A Prison That's Suffered Two Days Of Riots
Routinely Locks Up Inmates All Weekend A
prisoner rights campaigner told BuzzFeed News that inmates at HMP The Mount
have been locked up during the last three weekends and this has been going on
since May.
A prison that has been hit by two days of unrest and disorder has been keeping inmates locked up in their cells for entire weekends for as long as three months, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Simmering tension and longstanding grievances turned into disorder at HMP The Mount in Hertfordshire on Monday afternoon when around 50 cells were damaged.
Prisoners in the category C jail, which holds about 1,000, had been locked up for the third consecutive weekend, with food being served cold through the cell door.
A "Tornado" squad of riot-busting officers was sent in, and the prison was secured at around 10pm on Monday evening. But on Tuesday, trouble began again after prisoners took over a wing of the prison and smashed some windows, the BBC reported.
The incident was declared over at around 5pm.
An unrelated incident at HMP Erlestoke in Wiltshire on Tuesday left five prison officers injured and hospitalised, one of whom has a suspected broken jaw, according to Glyn Travis, a spokesman for the POA, the prison officers union.
BuzzFeed News has learned that prisoners at The Mount are routinely locked in the cells – known as being "banged up" – from Friday afternoon until Monday afternoon because of staff shortages.
Gloria Morrison, campaign coordinator for the Jengba group, which campaigns against joint enterprise sentences, said prisoners were becoming .
"Prisoners only want to organise meetings at weekends, because it's the only time they get out of their cell," said Morrison, who spoke to an inmate serving an IPP Sunday, and his mother on Monday.
"It's not just three weekends that this has been happening, it's been at least three months. They are not getting fed until the late evening and they are just getting a sandwich, a biscuit and a drink in their cell, there's no hot food.
"I don't like prisons but The Mount has always been a fairly good nick in the past."
Morrison said visitors were caught up in the disturbance on Monday and weren't allowed to leave, which was corroborated by one eyewitness.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said in a statement: "Specially trained prison staff have successfully resolved an incident at HMP The Mount on 1 August. There were no injuries to staff or prisoners.
"We do not tolerate violence in our prisons, and are clear that those responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars.”
The disturbance at Erlestoke was described as a "major incident" by POA acting chair Mark Fairhurst. He said around 60 prisoners were involved in the prison's Silbury Unit, before it was brought under control at 1pm. A Ministry of Justice source said there were fewer than 10 prisoners involved.
In June 2016, Erlestoke suffered heavy rioting – 140 prisoners had to be moved after two wings were put out of use. The riots coincided with the prison's smoking ban, although the governor later denied that the ban was their sole cause.
The MOJ spokesperson said: "Staff successfully resolved an incident involving a small number of prisoners at HMP Erlestoke on 1 August. The offenders responsible will be referred to the police and could spend longer behind bars."
Monday's disorder at The Mount came the same day as a report from its independent monitoring board that wrote that the prison has "suffered from staff shortages driven by uncompetitive pay scales".
It warned that experienced staff had not been replaced and that out of 136 officer roles there were 24 vacancies. In November last year, and mostly in a single week, there were 70 emergency call-outs, mainly for drug-related problems.
The report said: "Back in the summer of 2016, all the ingredients were in place for The Mount to suffer disorder such as has been experienced in other prisons – staff shortages, readily available drugs, mounting violence."However, the report added that: "It is to the credit of the Governor and all his staff that The Mount ended the year as a safe prison where prisoners have a good chance of rehabilitation."
The prison opened in 1987 and has space for up to 1,000 inmates.
As of February 2016 1 in 5 prisoners in The Mount had an indeterminate sentence, including IPP prisoners.
Frances Crook, CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform, urged David Lidington to act now on prison safety and said she had written to him with suggestions.
Unrest in two prisons. I think @DLidington must now act to make prisons safe. @TheHowardLeague wrote to him with suggestions. https://twitter.com/DannyShawBBC/status/892370333323362304 …
The POA's Fairhurst said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon regarding The Mount: "The Prison Service is in disarray; this type of unrest underlines the problems in our prisons and has significant ramifications for the taxpayer and local community.
"We have lost around 8,000 staff since 2010 while the prison population has increased. The government has allowed and condoned the actions of the Prisons Board to meet the demands of year on year budget cuts under the failed concept of Benchmarking.
