Whose Crime? What Harm? Whose Law? What Order?

Andrew Lansley, greedy

2011-04-03T16:29:00.000+01:00

UCU Strike

2011-03-24T06:00:00.008Z

On strike today to protest changes to our pensions and cuts in general. The background to the dispute is reported by BBC News here

Role of Honour - the MPs who opposed UK attacking Libya

2011-03-23T16:37:00.001Z

Conservative Party
John Baron (Basildon & Billericay).

Green Party
Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion)

Labour Party
Graham Allen (Nottingham North),
Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley),
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North),
Barry Gardiner (Brent North),
Roger Godsiff (Birmingham Hall Green),
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington),
Linda Riordan (Halifax),
Dennis Skinner (Bolsover),
Mike Wood (Batley and Spen),
Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran),
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South-East)

SDLP
Mark Durkan (Foyle),
Margaret Ritchie (Down South)

Well done to them all

Solidarity with the UCU strikers at Bristol today

2011-03-22T21:18:00.000Z

Bristol University UCU was on strike today in opposition to proposed changes in the USS Pension scheme.

Bristol is on strike again on Thursday along with us at UWE and the rest of the sector. These strikes are in opposition to cuts and attacks on staff pension rights. Please support.

Daily Mail's Reader's Poll a classic today

2011-03-20T14:32:00.001Z

I occasionally find the time to pop over to the Daily Mail's website to vote in their polls in the futile hope that my good sense will have some impact.

Normally it is easy to work out how to vote but today they have completely confused me

But don't worry Daily Mail readers have still felt able to contribute their considered opinions

Impressive or what?

Smiley Culture Stabbed to death in Police Raid

2011-03-15T19:16:00.002Z

David Emmanuel, better know as the early-1980s reggae MC Smiley Culture has died in a police raid on his home earlier today. Ironically one of his most successful records was Police Officer which recounts an encounter with the Police.

Owsley Stanley (January 19, 1935 – March 13, 2011) - A Crime against Nature

2011-03-15T11:35:00.000Z

Really sad to hear about the death in a car incident in Australia of Owsley Stanley. Stanley was involved with the counter-culture in 1960s California and was both the sound engineer of the Grateful Dead and the producer of over a million doses of high quality LSD.

This is an essay from his website:

The earth is an old place, and we humans are an old "race". We have been in close association with all the living things on the planet for millions of years. Man has adapted and uses many animals and plants in his world, but one plant is special. Special in a way that no other plants even come anywhere close to. Man's relationship with this plant is so ancient that all the near relatives of the plant have disappeared through evolutionary pressure and we don't even know for sure in which botanical grouping to place it. This plant is cannabis.

Most probably the association is at least hundreds of thousands of years old, way back in prehistory. The plant is unique, and the form of the plant is very simple, reflecting ancient structures which most plants no longer retain. In the Chinese orthography the word for cannabis, "ma" is a pictograph with the meaning "house", with the pictograph "plant " shown growing under the eaves, for the cannabis plant is very much a compost loving plant. The ancient relationship is not due to the provision of fiber, nor for the edible seeds, because the association predates the production of cloth and cordage, and likewise began before the use of large amounts of plant origin foodstuffs.

It is in fact, the resin and its wonderful effects on the mind and perception that has made the relationship so unique. The plant's sole reason for producing the resin is to induce men to cultivate and propagate it. In fact experiments have shown that the resin does not affect herbivorous animals, only carnivores. There is no other carnivore but man who could do anything useful for the cannabis plant. I know from my own experience that animals such as deer seem to consider the plant just like any other plant, as food, and do not seem the least affected by it. On the other hand, as little as half an ounce of the same plant will make a dog unable to stand up.

If you consider the antiquity of this special "dance" and the plant's distinct form and structure, this plant has given itself to us in a very special way. Nothing about the plant is other than a good, gentle thing. Growers have found that the plant seems to sense the sort of effects, the "high", that the grower likes to experience, and will strive to produce that for him (or her). It is common in the areas where it is grown to be able to identify the person from his/her smoke, regardless of the genetics of the seed.

I have a real hard time relating to the kind of attitude which leads us, on a world wide scale, to attempt to destroy a plant which has made its very existence dependent upon our cultivation, and which only wants to make us happy. For money, of course, as Jack Herrer so eloquently points out in his booklet "The Emperor wears no Clothes". First we had the prohibition against alcohol, and when that ended the enforcement and bootleg organizations needed a new source of easy money, and the poor cannabis plant, due to circumstances unrelated to the euphoric effects, namely the useful fiber which threatened Dupont's new synthetics, was one of their victims.

It is the laws which are the greatest sort of crime against nature. The plant is of such ancient association and use, that no possible argument can be made against it on either health or moral grounds. If we are to consider health, then why do we have to put up with some very dangerous things such as alcohol and tobacco, both of which are manifestly lethal... who's the fool here? We cannot make people stop using things which they want to use by passing laws, in fact those sort of laws are not really within the "rightful" authority of governments, since they are so destructive to the social fabric. To be accurate, the very concept of "government" is a very recent thing compared to the relationship between man and cannabis. Tribal man has never made "laws" which were not the will of the whole community, this is a modern aberration. We cannot properly deal with the world without re-evaluating the social and governmental systems we have, and trying to reform them to more nearly match the ancient tribal structures which guided us for most of our existence. It is only logical to live by the rules which we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, rather than trying to reduce everything to a situation which only benefits a small portion of our population.

The cannabis plant is a truly special emissary of the plant world to man, and is a great teacher of appreciation for the wholeness of the lifeforce which animates this planet. It is a very beautiful plant, with a great vibrance and serenity, the very essence of the feminine creative energy. The Princess of the plant world, who gives us a wonderful gift in return for our care and attention.

I will note that the male cannabis plant also is valuable, as it is the males which yield the long fibers for making hemp products. One of the things which seem to have been lost is knowledge of the practice of growing only the males, set closely together to force them to become very tall and without branching. This can produce fibers of nearly 6 meters in length.

One of the more remarkable uses for the euphoric smoke is that of enhancing one's perceptions. Sound, such as music is full and rich, colours are intense, and the effect on the perception of sex is little short of heavenly. Although I will admit that I didn't really notice a large effect on my sex enjoyment until I was about 40, it is very noticeable with increasing age. It not only increases sensation, it seems to prolong orgasm to a noticeable degree.

So far as an artist's visionary ability, I don't think that there is much disagreement as to the value of cannabis to all artists and creative people. In all the years that I have been associated with music and art, virtually everyone I have met is fond of cannabis. In that vein, who really wants to go to a party where you can't have a meaningful conversation due to an alcohol induced stupor in the participants?

By any means necessary

2011-02-23T06:00:00.011Z

We declare our right on this earth ...

To be a human being

To be respected as a human being

To be given the rights of a human being

In this society on this earth on this day which we intend to bring into existance,

BY ANY MEANS NESSESARY!!!

Malcom X 1972

Prison Kills

2011-02-22T10:59:00.001Z

I found an article by Mark Johnson about the death of his friend Craig Morrison incredibly sad. Craig fitted the profile of so many of those incarcerated by our criminal justice system, he came from a working class family, his father left home, his mother was an alcoholic and he ended up at 12 being put into 'care'. At 16 he was left to fend for himself he soon drifted into drug use and petty crime. Craig's account of his own childhood can be read in a Guardian Article published in 2008.

Like so many young people who are failed by society and damaged by its institutions it was his fate to end up in court where a man in fancy dress and a wig will have told him it was his fault and what was needed was that he be subjected to pain. This he would have been told was "justice".

Despite the criminal justice system's best attempts some convicts manage to escape its clutches and found outlets for their humanity and talents, sometimes a section of the criminal justice system actual helps them. This appears to have been Craig's experience at Grendon prison ten years ago which proved to be a turning point in his life. Following release he appeared to be the very model of a reformed prisoner, he got a degree and followed this up with employment in a number of criminal justice agencies. He became a sought after speaker at reform conferences and seminars.

On New Year's Day he killed himself.

I never met Craig but his story didn't surprise me. I have know far too many ex-con's kill themselves. I have read a few of their suicide notes. The damage done to individuals in state institutions, children's homes and prisons is immense. The suicide rates for prisoners are five times the national rate (and 18 times the national rate for 15-17 year olds. For male ex-prisoners they are over eight times the national rate and for women ex-prisoners they are 36 times the national rate. (source: See Page 21)

Just being in prison reduces life expectancy, the average age of male prisoners who die from 'natural causes' is 56.

So we do still have a death penalty, just not one handed out explicitly. Prison Kills.

2011-02-20T14:00:00.002Z

Back in September, as the Government claimed it was necessary to cut £6 billion of the welfare budget I highlighted a story in Private Eye about the Government letting Vodophone off a £6 billion tax bill. A classic case of stealing from the poor to give to the rich. This deal has subsquently been highlighted by the excellent direct action group UK Uncut who have targeted Vodaphone in their actions.

Last month the National Audit Office announced it was going to investigate how the Government reached "agreements" with large firms over disputed tax bills. I will being keeping an eye on this investigation.

Sun "readers" support legalisation of (at least some) currently illegal drugs

2011-02-19T10:44:00.001Z

An interesting online poll on the Sun website last month on the legal status of drugs. The results were

35% Drug Laws should not be changed
31% Legalise some drugs
33% Legalise all drugs

Obviously on-line polls have severe limitations, they are self selecting samples and can often be fiddled, but nevertheless the Sun has traditionally been one of the rags that has generated moral panics on drugs and it will be intersting to see how readers polls like this impact on their editorial line.

David Harvey - time to move beyong capitalism

2011-02-18T16:39:00.003Z

Apologies for the lack of activity but I have been drowning in work. The marking season is now over so expect a few more posts over the next month.

This is a brilliant video animation of a David Harvey talk at the RSA. WATCH IT!

Liberating the NHS My Arse

2011-01-22T16:29:00.002Z

Plans to radically change the NHS are being presented to Parliament on the 19th January by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

Doctors, nurses, unions and MPs have variously described Lansley's reforms as "extraordinarily risky", "expensive", "rushed, ill-conceived and potentially disastrous" - "it could be a bloody awful train crash".

Others see reform differently. "A new, exciting era. that will ultimately change, to our benefit, the landscape in which we operate" is the view of one CEO of a private hospital company. He is just one of a largely unseen army of lobbyists pushing Lansley for reforms that will see private health companies making huge profits out of the NHS.

To get the changes to the NHS they want, companies have been busy employing politicians (including former health ministers), hiring lobbying agencies full of government insiders, and paying think tanks close to the Conservative Party.

This short film takes you on a tour of the offices of just some of these healthcare companies, agencies and think tanks surrounding Parliament, all of which are lobbying to fundamentally change the NHS in their own interests.

Eddie Ellison - A voice from the past

2011-01-17T00:45:00.000Z

For some reason google news front page highlighted a May 2003 Independent article "The Big Question: Should cannabis be legalised?"

It included a quote for the late Eddie Ellison, a former head of Scotland Yard's drug Squad which I though was just brilliant

Our cities, our roads, our children and our health would be far safer with a mass migration from today's public houses to tomorrow's cannabis cafés.

"Obtaining sexual contact by fraud"

2011-01-15T16:09:00.002Z

My attention was drawn by a Sun Headline Girl 'beds lass for eight years by acting as a bloke' . The story shows the woman arriving at court in handcuffs. The Press Association Report on the case states:

A woman has denied tricking two women into sexual intimacy by pretending to be a man.
Samantha Brooks, 26, is accused of posing as a man called Lee Brooks and thus obtaining sexual contact with them by fraud.

It is alleged that this went on for eight years with one woman and eight months with the other.

I always find these cases worrying. Every Friday and Saturday night (and indeed every day) people are seducing others by a mix of charm, misrepresentation and straight forward deceit. So what is deemed so dishonest as to require the intervention of the criminal justice system?

However what struck me about this case was the recent news that three undercover police officers had (in more than one sense) penetrated environmental campaigns. The first one exposed was Mark Kennedy who as part of his deception slept with a considerable number of women. Evidence has emerged that the other two adopted similar tactics and deceived activists into having sex. The Telegraph reports:

A 29-year-old member of the group who had a three-month relationship with Officer B in the summer of 2008 told The Guardian newspaper: "I was doing nothing wrong, I was not breaking the law at all.
"So for him to come along and lie to us and get that deep into our lives was a colossal, colossal betrayal."

It does raise the question why the criminal justice system can prosecute Ms Brooks, who I wouldn't be surprised is subsequently showed to be a vulnerable person, but there is no thought of charging these three police officers who have appeared to have considered 'obtaining sexual contact by fraud' as part of their jobs.

The Guardian has suggested Kennedy's sexual deception could lead to civil actions against the police but do not seem to have consider his, or the other officers, criminal liability,

Traffic (2000)

2011-01-07T22:53:00.004Z

Just watched Traffic again - what a brilliant film and so powerfully illustrating the futility of the war on drugs.

