Americanisation of the British Criminal Justice System

Over the last twenty years the Americanisation of the British criminal justice system, especially in relation to sentencing policy and prison conditions, has been significant and strikingly obvious, and as the U.K. departs Europe and enters totally the orbit of U.S. influence any last vestige of rehabilitation or human rights in the treatment of prisoners will disappear completely.

Already British prisons now resemble third world jails with literally thousands of prisoners locked down in crumbling, vermin infested penal slums with dramatically rising levels of violence, self-harm, suicide and mental illness. Compared to most other European prison systems that which exists in the U.K. now resembles and exists as a sort of third world Pena logical satellite of the U.S. prison system. As a microcosm of wider society British prisons also reflect the social consequences of a growing colonial relationship between Britain and the U.S. and the fate of the poorest and most disadvantaged groups within the former.

Two major influences of the U.S. justice and prison system on its British counterpart was the use of indeterminate prison sentences [Indefinite Detention for Public Protection] and the increasing selling off of jails to private corporations [the Prison Industrial Complex].

Although the indefinite detention law has now been scrapped, thousands of prisoners originally sentenced under that law remain in jail, many for offences that hardly justified a custodial sentence.

The increasing privatisation of "custodial services", however, Continues apace and prisons have more and more become sites of cheap coerced labour for avaricious private companies. During a recent visit to the U.K. U.S. president Trump said any trade deal with the U.K. following it's exit from the E.U. would include the sale of the NHS to giant American pharmaceutical companies, and inevitably once the U.K. moves totally into the American sphere of Neo-Liberal free market capitalism what remains of the state sector infrastructure, including the prison system, will eventually be bequeathed to U.S. dominated financial interests.

If the U.K. withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights it will effectively remove even a semblance of humane treatment within the factories of suffering that are British prisons. A court in Holland recently refused to extradite a British national wanted by the U.K. authorities because, in the opinion of the court, conditions in the U.K. prison system are a clear breach of human rights. Clearly, in terms of its treatment of prisoners the U.K. shares a similar reputation to those countries less disguised by liberal democracy.

As the centre of political gravity in the U.K. shifts further to the far Right, evidenced by the popularity of Farage's Brexit party, so the treatment of marginalised groups like prisoners will worsen, and as the Welfare State is increasingly replaced by the Law and Order State prisons will become little more than ghettos with walls around them, or something even worst.

John Bowden, A5026DM, HMP Warren Hill, Hollesley, IP12 3BF