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  About CAPS


The Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS) was formed in 2002 by ex-prisoners, prisoner support groups and activists to campaign against compulsory labour in UK prisons and for the abolition of the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme (IEP).

Compulsory labour is a feature of most prison systems a round the world, whether it be forced hard labour as punishment, direct 'reparation' for the costs of imprisonment, prison jobs such as kitchen or cleaning work that keep administration costs down or workshop jobs where prisoners manufacture the cell doors and prison bars for the jails that house them.

However, the modern prison has also developed into a system for generating capital from a section of society that up until now has largely been held to have no intrinsic labour value, the marginalised elements that tend to be trapped on a roundabout of regular incarceration, never to hold down a 'proper' job or become a 'productive member of society'. Thus we now also have in the modern prison system the prisoners who are used to create capital for private sector companies, either through labour in prison workshops manufacturing and packing goods for these companies or those prisoners handed over wholesale to the global outsourcing and security companies that run the private prisons, to do with as they wish, often 'sub-contracting' them out to third party companies.


From Article 2 of the International Labour Organisation's Forced Labour Convention No. 29

1. For the purposes of this Convention the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall mean all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.

2. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this Convention the term "forced or compulsory labour" shall not include:
c ) Any work or service exacted from any person as a consequence of a conviction in a court of law, provided that the said work or service is carried out under the supervision and control of a public authority and that the said person is not hired to or placed at the disposal of private individuals, companies or associations.

 
 Prison Works?


It is a commonly held view, one certainly held by the Government and most prison reformers, that the primary function of prison labour is to provide training and work experience to aid a prisoner to find a post-release job. This is certainly not backed up by the everyday experiences of many prisoners and by the history and statistics of prison labour itself.

The primary function of prison work is in fact the control of the prison population - give them something to do to keep them occupied and out of trouble. Even the Prison Service reluctantly acknowledges this "The aim of Prison Industries is to occupy prisoners in out-of-cell activity {and wherever possible} to help them gain skills, qualifications and work experience to improve their employment prospects upon release." [my emphasis] [HC193-II] Even more bluntly "The desired outcomes from prison industries are:
(i) to ensure dynamic security by providing purposeful activity at relatively low cost; and
(ii) to support education, training, and employment (ETE) outcomes on release. [HC193-II]
The order of priority is no accident.

IEP AND THE WOOLF REPORT

The backbone of the system that ensures this "dynamic security" is the Incentives and Earned Privileges Scheme (IEP). IEP was designed to ensure prisoners good behaviour and participation in purposeful activity, by offering as carrots a series of earnable privileges such as extra personal visits, time out of cell for association and even, nowadays, the right to smoke. In a wonderful piece of sophistry, the Prison Service claim there are no sticks in the system - a prisoner who fails to behave correctly or maintain progress "may be downgraded to the level below (as an administrative measure, not as a punishment imposed at adjudication)." [my emphasis] [PSO4000]

IEP was first introduced in 1995 in response to the Woolf Report into events at Strangeways prison in 1990 and a whole host of other prison rebellions in the 1980's and early 1990's. Crudely put, the Government wished to re-establish control within the prison system and put an end to the power of the 'old lags code' and working class solidarity amongst prisoners. Competition for privileges and the limited number of jobs available in prisons were to be the tools of that repression. As far as the present government is concerned, IEP has worked - "This has been a valuable policy which has played an important part in securing order and control in prisons". [David Hanson, Prisons Minister, 10/07/08]

THE BARE BONES

At the time of the Woolf Report, the prison population stood at 45,000. It has nearly doubled since then, more than 25,000 of that in the last 10 years, mainly without a concomitant increases in the prison estate. As a result, the availability of prison jobs has significantly decreased.

The fact that there are three separate UK Prison Services, all responsible to different sets of governmental organisations with different standards for the reporting of operational statistics, makes it is difficult to draw an accurate picture of current job availability in the UK. For example, we do not even the exact figures for the current prison population. In England and Wales (HMPS) the figures are released on a weekly basic, whereas in Scotland (SPS) and Northern Ireland (NIPS) the figures appear to only be released on a yearly basis. Currently there are around 92,000 prisoners in the UK [some 83,000 in E&W, ~7,400 in Scotland & 1,500 in N.I.], excluding the 500 or so held in Secure Children's Homes (STCs) and approximately 15,000 people detained under the Mental Health Act or up to 3,000 in Immigration detention.

Of the 92,000 in UK prisons, approximately 10% of prisoners are currently on remand, and therefore do not have to work. Additionally, using all the available sources [HC193-I / Bromley Briefings], the best estimates are that less than a third of prisoners (approx. 26,500) being in employment at any one time. Roughly 15,500 (17%) of these are in Administrative Tasks (cleaning, food production & serving, etc.) and 11,500 (12.5%) employed in workshops (the Ministry of Justice have admitted to about 10,000 in England and Wales in a recent FOI answer).
  Prison Facts

37% of people are unemployed at the time of imprisonment - around seven times the national unemployment rate. 13% are unable to work because of long-term sickness or disability. A recent Ministry of Justice study found that 13% of prisoners said they had never had a paid job before custody. Around two-thirds of those who do have a job lose it whilst in custody.

A survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development showed that people with a criminal record are part of the ‘core jobless group’ that more than 60% of employers deliberately exclude when recruiting.

Research by the House of Commons Home Affairs committee found that two thirds of prisoners have no job on release.

25% of men have paid employment arranged for their release from custody, compared to only 9% of women. 58% of women and 53% of men in prison identified unemployment and skills as an issue contributing to their offending. A Home Office study which followed up prisoners between two and 12 months after release found that only half had done some paid work; 2% were on a government training scheme, and 48% had not found any work. Of those who had done some paid work, nearly two-thirds found it after leaving prison. Only 9% arranged a job whilst in custody.

Prisoners who have problems with both employment and accommodation on release from prison had a reoffending rate of 74% during the year after custody, compared to 43% for those with no problems.

[Bromley Briefings June 09]

 
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