One of my favourite scenes:

Pencil update

2010-12-28T10:00:00.005Z

Phew - remembered to sharpen up the anti drugs pencil for my kids on Xmas morning

2010-12-25T10:00:00.003Z

Santa brings me an anti drug pencil

2010-12-24T17:03:00.001Z

I should really be a good parent and give it to my kids but I need to use it this evening so will sharpen it up again and give it to them in the morning

Alternatives to the punitive

2010-12-21T17:28:00.001Z

I used to regularly contribute to the Guardian's Comment is Free and did so again this week in a thread entitled: At least Bob Ainsworth dares to speak about drugs

Whilst on the site I started rereading my previous contributions and thought I would share this one from January 2008

@ BigFaceDog

"What do these young people have to guide them in life? What have faux liberals such as John Moore put in place of what he and his fellow travellers have destroyed? Perhaps one of you can answer that simple question?"

Two responses

I regret I have destroyed very little. We retain a punitive criminal justice system that fails to address the crimes of the powerful (which cause the greatest harms) and focus instead on the powerless and most vulnerable in our society. Criminal justice interventions create more crime than they solve. Politicians follow policies they know will increase the number of victims and then (often successfully) seduce those very victims with tough words and promises of more of the same.

On a personal level what have I tried to create as alternatives?

Well I spent 20 years working directly with men and women leaving prison and forensic mental health services, managing and developing services that enabled them to escape the destructive grip of the penal syste. Services that treated them with respect, helped them access community resources, find housing, get jobs, sort out their money, become integrated into our communities and live ok lives.

I know that there are a couple of hundred women and men living ordinary lives away from prison and contact with the police as a result of that work. They benefited from our efforts to create opportunities for them to become socially included AND as a direct result there are at a guess many thousands of other members of our community who as a result were never victimised.

Its easy to condemn, demand more violence and more pain, but if you want to make things better you have to admit that what works to stop the anti social behaviour of the vast majority of people in our criminal justice system is community based services that facilitate intergration, inclusion and which respects them as fellow members of our society.

My Xmas Number One

2010-12-20T14:53:00.002Z

Appeal re missing MPS Taser

2010-12-12T22:23:00.001Z

Spotted this press release from the Met

Appeal re missing MPS Taser

Police are appealing for the assistance of the public in finding a Taser which has fallen from a police vehicle in Lambeth.

An officer from the MPS CO19 Firearms Unit had attended a briefing at a firearms base in Norfolk Row, Lambeth on Tuesday, 7 December, between 0700hrs and 0830hrs.

During the course of preparing the vehicle for operation after the briefing, the officer placed a Taser on the roof of a marked police vehicle. He then drove away from the base with the Taser still on the roof.

At around 1000hrs it was noticed that the Taser was missing. Despite extensive searches, we have been unable to recover the Taser and four cartridges which were with it.

Officers believe the Taser would have fallen from the vehicle in the Norfolk Row area of Lambeth, and almost certainly before reaching Vauxhall Cross where the vehicle stopped for fuel.

We are appealing for anyone with information as to the Taser's whereabouts to call the Metropolitan Police on 0300 123 1212.

The Taser broadly resembles a handgun in shape, but is constructed of bright yellow plastic.

We would ask anyone in possession of the Taser not to handle it, but to call police immediately.

An internal investigation is underway. The Directorate of Professional Standards has been informed. The officer has been removed from operational firearms duty.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

No image available overnight.

Nick Clegg - Watch my Lips

2010-12-09T08:23:00.003Z

Off to London town today I go

Lies, Damned Lies and Charles Murray’s arithmetic

2010-12-05T11:36:00.000Z

In 1997 the Sunday Times published an influential series of articles by Charles Murray’s entitled ‘Prison Works’. Murray claimed an aversion to prison and its under-use was responsible for a dramatic increase of crime during the second half of the twentieth century. The policy implication was simple. Any Government wanting to significantly reduce crime must build many more prisons. To do any less was to fail to protect the public. Murray claimed his arguments in favour of mass incarceration were “a matter of arithmetic, not ideology.” To prove this he cited selected crime and prison population statistics from the United States and England and Wales. To investigate his claims I looked at the statistics for England and Wales in the early twentieth century, four European countries statistics for the period 1990 to 2000 and United States statistics for the whole twentieth century.

According to Murray increases in crime in England since 1955 are explained by a change “in the elite wisdom about how to deal with crime” that concluded, “prison was retrogressive”. In fact in the mid 1950’s these ideas were increasingly being rejected in favour of a more hard-line approach. The 1958 White Paper “Penal Practice in a Changing Society” and Home Secretary, R. A. Butler’s speeches demonstrate both an increasingly punitive approach and a rejection of the reformative ideas that had dominated the first half of the twentieth century. The elite wisdom Murray claims developed in the mid 1950’s had in fact first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. It was put into practice early in the twentieth century with the development of Probation, reformative Borstals and the requirement of magistrates to give offenders time to pay fines. All these policies were intended to reduce imprisonment and they did dramatically. English and Welsh prison receptions declined from over 200,000 in 1908 to less than 28,000 by 1918 and were maintained at this level until the 1940s. Reported crime remained relatively stable in this period. The dramatic reduction in the use of imprisonment had no statistically significant impact on crime.

In Europe I looked at Denmark, France, Greece and the Netherlands using reported crime and prison statistics for the years 1990 and 2000. Two of the countries significantly increased their prison populations, Greece by 57% and the Netherlands by a whopping 101%. Demark and France had stable prison populations with increases of 1% and 3% respectively. If Charles Murray’s claims were correct Greece and the Netherlands would have experience a decrease in crime. However both countries recorded 12% increases. In Demark however crime fell by 4% and in France it increased by 8%.

Murray also looks at the relationship between crime rates and imprisonment in America and concludes that the apparent stabilisation in the crime rate in the 1990’s was a direct result of increased imprisonment since 1980. Reviewing the statistics for twentieth century America it was clear that two government policies could explain variations in crime and imprisonment rates far more effective than Murray. The first was Prohibition. In 1907 when Georgia and Oklahoma became the first states to prohibit alcohol the American murder rate was 1 person per 100,000 and it imprisoned 69 persons per 100,000 population. By 1933 when the error of prohibition was conceded and the 18th Amendment repealed the murder rate had increased by over 1000% and America’s prison population had doubled. By 1943, ten years after the end of prohibition the murder rate had halved and America’s prison population had reduced by a third.

The war on drugs had a similar impact. By 1970 homicide had doubled and was again at 1933 levels. The impact on imprisonment was far more dramatic and sustained. By 1980 it had risen to 138 per 100,000 and by 1990 it was 297 per 100,000. This rise has continued to date with the USA now locking up over 2 million people, a rate of over 700 per 100,000. As the end of prohibition showed ending the war on drugs would be the most effective crime reduction strategy. Combined with a general amnesty on incarcerated drug offenders the USA (and indeed Britain and the rest of the world) could benefit simultaneously from reductions in crime and people incarcerated.

A quick glance at Murray’s other writings including “The Emerging British Underclass” (1990) and “The Bell Curve” (1994) shows his preoccupation with the poor and powerless and the threat they pose. In 2002 the Social Exclusion Unit reviewed the characteristics of the prison population. They found that prisoners are 14 times more likely to have been in care as a child, 20 times more likely to have attended a special school, 13 times more likely to be unemployed, 50 times more likely to be suffering from three or more mental disorders, 12 times more likely to have a personality disorder, and 4,700 times more likely to be sleeping rough. Politicians may claim, as former Home Secretary David Blunkett did, that their agenda is about “tougher sentences for violent, dangerous sex crimes” but the reality during his period in office was imprisonment targeted at the weak, vulnerable and powerless. Murray’s mathematical fallacy, followed by Governments on both sides of the Atlantic, has had a dramatic impact. In both the UK and US the homeless, women, children, black people and the mentally ill are all being disproportionately sucked into the ever-expanding penal estate.

Whilst we would all like simple and easy solutions to crime we need to realise that crime covers a multitude of unrelated phenomenon. Imprisoning people has high social costs and is as likely to increase crime, as it is to decrease it. The lessons from crime and prison statistics are clear and the exact opposite of Murray’s claim. The powerful moral and political arguments for prisons abolition are backed up by historical and statistical evidence that strongly suggests closing our prisons will at worse have no impact on crime and could potentially significantly reduce it.

JM Moore

Cameron skins up

2010-12-01T20:16:00.000Z

I know I should be too grown up to find this funny ... but

Student Protests -v- McDonald's Prospects

2010-12-01T08:33:00.001Z

I was reading up on yesterday's student protests when I noticed the advert the Guardian was running on that page.

UPDATED 2 December

From today's Guardian

Leo Tolstoy

2010-12-01T08:25:00.000Z

Last month saw the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Novelist Leo Tolstoy. To celebrate a couple of quotes from his last novel Redemption

And he ran over in his mind the people he knew who were suffering from the activity of the various institutions for the re-establishment of justice, the support of religion and the education of the masses … and he saw with remarkable clarity that all these people had been arrested, locked up or exiled, not in the least because they had transgressed against justice or committed lawless acts but merely because they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the wealth they were busy amassing from the people.’ (pp 386-387)

‘there was no man living who was guiltless and therefore able to punish or reform.’ (p. 565)

Mixing Drugs and where to draw the line.

2010-11-30T14:00:00.002Z

Howard Marks interviews David Nutt

2010-11-29T07:55:00.001Z

Well worth a watch

0 out of 101,248 - Proof they really do need anti-terror powers

2010-11-28T21:31:00.003Z

Slightly out of date - the perils of being busy - but Home Office figures have shown that out of the 101, 248 searches carried out by the police and spooks under anti-terrorist legislation a grand total of 0, zero, ziltch, absolutely fuck all resulted in terror related arrests.

If you have been stopped and searched under these powers you should consider making a claim against the police.

Bristol Radical History presents 'How Protest And Riot Won Working Men The Vote'

2010-11-26T12:07:00.003Z

Really excellent series of talks (each part is 30 minutes) well worth watching/listening. In particular when we hear "violence" and street protest criticised for being "undemocratic" it is important to realise that democracy was given to the people but taken by then, often violently.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Herbal Duck

2010-11-24T13:34:00.002Z

Spotted this on the BBC News Website

A French farmer has been given a one-month suspended jail sentence and fined 500 euros (£428) for feeding his ducks marijuana to rid them of worms.

Police arrested Michel Rouyer after they discovered 12 cannabis plants and about 5kg (11lb) of the drug during a visit to his home after a theft.

Mr Rouyer said there was "no better worming substance" for ducks and that his flock was in excellent health.

A police spokesman said it was the first time they had heard such a claim.

Mr Rouyer, who lives in the village of Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien on France's Atlantic coast, did also admit to smoking some of the marijuana.

Students set up education camp at UWE

2010-11-22T21:59:00.000Z

Mondays are my long day, with seven hours of teaching from 11am to 6pm I drag myself in at an ungodly hour to ensure I am well prepared for my teaching. Normally come 6pm the University is relatively quiet. Not today as a group of students had set up camp inside the main communal area Core 24 and establish a free education camp. There were talks and discussions planned for the night mixed up with practical workshops and practical activities like making banners. The mood was positive and as a student activist from the late 70s and early 80s it warmed my heart to see students refinding the confidence to engage in direct action. Whilst the focus is clearly the fees increase this is seen in the context of the overall cuts package in education and beyond.

I left them just after half past seven and I hope they keep going through the night. There was about 50 students involved and from my experience these actions need to be grown and although they often start with relatively small numbers other students will, once they see others taking action, join and get involved.

This action is planned as the first in a number with the following planned for later in the week.

Tuesday 23 November, 2:30pm: rally with UCU to make some noise for and put pressure on the meeting of UWE’s board of governors.
Wednesday 24 November, 11am: national walkout. Meeting with students and lecturers from other colleges and universities in Bristol for a march in the centre.
Thursday 25 November, 5:30pm: vote of strong motions against fees and cuts at the AGM of the student union

Hat tip to UWE students + lecturers against the restructure and cuts! Facebook Group

London - 6.30pm Friday 18 Nov. 2010 - Remember the Suffragettes

2010-11-17T11:40:00.002Z

A Suffragette being forced fed in an English prison

A Vigil – Thursday 18th November – 6.30pm, College Green, Westminster.

100 years ago, on 18/11/10, two women were injured and later died because they tried to enter Parliament. They were part of a group of Suffragettes who went to the Houses to demand a debate on the Conciliation Bill, a bill that would have given some women basic voting rights.

Of the 300 who came, 200 women were arrested that day. There were 6000 police. We call it Black Friday.

100 years have passed. Fewer than 1 in 5 MPs are women. Only 1% of the world’s money is controlled by women. For every 10 people displaced by climate change, 7 are women.

We stand in vigil to remember the brave women who fought so we might vote. We stand to show solidarity with women across the world who don’t know justice. We stand for those that can’t.

Join us at 6.30pm on 18/11/10 to remember Black Friday.

Bring a candle, a jamjar, a banner and a veil.

Hear Caroline Lucas MP and Dr Diane Atkinson.

