“We are living in a time of global mass incarceration.  Prisons are overflowing, Imprisonment rates are sky-rocketing and prison costs are spiralling out of control.’

Despite these trends, prisons have failed to make our communities safer. Prisons have failed to protect our neighbourhoods and have failed to stop violence against women, migrants, people of colour / ethnic minorities, poor communities, queer and trans people, children, youth and people with mental health issues. Prisons have instead fostered more violence and oppression. With the government about to embark on an enormous £2.3 billion prison building spree, including construction of the three massive ‘Titan’ prisons, the time to act is now.

We are calling on everyone with an interest in community organizing, social justice and anti-prison activism to join in the movement to stop the violence of prisons. Communities of Resistance (CoRe) is a new collective that is committed to the struggle against prison expansion in Britain. Our first project is launching a campaigns is to Stop the Titan Prisons.”

Get involved – contact details:

email: building.safe.communities [at] gmail.com
website: http://www.co-re.org
Post: PO Box 74, Brighton, BN1 4ZQ, UK

10 reasons to oppose Titan prisons -
http://www.co-re.org/10Reasons_to_oppose_TitanPrisons.pdf

MORATORUM: Ban all prison expansion.
Call for immediate halt to all forms of prison expansion, including building new prisons or jail spaces, increasing prison budgets or hiring more prison staff.  Redirect money to community-based alternatives.  Stop all new laws that result in prison time (e.g. hate crime laws, minimum sentences or extended detention powers).  Create time and space to develop alternatives.

DECARCERATE: Get people out of prison.

Release as many people from prison as possible and redirect them to alternatives.  Start with children, the elderly, people with mental health issues, women and trans persons, people who have committed non-violent offences.  Those who need no supervision or support should be released at once.  Those who need no supervision but do need support or services should be released to community peer support groups through contractual arrangements.  Those needing supervision should be paroled with arrangements for transfer as soon as possible to community services by contract.  gradually release and redirect more and more people.  Use a timeline if release goals: 50% immediately, 25% within 5 years, 1010% within 10 years, etc.

EXCARCERATE: Stop putting people in prison.
Stop holding people in pre-trial detention and develop alternatives such as bail houses and community supervision.  Stop detaining immigrants abd those who have not been charged with crime.  Put caps on the number of people who can be sent to prison.  Reduce the maximum length of sentences.  Abolish indeterminate sentences and mandatory minimum sentences.  Decriminalise sex work and drug laws.  Redefine categories of crime so that minor offences do not result in prison sentences.  Provide options for prisoners to make restitution.

RESTRAINT OF THE FEW: Develop harm reduction & monitoring responses.
Develop a monitoring and review procedure for the very small percentage of people who need to be limited in movement dor some periods of time in their lives.  The process should aim to work out the least restrictive and most human option for the shortest perios of time.

BUILDING THE CARING COMMUNITY: Invest in social & economic justice.
Create a network of community supports.  Invest in social housing, education, youth services, health care, community-based mental health programs, and employment.  Provide victim assistance.  Develop restitution/compensation programs.  Develop non-punitive responses to harm and mechanisms of social accountability in the community.

The big talk from government ministers at the moment is to train prisoners in a relevant job opportunity, to give them better prospects on release. Mmmmmmm sounds good doesn’t it? As one prison guard that wrote to us said “The only problem is the Prison Service are more interested in churrrrrrrrning out bed upon bed, making more profits for companies like Airsprung and to hell with prisoners. Most staff have read your articles and support what you say, they are disgusted that the Prison Service seem hell bent on using PRISONERS FOR PROFIT TO PRIVATE INDUSTRY” and that “They are offered false hope and are worked like dogs”. Any pretense at rehabilitating prisoners and empowering them with trade skills has been abandoned.

If you write to one of these companies about the issue you will get an answer like this received from Trew Gates Ltd (who stopped using prison labour last year), “We as a company were proud to be involved in a program of training and helping rehabilitate prisoners to enable them to learn a trade for their re-introduction into society. Many men and women involved in the manufacture of these gates stated that they were happy to be part of the program and it helped to make their sentence pass by easier”. While we don’t deny that something to pass the time and get you out of your cell might be welcomed, this is low skilled work and is of no benefit to the rehabilitation of the actual individual, instead this replaces education and skill learning which have been drastically cut. These companies try to justify themselves by saying that it is good training and will help prisoners to get a job after release, but all they are interested in is profit, simple as that. The money saved is not reflected in the goods Airsprung or Wilkinson sell to the general public. If big companies like Wilkinson and Airsprung offered a reasonable rate, like say the minimum wage, then you would not see them for dust.

The Prison Service price each product using a formula which has not changed for over 10 years, they work between a break even price and a target price. The sales people very rarely reach the target selling price and usually settle for break even which just covers the cost of materials. There are also a number of instances where the Prison service buy work!! This is a situation where the company is offered a price below break even, if they can provide long term consistent work. This is exploitation at its very worst with the only benefit going to the company. Wickes Building Supplies used the Scottish Prison Service to manufacture gates. The price was squeezed so low that SPS did not even recover the material cost, they lost about £2 per item and must have lost thousands upon thousands over the 5 year period SPS did work for them. These loses of course being made up by the tax payer. As you can appreciate this is very attractive to potential customers as it ultimately means bigger profits for them.

