On 14 September a noisy demonstration took place outside Frankland prison in support of three prisoners protesting in the segregation unit. A fourth prisoner, Keith Pringle, had been ghosted out of the gaol the day before the demonstration took place.

The protest began after Tony Daniels was moved to Frankland from Long Lartin, where he had been held in the block since March this year, following a spurious accusation of involvement in bullying other prisoners. Tony is a black, life sentence prisoner, who has always been vocal in defence of his rights and those of other prisoners. He was kept in the segregation unit at Long Lartin on a series of pretexts from March until August, when the Prison Service finally agreed to move him to another prison. He was led to believe that his transfer to Frankland would involve a short initial period in segregation, after which he would go onto an ordinary wing. However after three weeks waiting patiently for this to happen, he was told by the Board of Visitors that he would remain in the block for another 28 days, with no guarantee that at the end of that period, he would not simply be told the same thing again. 

Tony and four other prisoners supporting him then began a 'dirty protest', which has continued ever since. As we go to press, those still on the protest are Tony himself, Greg Newlands and Tony Woods. 

The Prison Service has produced guidelines on how to deal with prisoners on dirty protests. These say that the prison has a duty to find out what the protest is about. By extension, this should mean they have a duty to negotiate or attempt to bring it to an end. However, no member of prison staff other than those screws already employed in the block seems to have been anywhere near the protesting prisoners to ask them anything. Faxes from lawyers and campaigners to the prison and Prison Service have been ignored. This has left the screws in the block a free reign to contaminate the prisoners' food, limit the amount of liquid they are getting to three cups of water a day, and threaten them repeatedly with physical violence. 

Undeterred, the three prisoners who remain on the protest are continuing to get messages out of the prison, even though none of their mail appears to be being posted. Publicity is therefore increasing around their situation, with local radio and TV stations covering it, and making inquiries of tight-lipped governors, and the websites of the Schnews and Asian Dub Foundation, among others, posting details, together with copies of model faxes to download and send to the prison and Prison Service in protest. 

Add your voice and send a letter of protest about the length of time Tony Daniels has been in segregation and the way in which all three prisoners are being treated. 

You can fax the new governor of HMP Frankland, Phil Copple, on 0191 332 3001

or write to

HMP Frankland

Finchale Road

Brasside, Durham

DH1 5YD. 

Send cards to the same address to:

Tony Daniels (KW3622)

Greg Newland (MJ2662)

Tony Woods (prison number not known).

There are also dirty protests in the segregation units at Long Lartin and Swaleside. We have been told that the first is in response to racial harassment of black prisoners there. We don't have any details of the second. Any information or letters/articles for publication in the next issue of FRFI would be very welcome.   

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The commitment of the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) to the eradication of inhuman physical conditions in some of Scotland's oldest and most squalid prisons is seriously open to question, even despite censure from the courts.

Following the 1990 Strangeways prison uprising, the prison system in England and Wales initiated and completed a comprehensive refurbishment of gaols, that eventually saw virtually all cells equipped with toilets and sinks. The SPS pursued no such programme and even today hundreds of prisoners in places such as Saughton in Edinburgh and Barlinnie in Glasgow, the two largest remand jails in Scotland, exist in conditions that have barely changed in over 100 years.

The new Scottish Executive, with a Justice Ministry that now possesses substantial powers to improve prison conditions in Scotland, has turned its back on the issue of prisoners' human rights, and the so-called Scottish Prisons Complaints Commissioner has yet to openly criticise conditions at Barlinnie or Saughton.

Inevitably, it is prisoners themselves who have been at the forefront of the struggle to challenge inhumane conditions in Scottish prisons.

On 26 June 2001, prisoner Robert Napier, at the time on remand in Barlinnie, brought a legal action in the Edinburgh Court of Sessions, arguing that the conditions of his detention contravened his human rights.

Napier described being held in a cell that was small, badly ventilated, inadequately lit, contained no toilet or sink, and was in a dilapidated condition. He was forced to share the cell with another prisoner and was allowed few periods of exercise or recreation outside the cell.

Judge Lord MacFadyen upheld Napier's complaint and said a prima facie case of human rights abuse had been made. He gave prison ministers 72 hours to transfer Napier from Barlinnie to accommodation which complied with human rights legislation. Fearing that the ruling would encourage hundreds of other prisoners to seek a similar remedy in law, the Scottish Executive immediately appealed against the ruling. Justice Minister Jim Wallace claimed that the Executive is committed to ending the practice of slopping out in Scottish prisons, but refused to give a deadline for when that might happen. 'There is no exact timetable', he said.

Meanwhile, in places like Saughton, bad conditions are deliberately used as a tool of control and punishment. Of the four main wings, two are designated 'downgraded' wings, or punishment units, for prisoners who have failed drug testing or in other ways been deemed undeserving of accommodation that meets minimum standards of human decency. Conditions in one of the 'downgraded' wings, A Hall, almost defy description in terms of the squalor and filth. The message to the prisoners held there is clear: conform or you will be denied humane conditions. Acquiescence to authority is rewarded by transfer to an 'upgraded' wing with in-cell TV and sanitation; non-acquiescence is punished by confinement to stinking cells with slop buckets, broken cell call buttons, decrepit beds and the risk of body vermin. Conditions in A Hall are being kept deliberately bad as a negative inducement to conform.