Hat Tip - Climate Rush

More Drug Misinformation from the 1950s

2010-11-16T11:00:00.001Z

Drug Policy Harm Part Five: Conclusion (and bibliography)

2010-11-15T08:00:00.000Z

Please note this paper was drafted April 2009 and has not been updated

Continued from ... Drug Policy Harms Part Four: The Legal Harms

Conclusion

There is a clear relationship between violence and illegal drugs and alcohol. Indeed alcohol and illegal drugs contribute to a range of social harms. In exploring these harms we need to differentiate between those which are consequences of the substances and those which are generated by policy. We can not completely remove the harms of drugs; but an effective drug policy, covering both currently legal and illegal drugs can minimise the harms these substances cause.

Figure 11 (Source TDPF 2009:21)

Controls over supplier

Hours of opening
Location/appearance of outlet, number of outlets
Licensing/training of vendors/staff
Controls over marketing/advertising

Controls over purchaser

Age controls (minimum age, ID / proof of age required for purchase)
Restriction of sale if purchaser is intoxicated
Volume rationing
Purchase tracking
Licensing of purchaser
Delay between order and pick up
Required membership of group or union for purchase
Consumption on licensed premises only

Controls over product

Packaging (plain packaging, tamper proofing, health and safety warnings etc)
Preparation, dosage, quantity
Coded for individual licensed purchaser

Such a policy must involve government taking responsibility for regulation of these substances markets. This would include intervention on pricing and would allow a range of controls, as set out in Figure 11 above. Clearly treatment and law enforcement have a role to play under such a regime but they would no longer be the key to the minimisation of harm or indeed violence. By rejecting the idea that harm and violence is the consequence of individuals making irresponsible choices in an unregulated market we can adopt a new policy paradigm. The policy, based on scientific evidence, will allow us to significantly reduce violence and other harms by implementing effective regulation and control, based on the public health principles of promoting well being and minimising harm. Criminologists can contribute to this, but only if they escape the straight jacket of their discipline and approach the issues using a broader social harm perspective.

J.M. Moore

j.moore@uwe.ac.uk
23 April 2009

Bibliography

Academy of Medical Sciences (2004) Calling Time: The Nation’s drinking as a major health issue, London, The Academy of Medical Sciences

AMCD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) (2009) MDMA (‘ecstasy’): A Review of its Harms and Classification under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 London, Home Office

BBC (2009) ‘Drug adviser criticised by Smith’ BBC News on-line 9th Feb. 2009. Online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7879378.stm (Accessed 11 April 2009)

Behr, E. (1996) Prohibition: thirteen years that changed America New York, Arcade Publishing

Brown, J & Langton, D. (2007) ‘Legalise all drugs: chief constable demands end to ‘immoral law’ Independent 15 October 2007

Burnham, A. (2008) Written ministerial statement by Andy Burnham on the Evaluation of the impact of the Licensing Act 2003 Online at:
http://www.culture.gov.uk/reference_library/minister_speeches/1997.aspx (Accessed 23 April 2009)

Cabinet Office (1998) Better Regulation Task Force Welcomes Liquor Licensing White Paper, London Cabinet Office Press Release

Cabinet Office (2004) Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England. London, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit

Caulkins, J.P. & Reuter, P. (1998) ‚What price data tell us about drug markets’. pp. 593-613 in Journal of Drug Issues No. 28, Vol.3.

Dills, A.K., Miron, J.A. and Summers, G (2008) ‘What do economists know about crime?’ Working Paper 13759 National Bureau of Economic Research Cambridge, MA

Donaldson, L. (2009) 150 years of the Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, London, Department of Health

Dorling D., Gordon, D., Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Pemperton, S. and Tombs, S. (2008) Criminal Obsessions: Why harm matters more than crime. (2nd Edition) London, Crime and Society Foundation.

Easton, M. (2009) ‘Could we save billions by legalising drugs?’ BBC News online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/04/heroin_and_cocaine_cost_britai.html (Accessed 11 April 2009)

Glenny, M (2008) McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime London Vintage Books

Goodacre, S. (2005) ‘The Licensing Act: an act of stupidity?’ pp. 682 in Emergency Medical Journal Vol. 22

Gordon, L,. Tinsley, L, Godfrey, C and Parrott, S (2008) ‘The economic and social cost of Class A drug use in England and Wales, 2003/4’ pp. 41-45 in Singleton, N., Murray, R. and Tinsley, L. Measuring different aspects of problem drug use: methodological developments (2nd Edition) London, Home Office

Haldeman, H.R. (1994) The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House. New York, G. P. Putnams Sons

Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S. and Gordon, D (2004) ‘Introduction’ pp.1-9 in Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S. and Gordon, D Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, London, Pluto Press

Hillyard, P and Tombs, S. (2008), ‘Beyond Criminalogy?’, pp. 6–23 in Dorling D., Gordon, D., Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Pemperton, S. and Tombs, S. Criminal Obsessions: Why harm matters more than crime. (2nd Edition) London, Crime and Society Foundation

Hoare, J and Flately, J Drug Use Declared: Findings from the 2007/08 British Crime Survey England and Wales London, Home Office

Home Office (2008) Drug Strategy Equality Impact Assessment Available Online at: http://drugs.homeoffice.gov.uk/publication-search/drug-strategy/equality-impact-assessment?view=Binary (Accessed 23 April 2009)

Hough, M., Hunter, G., Jacobson, J. and Cossalter, S. (2008) The Impact of the Licensing Act 203 on levels of crime and disorder: an evaluation. London Home Office

Howker, E. (2009) ‘The Big Question: Do we need a new debate about relaxing drugs policy in Britain?’ The Independent 11th February 2009

Human Rights Watch (2004) Not enough graves: The War on Drugs, HIV/AIDS, and violations of Human Rights, New York, Human Rights watch

Hunter, G. and May, T (2004) Solutions and Strategies: Drug Problems and Street Markets, London, Home Office

Independent (2009) ‘PM rejects minimum alcohol price idea’ Independent 16th March 2009 online at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pm-rejects-minimum-alcohol-price-idea-1646077.html (Accessed 23 April 2009)

Jason-Lloyd, L (2007) Misuse of Drugs: A Straightforward Guide to the Law Winchester, Waterside Press

Jones, S., Miller-Mack, E. & Ahrens, L. (2005) Prisoners of the War on Drugs, Northampton Ma, The Real Cost of Prisons Project

Joseph, M (2000) Ecstasy, London, Carlton Books

Labour Party (1991) Drugs: A Consultation Document London, Labour Party

London Ambulance Service (2009) ‘Alcohol-related calls’ Available online at: http://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/news/alcohol-related_calls.aspx (Accessed 23 April 2009)

Marks, H. (1996) Mr Nice London, Secker and Warburg

McGreal, C (2009) ‘Retaliation theory as president of Guinea-Bissau is assassinated.’ Guardian 3rd March 2009 Online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/03/guinea-bissau-africa-president-assassination (Accessed 21 April 2009)

McSweeney, T., Turnbull, P.J. & Hough, M. (2008) Tackling Drug Markets and Distribution Networks in the UK: A review of the recent literature London, UK Drug Policy Commission

National Statistics (2009) ‘Alcohol Deaths: Rates stabilise in the UK’ online at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=1091&Pos=1&ColRank=2&Rank=1000 (Accessed 19 April 2009)

Newton, A., Sarker, S.J., Pahal, G.S., van den Bergh, E. and Young, C. (2007) ‘Impact of the new UK licensing law on emergency hospital attendances: a cohort study’ pp. 532-534 in Emergency Medical Journal Vol. 24.

Newton, A., Hirschfield, A., Armitage, A., Rogerson, M., Monchuk, L. and Wilcox, A. (2008e) Evaluation of Licensing Act: Measuring Crime and Disorder in and around Licensed Premises, Home Office Research Study SRG/05/007 Final Report. Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Applied Criminology Centre.

Norris, P, & Williams, D. (2008) ‘Binge Drinking, anti-social behaviour, and alcohol-related disorder: examining the 2003 Licensing Act’ pp. 257-272 in Squires, P. Asbo nation: The Criminalisation of Nuisance Bristol, Policy Press

Nutt, D.J. (2009) ‘Equasy: An overlooked addiction with implications for the current debate on drug harms’ pp 3-5 in Journal of Psychopharmacolgy Vol. 23. No. 3.

Nutt, D.J. (2006) ‘A tale of two Es’ pp. 315-317 in Journal of Psychopharmacology No. 20, Vol. 3.

Nutt, D.J., King, L.A., Saulsbury, W. & Blakemore, C (2007) ‘Developing a rational scale for assessing the risks of drugs of potential misuse’. Pp. 1047–1053 in the Lancet Vol. 369:

ONS (Office for National Statistics) (2005) ‘Alcohol related death rates in England and Wales, 2001 to 2003.’ Available online at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=8905 (Accessed 20 April 2009)

Pemperton. S (2007) ‘Social harm future(s): exploring the potential of the social harm approach’ pp. 27-41 in Crime, Law and Social Change Vol. 48, Nos. 1-2.

Phillips, M. (2009) ‘Drugs no worse than horse-riding? The folly of those ‘experts’ simply beggars belief’ Daily Mail 9th Feb. 2009

Rayner, G. (2006) pp. 174-182 in Griffiths, S. & Hunter, D.J. (2006) New perspectives in public health, Oxford, Radcliffe Publishing

Reuters (2008) online at http://africa.reuters.com/country/SL/news/usnL1148907.html (Accessed 19 December 2008)

Rolles, S., Kushlick, D. and Jay, M. (2006) After the War on Drugs: Options for Control Bristol, Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Rush, B.R., Gliksman, L. and Brook, R. (1986) ‘Alcohol Availability, Alcohol Consumption and Alcohol-Related Damage: The Distribution of Consumption Model’ pp. 1-10 in Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs Vol. 47, No. 1.

Sivarajasingam, V., Moore, S. and Shepherd, J. P. (2007) Violence in England and Wales 2006: an accident and emergency perspective. Violence Research Group, Cardiff University Available Online: http://www.cf.ac.uk/dentl/resources/Trends_violence_England_Wales_2006.pdf (Accessed 21 April 2009)

Smart, C (1990) ‘Feminist approaches to criminology or post modern woman meets atavistic man.’ pp. 70-84 in Gelsthorpe, L. & Morris, (eds.) A. Feminist perspectives in criminology. Milton Keynes, Open University Press

SU Drugs Project (2003) Phase 1 Report: Understanding the Issues Leaked to Guardian and available at: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2005/07/05/Report.pdf (accessed 11 April 2009)

TDPF (2009) A Comparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, Bristol, Transform Drug Policy Foundation Full Document Available Online at: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/TransformCBApaper.pdf (accessed 12 April 2009)

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Wilson, L. and Stevens, A. (2008) Understanding Drug Markets and How to Influence Them. Oxford, The Beckley Foundation

Drug Policy Harm Part Four: The legal harms

2010-11-14T22:00:00.001Z

Please note this paper was drafted April 2009 and has not been updated

Continued from ... Drug Policy Harm Part Three: The Failure to Regulate

Alcohol – A failure of regulation

Having highlighted the scale of the failure of prohibition and the ensuing violence in the case of illegal drugs my argument has been implicitly suggesting that these are problems that could be solved by abandoning the policy of prohibition. Using the example of existing policies applied to alcohol it is possible to highlight that whilst legalisation offers the opportunity of minimising harm, this potential can only be fully realised if the substances are subjected to a regime of control and regulation, driven by public health considerations which resist the pressure of commercial interests. As prohibition in America demonstrated alcohol would cause considerably more harm and generate a massive amount of violence if it was illegal. (Behr 1996) However it still causes considerable harm and generates levels of violence that could be significantly reduced by effective public health led regulation.

New Labour’s policy on alcohol has, since 1997, been driven by the demands of the alcohol industry and is characterised by progressive deregulation and a taxation policy that has led to alcohol becoming progressively more affordable. (Rayner 2006:179-181) The link between availability of alcohol, its consumption and alcohol related harms is clearly established. (Rush et al 1986) Availability can be controlled both by price and restrictions on where and when it can be sold. The 2003 Licensing Act was the culmination of the process of deregulation begun decades earlier. Public health considerations were effectively marginalised; when the 2003 Act was implemented in 2005, alcohol deaths in England and Wales had risen by 20% in the preceding five years. (ONS 2005) It was in line with the New Labour’s government’s commitment to the alcohol industry, summed up by its Better Regulation Task Force’s call for action to remove ‘unnecessary burdens from this important industry and allow it to grow in the modern world’. (Cabinet Office 1998) In an editorial in the Emergency Medical Journal the legislation was described as ‘an act of stupidity’ which, despite being unlikely to have an immediate impact, would contribute to the ‘continuing progression of an already depressing situation.’ (Goodacre 2005:682) But as we saw above when discussing ecstasy, alcohol kills on a scale that dwarfs the fatalities of all illicit drugs. Figure 8 below demonstrates how over the past two decades alcohol deaths have virtually doubled.

Figure 8 - Alcohol-related death rates by sex, United Kingdom, 1991-2007
(Source: National Statistics 2009)

Despite an overwhelming body of scientific evidence showing links between availability, price, harm and death, the Government’s Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy claims ‘our analysis showed that the drivers of consumption are much more complex than merely price and availability’. (Cabinet Office 2004:18) Figure 9 charts alcohol prices and levels of consumption. Price is showing a steady decline, consumption a steady increase and in Figure 8 we saw the upward trend of alcohol related deaths.

