that house them are also big business. Many US corporations have grown increasingly fat on the cheap labour provided by the sprawling US prison-industrial-complex.

Privatising the UK prison system

New Labour has sought to follow the American model. They have introduced the private finance initiative prison-building programme and pursued a wholesale liquidisation of Prison Service assets, handing large sectors over to private companies, many of them American (such as Aramark now running large sections of the prison canteen system). Our ever-increasing prison population is now seen as a source of cheap captive labour that can help maintain British competitiveness against countries like China.
A key component in this were the prison rebellions and riots of the 1970s and 80s, which necessitated a radical reorganisation of the prison control and discipline system. This resulted in the introduction in 1995 of the incentives and earned privileges (IEP) scheme, which has proved an essential tool in the industrialisation of British prison labour.

IEP Ltd

The objectives of the IEP scheme are ‘to encourage hard work and other constructive activity’ by introducing a system of privileges that are ‘earned by prisoners through good behaviour and performance and are removed if they fail to maintain acceptable standards’. At the core of this scheme is the concept of paying prisoners ‘to encourage and reward their constructive participation in the regime of the establishment’. Pay rates vary depending on resources, the amount and type of work available at each prison, and the level reached on the IEP scheme. At present the minimum ‘wage’ is £4 per week. Prisoners willing to work but unemployed because no work is available get £2.50 per week. Most of the work available, by the regime’s own admission, ‘provides little training, qualifications or resettlement activities for prisoners.’
Whether the prisoner is on basic, standard or enhanced depends on how well she or he tows the line. This is an administrative measure, not a punishment imposed at adjudication.
Linked to the IEP scheme are a set of key earnable privileges:
• extra and improved visits
• eligibility to earn higher rates of pay
• access to in-cell television
• opportunity to wear own clothes
• access to private cash
• time out of cell for association
• the right to buy from the prison shop
• active participation in sentence planning, offending behaviour programmes, prison work, education etc.
Even the right to possess tobacco and to smoke is now an earned privilege under Rule 8. And these privileges can also be taken away for breaking any of the myriad prison rules listed in the Prison Discipline Manual.

Bending the Rules

With the introduction of the IEP scheme in 1995, the existing regulatory framework of the Prison Rules (established under the Prison Act 1952) had to be revised to integrate this new system of rewards and punishment. Among the many Offences Against Discipline that prisoners can now commit, is if they ‘...intentionally fail to work properly or,
being required to work, refuses to do so.’ These offences against discipline carry the threat of a number of governor’s punishments., which can include:
• loss of privileges under Rule 8 up to 42 days (21 days for a young offender)
• up to 21 days’ cellular confinement
• stoppage of earnings for up to 84 days or deduction from earnings of an amount not exceeding 42 days’ earnings
• young offenders being sentenced to periods of extra work as a punishment.
So not only is it compulsory to work to a standard set by prison staff, it is also possible for prisoners to find themselves working for a prolonged period for nothing at all if they fall below that standard or get out of line in any other way.
And there’s more. Participation in work, education, exercise and association, attendance at offending behaviour and treatment programmes and even religious service are all seen integral to the maintenance of order in the modern prison regime. Therefore basic ‘rights’ under the IEP scheme such as access to a radio, newspapers and attendance at educational classes ‘should not normally be forfeited.’ However, prisoners have been denied access to education when refusing to work as they were held to be disruptive to the maintenance of good order or discipline and placed in segregation.

What is behind it?

The government and prison authorities maintains that the British prison system exists not only to protect the public and maintain civil order, but also to rehabilitate
offenders through education and training, How can some mind-numbing activity such as packing plastic spoons for Sainbury’s or untangling and repacking in-flight entertainment headphone for Virgin Airways for up to 10 hours a day for a few pence an hour, week in week out, ever be constituted as holding any skills training value?
The government wants to establish a prison-industrial-complex in Britain based on the US model. But such a large and potentially belligerent captive workforce had to be subdued and coerced into a compliant state. Thus the IEP scheme, one of the state’s more subtle and ingenious methods of subjugation. The prison population is now ripe for exploitation by private capital. They have become modern day slaves in everything but name.