On 5 June this year prisoners on the unconvicted wing at Saughton rose up and tore the wing to pieces, forcing staff to retreat for about 16 hours. Eventually riot squads retook the wing with maximum violence, beating some of the 'ringleaders' all the way to the segregation unit. Around a dozen prisoners have now been charged with prison mutiny and face ten year sentences. The SPS is allowed to breach the human rights of prisoners by forcing them to endure deliberately created squalor and the risk of ill-health, while prisoners who protest at such conditions are prosecuted.

John Bowden,

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On 20 September the prison population stood at 71,894, an increase of 4.659 since the same date last year, and 7,747 above the Certified Normal Accommodation figure.

Statistics released at the end of July showed that over 52,500 prisoners were being held in overcrowded conditions, with the worst overcrowding at Preston prison. 

Prison population 31 July 2002

1 Preston 356 661 186%

2 Shrewsbury 184 331 180%

3 Leicester 199 351 176%

4 Dorchester 153 258 169%

5 Swansea 219 364 166%

(table from Howard League for Penal Reform)

Prisons were last this overcrowded in 1994, when Preston again topped the list being 170% overcrowded, and before that in 1987-8, prior to the mass uprisings which hit the system in 1990, when prisoners could stand no more of being banged up 23-hours-a-day, three or four to a cell built for two. But each fresh overcrowding crisis is on a larger scale, as more and more prisons are constructed. In 1987 the prison population reached 51,300. After the 1990 uprisings and the Criminal Justice Act which followed them, it fell, but immediately began rising again, and was back to the 1987 level by 1994. It is now hitting 72,000, and there are no indications of any foreseeable reverse, particularly as, this time around, all the new prisons have been privately built, creating a powerful incentive for the businesses involved to use their political contacts to lobby for more and more imprisonment.

There have already been signs that prisoners have had enough, with Swaleside, Pentonville, Holme House. Liverpool, Dorchester and Ashfield prisons all having disturbances during August. 

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On 30 July a panel of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, chaired by Judge Andrew Collins, ruled that the detention without trial provisions of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCA) are unlawful, as they only apply to foreign nationals. This ruling has not, however, resulted in the release of the nine men currently detained in Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons under the anti-terrorist provision. 

The Terrorism Act (TA) 2000 massively increased the powers of its notorious predecessor, the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The definition of terrorism was extended to encompass the use or threat of any action of serious violence, damage to property or disruption of an electronic system, 'designed to influence the government or intimidate the public or a section of the public' and undertaken 'for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause'. A list of banned organisations was issued, and any association with or expression of support for such an organisation made punishable by imprisonment. The first name on the banned list was al-Qaida, and half of all the newly proscribed organisations were armed Islamic militant groups. It is therefore now extremely easy for the state to gaol alleged 'terrorists' without resorting to detention without trial.  

However, the post-11 September anti-terrorist measures are not aimed at securing convictions, or even at preventing crime by pre-emptive detention. Their aim is to criminalise Muslim and Asian immigrants. The nine current detainees are there as an example to others, hostages of a policy of terror. In order to pass legislation permitting internment without trial, the British government had to opt out of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, with Home Secretary David Blunkett declaring, despite any concrete evidence from its own security services to back this up, that it was compelled to do so due to the existence of a state of 'public emergency', threatening the 'life of the nation'. 

Clearly, it is only the life of this nation which concerns Blunkett, as these detainees - so dangerous apparently that they must be detained in maximum security conditions - can opt to leave Britain any time they choose, if another country will take them.

In a recent letter to The Guardian, Prisons Minister Hilary Benn defended the internment policy and refuted criticisms that the detainees were denied 'basic human rights', saying that they have 'exactly the same rights as any other Category A prisoner - such as legal and family visits and exercise outdoors'. Leaving aside the stringency of the conditions faced by all Category A prisoners, this is nonsense. In theory the detainees can be visited by their friends and family. In practice, anyone visiting them will immediately come under suspicion themselves, resulting in heavy scrutiny and surveillance, culminating very possibly in their own arrest and detention.

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Thirteen asylum seekers have been put on trial, following the fire which destroyed the Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre last February. The centre had been open only a short while and was been run - very badly - by Group 4 security services, whose staff fled the building as soon as the fire started. Some even prevented the police and fire services getting in to evacuate the people inside. The Home Office too was more concerned with 'securing the perimeter' to prevent escape, than with ensuring there were no fatalities. The centre had been poorly constructed and had no sprinkler system.

Detainees who could have given witness statements to police or government inquiries about Group 4's management of the centre and the events on the night of the fire have been hastily deported, while those charged with inciting a disturbance or starting the fire have been 'allowed' to remain, so that they can be made an example of. 

Following last Fridays remand hearing, a trial date has been set for April 2003. Most of those appearing have been moved to HMP Wormwood Scrubs.

A report earlier this month said "Prisoners' safety is critically dependent upon the first few days in prison (when the risk of self- harm is greatest) and on a prison's ability to tackle bullying. HMP Wormwood Scrubs may have instituted systems which made prisoners safer from staff; but it had no effective systems to make them safe from one another, or themselves. Though permanent reception staff were committed and well- meaning, they were assisted by untrained staff, and first night and induction procedures were inadequate to ensure that prisoners, especially first-time and foreign national prisoners, were properly supported and informed.

Last time Group 4 was in court following a disturbance at a detention centre was in 1997, when the trial of nine men charged with riot at Campsfield House collapsed. The court heard and saw evidence that criminal damage to the detention centre was perpetrated not by the detainees but by the Group 4 guards themselves.

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Source:

Prisoners Fight Back

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FRFI

BCM Box 5909

London WC1N 3XX