Figure 9 (Source: The Academy of Medical Sciences 2004:18)

Andy Burnham, the relevant minister, in a statement last year claimed a review of the 2003 Act’s impact revealed a ‘mixed picture’, highlighting its successes as being ‘a considerable reduction in red tape – estimated at £99m per annum’ and that ‘millions of people have been able to able to enjoy … socialising in restaurants, bars and cafés beyond 11pm.’ (Burnham 2008) His main conclusions were

that people are using the freedoms but people are not sufficiently using the considerable powers granted by the Act to tackle problems, and that there is a need to rebalance action towards enforcement and crack down on irresponsible behaviour. (Ibid)

In support of the Minister’s statement was a body of criminological research. (Hough et al 2008, Newton et al 2008) Hough et al (2008) conclude that there are not ‘any clear signs yet that the abolition of a standard closing time has significantly reduced problems of crime and disorder.’ (Hough et al 2008:1 Emphasis added) This report is unfortunately typical of much Home Office funded criminological research. For example it refers only in passing to the Alcohol Misuse Enforcement Campaign, a Home Office funded operation carried out by 43 police forces following the implementation of this legislation, implying it was an ‘existing … initiative’ and fails to consider the possibility that it potential caused a short term distortion to levels of alcohol related crime. (Norris & Williams 2008:264, Hough et al 2008:4) In looking at information from attendances at Accident and Emergency Departments Hough et al (2008) highlight the research of Sivarajasingam et al (2007) which reported on serious violence recorded by a sample of A&E departments. None of its data is specifically about alcohol and although it makes a number of assertions about the 2003 Act, there is no evidence base to sustain these. Research carried out in hospitals showing significant increases in alcohol related A&E attendances and by ambulance services is also mentioned although its evidence is not adequately explored. (Newton et al 2007) The London ambulance service figures at the time Hough et al (2008:9) completed their report showed during the first ten months following implementation of the Act, alcohol related call outs had increased by 2%. A year later they had increased by 12% and the most recent figures show a 28% increase. (London Ambulance Service 2009) The evidence, particularly from medical sources, suggests that the impact of the Act has been consistent with overall alcohol policy, and is contributing to increased harm and violence.

Regulating the legal harms
Earlier this year Liam Donaldson, the Government’s Chief Medical Advisor recommended a minimum price for a unit of alcohol. His advice was clear

Quite simply, England is drinking far too much. England has an alcohol problem. Alcohol is not simply a problem for the minority who are dependent on it - it is a problem for everybody … There is a clear relationship between price and consumption of alcohol … Price increases generally reduce heavy drinkers' consumption by a greater proportion than they reduce moderate drinkers' consumption. (Donaldson 2002:22)

Figure 10 (Source Donaldson 2009:21)

Figure 10 illustrates this. The benefits of this policy would be considerable; the Chief Medical Officer argues that a 50p minimum unit price would reduce crimes by 46,000 a year and reduce hospital admissions by 100,000 a year. (Donaldson 2009:22) However the minimum price has been rejected by Prime Minister Gordon Brown because

It is right for society to bear down on, and deal with, anti-social behaviour that is associated with drinking ... (but) it is also right that we do not want the responsible, sensible majority of moderate drinkers to have to pay more, or suffer, as a result of the excesses of a small minority. (Cited in Independent 2009)

Yet again the problem is presented as being about individuals and the evidence of government policy generating harm and violence is ignored. Alcohol policy is more sensitive to the producers, distributors and retailers of the drug than it is to both the Government’s Chief Medical Officer and the substantial body of scientific research supporting his arguments.

Continued ... Drug Policy Harm Part Five: Conclusion (and bibliography)

Warning don't mix LSD and hotdogs!

2010-11-14T18:00:00.008Z

An 1960s LSD Propaganda film

Busy Times

2010-11-14T16:28:00.000Z

Apologies for the lack of recent blogging but life has got very busy recently. I will finish drug policy harm series over the next couple of days, I had planned to update the last couple of sections but have decided that I haven't got the time. David Nutt's decision to publish a paper in the middle of my blogging certainly wasn't very helpful!

Much of my time is currently spent cracking on with another chapter of my PhD focusing on how penal theory in the mid-nineteenth-century sought to utilise labour. Much of it is obscure intellectual history but the echos of with the present are at times very alarming. I was reading up on the 1834 Poor Law as a background source and the similarities with 2010 welfare reform were scary.

Sadly I didn't manage to make this Wednesday's demo despite it being in my diary for weeks, but I was impressed by both the numbers and the militancy. Enjoyed watching this, this and this.

Drug Policy Harm Part Three: The Failure to Regulate

2010-10-29T11:00:00.014+01:00

Continued from ... Drug Policy Harm Part Two: Misrepresenting Harms

Prohibition – Generating Harms

If we look at other aspects of prohibition we see the generation of significant violence and harms. The MDA makes all consumers criminals. A third of the population admits drug use in the British Crime Survey. (Hoare and Flately 2008:5) Of course all these people are not subjected to criminal justice intervention, the system simply couldn’t cope, but all of them are liable to arrest, a criminal record and imprisonment. Events that could have a dramatic bearing on their lives. Jobs and homes are lost regularly by consumers who come into contact with the criminal justice system. The impact of this is not spread evenly across the community. I have not been able to calculate the racial profile in the UK but figure 5 below shows how this process plays out for African-Americans.

Figure 5 (Source Jones et al 2005:13)

The war in drugs was launched by Richard Nixon. His Chief of Staff recorded in his diary, that Nixon had ‘emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognises this while not appearing to.’ Halderman 1994:53) The war on drugs has proved to be such a system.

The inequality generated by the selective enforcement of drug prohibition in Britain urgently requires detailed research. The Home Office was required to carry out an Equality Impact Assessment on their new drugs strategy in 2007. The first section of the assessment, titled Preliminary Screening, includes the question: ‘Could the aims of the policy be in conflict with equal opportunity, elimination of discrimination, promotion of good relations?‘ (Home Office 2008) To which the Home Office replied ‘NO’. This and the document in general demonstrate contempt for equality, which is reduced to a form filling exercise cynically ignoring a considerable body of evidence of inequality generated by the war on drugs.

The illegality of substances does not just impact on crime by criminalising their consumers. It has much wider impacts both within the UK and internationally and generates dramatic levels of harm. Central to this generation of crime and violence is prohibition, which in terms of policy, places the entire market, production, distribution, wholesale and retail, into the hands of organised crime. The illegal drug market is a state sponsored, tax free monopoly for criminals. The consequences of this are dramatic; however because of limited space I will restrict myself to a few examples

1. Generation of acquisitive crime

Figure 6 below shows the cost of drug use for a heavy user in 2003. Having a Cocaine or heroin habit is expensive, raising £300, £400 or even £500 a week is impossible for most people through legal means. They resort to crime. The Strategy Unit estimated that 56% of the total number of crimes; some thirty six million crimes, are ‘drug-motivated crimes’ committed by drug users. (SU Drugs Project 2003:22) This is illustrated in Figure 7, again copied from the Strategy unit report to the cabinet.

Figure 6 (Source: SU Drugs Project 2003:12)

Figure 7 (Source: SU Drugs Project 2003:22)

Home Office Research has estimated that drug-motivated crime in total costs victims just under ten billion pounds per year and the economic costs to the community of the average ‘problematic drug user’ is in excess of £44,000. (Gordon et al 2006:44 & 41) In this market, unregulated prices emerge which lead to increased crime. The government’s own analysis finds that over half of all crime and victimisation are linked to behaviours generated by the economics of this market - which the government chooses not to regulate.

2. Prostitution of drug users

For many women and girls and a few men and boys, fundraising is achieved not through acquisitive crime but by prostituting themselves. Research carried out for the Home Office has shown that the drug and sex markets are intrinsically linked. (Hunter and May 2004) The same factors detailed above for acquisitive crime drive adults and children into prostitution. The Home Office’s Equality Impact Assessment makes no mention of the contribution of drugs policy in generating supply within prostitution nor does it acknowledge the gendered status of prostitution. (Home Office 2008)

3. Generation of Violence

In a review of economists’ contribution to the study of crime, Dills et al (2008:3) concluded that ‘economists know little about the empirically relevant determinants of crime.’ Applying various hypotheses on subjects as varied as arrest rates, capital punishment, gun laws and abortion rates, to an examination of aggregate data over long time periods and across countries exposed the various theories as wanting. However, they did ‘find one theory that is consistent with the aggregate time series and cross-country data on crime: the view that enforcement of drug prohibition encourages violent dispute resolution.’ (Ibid:22) Drug markets operate outside the law and have no recourse to legal procedure to resolve disputes. Drug dealers use violence to collect debts, they use violence to resolve disputes between themselves and they use violence to resist law enforcement efforts. Prohibition makes violence a cost effective business strategy. It introduces guns and knives on to our streets as routine business tools. Sometimes the state responds with violence. China celebrated UN world anti-drugs day in 2002 with the mass execution of 64 drug offenders. (Rolles et al 2006) Thailand’s security services murdered almost two and half thousand alleged drug dealers in just three months, in pursuit of the war on drugs. (Human Rights Watch 2004) Even lawful criminal justice responses generate perverse outcomes. As Sanho Tree has argued, law enforcement operates as a Darwinian natural selector removing less ruthless and less violent market participants. (Tree 2007) Over time law enforcement has driven out the non violent hippys like Howard Marks and replaced them with brutal, callous and vicious gangsters. (Marks 1996, Glenny 2008) The violence of the market raises prices; Caulkins & Reuter (1998) estimate that 33 per cent of the retail price of cocaine is paid to compensate dealers for their risk of death or injury. This in turn increases the fundraising requirements of problematic users, thus increasing crime and its associated victimisation.

4. Destabilisation of producer and transit countries

As well as generating considerable levels of violence in consumer countries like the UK the drug business has a far more dramatic impact on producer and transit nations. In Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia nations have been destabilised as a direct consequence of the so called war on drugs. Last year Michael Schulenburg, the UN Mission Chief in Sierra Leone observed ‘that the exposure to the international drug trade is the single biggest risk affecting the future of Sierra Leone’. (Reuters 2008) Guinea-Bissau has seen both its President and army chief murdered this year, killings directly linked to the country’s status as a transit country for the cocaine trade. (McGreal 2009) Internationally the war on drugs has subjected many poor nations to wave after wave of violence.

Continued ... Drug Policy Harm Part Four: The legal harms

Drug Policy Harm Part Two: Misrepresenting Harms

2010-10-28T16:00:00.027+01:00

Continued from Drug Policy Harm Part One: Social Harm Theory -v- Criminology

The Myth of the Misuse of Drugs Act and Harm

The prohibition of certain classes of drugs is a policy decision which has cross-party consensus with both the last Labour and the current Conservative/Liberal Democratic Governments supporting this arrangement and indeed keen to include any new drugs that emerge on the market. The core piece of legislation underpinning this policy is the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (MDA) which seeks to control specific drugs through criminal justice interventions based on the scientific classification of their harms. (Jason-Lloyd 2007) Although harm appears to be an established component of this regime this is an illusion than needs exposing. To do this I want to highlight the work of David Nutt, an eminent scientist and former chair of the scientific committee, established by the MDA, to advise the Home Secretary on drug policy.

Nutt (2009:4) raises ‘the critical question of why society tolerates –indeed encourages – certain forms of potentially harmful behaviour but not others’, highlighting the comparative risks of ecstasy and alcohol, ecstasy and horse riding and the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs. (Nutt 2006, 2009 & Nutt et al 2007) In figure 1 below Nutt (2006:316) compares the relative harms of the two E drugs, ethanol, better known as alcohol, and ecstasy and his figures make clear that the harms caused by alcohol are dramatically greater than ecstasy.

Figure 1 (Source: Nutt 2006:316)

In fact what is clear from this is how much harm alcohol causes; twenty two thousand premature deaths, one thousand five hundred road traffic deaths and over 10,000 cases of interpersonal violence per annum, and how little harm is caused by ecstasy. Yet earlier in 2009 the government choose to retain ecstasy’s classification as a class A drug under the MDA. (Home Office 2009, ACMD 2009)

In an interesting analysis Nutt et al (2007) attempted to incorporate both legal and illegal drugs in a single hierarchy of harm. The results, published in the Lancet and shown in figure 2 below, clearly demonstrate the lack of any clear correlation between a drug’s harm and it’s classification under the MDA. Methodologically this study is not unproblematic and remains trapped in the paradigm of prohibition. For example, considering the most harmful drug, heroin, it fails to separate those harms intrinsic to it as a chemical substance and those harms that are generated by its legal status. (TDPF 2009:12-13) Hopefully this exercise will be repeated with the harms directly attributable to prohibition disaggregated. Would illegal street heroin have exactly the same level of risk of harm as prescribed heroin?