The Scottish Prison Service also make garden furniture goods, held at their Faulhouse Depot in West Lothian, which is then sold onto to local sharks, who in turn sell it onto the public for at least double the price. As we heard “There are more fiddles going on than the London Philharmonic. These guys are raking in a fortune. Most of this stuff is touted by the SPS sales manager Anthony Apperley. This is the guy responsible for getting the guys to slave away for 30p per hour while the greedy companies get the rewards. I bet he is on a back-hander with some of these people giving them low prices as he has a high lifestyle”.

Here’s what the prisoners themselves had to say, “I was made to pack cards into plastic slips but found this hard as have Attention Deficit Disorder. Because I could not keep up I ended up on basic regime, 23 hours a day bang up, 1/2 hour visits, £2.50 canteen a week, no association”……..”I laid fabric for Wilkinson ironing boards but at the time had a medical issue so would loose a days wage each week as I had to see the doctor. Plus I would get docked if I could not complete an order. I was 300 miles away from home so had to do this work to phone my family”………………. “At HMP Lindholme I saw inmates use the toilet and not wash their hands packing mushrooms, spit on them, put boggies on them, kick them about, put flies in the pack then seal them. Also the onions were kept in moldy conditions then wiped and sealed. I wrote to Asda but got no reply. The mushrooms packed for Asda I would not eat them as health and safety in prisons is not an issue”…………” I have packed food for Asda, parts for Land Rover, packed welcome packs for hotels, nuts and bolts for DIY stores, plus have been punished for not working”……..”I packed cards and put screws in shock kits. We are meant to be getting rehabilitated but we are used like slaves for pittance then we have to shop at Aramark to buy our stuff at over marked prices”.

Aramark are yet another US import grown fat on the misery of incarceration. Over the past few years it has become ubiquitous, running prison canteens up and down the country. Everything has to be purchased from the prison canteen, this monopoly is another attractive proposition for the ever-greedy forces of capitalism. Though sometimes the “needs” created are false ones, in many prisons it is even necessary for prisoners to buy their own toilet cleaner, and they increasingly have to feed themselves.

What You Can Do

Contact your local MP and demand information under the Freedom of Information Act, an Act to make provision for the disclosure of information held by public authorities or by persons providing services for them. Potential questions people should ask are:

1. I would like to see a copy of the formula used to calculate how a product is costed, how is this formula arrived at giving a breakdown of materials and labour? I would like to know why this costing has not significantly changed over the past decade.
2. I would like to see details of how prisoners wages are calculated.
3. I would like to see all information on the Prison Service customer data base detailing all the products costs which are sold onto to private companies, so comparisons can be made against what these private customers sell onto the consumer FOR BIG PROFITS.
4. Why tax payers money was used to subsidize Wickes profits over the past 5 year? Under the Freedom of Information act the Scottish Prison Service must provide figures for this.
5. How many hours are the prisoners spending in the workshops? Are people are having to work in order to get access to education or being punished for not working?
6. Ask about the profits Aramark and other prison canteen suppliers are making.
etc.

What will happen is the local MP will write to the Prison Service asking questions on behalf of their members, the Prison Service will have to respond (reluctantly). The general public have a right to know where tax payers money is being spent. Of course the other alternative is to run a campaign alongside pushing for a minimum wage for prisoners, we know it would never happen, but if it ever did you would not see these greedy companies for long.

Find your constituency and your MP at www.locata.co.uk/commons

Contact the National Audit Office to ask for a full audit into the way tax payers money is being spent unwisely.

National Audit Office
Freedom of Information Team
Room BM45
157-197 Buckingham Palace Road
London
SW1W 9SP
foi@nao.gsi.gov.uk

Write to the English Prison Service or locate the addresses of prisons in England and Wales at www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk
Write to the Scottish Prison Service or locate the addresses of prisons in Scotland at www.sps.gov.uk
Contact the Prison Management direct at Tony Simpson, Head of Prison Industries, 5 Redheughs Rigg, Calton House, Edinburgh. EH12 9HW or Paula Arnold, Deputy Head of Prison Industries at the same address or at paula.arnold@sps.gov.uk 

Look at the “Corporate Watch DIY Guide to How to research companies” which can be found at www.corporatewatch.org.uk

Contact some of the companies using prison labour:

- Airsprung Beds. Canal Road, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, BA14 8RQ    penny.edwards@airsprungbeds.co.uk
Airsprung beds supply Argos with beds made by the Scottish Prison Service. The SPS get £3 per bed, Argos sell them for upwards of £100. Argos is Airsprung’s main customer regarding prison made beds.
- Bison Safety Systems. Unit 3, Calendar Business Park, Falkirk, FK1 1XR. SPS manufacture safety equipment for them.
- KDM International. 18 The Havens, Ransomes Business Park, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP3 95J. They are starting to sell a lot of garden items and are getting a special deal because they buy so many of them.
- Peter Smith Garden Furniture. Dick Lane, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD4 8JD. Same as KDM.
- Lomax Mobility – Dundee. They buy bags and other small items.
- Other companies mentioned like Wilkinson, ASDA, Virgin, Sainsbury, Wickes.