"Whilst the POA welcome the recent announcement to increase officers this is too little too late. Staff morale is at an all-time low and as fast as the service recruits new staff, staff leave in their droves. It is time for the Government to act and act quickly."
Patrick Smith is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in London.
Contact Patrick Smith at patrick.smith@buzzfeed.com.
Get real on IPPs
It is generally acknowledged how inherently wrong the IPP sentence was, hence the government’s abolition of it. However, no one has taken responsibility for ‘us lot’ – still in jail and long over tariff. It is a political hot-potato, tossed about by Courts of Appeal, then kicked like a football into touch by the government, who pass the buck to the Parole Board. They, in turn, defer to error-littered reports, often made by unqualified ‘facilitators’ or trainee-psychologists, which then end up as ‘facts’ in your dossier.
“Inevitably these reports read like spiteful teenage internet troll postings rather than reliable documents produced by professionals who have the power to decide people’s futures”
Then there is the increasing practise of recommending ‘PIPE’ or ‘TC’ for those who have already completed all their offending behaviour programmes and are already over tariff. Such a travesty.
Few of us could ever have completed our ‘courses’ within our tariffs – and the authorities knew that. I sincerely believe they fear that some big legal firm will jump all over this at some point, and a tsunami of compensation claims will follow.
All these PIPE and TC recommendations are no more than a smoke screen – so they can say, ‘Oh, it wasn’t just the courses (that we don’t even provide!), there were other ‘psychological’ concerns.’ They hope that this will get them off the hook and provide them with a defence against future compensation claims.
It is appreciated that ‘public protection’ must be a priority, but this cynical approach is no more than an ‘arse-covering manoeuvre’ that just adds insult to injuries suffered by us IPPs as this obscenity is permitted to go on, ad infinitum. Sort it out, now.
Some 25 were overdue for parole hearings - this leads to uncertainty and frustration which can be the cause of disruptive behaviour or on occasion, self harm..... http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/15444508.Smoking_ban_fuels_smuggling__debt_and_violence_at_Wiltshire_prison/
The number of prisoners on an Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection (IPP) and are over tariff is still causing concern to the IMB.
Of the 69 IPP prisoners at Erlestoke at the time of the report, 61 were over tariff with 10.5 years over.Some 25 were overdue for parole hearings - this leads to uncertainty and frustration which can be the cause of disruptive behaviour or on occasion, self harm..... http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/15444508.Smoking_ban_fuels_smuggling__debt_and_violence_at_Wiltshire_prison/
‘Our prisons are a stain on the nation’
Drastic cuts to prison budgets and staff numbers are driving this prisons crisis, Shadow Justice Secretary tells Inside Time and promises more staff and better conditions if Labour comes to power
Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East since 2015, agreed to meet Inside Time in his office at Westminster to share his reaction to the damning annual report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons. “This report makes it clear that the crisis in our prisons is getting worse by the day,” he says. “Our prisons are becoming ever more dangerous for prisoners and staff alike. Assaults on staff are up by over a third and it is a stain on the nation that not a single young offenders institute inspected was deemed safe. The Conservative
‘Our prisons are a stain on the nation’
Drastic cuts to prison budgets and staff numbers are driving this prisons crisis, Shadow Justice Secretary tells Inside Time and promises more staff and better conditions if Labour comes to power
Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East since 2015, agreed to meet Inside Time in his office at Westminster to share his reaction to the damning annual report from the Chief Inspector of Prisons. “This report makes it clear that the crisis in our prisons is getting worse by the day,” he says. “Our prisons are becoming ever more dangerous for prisoners and staff alike. Assaults on staff are up by over a third and it is a stain on the nation that not a single young offenders institute inspected was deemed safe. The Conservative
Government’s failure to get a grip of this crisis, including dropping prison reform from the Queen’s Speech, is making it more difficult to turn prisoner’s lives around and to reduce risk to the public.”
So how would Labour tackle the crisis? “By recruiting thousands of new prison officers and increasing staff retention by improving terms and conditions,” he says. “I think one of the problems when people talk about prisons is that some people in the national media talk about it from a very authoritarian perspective and there are some who talk about it solely from a liberal perspective – as if its a choice between one or the other.