Figure 2 (Source Nutt et al 2007:1050)

In an editorial in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, Nutt returned to comparisons of the relative harm of two ‘e’s, this time Ecstasy and Equasy (Equine Addiction Syndrome). Figure 3 below summarises his results. The legitimacy of his comparison of their respective harms generated a strong backlash with, the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, declaring that she was ‘sure most people would simply not accept the link that he makes up in his article between horse riding and illegal drug taking.’ (BBC 2009)

Figure 3 (Source: Nutt 2009:4)

Melanie Phillips (2009) commenting on Nutt’s paper declared ‘The only reason there are not many more deaths from ecstasy is that unlike horse riding, it is illegal.’ In fact the relationship between ecstasy’s illegality and fatalities associated with use are more complex. Its illegality removes the opportunity for any quality controls, it has led to moral panics, misinformation and has potentially impacted on levels of consumption. Lack of quality control means the consumer has no reliable information about ingredients and this lack of regulation leaves the control of the exact composition of the product retailed, and the health and welfare of consumers in the hands of organised crime. Moral panics over ecstasy have undoubtedly created harm; Leah Betts, the iconic ecstasy victim, died from water intoxication, consumed on the misunderstanding promoted by the press that vast quantities of water were the antidote to ecstasy. (Joseph 2000:91) Illegality therefore certainly increases the risk of death but does it deter use, thereby reducing the risk as well?

The Home Office claims that ‘(d)rugs are controlled because they are harmful. The law provides an important deterrent to drug use and legalisation would risk a huge increase in consumption’; though they provide no evidence to support their assertion. (Easton 2009) The Number Ten Strategy Unit, whose confidential report on drug policy to the cabinet in 2003 was leaked to the Guardian, concluded that ‘attempts to intervene have not resulted in sustainable disruption to the market at any level.’ (SU Drugs Project 2003:104) This conclusion was backed up by the UK Drug Policy Commission whose research concluded that ‘seizures and enforcement efforts have had little adverse effect on the availability, purity and price of illicit drugs in the UK ‘ and that ‘(s)ince 2000, average street prices in the UK have fallen consistently for heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis.’ (Mc Sweeny et al 2008:48 & 40)

Figure 4 below is reproduced directly from the Number 10 Strategy Unit’s report to the Cabinet. It demonstrates how effectively use of Heroin has been controlled since the introduction of the MDA. Illegal drugs are today widely available, at historically low prices, suggesting that prohibition has neither reduced supply nor demand, both of which have actually grown dramatically over the last forty years. Whatever their ambitions it is clear that the MDA and the prohibitionist paradigm in which it operates have not reduced harms.

Figure 4 (Source: SU Drugs Project 2003:38)
The lighter columns are addicts notified to the Home Office, and the darker columns from 1997 when the HO notification system was shelved, are numbers in treatment.

Continued ... Drug Policy Harm Part Three: The Failure to Regulate

Drug Policy Harm Part One: Social Harm Theory -v- Criminology

2010-10-27T19:11:00.002+01:00

This post is based on a paper I delivered at the University of Wales, Newport in 2009. I am delivering a modified version at the University of Bath this Friday.

The Elephant in the Room: Drug and Alcohol Policy as Generators of Violence and other Social Harms

The wide-scale use and abuse of legal substances such as alcohol and tobacco inflicts far more harm on individuals and society than illicit drugs … We need a calm non-sensational approach to policy development in this area and one which places these serious problems in context. (Labour Party (1991) Drugs: A Consultation Document)

Things have gone from bad to worse; there is no possibility of an honest discussion now. Anyone who sticks their head above the parapet and calls for a rational consideration of the drug laws gets it shot off and kicked around by a horde of lunatics (Austin Mitchell, Labour M.P. 10 Feb. 2009 cited in Howker 2009)

This paper seeks to do two things. Firstly to introduce an emerging theoretical paradigm, social harm theory, which seeks to refocus our attention from behaviours defined as 'crime' to a wider set of behaviours, those that generate harm. Secondly it seeks to rethink the issues of alcohol and drug harms and violence by incorporating those caused by state policy alongside those generated by individual consumers, producers and suppliers of currently illegal drugs and alcohol.

My conclusion is that violence and other social harms associated with illicit drugs and alcohol could be dramatically reduced. However this reduction will not be achieved through a focus on the individual user or indeed on drug and alcohol services. Such initiatives, whilst undoubtedly making significant positive contributions to the lives of individual problematic consumers, are effectively swimming against the tide of avoidable violence and other harms generated by existing policy. Reducing violence and other social harms associated with both legal and illegal drugs requires the government to accept its responsibility for public health and to implement an effective framework to regulate all drugs.

Social Harm Theory

Criminology focuses on crime, the criminal and the resolution of problems through the criminal justice system. However, the events and actors we label crimes and criminals operate in a wider context that criminology often ignores. As Carol Smart (1990:77) has observed, the great weakness of criminology is that it:

cannot locate rape or child sexual abuse in the domain of sexuality or theft in the domain of economic activity or drug use in the domain of health. To do so … would involve abandoning the idea of a unified problem which requires a unified response.

This limitation has inspired the development of a social harm perspective which seeks ‘to move beyond the narrow confines of criminology, with its focus on harms defined by whether or not they constitute a crime’ and instead calls for ‘(a)ll forms of harms’ to be ‘considered and analysed together.’ (Hillyard et al 2004:1,2) We are all vulnerable to a wide range of social harms throughout our life course and social harm theory argues that to separate out crimes from other harms considered ‘outcomes of the market economy, … accidents or mistakes’ creates ‘a very distorted view of the world’. (Ibid:1,2) Social Harm approaches lead away from a focus on individual blame and towards policy responses designed to minimise future harms. (Dorling et al 2008)

Social harm theory rejects the boundaries of criminology and the exclusive focus on crime and criminals. It seeks to place crime in the context of other harms, an approach which allows us to respond to the totality of harms generated by a particular problem. For example it allows us in the case of alcohol to consider the harms generated by deregulation alongside the harms caused by the individual drunk and the harms suffered by the solitary middle aged heavy drinker in the quiet of his own home alongside the harms caused by the drunken teenager disturbing the peace of her local community. Social harm theory seeks to embrace not only physical harms but also financial/economic, emotional and psychological harms. (Hillyard & Tombs 2008:15)

Simon Pemberton (2007:33-36) has highlighted the potential of the social harm perspective to explain the failure of criminal justice policies and generate the space for alternative social policies which, freed from the rhetoric of law and order, can genuinely reduce the harm communities experience. Relating this paradigm to alcohol and unlawful drugs provides the opportunity of exploring the impact of these substances within a much wider perspective than criminology offers. It enables us to give equal consideration to legal and illegal acts, explore individual, corporate and state behaviours and to measure the harms directly associated with the drugs alongside the harms generated by failures to control and regulate their market places. Most significantly for this talk it allows us to look at all drugs, both legal and illegal, within the same paradigm.

Continued ... Drug Policy Harm Part Two: Misrepresenting Harms

Plan B

2010-10-24T17:03:00.002+01:00

"Ken Clarke has struck a secret deal with the Treasury to tear up his new budget if controversial plans to reduce reoffending rates do not work. The Justice Secretary has secured a private agreement from George Osborne, the chancellor, that he will not have to proceed with downsizing prisons and closing courts if his new sentencing policies fail to reduce crime rates. The deal comes amid mounting concern among Tory MPs that the ministry of justice is going soft on crime." - Sunday Times

Stop the Death Penalty

2010-10-22T14:00:00.006+01:00

Statistics - Do they just make them up? Part Two

2010-10-21T22:51:00.003+01:00

Searching for material for my teaching I came across a BBC Radio Four programme A Baby ASBO first broadcast in 2009. About five minutes into the programme a new initiative aimed at Primary School Children called Growing Against Gangs is introduced. The programme ran by an organisation called Gang Resistance Education and Training and is adapted from a similar scheme in the United States. The programme involves police officers delivering lessons to primary school children. In this programme we hear PC Emma Hart "teaching" some young children. She tells the children she is "going to through some facts" with them. She checks that they understand what facts are before telling them:

Most gang members make very little money ... 95% of drug dealers are working for less than the minimum wage you could earn at McDonalds ...

What PC Hart fails to tell the children that her "fact" is based on a paper published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2000 by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh An Economic Analysis of a Drug Selling Gang's Finances. The paper is based on data collected by Venkatesh on a Chicago gang in the mid 1980s whose activities included dealing crack. In fact the paper although showing that the rewards for drug dealing were very much concentrated at the higher levels had concluded that average rewards were better than the participants would have gained in legitimate occupations. However these rewards were not sufficiently high as to justify the risks involved in gang activity. The activity could be better explained they argued by gang members hopes of high future earnings (when and if they made it higher up the drug dealing ladder) rather than current earnings.

This research has featured in Levitt's best selling Freakonomics and Venkatesh's Gangleader for a Day and have become generalised both in terms of all drug dealers and all places. Although I am not a great fan of either book at least reading them meant I could spot the dodgy source being used by PC Hart as having established that the children knew what a fact was then provided them with at best spin, at worse a lie. The sad news is I only heard it on the radio and was not present to point out to the kids the dangers of trusting what a police officer tells them. A valuable lesson in Lambeth!

Statistics - Do they just make them up? Part One

2010-10-20T10:45:00.000+01:00

One of the advantages of spending an unhealthy proportion of your life absorbing information about the criminal justice system is you can often spot the origins of statistics that appear out of no way. Two examples:

Yesterday the Government issued a press release announcing "Government is tackling homelessness to stop the revolving door of re-offending". Reading through this rather poor attempt to spin (failing) policies inherited from the previous Government I came across this claim:

Getting ex-prisoners into stable homes could reduce re-offending rates by as much as a fifth.

This claim normally phrased as "almost 20 per cent" can be found in almost any document about the accommodation of homeless ex-prisoners. But where does it come from?

Whilst in the last 5 or 6 years I have never seen this claim referenced it was footnoted in the 2004 Home Office publication "Reducing Re-offending: National Action Plan" which identified the source as

HO OAsys pilot study, 2001 (unpublished). Data only covered 1 year after release and studied those with severe accommodation problems.

So a small unrepresentative survey, not worth publishing, is nearly ten years later the evidence base that is being relied upon.

Even more interesting is that whilst there is considerable evidence that housing is a key factor in allowing ex-prisoners to escape the criminal justice system the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice have not commissioned the research to provide an adequate evidence base on which to base policy.

Warning - making liberal promises may expose you

2010-10-16T23:56:00.001+01:00

John Pilger - Chile's Ghosts are not being Rescued

2010-10-16T09:47:00.001+01:00

In his latest column for the New Statesman, written as the 33 Chilean miners are brought to the surface after ther epic rescue, John Pilger describes the unspoken life in Chile behind the media facade that the government of President Sebastion Pinera has skilfully exploited.

The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a façade.

The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile’s gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile’s privatised mines. The San Jose mine, where the men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On 30 July last, a labour department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies ”, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.

For all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the capital Santiago, a sign says: “The forgotten past is full of memory.” This was the torture centre where hundreds of people were murdered and disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Augusto Pinochet and his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to live nearby and remembers the screams.

I was taken there one wintry morning in 2006 by Sara De Witt, who was imprisoned as a student activist and now lives in London. She was electrocuted and beaten, yet survived. Later, we drove to the home of Salvador Allende, the great democrat and reformer who perished when Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973 – Latin America’s own 9/11. His house is a silent white building without a sign or a plaque.

Everywhere, it seems, Allende’s name has been eliminated. Only in the lone memorial in the cemetery are the words engraved “Presidente de la Republica” as part of a remembrance of the “ejecutados Politicos”: those “executed for political reasons”. Allende died by his own hand as Pinochet bombed the presidential palace with British planes as the American ambassador watched.

Today, Chile is a democracy, though many would dispute that, notably those in the barrios forced to scavenge for food and steal electricity. In 1990, Pinochet bequeathed a constitutionally compromised system as a condition of his retirement and the military’s withdrawal to the political shadows. This ensures that the broadly reformist parties, known as Concertacion, are permanently divided or drawn into legitimising the economic designs of the heirs of the dictator. At the last election, the right-wing Coalition for Change, the creation of Pinochet’s ideologue Jaime Guzman, took power under president Sebastian Piñera. The bloody extinction of true democracy that began with the death of Allende was, by stealth, complete.

Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice of the mining, energy and retail industries. He made his fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup and during the free-market “experiments” of the zealots from the University of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labour minister under Pinochet, privatised mining and state pensions and all but destroyed the trade unions. This was applauded in Washington as an “economic miracle”, a model of the new cult of neo-liberalism that would sweep the continent and ensure control from the north.

Today Chile is critical to President Barack Obama’s rollback of the independent democracies in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Piñera’s closest ally is Washington’s main man, Juan Manuel Santos, the new president of Colombia, home to seven US bases and an infamous human rights record familiar to Chileans who suffered under Pinochet’s terror.

Post-Pinochet Chile has kept its own enduring abuses in shadow. The families still attempting to recover from the torture or disappearance of a loved bear the prejudice of the state and employers. Those not silent are the Mapuche people, the only indigenous nation the Spanish conquistadors could not defeat. In the late 19th century, the European settlers of an independent Chile waged their racist War of Extermination against the Mapuche who were left as impoverished outsiders. During Allende’s thousand days in power this began to change. Some Mapuche lands were returned and a debt of justice was recognised.