Contact Campaign Against Prison Slavery, PO Box 74, Brighton, East Sussex. BN1 4ZQ

Disclaimer: This is all information and ideas sent to us by third parties. 

In England and Wales the administration of this is in the hands of individual prison governors. They can negotiate contracts with outside firms who want products produced in prison workshops – your double-glazing made at HMP Wolds and Blakenhurst or your electrical components assembled at HMP Lewes and Bedford. Governors can also set local variations in the basic rates of prisoner wages paid under the Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) scheme. Under this scheme, prisoners can do a full week’s work and be paid as little as £4.00 [the basic minimum wage], though the current national average is around £9.60 for a 32 hour week.

SPS Industries

In Scotland however things are run differently. Prison labour is under the centralised control of Scottish Prison Services (SPS) Industries. Run from their HQ at Calton House in Edinburgh and the Central Stores at Faulhouse, near Bathgate in West Lothian, SPS Industries has a budget of around £2.50m and employs just over 20 people.

In 2002-03 SPS Industries had a very successful year. The SPS annual report trumpeted the fact that “over a million pounds worth of work previously carried out abroad being won for the Scottish Prison Service Workshops.” Income from SPS Industries’ sales was at an all time high of £2.99m, from total sale value from production of £5.42m. In the same report, under the slogan Leaders In Prison Correctional Work, they also told us that ” The Royal Mail awarded SPS Industries their Gold Award for outstanding achievement in supply of metal fabricated postal trolleys.” All this was illustrated in a series of pie charts and histograms in a colourful appendix. Heady days indeed.

By 2005-06 the appendix was no longer a feature of the annual report and annual income from sales had fallen to £1.77m. SPS Industries were no longer featuring as a
success story and the following year, the last for which figures are available, income from sales had fallen to just £1.13m.

During that period SPS Industries has lost a number of high profile clients due to a combination of factors. One of these is the bad publicity generated by the Campaign Against Prison Slavery (CAPS), an organisation that campaigns against IEP and for the right of prisoners to gain meaningful training and educational opportunities within prisons, and their website naming and shaming companies that exploit prison labour. This naming and shaming internal SPS sources tell us led to Gleneagles Hotel pulling out of their contract with SPS Industries for the manufacture of their laundry bags within weeks of being named the website’s “Company Of The Month”. Gleneagles of course deny this and say that it’s simply because they had found somewhere cheaper.

The other main cause is the actions of the prisoners themselves in resisting this exploitation by throwing a clog in the works: packed items missing a component, bed frames that mysteriously collapse because someone forgot to put a bolt in the correct place. All exploited workers know of ways they can silently fight back.

Crisis, What Crisis?

In addition to the collapse in sales and loss of contracts, now even the staff at SPS Industries are beginning to abandon what they perceive is a sinking ship. At the beginning of February this year CAPS learnt that Tony Simpson, head of SPS Industries, had had enough of the bad publicity and pressure to improve sales. He was leaving to head the new PPP prison at Addiewell, West Lothian. No sooner had CAPS discovered that Nigel Ironside, governor of HMP Dumfries, would replace him than our sources told us that he had had second thoughts and is now reluctant to take up his new post. Other staff members, including a storeman and a member of the sales staff at Fauldhouse have also left their posts within the last month.

On top of this, Paula Arnold, deputy head of SPS Industries, is leaving her post and will instead be conducting a review of SPS Industries itself. This, we understand, is with a view to some form of restructuring, probably including the selling off the Central Sores at Fauldhouse, and will also seek to find out why sales figures have plummeted in recent years.

We at CAPS of course welcome this review. It offers an unmissable opportunity to change the whole ethos of prison work and training. Instead of the present situation: very limited training in workshops that follow production line principles, producing items for contracts with outside firms or, in the case of SPS Industries’ line of Athol garden furniture, stock for wholesale to gardening centres; prisoners could be offered an integrated system of training and education addressing the very real needs of the prisoners rather than the prison industries’ need to produce a profit. This integrated system would obviously need to include programmes to address the literacy and numeracy skills that the majority of prisoners lack.

One possible model for change within the workshop system of SPS Industries is that followed by the Barbed design company 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 rather than the paltry rates paid to other prisoners. The workers even pay tax and NI contributions and are able to save towards their eventual release and contribute to a collective fund that donates to victim’s charities. 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. Barbed is unique within the prison system but offers an innovative and controversial alternative to the traditional model pursued by the prison industry.

Some Facts

“Thirty per cent of offenders were regular truants from school. Almost half of all male prisoners were excluded from school. Over half of prisoners have no qualifications at all, and more than half of all prisoners are below the level expected of an average 11 year-old in reading, writing and maths.” This is a quote from Neil Bentley, the Director of the CBI Public Services Directorate in a speech titled ‘The Business Of Reducing Reoffending’ to a HM Prison Service Industries Forum in 2006. He also went on to point out that at present:
• 76 per cent of offenders leave prison without a job
• more than 50 per cent of people on probation are unemployed.
• according to the Home Office, lack of ‘education, training and employment’ is the single greatest factor behind offending
• this exceeds all other factors, including housing, relationships, drug and alcohol abuse
• offenders released from prison without a job are twice as likely to re-offend as those released with employment already lined up.