Whereas in fact, rehabilitation isn’t in itself an exclusively liberal concept. Actually effective rehabilitation helps to protect society. Rehabilitation helps to keep law and order. People going into prison, then due to understaffing, due to the prevalence of drugs, coming out with addictions they didn’t have when they went in, coming out more likely to commit serious crimes – well that’s not only not fair on the prisoner, its failing society as a whole. The reality is that most people who go into prison come out.”
Whereas in fact, rehabilitation isn’t in itself an exclusively liberal concept. Actually effective rehabilitation helps to protect society. Rehabilitation helps to keep law and order. People going into prison, then due to understaffing, due to the prevalence of drugs, coming out with addictions they didn’t have when they went in, coming out more likely to commit serious crimes – well that’s not only not fair on the prisoner, its failing society as a whole. The reality is that most people who go into prison come out.”
No more private prisons
How comfortable is he with the concept of private prisons? “I think the thing that concerns us actually is prisons belonging to private companies. That’s why in our manifesto we said no new prisons will be private under Labour. I’ve said it in my conference speech last year and I’ve said it elsewhere – I’m deeply uncomfortable with the concept of private companies making profit out of the incarceration of human beings. That’s why we made that pledge.”
Imprisoning children
Children’s prisons came in for particular criticism in the Inspector’s annual report. Isn’t it time to rethink the way we use incarceration to deal with children? “I think it’s important that we view the people in there as children. Too often, partly due to the press, they’re viewed as monsters, or as equivalent to adult prisoners. But they are children that need help. I don’t believe there is such a thing as an intrinsically evil person. I believe that in most cases people who have committed crimes can be reformed. Especially when its children. We must be careful not to demonise them. On the wider topic of the private sector, there is this other issue of a conflict of interest where the same private company is operating the prisons and the probation service at the same time because you could actually say that it’s in the commercial interest of that company for probation not really to work.”
What does he think are the main reasons for the prison system having deteriorated to much in the past few years? “At the end of the day the reasons are complex,” he says. “The prison population has doubled since the 1980s. Prisons are overcrowded. Armley prison in Leeds, the city where I am from, is at 174 per cent capacity.” He’s due to visit Armley soon.
Spot the difference
So what would Labour do differently? “Well firstly we would not have made the cuts to prison officers – a cut of a third since 2010. We’d have a better relationship with the prison officers. I know many are keen to have a more pastoral role if you like, keen to have a role that’s not just about keeping order and discipline, though that’s a key part of it. Lots of officers are frustrated that they have to leave prisoners in their cells for too long. One of the reasons for disorderly behaviour in prisons, and for occasional eruptions of violence, is because when people are cooped up in their cells for the vast majority of the day it leads to serous frustration. Even in Victorian times these cells were designed for one person, and now have two or three people in them. And by the way we, Labour, would not be having an adversarial relationship with the prison officers. The Government’s relationship with them has been characterised by an aggressive stance, rushing to take them to court. The Prison and Courts Bill was going through parliament, the General Election meant that was dropped and the prisons element is not coming back. They never mentioned the crisis in our prisons in the Queens Speech at all, yet they’re quick to take the prison officers to court to try and gag them over health and safety concerns. We need a government that will work with the prison officers. They want to go in there and do a productive job and we should be helping them do that.”
Punishment
They say there are no votes in prisons, but surely there would be if voters really understood the issues and why it is in all our interests to use them intelligently? “Even if there are no votes in prisons,” he says, “change for the better has to happen because it’s the morally right thing to do. The most serious thing the state can do in the UK is to take away your liberty – and the punishment is the deprivation of liberty. The punishment is not trying to make sure it’s as unpleasant as possible when you are in there. The state has a special responsibility for those whose liberty it takes away.”
Great expectation
If there was another General Election any time soon Burgon says he would hope to take up the post of Justice Secretary. “That is my expectation,” he says. “I was invited by Jeremy Corbyn to take this role and one of the reasons for that was that I was a lawyer, a trade union lawyer for ten years before becoming an MP. So I served my time representing workers who had been discriminated against at work, unfairly sacked.” Does he think prisoners are discriminated against? “There is a problem in society with a view towards prisoners, most clearly shown in the right wing newspapers. I remember going on the Daily Politics and Kelvin McKenzie was a fellow guest and we were discussing prisoners and McKenzie called them ‘pigs’ – that kind of language helps nobody apart from helping him to get more paid slots as a controversialist on the radio or tv. But that doesn’t help society, doesn’t help prisoners. We have to understand that people make mistakes.” He acknowledges that there is no excuse for crime, “But good people can do bad things,” he says. “And I think that’s important to understand.”