Since then, a vicious, largely unreported war has been waged against the Mapuche. Forestry corporations have been allowed to take their land, and their resistance has been met with murders, disappearances and arbitrary prosecutions under “anti terrorism” laws enacted by the dictatorship. In their campaigns of civil disobedience, none of the Mapuche has harmed anyone. The mere accusation of a landowner or businessman that the Mapuche “might” trespass on their own ancestral lands is often enough for the police to charge them with offences that lead to Kafkaesque trials with faceless witnesses and prison sentences of up to 20 years. They are, in effect, political prisoners.

While the world rejoices at the spectacle of the miners’ rescue, 38 Mapuche hunger strikers have not been news. They are demanding an end to the Pinochet laws used against them, such as “terrorist arson”, and the justice of a real democracy. On 9 October, all but one of the hunger strikers ended their protest after 90 days without food. A young Mapuche, Luis Marileo, says he will go on. On 18 October, President Piñera is due to give a lecture on “current events” at the London School of Economics. He should be reminded of their ordeal and why.

http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=590

Is it Banksy?

2010-10-11T08:00:00.004+01:00

The Birmingham Prison Scandal 1853

2010-10-08T21:38:00.003+01:00

An extract from the script of a paper I gave at the University of Bristol's History Department Research Seminar last year.

At 10 o'clock on the night of the 27th April 1853 in Birmingham Gaol Warder Jones entered the cell of Edward Andrews, a 15 year old prisoner and saw him hanging, dead, from the iron bars of his cell. Referring to Andrews’ death Michael Ignatief has claimed ‘there was no one to support him, no one to hear his defiance.’ In fact far from Andrews death provoking the indifference which, both then and now, normally characterises official responses to such tragedies it had exactly the opposite impact. It led via a controversial inquest, a Home Office Inspector of Prisons report ,an inquiry by the local justices, a Royal Commission, considerable local and national press coverage to the trial and imprisonment of the prison's Governor.

Birmingham Jail had been open less than five years; when it received its first prisoners in September 1849 its Governor had been Alexander Maconochie, the former Superintendant of Norfolk Island Penal Settlement and inventor of the 'Mark System' of penal reformation. Maconochie's tenure however was an unhappy one and in October 1851 he was dismissed and replaced by his deputy William Austin under whose regime Edward Andrews was to die.

Edward Andrews, aged fifteen, was serving his third prison sentence. His first two convictions had been for stealing garden fruit and for throwing stones in the street for which he had served a month and 14 days hard labour respectively. His current offence, stealing 4lbs of beef, had earned him two months hard labour. None of Andrews’ offences had been of sufficient interest for the Birmingham Journal to include them in their detailed court reports. We know little more about the boy and what information we have is contradictory; Ambrose Sherwin, the Gaol’s Chaplain described him as ‘a willing lad, but (who) seemed very weak’, whilst the prison’s surgeon, John Blount, whilst conceding that he was not fat portrayed him as ‘a fully developed, muscular boy’ who was in good health. The Visiting Justices’ investigation concluded that he ‘was most mischievous, obstinate, idle, and dirty, and pertinaciously refused to work, and comply with the rules of the prison’ and the Royal Commission determined that he was ‘of a thin spare habit of body, about five feet high’.

Three days before Andrews’ death John Wood, the prison school master described seeing him undergoing punishment by being hung up in a straight jacket which

made shrivelled marks on his arm and body. A bucket of water stood by hum in case of exhaustion. He stood with cold, red, bare feet, on a sock soaked in water. The ground was covered with water. He looked very deathly and reeled with weakness when liberated and previous to liberation. Water had been used the previous day to restore from exhaustion consequent on the punishment from the jacket; … had had the jacket on for many previous and consecutive days; had been sent regularly to the crank, except when confined in the jacket. Food, usually bread and water. Punishment with bread and water for seven prospective Sundays. Too weak and jaded to be taught; could only be talked to; always appeared wild.

It is clear that Edward Andrews was frustrating the attempt by the Governor, Lt. Austin and others to extract from him the submission to their authority they demanded. Despite a period of sustained punishment, including being regularly placed in a straight jacket which had been adapted by the addition of a stiff leather collar and straps allowing the prisoner to be attached to a hook on the wall, Andrews was unwilling or unable to comply. The day before his death, not for the first time, Andrews sabotaged his crank machine as well as damaging the bar on the cell window. The Governor determined on this occasion not to punish him but instead to refer him to the visiting magistrates. Andrews’ bed was removed from his cell and he was left alone in it, his bed being returned at ten at night, rather than the normal locking up time of 5.30pm. The next day, Wednesday, Andrews again broke his crank machine and was caught declaring, to another boy, ‘his determination, in coarse language, not to do the work’. Again the Governor returned Andrews to his cell and removed his bed. At ten o’clock that night warder Jones discovered him dead.

Two days later John Davis, the Birmingham Coroner held an Inquest into Andrews’ death which heard evidence from the Gaol's Governor, Lieutenant Austin; two warder’s Thomas Brock and Edwin Cotterill; the surgeon, John Blount and the chaplain, Ambrose Sherwin. Austin portrayed Andrews as healthy and fit but a troublesome prisoner reluctant to work who regularly sabotaged his crank machine. Although he had punished Andrew regularly he reported that Andrews had never complained at his treatment. He offered no explanation for Andrews hanging himself. Brock and Cotterill confirmed the details of the discovery of Andrews’ body. Blount, the surgeon, reported that Andrews was in 'very good health'. He had seen the boy less than seven hours before his death and inquired as to his health, Andrews had told him that he had nothing to complain off. Subsequent to the boy’s death, Blount had performed an autopsy on his body which had shown him to be in good health and that his body 'did not bear the slightest mark of any violence, except the mark on the neck.'

The chaplain, who ‘voluntarily offered to put the coroner and jury in possession of the circumstances within his knowledge, as to the state of deceased's mind’ had a very different story to tell. He advised that on the 19th April he had heard, whilst passing Andrews’ cell, groans. On entering he had found Andrews ‘strapped to the wall of his cell in a straight jacket’. The jacket, Sherwin reported, was not only ‘drawn very tight (impeding) the circulation of his arms’ but has a ‘stiff and deep leathern collar’ attached to it which caused Andrews pain. Andrews, who he described as ‘spare and thin’, had ‘been driven to despair at being punished’, not only through the application of the straight jacket but also through repeated periods on a bread and water diet and hard labour on the crank. In short the disciplinary regime of the prison had driven him to suicide. The jury returned a verdict of ‘Suicide in a state of insanity’ and Andrews’ body was released to his family for burial.

The Justices set up an inquiry and the following week’s Birmingham Journal reported the inquest under the headline – ‘Another Suicide at the Borough Gaol – Extraordinary Revelations’. A copy of the newspaper report was sent to John Perry, the Home Office Inspector responsible for Birmingham who immediately informed the Home Secretary, Palmerston, of his intention to ‘proceed forthwith to Birmingham for the purpose of making a searching investigation’. Meanwhile back in Birmingham, the radical Councillor Joseph Allday placed an advert in a number of Birmingham newspapers calling a public meeting primarily to discuss the Borough’s expenditure but with the issue of ‘Discipline at our Gaol’ listed as the fourth and final agenda item. This was not the first such meeting called by Allday, and it is likely that it had been planned before Andrews’ death.

The meeting on the 17th May was packed despite hundreds having to be turned away. Allday reported on 'recent extraordinary revelations' 'so horrifying that he could scarcely believe he was in England.' He rejected any suggestion that the Visiting Justices, responsible for the jail's management, might investigate the allegation and instead he 'demanded a public inquiry, in the presence of the press'. After other speeches the meeting resolved that a memorial drafted by Allday be presented to Lord Palmerston. Ten days later Allday led the deputation that presented the lengthy memorial to the Home Secretary. He was accompanied by both Birmingham MPs, two other Borough Councillors and Cutler. The Home Secretary provided a sympathetic ear but advised the delegation that although he felt a full investigation was necessary he must first wait for the report from the Inspector of Prisons. This report had in fact been drafted two days earlier; John Perry’s conclusions were damming; the Governor, he advised, was

in the habit of inflicting on the prisoners, especially those of the juvenile class, punishments not sanctioned by law, which, while they are not even effectual in repressing disorder, are in their nature repugnant to the feelings of humanity, and likely to drive the prisoners to desperation.

Perry linked ‘the large number of suicides, and attempts at suicide, that have occurred in this prison’ directly with ‘the extreme severity and irritating nature of the discipline pursued in it.’ On the 3rd June the Home Office wrote to the Justices, enclosing Allday’s memorial and Perry’s report, requesting their comments on the allegation made within them. The Visiting Justices provided a detailed response, which made a number of telling points. The punishments in the prison highlighted by Perry were not, they claimed, recent innovations; they had been established by the prison’s first Governor, Alexander Maconochie, and had not in the interim period been seen worthy of comment by the Inspector in any of his annual reports. They provided a detailed analysis of the three suicides and eleven attempted suicides arguing that with the exception of Andrews none of the prisoners who had killed themselves had been subject to the Hard Labour regime. They also made a clumsy attempt to discredit the Chaplain, highlighting his failure to comply with his duty to report concerns to the Governor and suggesting he had significantly backed off his allegations made in the inquest.

Concerning Austin, the Visiting Justices were clear, ‘whereby occurrences of an objectionable character have occasionally happened’ these were ‘without the knowledge of the Governor’; who they had found throughout his employment to be ‘faithful, energetic, and painstaking in the discharge of his difficult and laborious duties’. The report was submitted to a full meeting of the Justices who approved it for submission to the Home Secretary without discussion.
Local reaction to the report was unfavourable; a Birmingham Journal editorial concluded that

the report wholly fails to vindicate the discipline practised at the Gaol, or the character of the officers by whom it is administered, from the serious charge of severity unsanctioned by law and repugnant to the ordinary feelings of humanity.

More significantly three days later, Ambrose Sherwin, the chaplain wrote to John Perry at the Home Office claiming that from the over twenty pages of evidence he had submitted to the Justices they had ‘culled a few isolated statements … perverting’ their meaning. He also alerted Perry to a number of new cases of abuse that had recently taken place in the prison, in particular he highlighted one that was remarkably similar to Andrews’ treatment:

A puny looking boy, fifteen years of age, who was at the Hard Labor Crank from 6 o’clock in the morning till ten at night, on the bread and Water diet. Then at 10 o’clock the Head Warder and another put the Straight Jacket on him and left him so, till six next morning when on removal of the jacket he was immediately subjected to the crank again, he had not closed his eyes all night.

Sherwin’s letter was added to a bundle of papers already containing Allday’s petition, Perry’s report, the observations of the Magistrates and the printed regulations of the Prison. These were attached to a request for the Law Officers to consider issuing indictments against the Governor and the Chief Warden ‘for the punishments inflicted upon Prisoners … contrary to Law.’ On the same day this was submitted, Palmerston announced in the House of Commons that

he had caused inquiry to be made into the charges of cruelty recently brought against the Governor of the Borough's Gaol of Birmingham … The proceedings appeared to have been most arbitrary, illegal, and exceedingly cruel and unjust. He had submitted the case to the Law Officers of the Crown, for the purpose of taking opinion as to what steps should be taken.

The Attorney and Solicitor Generals advised that ‘it would not be expedient to prefer an Indictment against the Governor of the jail or the warder, on the materials at present collected. Instead they recommended a Royal Commission be established to further investigate the case.

On the 15th August Austin wrote to the chairman of the visiting justices to advise that as the inquiries into the prison were over ‘that the time has arrived when I can without unpropriety tender my resignation’. Later that week the Royal Commission was announced. It had three members; its chair was Mr Welsby, the Recorder of Chester and an eminent legal scholar, Captain Williams, the Inspector of Prisons for the Home District and Dr Baly, Medical Inspector of the Millbank Penitentiary. They opened the inquiry at the Queens hotel on the 30th August 1853. They took evidence in public every day (except Sundays) until the 13th September 1853. The proceedings were widely reported in local and national reports and Birmingham’s newspapers carried detail accounts of the evidence given. The prisons three principal officers and a number of current and former guards and prisoners were examined in great detail as was the former Governor, Alexander Maconochie, and the Justices. Allday attended every day, introduced witnesses and repeatedly suggested lines of enquiry for the Commissions members to pursue.

As no replacement had been appointed Austin continued as Governor throughout the hearings, one of the Commissioners advising the Home Office that the ‘police had considerable difficulty in protecting the Governor from the mob yesterday evening on his return home.’ The evidence revealed that Birmingham Prison had since its opening in 1849 practiced a range of illegal punishments, exposed the Visiting Justices for failing to carry out their statutory duties and raised serious concerns about the individual conduct of the prison’s two Governors, the surgeon, and a number of other employees.
At the conclusion of the public hearings the Justices accepted they had to act rather await the Commissions report. At the next meeting of the quarter sessions it was reported they had dismissed Thomas Freer, the chief warden and four other warders as well as accepting the resignations of the Governor, the Surgeon and one of the guards. They also agreed to appoint George Hillyard as the new Governor. The offer of the visiting justices to stand down was rejected and they were all re-appointed.