Clearly, by these figures the present prison regimes in England and Scotland are failing. Yet what does both the present government and the Tories want to do? Increase investment in the prison system by building more prisons and increase the rate of privatisation of the present prison stock to cope with the ever-rising prisoner numbers.

This is plain stupid. The money should be going into efforts to decrease offending rates. And the only way to do this is by tackling the training of prisoners and the provision of employment for ex-offenders. The review of SPS Industries could just be the ideal opportunity to turn the thinking of the prison industry on its head.

The Campaign Against Prison Slavery

Something else that could come out of the impending review might be some answers to questions that CAPS have been asking under the Freedom Of Information (FOI) Act but have so far failed to gain satisfactory answers to.

In early 2007, CAPS was informed by SPS insiders that a major contract between SPS Industries and Airsprung Beds had been misnegotiated and that SPS Industries were making a large loss on it. This flagship contract was for the supply of platform bed frames and divan bed bases, made at HMP Shotts, to Airsprung, a Wiltshire company that supplies finished beds to Argos, Bensons & The Bed Shed amongst others. Airsprung Beds supplies the raw materials [wood and metal fixings] and ships it up to Shotts.

The prisoners make the frames and an outside contractor than transports the palletised frames to the Fauldhouse depot 10km away. Airsprung lorries then transport them down to their Wiltshire factory.

For each bed frame or divan base SPS Industries earns between £2.15 and £4.30, depending on the model. Now the average lorry load from Shotts to Faulhouse should cost about £160 for 100 bed frames i.e. £1.60 per frame, but our sources tell us that the contract only allows for transport costs of 30p per frame! Something somewhere does not add up.

CAPS, through a number of FOI applications, have sought to clear up this discrepancy but to no avail. Scottish Prison Services claim that the ‘official’ costs “are subject to ‘the public interest test’” and as such will not be disclosed in response to out FOI Act requests because “this information may have a detrimental commercial impact on the company.” Additionally, they tell us that for them to calculate the actual transport costs for a single bed would cost more than the Act’s statutory cut off figure of £600, beyond which an organisation can refuse to pursue a FOI request.

This is clearly a very curious situation. Any commercial company worth it’s salt will keep a very close eye on the on-going running costs of any contract that it negotiates to ensure that said contract remains viable. In fact, SPS Industries carry out quarterly ‘contract reviews’ examining material and transport costs the profitability of all their lines except, we are again told by internal sources, the Airsprung Beds contract. We have since referred this to the Scottish Information Commissioner.

If our information is correct, this would mean that the Scottish tax payer has effectively been subsidising a private company to the tune of tens of thousands a year and that efforts have been made to cover this fact up. Now, we can only go on the information supplied to us in confidence the SPS insiders and the more than grudging responses that have come from SPS Industries itself. We could of course be totally wrong but all the evidence we have seen so far points to just such a scenario.

* you have no choice in this, either you do the work or you are punished.

This article dates from March 2008 and some of the details on Airsprung beds have been superseded as of 30/07/08.

Elevator Road,
Trafford Park,
MANCHESTER.
M17 1B

SPS prisoners make their wooden road frames (as seen on motorways). [12/06]

ANDREW MITCHELL & Co. Ltd.

15 Dunivaig Place,
Easter Queenslie Estate,
GLASGOW.
G33 4TT

FAX: 0141 773 5455

Hospital trolleys.

BELHAVEN BREWERIES

Sprott Road Industrial Estate,
DUNBAR,
East Lothian.
EH42 1RS

Contact: ADRAIN
FAX: 01786 465655

BSW TIMBER

East End,
EARLSTON,
Berwickshire.
TD4 6JA

TEL: 01896 849255
FAX: 01896 848308
Email: marketing@bsw.co.uk

Have taken over production of timber side of HMP GLENOCHIL, supplying timber to be made into sheds, garden furniture, etc. made for stock and distributed from the SPS stores at Fauldhouse, Bathgate.

CHAMPFLEURIE ESTATE LTD

Champfleurie House,
LINLITHGOW,
West Lothian.
EH51 0AU

TEL: 01506 847999
FAX: 01506 847174
Email: info@ChampfleurieEstate.co.uk

Sheds, garden furniture, dog kennels & a gate. [12/06]

CRECA SAWMILLS

ANNAN,
Dumfrieshire.
DG12 6RP

Contact: ROBERT MAYOR
FAX: 01461 500645

Part of NORTHWEST TIMBER PRODUCTS [Manchester area]. Buy garden furniture and sheds. [12/06]

A. DIAMOND & SON

35 Newmills Road,
COLERAINE,
Northern Ireland.
BT52 2JB

TEL: 028 7034 3452
FAX: 028 7034 3279
E-Mail: sales@adiamondandson.co.uk

FORSET GARDEN LTD.

Units 291 & 296,
Hartlebury Trading Estate,
Hartlebury,
KIDDERMISNSTER,
Worcestershire.
DY10 4JB

TEL: 01299 251725
FAX: 01299 254858

GIBBS SANDTECH

Station Road,
Braughting,
WARE,
Hertfordshire.
SG11 2PB

Contact: MR GIBBS
TEL: 01920 822404
FAX: 01920 822909
Email: info@gibbsfinishing.com

Modular paint drying racks.