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GUARDIAN LETTER

Here is the text of a heavily edited letter as it appeared in the March 7th edition of The Guardian:

While acknowledging the exploitation of migrant labour and the appalling plight of sex-trafficked women and children, there is another section of the population who are, in effect, modern-day slaves - prisoners. This government and the previous Tory one have been far from negligent in their legislation when it comes to the exploitation of this captive work force. With the introduction of the incentives and earned privileges scheme and the 1991 prison rules, prisoners are now forced to work for pennies an hour or face the removal of "privileges" and docking of the "pay" that is often their only source of everyday essentials like toothpaste, stamps and phone cards. And where is the only place prisoners can spend their cash? The prison canteen/shop - the modern-day equivalent of the company store.

[Unfortunately it loses some of the meaning by missing out "a feature of peonage or indentured slavery of the past" from the end of the last sentence and not having Incentives and Earned Privileges scheme and Prison Rules capilaised.]

THE BIG ISSUE SCOTLAND

The Big Issue Scotland are publishing an item in Issue 616 February 1st - 7th on the state of prison labour in Scotland, prompted by a letter from a current prisoner to the paper. In it he complained that he was frustrated and depressed at not getting any real training, and that he felt he was only there to make profits for the companies that use these prison labour schemes. We understand that there will probably be a follow up article in a later issue. [31/01/07]

Here's the text of the article by Kirsty Taylor for those of you who are not regular Big Issue Scotland readers:

The cycle of re-offending in Britain’s crisis-stricken prison system is being worsened by “slave labour” practices in jails.

Campaigners criticised the Scottish Prison Service for producing goods at low costs for profitable private companies ranging from bed manufacturers to Highland G8 getaway, Gleneagles Hotel. The SPS receives £2.00 - £3.50 for each mattress* produced by HMP Shotts inmates for Airsprung beds, but the company sell them on for up to £250 in high street stores such as Argos.

HMP Low Moss near Glasgow receives £1.75 per luxury laundry bag made by its inmates for Gleneagles hotel rooms starting at £285 a night. The SPS pricing system has not changed even to adjust in line with inflation for 12 years. Prisoners’ wages can be as low as £4 a week though the SPS said most working prisoners earn £8 to £15 to spend on toiletries and luxury items such as phone cards and sweets. The Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS) group said disaffection among inmates and even Scottish Prison Service officers was worsening.

An SPS internal training document obtained by CAPS by Freedom Of Information request stated: “Much of the current contract service work provides little training, qualifications or resettlement activities for prisoners. In some cases, such outputs may neither be appropriate or achievable depending on the type of activity provided.”

CAPS campaigner Joe Black said: “Prison staff at all levels are also realising that the system produces none of the training and rehabilitation promised for prisoners. Even HMPS internal documents admit that there is a total lack of transferable skills and training given by the scheme.”

An HMP Shotts inmate writing to The Big Issue in Scotland feared he would complete his five-year sentence unqualified for any job on the outside in spite of taking part in labour schemes producing Airsprung mattresses.* He said “I criticise the Scottish Prison Service for forcing me to do menial work which only benefits the companies we make stuff for… I tell you this they are all creaming off the top.”

William Higham head of policy for the Prison Reform Trust said most prisons were like “industrial museums” teaching prisoners no skills for the modern workforce: “The Prison Reform trust said: “We are building prisons across the UK and filling them up as soon as they are built, there is no time or space left for proper rehabilitation through training or proper work schemes. We are creating a crisis of re-offending. Even though the main focus is meant to be on bringing down re-offending, most Scottish prisons see half of prisoners back inside within two years.” An SPS spokesperson admitted enforced labour was a “thorny issue” but insisted vocational courses such as bricklaying and industrial cleaning offered another form of rehabilitation. He said prices charged for SPS produced goods must be kept low to fend off competition for commercial contracts from China and Eastern Europe.

“It is costing us £36,000 per year per prison place, that is a lot of money and these are met by the tax payer. The prisoners don’t work for free, and the SPS are not in to make a profit.” he said.

* HMP Shotts fabricate bed frames for Airsprung Beds not mattress as stated, which requires a far higher skills level than HMPS are willing to provide through training for their captive labour force.

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