The Royal Commission report published on the 25th January 1854 was damning concluding, with respect of Edward Andrews, that,

by the order and with the knowledge of the governor, he was punished illegally and cruelly, and was driven thereby to the commission of suicide.

Detailed findings on other cases were equally damning, with Austin, Blount, the Surgeon, and several other prison employees been held responsible for individual cases of abuse. Their general conclusions found both Maconochie and Austin guilty of inflicting illegal punishments. Under Austin, they believed ‘the penal discipline of the gaol became almost a uniform system of the application of pain and terror’; and they concluded ‘his conduct in his office … was deserving of the most severe censure.’ The surgeon Blount received the most severe criticism, not only was he involved ‘in the commission of illegal assaults upon prisoners’ he was also grossly negligent in carrying out his professional duties as a Doctor. Both Austin and Blount, the commission felt had given evidence ‘in an evasive, disingenuous, and discreditable manner.’ The report noted that both had resigned.

The one superior officer exempt for criticism was Ambrose Sherwin, who had
laboured assiduously in the discharge of his sacred functions and his endeavours … to comfort the sick and afflicted, were zealous and unremitting.

The commissioners highlighted that a number of the subordinate officers were ‘guilty of wanton and very reprehensible severity’, but acknowledged that the culprits had been dismissed and it was therefore unnecessary to report further on their conduct. The visiting justices as a body were censured for allowing their confidence in Austin to let their duty ‘degenerate into a mere routine form.’ Two justices were singled out for particularly criticism, the commission having established that they were aware of the punishments taking place in the prison.

The Royal Commission had provided the evidence that the Law Officers required to issue an incitement against Austin, it also provided sufficient evidence to prosecute Blount. The Attorney-General prosecuted the case personally at the Warwick assizes where Austin was found guilty of assaulting Edward Andrews and Blount and Austin were found guilty of failing to make required entries in the prison books. Although Blount was not brought up for punishment Austin received a sentence of three months imprisonment. Ambrose Sherwin who appeared as a prosecution witness had by the trial left Birmingham to take up the highly prestigious post of chaplain at Pentonville ‘model’ prison.

Some photos from my trip to Mytilene

2010-10-04T12:00:00.017+01:00

Last month I spent a week at the European group's conference in Mytilene. A few pictures to remind myself of the place before my memories are totally buried under the new terms teaching!

H3 now available through Amazon

2010-10-03T14:39:00.000+01:00

I first saw H3 when I attended the European Group Conference in Belfast in 2005. As I recorded at the time

Next stop was the Conway Mill community centre where we got to see H3 a film about the hunger strikes in the early 1980's when Bobby Sands MP, and nine of his comrades died in a protest at the removal of political prisoner status. I am normally good at controlling my emotions but I found this film overwhelmingly powerful. At times I was unable to watch the screen and like many others ended the film with red eyes. But before I could recover we were introduced to the films writer Lawrence McKeown, and Seanna Walsh. Lawrence McKeown had been the eleventh hunger striker, and in a coma, when the action was called off. For years IRA statements have been issued in the name of P O'Neil, but the recent announcement of the end of the armed struggle had a human face, Seanna Walsh, a former cellmate of Bobby Sands, had made it. Yet again we were involved in dialogue with major actors. Listening to their stories and their responses to challenging questions from conference participants from across Europe was a real privilege. We then had the best food of the conference, cheap wine, passionate debate, local music and a late night.

When I got back to the UK I tried to get a copy without any luck eventually buying my copy through a Northern Irish political group. I was pleased to notice recently that it is now available through Amazon at £5.99 including postage. A strongly recommended viewing

More Subversion of Barclay's Bikes

2010-09-22T12:00:00.001+01:00

Journalism Warning Labels

2010-09-21T12:00:00.002+01:00

Tom Scott has produced therese wonderful Journalism Warning Labels

Download a set from his website here

That Parrot is not dead ...

2010-09-20T17:49:00.005+01:00

she is a member of a drug cartel. The drug war's latest "victory"

Hat tip Daily Telegraph

Subverting Advertising

2010-09-20T08:00:00.005+01:00

On recent visits to London I have noticed the new municiple bikes provided by the Mayor. Great idea but somewhat spoiled by the deal being sponsored by Barclays Bank and each bike being covered in Barclays' logos and advertitising

However creative activists have been busy subverting this message to highlight aspects of Barclays' corporate business, like its involvement in funding the arms trade that the company might be less keen to promote

Last year Barclays tax avoidance and their determination to cover it up came to light. Not surprising they can afford to "support" the bike scheme.

Hattip Indymedia London

Symposium on controversial issues in prisons

2010-09-19T17:36:00.003+01:00

I will be speaking in Preston this week. Full details of the event are:

British Society of Criminology (NW Branch)

Symposium on controversial issues in prisons

Harrington Lecture Theatre, University of Central Lancashire,

September 22nd 2010

Programme

9.00 – 9.30 - Welcome and registration

9.30 - 11.00 Morning Session: Exploring controversial issues in prisons (part 1)

David Scott, University of Central Lancashire -Thinking about controversial issues in prison
Deborah Coles, INQUEST - Self inflicted deaths of women in prison
Barry Goldson, Liverpool University - Child incarceration, state-sanctioned violence and cultures of impunity

11.00 – 11.30 Coffee Break

11.30 – 13.00 Morning Session: Exploring controversial issues in prisons (part 2)

Toby Seddon, Manchester University - Mental health in prison
Elaine Crawley, Salford University - Elder prisoners
Helen Codd, University of Central Lancashire - Families of prisoners

13.00 - 14.00 Lunch Break

14.00 – 14.55 Afternoon Session: Responding to controversial issues in prisons (part 1)

Joseph Trueman - A view from an ex-prisoner
Jamie Bennett, HM Prison Service - Prison Managerialism: How prison managers respond to controversial issues

14.55 – 15.05 Short Interval

15.05 – 16.00 Afternoon Session: Responding to controversial issues in prisons (part 2)

Joe Sim, Liverpool John Moores University -We Are All Liberals Now: Science, prison staff and the Prison-Welfare Industry
John Moore, University of West England - The limits of penal reform

16.00-16.15 Close of symposium

For further information and / or to register for your free place and free buffet lunch please contact David Scott

Mumsnet -v- M&S

2010-09-19T15:52:00.006+01:00

"Hooters" a nasty sexist "family" restaurant who require their staff to be sexual harassed has recently decided to move into the UK. Bristol is one of the cities they want to open in. They have managed to sublet a former Marks & Spencer's "Simply Food" outlet on the harbour-side. Bristol Council have agreed the necessary planning permission.

The plans to open the branch seemed to steamed ahead when one local Bristol woman, JessinAvalon decided to express her opposition on Mumsnet, a social network for predominately affluent middle class women in their 30s and 40s. I have been watching the responses and the tactic of the mumsnetters have been to target M&S, where I suspect many of them spend rather a lot of money. M&S has resisted to date, claiming their decision to sublet to Hooters is commercial and in no way endorses the company, its sexist employment practices or its sexist products.

M&S have an existing relationship with Mumsnet and are listed on their front page as supporter of the Let Girls be Girls campaign.

If this is true it will be interesting to see if this decision really was in M&S's commercial interest. Whatever rent M&S is getting for their Bristol property is likely to be dwarfed by the amount charged to the high credit limit plastic the mumsnet women flash in their stores. If the boycott takes off expect a rapid retreat by M&S.

The campaign is now spreading into the broadsheets with the Indie on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph both running stories today. Both stories provide excellent publicity for Mumsnet and very bad publicity for M&S.

M&S were earlier this month one of the British retailers caught up in a sweatshop scandal with workers at their suppliers forced to work 18 hours a day at rates as low as 25p an hour

Sharing the pain? Pull the other one!

2010-09-19T10:58:00.001+01:00

David Cameron, George Osbourne and Nick Clegg have claimed time and time that we must all share the pain of sorting out public finances. But how does the coalitions walk compare to its talk. Unfortunately the evidence is increasingly that it doesn't. Whilst the weakest and most vulnerable are being targeted to take the brunt of the cuts the richest and most powerful are continuing to be allowed to plunder the public finances.

Whilst public attention over recent weeks has focused on Government attempts to cut a further £4 billion of disability benefit with Nick Clegg telling the disabled that benefits were not there "to compensate the poor for their predicament" Private Eye this week revealed that the Government had agreed to let corporate giant Vodaphone off a £6 billion tax bill.

The Eye also reveals the deal was negociated by Vodaphone by a former senior HMRC official who moved to the darkside to head the team seeking the tax windfall. Vodaphone's Finance Director is also an unpaid (sic) advisor to the Chancellor on corporate tax.

If it stinks it is likely to be because it is rotten!

PS Well done to the Indian Tax Authorities. On a very similiar deal they refused to cave into Vodaphone and took the tax cheats to the courts and won this month.

If its in the newspaper it must be true

2010-09-18T23:15:00.001+01:00

From the Guardian

Hat tip Mills

Rousseau on private property

2010-09-12T08:00:00.007+01:00

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine”, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars and murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared if some one had torn up the stakes, or filled the ditch, and cried out to his comrades; “Beware of heeding this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the ground belong to all, and the ground itself to no one”

(JJ Rousseau, ‘Discourse upon the Origin and Foundation of Inequality among Men’, in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans GDH Cole. (London 1966) p. 192)

Jules RIP

2010-09-11T15:44:00.000+01:00

Adam Smith Institure argues for legalisation of drugs to reduce prison population

2010-09-04T08:00:00.011+01:00

From the Adam Smith Institute's blog

The Adam Smith Institute has advocated a more sensible policy, involving the medicalisation of addictive and damaging drugs, and the legalisation of recreational drugs. Such a policy would eliminate the financial burden of incarcerating drug offenders, as well as the need to expend precious resources to police drug-related crimes. The decriminalization of drugs, as has been successfully completed in Portugal with positive results, has the potential to save the British taxpayer money, and simultaneously improve the security and health of the general public. The coalition government should use this opportunity to inject sensibility into the criminal justice system and eliminate costly penalties for drugs

Ketamine is 'magic drug' for depression

2010-09-02T08:00:00.014+01:00

Claims the Daily Telegraph

A single dose of the drug Ketamine acts like "magic" lifting people out of depression in hours and lasting more than a week, scientists claim

Full article here

Whilst the Independent reports

Ecstasy can help the victims of post-traumatic stress overcome their demons, research has shown. In tests, the illegal dance drug had a dramatic effect on previously untreatable patients who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Is it any surprise that the drugs do work?

Fair Fines

2010-09-01T08:00:00.021+01:00

The fine as a punishment has many advantages, it is swift, cheap to administer and does not have the labeling consquences of other criminal justice interventions.

However its main problem is fairness. A £1,000 fine is a minor inconvience to a rich person but has a massive impact on someone on benefits. One way around this is the idea of "unit fines". Essential this results in the level of fine reflecting the income levels of those who are convicted.

The impact of this approach is highlighted by this BBC news story

A Swedish motorist caught driving at 290km/h (180mph) in Switzerland could be given a world-record speeding fine of SFr1.08m ($1m; £656,000), prosecutors say.

The 37-year-old, who has not been named, was clocked driving his Mercedes sports car at 170km/h over the limit.

Under Swiss law, the level of fine is determined by the wealth of the driver and the speed recorded.

In January, a Swiss driver was fined $290,000 - the current world record.

Local police spokesman Benoit Dumas said of the latest case that "nothing can justify a speed of 290km/h".

"It is not controllable. It must have taken 500m to stop," he said.

The Swede's car - a Mercedes SLS AMG - has been impounded and in principle he could be forced to pay a daily fine of SFr3,600 for 300 days

Conference Time

2010-08-29T16:20:00.000+01:00

Over the summer I try to get to a few conferences to hear reports on others research, catch up on old friends and meet new people. This coming week I will be in Greece for the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control's annual conference. If I can get access to the web I will post some updates on the conference.

Earlier in the year I went to a interdisciplinary conference in Bristol entitled Writing the Empire: Scribblings from Below. It was a really enjoyable few days with some excellent papers. These are now available to listen to on the website of the wonderfully named Backdoor Broadcasting Corporation. I strongly recommend a listen.

Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women

2010-08-19T17:53:00.000+01:00

A rat race is for rats. We're not rats. We're human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts and before you know where you are, you're a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit.

Jimmy Reid (1932-2010)

This quote is from Jimmy's 1972 acceptance speach on his appointment as Rector of Glasgow University. The full speach can be read here

Hat tip The Herald

Failure, Failure, oh fuck it lets have some more failure

2010-08-18T09:49:00.002+01:00

From the Home Office Website

CSO Manchester

2010-08-10T17:10:00.000+01:00

Peer Reviewed Criminology Scholarship -v- Wikipedia

2010-08-07T12:44:00.010+01:00

Academic Journals claim to assure the quality of their content by a process of rigorous peer review. Basically that means all submissions are subject to a detail review by at least two leading scholars in the field. This process is done blind so the reviewers should not know the identity of the author. The process is key to both selecting what gets published and to assuring those who subscribe to the Journal that the published material is of the highest academic quality.

