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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 around 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.

This text mirrors almost word for word the texts in the European Convention on Human Rights and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 [both Article 4].

 
 Prison Works?


The latter have a turnover of more than £30M at market prices, but the majority of products are consumed within the prison system itself. 40% [4,700] of these prisoners however are employed producing goods for private sector companies in so-called Contract Services, which had an annual turnover of £6.1M in England and Wales in 2007-08. [SPS Industries, whose income from sales has plummeted in the past 5 years, had an income of £1.095M for the same period. NIPS has no prison industries sector.] Many of these tasks are mundane, the equivalent of home piecework e.g. packing and sealing birthday cards in cellophane slips or assembling pendant light fittings, providing “little training, qualifications or resettlement activities for prisoners.” [Costing And Pricing Guidelines For Prison Industries] Some though require higher skill levels and can provide much more on-the-job training including double glazing manufacture through to on-line marketing and website design.

Example 1: An example of a typical low-skill Contract Services job.
Packing units of 8 screws, 4 brass picture plates and a label in 600 blister packs. The job is priced at £7.20, 50% goes to the prison, £2.40 goes to the packer for roughly 6 hours work and the rest is split between the final bulk packers, the stores person, workshop cleaner, etc.

The average weekly wage across the UK for an employed prisoner* is £8.00, slightly less than the average British child receives a week in pocket money according to a 2007 Halifax Building Society survey. The minimum pay rate is £4.00 and for those willing to work but without a job or those classed as short-term sick the rate is £2.50 a week. At the top end of the scale, a few prisoners in privately run prisons and those on day release from open prison may earn over £30. These basic pay rates are exactly the same as they were when the IEP scheme was introduced in 1995

‘GIS A JOB’

Under IEP it can be argued that it is prison officers (POs) rather than the prisoners themselves that have benefited the most from its introduction. Home Office research commissioned in 1999 showed “an increase in staff confidence and control” but a “reductions in favourable perceptions of staff fairness, relations with staff, regime fairness”, both due to POs having greater discretionary powers under IEP than before. This continues to be the case across the system.

One particular ongoing bone of contention is that jobs are largely in the gift of POs and, as such, they can be used as a basis for punishment and reward. The system is seen to operate in an arbitrary and often vindictive manner. Cross a PO and you could find yourself given the worst job available or with no job at all as an alternative to being up on a charge before the Governor. Or maybe you’ll just find your pay at the end of the week is mysteriously ‘short’.

Example 2: Additional time on your sentence for refusing to work.
One correspondent has told of how, within 1 year of his release, he refused to fold pieces of paper for mail shots 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week “because he found it degrading and an insult to the prisoners’ intelligence”. His stand resulted in a move back to closed conditions and ultimately cost him 2 years on his sentence.

Prison work is also not a thing of choice. You have no right to refuse work and if you do you will be punished. Initially it will be loss of privileges already earned, such as access to the canteen or extra visits. Then comes downgrading of IEP level or 50% loss of earnings. Worse still are segregation and extra days on your sentence. Prisoners pursuing further education courses have even been refused access to educational materials as punishment, despite the Prison Services mantra in recent years of “education, education, education”.

 

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  Prison Facts

48% of prisoners are at, or below, the level expected of an 11 year old in reading, 65% in numeracy and 82% in writing. Nearly half those in prison have no qualifications at all. Half of all prisoners do not have the skills required by 96% of jobs and only one in five are able to complete a job application form. 41% of men in prison, 30% of women and 52% of young offenders were permanently excluded from school.

In 2008-09 an average of £1,631 per prisoner per year was spent on education in custody. This is less than half the average cost of secondary school education at £2,590 per student per year, which many prisoners have missed. In 2009-10, the government spent £181 million on education and training in prison. Government funding for prison education more than doubled in five years from £47.5m in 1999-2000 to £122m in 2004-2005. According to the Offenders Learning and Skills Unit in the Department for Education, just under a third of the prison population is attending education classes at any one time. Ofsted’s latest annual report on education in England noted that only two prisons were judged to be inadequate, compared with 24% in the previous year. For the first time one adult prison was assessed as outstanding.

[Bromley Briefings Dec 10]

Dyslexia is three to four times more common amongst prisoners than amongst the general population.

[Rack, J. The Incidence of Hidden Disabilities in the Prison Population, 2005, Dyslexia Institute, Egham, Surrey.]