KDM INTERNATIONAL

18, The Havens,
Ransomes Business Park,
IPSWICH,
Suffolk.
IP3 95J

Contact: IVAN WALSH
ivan@kdm.co.uk
FAX: 01473 276911

Athol garden furniture, sheds, etc. [12/06]

MIMS POTTERIES

76-80 Glentanar Road,
Balmore Industrial Estate,
GLASGOW.
G22 7XS

TEL: 0141 336 2636
FAX:0141 336 2626
Email: sales@mimspottery.com

P & A FENCING

Mold Industrial Estate,
Wrexham Road,
MOLD,
Flintshire.
CH7 4HE

TEL: 01352 752555
FAX: 01352 755200
E-mail: sales@p-a-group.com

Athol sheds and garden products.

ROYAL MAIL

Royal Amil House,
Station Road,
CHESTER.
CH1 3AA

Contact: JASON SODEN
Email: jason.soden@royalmail.com
FAX: 01246 546215

Delivery trolleys parts. [Early 05/08]

SPEEDY HIRE PLC

Chase House,
16 The Parks,
NEWTON-LE-WILLOWS,
Merseyside.
WA12 0JQ

TEL: 01942 720000
FAX: 01942 720077
Email: admin@speedyhire.plc.uk

The latest firm to negotiate a Contract Services agreement with HMP Shotts, in this case the refurbishments of tools and equipment. Currently they are refurbishing motorway works lighting equipment. Speedy Hire have also been trialling workshop training schemes with the EPS at HMP Garth and HMP Pentonville and have recruited a number of prisoners upon their release. [07/08]

STEWART FENCING LTD

Blairlinn Industrial Estate,
11 Green Road,
CUMBERLAND,
Stratchclyde.
G67 2TU

TEL: 01236 727776
FAX: 01236 780313

Prisons are violent institutions.  People in prison experience brutal human rights abuses, including sexual assualt, rape, harassment and medical neglect.  Aside from these violations, the act of putting people in cages is a form of violence itself.  Such violence leads to extremely high rates of self-harm and suicide, both inside the prison, and following release.  The current prison system severly damages the people it imprisons and harms the communities most effected by it.  People who are incarcerated under degrading conditions often return to society more unstable than when they went in.

 2. Prisons don’t reduce crime.

Putting people into cages does not solve any of the problems that lead to harm, liek drug abuse, poverty, violence, or mental illness.  Numerous studies show that places with more prisoners and prisons do not have lower crime rates than other places.  Indeed, countless studies – even those conducted by independent criminologists and conservative governments – have found that prisons don’t reduce crime.  As the DAubney Commission (appointed by a Conservatie Government) found in Canada, “imprisonment has not been effective in rehabilitating or reforming offenders, has not been shown to be a strong deterrent, and has achieved only temporary public protection and uneven retribution.”  In the UK, approximately 65% of prisoners are reconvicted within two years of being released.  In order ro reduce harm we must change the social and economic conditions under which the harm takes place.  Focusing on creating safe and stable conditions – instead of policing and imprisonment – reduced harm.

3. Prisons don’t meet the needs of victims/survivors of violence.

Victims of violence repeatedly say that the justice system doesn’t work for them.  First if all, many serious social harms don’t count as crime or are sancioned by the legal system (such as poverty, war, exploitation).  Second, many people who experience violence feel unable to report it (such as sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, hate crimes).  Third, when people do go through the legal system, they often feel exluded from the court process, revictimised by lawyers and unsatisfied with results.  This is partly because the legal system responds to crime by asking: Who did it, and how can we punish them?  By contrast, prison abolitionists ask: Who was hurt?  How can we heal them?  How can we prevent such harm in the future?  Focusing on these latter questions means that prison abolitionists can take victims concerns seriously, priortise healing and emphasise prevention.

4 . Prisons tear apart families and communities.

Prisons not only cause damage to those who are imprisoned, but also to their families and communities.  Seperating people from their home communities and isolating them in abusive an violent environments can make pre-existing problems worse.  Many prisoners lose their jobs, homes and possessions during custody.  Many prisoners break up with their partners, lose custody of their children and lose contact with their families and support networks during incarceration.  The prison system claims that it is about safety and order, but it often causes more disruption and violence than the original problem.  How can we build safe, strong communities when people are constantly being taken out of them? 

5. Prisons are expensive.

It costs approximately £112 per day (£40,992 per year) to keep a person in prison in England and Wales.  Prisons drain vital resources from health care, education, housing and social programs, which better address root causes of crime.  The cost of alternatives to prison, such as probation, bail supervision and community supervision orders can range from £5 to £50 per day.

6. Prisons are racist and anti-immigrant.

The prison system disproportionately punishes and imprisons people of colour, immigrants, and foreign nationals.  People of colour are subject to more police searches, more changes, and harsher sentences than white people.  People of colour are disproportionately imprisoned for drug related charges, even thogh people of colour use drugs at similar or lower rates than whites.  People without citizenship status are criminalised, punished and locked up just for trying to live in the same country as their family, trying to find a better paid job, or trying to escape from discrimination and persecution in another country.  People without citizenship who are convicted of crimes are doubly punished; following criminal punishment, they are often deported, regardless of how long they’ve lived in the UK or what conditions they might face in being sent elsewhere. 