Getting tough?
Isn’t it time to be innovative and more constructive in our approach to low level crime and think again about the usefulness of prison sentences of just a few weeks? “I think part of the reason for the high re-offending rate in the UK is the failure of the privatised probation service. And going back to what I said earlier, I still do believe in the slogan, ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ and I’d guess that most prisoners would actually. Because prisoners can be the victims of crime in prison or after prison as well and their family members. The former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas said ‘Tough, and I mean tough’ – community sentences were a much more suitable alternative to some of the shorter prison sentences. And the reason he said that and why I think it needs to be considered is because it would help reduce overcrowding, and it could be of more value to society and the individual concerned as well. Do we really want people to be going into prison for just a few weeks for not paying their tv licence or for not paying a fine? Is that really the best use of taxpayers money?”
Stay Safe
Stay Safe
Did you spend time in local authority care when you were growing up?
Over a quarter of all adults in custody have spent time in local authority care. If you’re under 21 and in the criminal justice system, there’s a 50% chance you spent some time in care while you were growing up.
National Prison Radio has been broadcasting a brand new series, especially for care-leavers in prison. It’s called Safe, and the next episode is on Monday 21 August at 9pm. And if you miss it, it’s repeated on Friday 25 August at 5pm.
There are loads of young care leavers in the prison system, but so many aren’t getting the help and support they’re entitled to because they’re not letting the prison service know that they’ve been in care.
On Safe, we’ll be hearing about how if you’re under the age of 25, you could get funding for education and training, and help with accommodation when you get out. We’ll also be meeting loads of people who’ve been in care.
To qualify for this sort of support, you need to have spent 13 weeks or more in local authority care between your 14th and 18th birthdays. If you think you qualify, you need to tell your OMU worker that you’ve been in care.
It’s important to understand that it’s safe to declare this information to the prison service. They won’t do anything with this information without your permission. And it could unlock some important doors for you that can help you when you’re released from prison.
Muna Ahmed works for the Prison Radio Association, the charity behind National Prison Radio. Here’s what she had to say about making Safe:
“Young people who have been in care aren’t getting as much support as they should. But there’s so much potential out there. Through making this programme I’ve discovered a whole load of information and support that I had no idea about before – and I hope people who listen to this programme will pick up that advice and support and go on to successful futures. I’ve made so many programmes for National Prison Radio, but this is one of the most rewarding I’ve ever made.”
So make sure you tune in to Safe on Monday 21 August, and every month afterwards.
COMMENTS
Boden
Extracts from Dr. Fordes article in this months Inside Times: "My considered opinion is that all of the programmes and risk assessment methods used by the MOJ should be reviewed.
It is virtually certain now that most of them do not do what is claimed.
There are other ways of helping prisoners to give up a criminal lifestyle: education, trade training, restorative justice, support in the community, and good mental health care, to name but a few. It is time to change." .... ... ".... other untested programmes such as HRP will continue. There is no evidence base for these programmes, and at most they should be trialled on a small scale and effectiveness demonstrated before being adopted nationally.
Cognitive-behavioural methods are generally recognised as having helped in the treatment of depression and anxiety. However, there is no evidence that they are effective in changing patterns of behaviour as opposed to emotional states. There is no evidence that changing the attitudes and beliefs which people express to programme facilitators has any effect on subsequent behaviour."
It is virtually certain now that most of them do not do what is claimed.
There are other ways of helping prisoners to give up a criminal lifestyle: education, trade training, restorative justice, support in the community, and good mental health care, to name but a few. It is time to change." .... ... ".... other untested programmes such as HRP will continue. There is no evidence base for these programmes, and at most they should be trialled on a small scale and effectiveness demonstrated before being adopted nationally.
Cognitive-behavioural methods are generally recognised as having helped in the treatment of depression and anxiety. However, there is no evidence that they are effective in changing patterns of behaviour as opposed to emotional states. There is no evidence that changing the attitudes and beliefs which people express to programme facilitators has any effect on subsequent behaviour."
No comments:
Post a Comment
comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.