7. Prisons reinforce oppressive gender and sexual norms.

Prisons intensify violence against women, queers and trans people, and support a culture of misogyny, homophobia and transphobia.  Women, trans and queer people in prison experience extreme medical neglect, sexual harassment and abuse – and many go to priosn in the first place for protecting themselves against an abuser.  Women in prison often lose custody rights of their children, and are denied reproductive choice.  Sex-segregated prisons restrict people’s right to determine their own gender identity and sexuality.  Prisoners who don’t identify as ‘male’ or ‘femaile’ or who are gender-non-nonforming are often forced into solitary confinement or share a cell with prisoners of a different gender, with no regard for their safety. 

8. Prisons harm young people.

Youth make up a disroportionate percentage of the UK prison population.  A large proportion of youth in prison experience violence from peers and staff.  Criminalised youth also experience more barriers in getting an education and finding a job later on.  A large proportion of youth end up in prison as adults where they are likely to be classified as dangerous because of their youth record.  Prison has a particularly negative effect on young people and often increase the risks of further criminalisation.  In effect, locking up youth creates creates repeat customers for the prison industrial complex.

9. Prisons exploit imprisoned people labour and make profit for corporations.

Prisoners are paid pennies a day to work for private companies and public industries in a form of legalised slave labour.  Private companies that finance, build and run prisons mek a profit from crime and effectively exploit other people’s suffering and misery.  Prisons are also toxix environments for workers; prison jobs have high turnover rates, high rates of sick leave and higher rates of depression, stress and anxiety.

10. Prisons are not necessary: real alternatives exist.

The prison industrial complex did not always exist.  It has taken about 200 years to build it up.  Yet there are still many places where people rely on each other to solve problems instead of police, courts and cages.  But we can’t get rid of prisons without making dramatic changes to the systems that lead people to prison.  We need to build safe, stabel environments that don’t depend on punishment and domination.  If creating better envrionments can’t keep some people from harming others, we need to have something in place to help those involved get meaningful justice and resolution.  The prison system does not get this job done.  Restorative and transformative justice practices which do not depend on our current policing and court systems may be one way of settling damage that happens between people.  Decarceration is widely recognized as an importnant step: numerous prisoners don’t need to be in prison.  This means many people could be out now – among their families and friends, making positive contributions to their communities.  Shoulder to shoulder we can all learn together how to live in healthy ways that don’t harm anyone.

On Thursday the 20th of November more than 7,000 hunger strikers in greek prisons demanding a comprehensive 45-point program of prison reform have decided to stop their hunger strike, already on its 18th day, after the Ministry of Justice responded to their struggle and to the widening solidarity movement which in the last weeks has held several mass protest marches in the greek cities by declaring that by next April the number of prisoners in greek jails will be reduced to 6.815 from the present 12.315, thus effectively releasing half of the country’s prison population.

The Ministry’s declaration in detail states that:

1) All persons convicted to a sentence up to five years for any offense including drug related crimes can tranform their sentence into a monetary penalty. This will not be allowed in the case the jury decides that the payment is not enough to deter the convict from commiting punishable acts in the future.

2) The minimum sum for tranforming one day of prison sentence to monetary penanlty is reduced from 10 euros to 3, with the provision of being reduced to 1 euro by decision of the jury.

3) All people who have served 1/5 of their prison sentence for 2 year sentences and 1/3 for sentences longer than 2 years are to be released, with no exceptions.

4) The minimum limit of served sentence is reduced to 3/5 for conditional release and for convicts for drug related crimes. Those condemned under conditions of law Ν. 3459/2006 (articles 23 και 23Α) are excepmpted.

5) The maximum limit of pre-trial impironment is reduced from 18 to 12 months, with the excemption of crimes puniched by liife or 20year sentence.

6) The annual time of days-off prison is increased by one day. Tougher conditions for days-off are limited for those convicted for drug related crimes under Ν. 3459/2006.

7) Disciplinary penalties are to be integrated.

Integration after 4 years into national law of the European Council decision of drug trafficking (2004/757).

9) Expansion of implementation of conditional release of convicts suffering from AIDS, kidney failure, persistent TB, and tetraplegics.

What the Ministry failed to answer with regard to the prisoners’ demands include:

1) Monetary exchange of prison sentences longer than 5 years, especially for 6.700 prisoners presently convicted for non-criminal offenses.

2) Abolition of juvenile prisons

3) Abolition of accumulative disciplinary penalties

4) Abolition of 18 months pre-trial imprisonment for a large number of offenses.

5) Satisfactory expansion of days off, despite the fact that the application of present liberties has been tested as succesfull during the last 18 years.

6) Immediate improvement of relocation conditions of convicts

7) Holding a meeting between the minister of justice and the prisoners’ committee

Thus in a press release, the Prisoners’ Commitee announced that:

“The amendment submitted to the Parliament by the Ministry of Justice tackles but a few of our demands. The minister ought to materialize his promises for the immediate release of the suggested number of prisoners announced, and at the same time implement concrete measures regarding the totality of our demands. We the prisoners treat this amendment as a first step, a result of our struggle and of the solidarity shown by society. Yet it fails to covers us, it fails to solve our problems. With our struggle, we have first of all fought for our dignity. And this dignity we cannot offer as a present to no minister, to no screw. We shall tolerate no arbitrary acts, no vengeful relocation, no terrorizing disciplinary act. We are standing and we shall stay standing. We demand form the Parliament to move towards a complete abolition of the limit of 4/5 of served sentence, the abolition of accumulated time for disciplinary penalties, and the expansion of beneficial arrangements regarding days-off, and conditional releases for all categories of prisoners. Moreover, we demand the immediate legislation on the presently vague promises of the minister of justice regarding the improvement of prison conditions (abolition of juvenile prisons, foundation of therapeutic centers for drug dependents, implementation of social labour in exchange for prison sentence, upgrading of hospital care of prisoners, incorporation of european legislation favorable to the prisoners in the greek law etc.). Finally, we offer our thanks to the solidarity movement, to every component, party, medium, and militant who stood by us with all and any means of his or her choice, and we declare that our struggle against these human refuse dumps and for the victory of all our demands continues”.
Prisoners’ Committee 20/11/08.

As of Monday the 3rd of November the totality of prison across greece are under a 3-stage campaign in demand of a 45-point reform, asking amongst other things for abolition of all juvenile prisons, greater freedoms, reduction of prison service and better conditions. The first stage of the prisoners struggle in which 8,000 out of 15,000 inmates took part consisted of refusing food from the prison catering. On Friday the 7, 1,000 of them upgraded to the second stage of the campaign by going on hunger strike. The number of the hunger strikers today (11/7/08) is 5,120, 17 of whom have sewn their mouths. The third stage of the campaign, general uprising, looms over the prison establishment as outside the prisons solidarity campaigns are filling the streets of the greek cities with protest marches, concerts and various forms of direct action.

The main 16 demands by the prisoners are as follows

WE DEMAND:

1. Abolition of disciplinary charges. Modification of the Penitentiary Code’s articles 68, 69, 70, 71. In any case, the disciplinary charges must be removed after served, and not accumulated nor taken into consideration when it comes to days off, work, education and discharge under conditions after they are served.
2. Reduction of the sentence limit for discharge under conditions, from 3/5 to the 3/7 of the sentence time. Immediate abolishment of the anti-constitutional treaty that increased up to the 4/5 of crimes related to drugs.
3. Once and for all 3 year reduction of all prices, to make easier the relieve of over-crowding of prisons. Rejection of the new Panoptic prisons, built isolated from the urban social body.
4. Abolition of all juvenile prisons. Adoption of open structures to take care of and protect the teenagers and youth.
5. Reduction of sentence limit of 25 years of continuous detention. Reduction of the minimum detention time to be discharged under conditions to 12 years from 16 that it is today, according to european legislature.
6. Immediate and without exceptions application of days-off, suspensions, and other benefits of the law, reduction of the minimal sentence time limits. Increase the number of days-off to 60 for those that have a right to 5 days and to 96 for those with a right to 8.
7. To end the over-use of pre-trial detentions and reduce the time limit to 12 months.
8. The para-judicial racket is known for its hysteria of the last 8 years, leading to revengeful killing sentences. We as for proportionate sentences and wide application of the measure of suspension and discharge under conditions.
9. Full, permanent and 24 hour medical treatment and respect to the patients. Creation and improvement of adequate hygiene spaces (baths and toilets). Immediate integration of the Korydallos prison psychiatric and medical clinic to the National Health System, with new aisles for women and juveniles, that lack now. Immediate transportation of patients to public hospitals with ambulances and not in police vehicles, tied up with their hands behind their back.
10. To be provided the right in beneficial work payment, education, second chance schools, technical workshops and participation in diverse similar programmes, to all prisoners proportionate and without any discrimination. To be given educational days-off, for all prisoners, that meet with the criteria and terms to study outside prison and for all levels of education and technical skills learning. Substantial amplification of withdrawal projects to all prisons.
11. Abolition of the prison no-go zone. Free access for social and political institutions, Lawyers Associations, Hellenic Medical Association and EINAP, organizations for human rights, NGOs and international organizations. Free circulation of political and educative press, with no exceptions.
12. Alternative forms of detention, amplification of agricultural prisons and of the institution of semi-free sentence as well as community service.
13. Amplification of the institution of free visits in humane conditions with respect to the personality and dignity of the prisoners and the visitors. Private place to meet with our companion.
14. Work and access to creative activities for all of us. Beneficial account of days of work in the sentence.
15. Right to selection of serving the sentence in their country of origin, for the prisoners from other countries, once and if they wish.
16. Humane transport conditions with improvement of the room in the preposterous transportation means of the greek police. More stops, improvement of the detention room in the miserable “Metagogon” ‘transfer prison’ and faster transfer to the destination prisons.

DEMANDS OF THE WOMEN PRISONERS AT ELEONAS, THIVA PRISON:

On the occasion of the third-world life conditions inside this establishment but also our treatment by the totality of the ministry of justice services, and more precisely: Inexistent medical-pharmaceutical supply. Few, to even inexistent hygiene supply (without any right to a private purchase). Inexistent basic hygiene (no warm water). Inexistent social services and care. Preposterous food, because of luck of supplies. Even first need stuff is an unknown word here. Racist treatment of the prisoners when it comes to days-off and suspensions. Injust treatment of sentence accounts for suspension proportionate to the offence (2/5, 3/5 etc). Vast delays when it comes to bringing the case to the courthouse and especially the court of appeals. The peculiar stiffness of the persons judging us, despite the recommendations they have received. The inexistent second chance we are all waiting for and most of us have a right on it, but are never given. We decided to abstain from prison food commons from 03/11/2008 until proportionate measures are taken in regards to all the above. We expect your understanding.

This process is being imposed through fear, and the authorities justify it to us in terms of our need for protection – from criminals, from terrorists, from drugs and violence. But who are these criminals and terrorists, who are these monsters that threaten us every moment of our fear-filled lives? A moment’s careful consideration is enough to answer this question. In the eyes of the rulers of this world, we are the criminals and terrorists, we are the monsters – at least potentially. After all, we are the ones they are policing and monitoring. We are the ones who are watched on the video cameras and searched at the bus stations. One can only wonder if it is the fact that this is so glaringly obvious that makes people blind to it.

The rule of fear is such that the social order even solicits our aid in our own policing. Parents register their toddlers’ fingerprints with police agencies connected with the FBI. A Florida-based company called Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) has created the “Veri-Chip” that can hold personal, medical and other information and is intended to be implanted under the skin. Their idea is to promote its voluntary use by people, of course, for their own protection. It may soon be connected to the network of the Global Positioning System (GPS) Satellite so that anyone with the implant could be monitored constantly.* In addition there are dozens of programs that encourage snitching – a factor that is also reminiscent of prisons where the authorities seek out and reward snitches. Of course other prisoners have a rather different attitude toward these scum.

But all of this is purely descriptive, a picture of the social prison that is being built around us. A real understanding of this situation that we can use to fight against this process requires a deeper analysis. In fact, prison and policing rest on the idea that there are crimes, and this idea rests on the law. Law is portrayed as an objective reality by which the actions of the citizens of a state can be judged. Law, in fact, creates a kind of equality. Anatole France expressed this ironically by pointing out that before the law, beggars and kings alike were forbidden from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges. From this, it is clear that before the law we all become equal, simply because we all become ciphers, non-entities without individual feelings, relationships, desires and needs.

The objective of law is to regulate society. The necessity for the regulation of a society implies that it is not meeting the needs or fulfilling the desires of everyone within it. It rather exists as an imposition on a greater part of those who make it up. Of course, such a situation could only come to exist where inequality of the most significant kind exists – the inequality of access to the means for creating one’s life on one’s own terms. For those with the upper hand, this state of social inequality has the dual name of property and power. For those on the bottom, its name is poverty and subjection. Law is the lie that transforms this inequality into an equality that serves the masters of society.

In a situation in which everyone had full and equal access to all that they need to fulfill themselves and create their lives on their own terms, a wealth of individual differences would flourish. A vast array of dreams and desires would express themselves creating an apparently infinite spectrum of passions, loves and hatreds, conflicts and affinities. This equality in which neither property nor power would exist would thus express the frightening and beautiful non-hierarchical inequality of individuality.

Contrarily, where the inequality of access to the means for creating one’s life exists – i.e., where the vast majority of people have been dispossessed of their own lives – everyone becomes equal, because everyone becomes nothing. This is true even of those with property and power, because their status in society is not based one who they are, but on what they have. The property and the power (which always resides in a role and not in an individual) are all that have worth in this society. Equality before the law serves the rulers, precisely because its aim is to preserve the order in which they rule. Equality before the law disguises social inequality precisely behind that which maintains it.

But, of course, law does not maintain the social order as words. The word of the law would be meaningless without physical force behind it. And that physical force exists in the systems of enforcement and punishment: the police, judicial and prison systems. Equality before the law is, in fact, a very thin veneer for hiding the inequality of access to the conditions of existence, the means for creating our lives on our terms. Reality breaks through this veneer constantly, and its control can only be maintained by force and through fear.

From the perspective of the rulers of this world, we are, indeed, all criminals (at least potentially), all monsters threatening their tranquil sleep, because we are all potentially capable of seeing through the veil of the law and choosing to ignore it and take back the moments of our lives whenever we can on our own terms. Thus, law, itself, (and the social order of property and power which require it) makes us equal precisely by criminalizing us. It is, therefore, the logical outcome of law and the social order that produces it that imprisonment and policing would become universal, hand in hand with the development of the global supermarket.

In this light, it should be clear that there is no use in making laws more just. There is no use in seeking to monitor the police. There is no use in trying to reform this system, because every reform will inevitably play back into the system, increasing the number of laws, increasing the level of monitoring and policing, making the world even more like a prison. There is only one way to respond to this situation, if we would have our lives as our own. To attack this society in order to destroy it.
]]> http://ape93208.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/why-do-we-all-live-in-prison-prison-law-and-social-control/feed/ 0 ape93208 http://ape93208.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/locked-out-of-entry-locked-into-prison/ http://ape93208.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/locked-out-of-entry-locked-into-prison/#comments Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:31:12 +0000 ape93208 http://ape93208.wordpress.com/?p=25 ]]>