University Lecturers penalise students referencing Wikipedia on the basis that anyone can make an entry and it lacks the credibility and intellectual rigour of "proper" academic sources. So how good is peer reviewed material and how does it compare with Wikipedia?

In preparation for next year's teaching I was reading an article by Paul Klenowski published last year in the Contemporary Justice Review entitled "Peacemaking Criminology: etiology of crime or philosophy of life?" (subscription required) Whilst reading it I came across this claim

In fact, the Quakers who essentially founded America, who are commonly referred to as the 'Piligrim Fathers,'

Klenowski cites as his source Hamm (2003) The Quakers in America.

I am not an expert on American history but his claim that the Pilgrim Fathers were Quakers just didn't ring true so I searched in Wikipedia to find the claim that:

Mary Fisher and Ann Austin are the first known Quakers to set foot in the New World. They journeyed from England to Barbados in 1656 and then went on to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their purpose was to spread the beliefs of the Friends among the colonists. In Puritan-run Massachusetts the women were persecuted. They were imprisoned and their books were burned.

Wikipedia also advised that the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620 and that the Quakerism didn't emerge until the late 1640s.

So then, if Wikipedia is correct, the Pilgrim Fathers were not only not Quakers, but that the Quakers did not even exist until over quarter of a century after the Pilgrim Fathers landed and indeed the first Quakers didn't arrive until the late 1850s. Indeed on their arrival the communities established by the Pilgrim Fathers were aggressively anti-Quaker burning their books and imprisoning them.

But surely Wikipedia can't be trusted. Klenowski has after all backed up claim by a reference to Hamm's The Quakers in America. A cursory glance at Hamm (pages 22-23) on Google books shows that Wikipedia does contain errors, Fisher and Austin were not the first to visit the American Colonies, Elizabeth Harris visited Virginia and Maryland slightly earlier. However Wikipedia is spot on about the reception Fisher and Austin got:

When two women Friends, Anne Austin and Mary Fisher, arrived in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, authorities in Boston immediately seized and imprisoned them, burning their Quaker books and examining them for marks of witchcraft before putting them on a ship to Barbados.'

So 7 out of 10 for Wikipedia.

What about Klenowski, the Contemporary Justice Review, its editor and their peer reviewers? The evidence suggests none had even a basic grasp of American history or the slightest inclination to accept their limitations and do any research. They could have discovered the poor quality of the article's scholarship by a brief visit to Wikipedia or if they prefer more traditional scholarship by actually reading the books listed as references.

This example is but one of many I come across which shows that the quality control mechanisms for the production of criminological knowledge are very poor. Clearly there is sometimes room for different views, perspectives and understandings. Truth is not always straightforward. But not even the most extreme post-modernist reading of American History can argue that the Pilgrim Fathers were Quakers. Indeed at Hamm points out

Puritans saw in Quakerism an almost unimaginable threat to the society they were trying to build

Thought of the Day

2010-08-06T17:37:00.000+01:00

I came across this observation from George Orwell:

We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are "enlightened" all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free: but our standard of living, and hence our "enlightenment," demands that the robbery shall continue.

For those of us who want social justice and a sustainable planet the only answer is to be significantly poorer.

Podcast of the Public debate - Addiction: should we penalise or treat?

2010-08-04T21:19:00.001+01:00

On April 8th I took part in a public debate at The Watershed in Bristol about how we respond to drugs. The debate was recorded and is now available on the web as the August Philosophy Monthly Podcast.

You can listen to the Podcast here

BMJ on the health consquences of the War on Drugs

2010-08-03T19:54:00.002+01:00

The British Medical Journal has started producing short videos. This one is worth a view.

Strict laws on the criminalisation of drug use and drug users are fuelling the spread of HIV and other serious harms associated with the criminal market and should be reviewed, say experts. In this video, epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani and other leading commentators describe which countries are leading the way in tackling HIV infection among injecting drug users.

Hat tip Transform

What Evidence? Why more people will die on our roads over coming years. (part 1 of 3)

2010-08-01T10:00:00.028+01:00

The Conservative Party's April Manifesto boldly declared

We will stop central government funding for new fixed speed cameras, and switch to more effective ways to make our roads safer, including authorising ‘drugalyser’ technology for use in testing for drug-driving.

This suggests to the casual reader that there is evidence that

Speed cameras are not effective; and
Drugalysers are an effective way of improving road safety

So I thought I would do a quick google search.

On speed cameras Google Scholar is very helpful with hundreds of scholarly papers. Ranked 631 is a paper by Charlton and Smith "How to reduce the toll of road traffic accidents" which states

In about one-third of RTAs, inappropriate speed is the major cause. Collisions at 20 mph result in a 5% risk of death, whilst those at 85 mph result in an 85% risk of death. According to a study by the Department of Transport in 2001, the introduction of speed cameras reduced casualties in the immediate vicinity by 47% and in surrounding areas by 18%. To combat speed many local authorities are now introducing traffic calming measures including 20 mph zones outside schools and in town centres, speed humps and speed-activated signs at hazards.

Google scholar produces a maximum of a 1,000 results and so I looked at the last one - number 1,000. It was by Chin, from the University of Singapore's Department of Civil Engineering and the paper's abstract describes the study and its outcome:

Using Holland Road in Singapore as a case study, this paper examines the effectiveness of the speed camera by comparing the change in observed traffic speeds, the speed-limit compliance and the number of crashes before and after the installation of the camera. Following the installation of the camera, an overall reduction in mean speeds was observed as far as 500 m away from the camera position. A higher level of speed-limit compliance was also observed in the vicinity of the camera as motorists adjusted their speeds when they were within about 200-300 m of the camera position. The speed camera has also resulted in fewer crashes along the entire study roadway.

The first study is from the BMJ is 2005. Its results are as clear as any of the other studies.

Another study I found compared the UK and USA and concluded that between 1990 and 1999 the decrease in road deaths of 33.9% in the UK (compared with a decrease of 6.5% in the USA) was largely explained by the introduction of speed cameras.

So the evidence is clear speed cameras save lives - no ifs no buts - they work!! However despite this evidence the Daily Mail recently reported:

Thousands of speed cameras will be switched off after the Government slashed the money that funds them.
In an open attempt to have the controversial cameras axed, ministers have pushed through 40 per cent cuts to the cash handed to councils for road safety.

That will limit the amount they can pass to road safety partnerships which run the cameras.

This suggests the Government is being driven by an ideological commitment that refuses to acknowledge the hard evidence and they are instead promoting a policy that will dramatically increase the number of our citizens killed.

Later in the week ...

Part Two - Drugalysers - the poverty of evidence
Part Three - Why we are uncomfortable with the evidence (and are prepared to die for our denial)

Personality Disorders - The must have diagnoses for 2013

2010-07-31T22:14:00.002+01:00

The American Psychiatric Association are busy preparing the fifth edition of their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. The Manual whist claiming to be scientific is in fact the result of a series of heavily lobbied meetings which have widened the remit of the definition of mental illness to the point where nearly everyone could be considered a sufferer and appropriate for the prescription of medication.

For Big Pharma the Manual is a potential goldmine. Every new condition will require treatment, normally in the form of a pill. Nikolas Rose has written in detail on this relationship. His article Disorders Without Borders? The Expanding Scope of Psychiatric Practice is well worth a read.

From when I worked at Penrose I have been concerned at both the lack of scientific back-up to the the concept of "Personality Disorders" and the misuse of the concept in the Criminal Justice System. I am therefore horrified that the new draft lists at the end of the new lists of so-called Personality Disorders a brand new catch all one is being considered.

Personality Disorder Not Otherwise Specified

This category is for disorders of personality functioning that do not meet criteria for any specific Personality Disorder. An example is the presence of features of more than one specific Personality Disorder that do not meet the full criteria for any one Personality Disorder (“mixed personality”), but that together cause clinically significant distress or impairment in one or more important areas of functioning (e.g., social or occupational). This category can also be used when the clinician judges that a specific Personality Disorder that is not included in the Classification is appropriate. Examples include depressive personality disorder and passive-aggressive personality disorder (see Appendix B in DSM-IVTR for suggested research criteria

If it wasn't for the serious consequences of such a diagnoses it would be comic to invent a personality disorder for those of us that cannot quite squeeze into their other (very broad) categories.

Italy to "Register" Homeless

2010-07-29T08:00:00.003+01:00

This story from the excellent Statewatch.

The interior ministry published a decree on 6 July 2010 to establish a nationwide "anagrafe" (residents' register) for homeless people, which had been envisaged in law 94/2009 on public security, also known as the "security package", whose art. 3 point 39 provides for "establishing a purpose-made national register for people who do not have a fixed residence". The demographic services directorate of the department for internal and territorial matters within the ministry will be responsible for running it and will have access with a search function for "maintenance and updating purposes". It will carry fields concerning the registered position of homeless people. Town councils will have to load available data into the password-protected system by 30 September 2010, including data normally included in the "anagrafe" records, such as their name, surname, tax code, date and place of birth, place where their residence was last registered. The final field in the database entries will be reserved for the homeless, and when it is ticked and the user clicks the "load" (carica) icon, an entry will automatically be loaded in the homeless people's register. Their status as homeless people may be amended once the situation changes, and the database will be searchable, by name, surname and using their tax code [which every citizen is issued at birth].

After ordering that Roma people living in makeshift camps be identified in 2008, at least in Rome, Milan and Naples, the interior ministry is now proceeding to create a register of another group of "undesirables", homeless people. Like the previous measure, it is not a measure that arose out of concerns for their needs, but rather, it became a priority after a violent ordeal involving sexual violence suffered in Rome by a Dutch woman and her partner at the hands of two homeless Romanians in the summer of 2008, leading mayor Gianni Alemanno to call for the census that was being carried out for Roma people living in illegal camps to be extended to homeless people and those who live at the margins of legality.

The measure was included in the security law that was approved in July 2009. Hence, in both cases, the measures are announced with a clear emphasis on "security". It is likely that if criticism surfaces, justifications based on the need for the people in question to be protected or assisted will be voiced (as happened in relation to Roma children when the measures on Roma people were criticised as discriminatory), although the measures are introduced by the interior ministry for "security" purposes rather than by the ministry for social affairs.

Sources
Legge 15 luglio 2009, n. 94, "Disposizioni in materia di sicurezza pubblica" [pdf]
Ministero dell'interno, Decreto 6 luglio 2010, "Modalità di funzionamento del registro delle persone senza fissa dimora"
Ministero dell'interno, Dipartimento per gli Affari Interni e Territoriali, circolare n. 22, 21.7.2010. [pdf]
Il Messaggero, 24.8.2008; Alleanza Nazionale website, "Censimento per i senza fissa dimora"

BP Hires Prison Labor to Clean Up Spill While Coastal Residents Struggle

2010-07-28T18:43:00.000+01:00

Interesting report in the Nation about how BP prefers to employ prisoners to clean up their mess rather than the workers whom their polution has put out of a job. Apparently they are cheaper and easier to manage.

Employers like them because they are guaranteed a worker who's on time, drug-free, and sober and because they do get a tax break.

More about this story on the CAPS (Campaign against Prison Slavery) website.

Tasers

2010-07-28T12:24:00.002+01:00

The recent death of Raoul Moat has highlighted the use of Tasers and in particular the new version which was used on Raul immediately prior to his death which is currently being tested by British Police. I found this promotional film on the new Taser which was deployed against Moat. Expect these to be used regularly in our local communities.

Update: 12.30

I have recently been accused of only publishing "bad" news. So he is some good news - Taser International who make these weapons has just yesterday posted second quarter losses of $1.4 million. The company has tried to reassure investors that it will turn the situation around by increasing sales by targeting private security companies and individuals - so maybe not all good news!

The relationship between crime and imprisonment.

2010-07-27T13:54:00.002+01:00

I was going to write something about the relationship between crime and imprisonment when I came across this posting I made on the Guardian's CiF site on 9th September 2008. It was in response to the proposal to build Titan jails.

The relationship between crime and prison is not as clear cut as both sides of this debate assume. The people we imprison are selected on the basis of their visibility, their vulnerability, their power (or lack of it) and because of their behaviour. Criminal justice agencies focus their efforts on those it is easiest to convict and often prioritise low hanging fruit (e.g. kids hanging around the streets) rather than more serious criminals who through their location, position or wealth are able to operate with impunity. Take a drug smuggler. Divide your cargo among four people who for whatever reason (but often poverty) are prepared to carry it. Three get through, one gets arrested. The smuggler makes very healthy profits, three of the mules get a few bob, and one gets a long sentence justified by a Minister who claims its shows she or he is tough on drug smuggling.

The SEU report commission by the government made clear that our prisons were full of the most socially excluded members of our society. Many of them have committed crimes, but it is the poor, the homeless, ethnic minorities, the educationally disadvantaged, victims of sexual abuse, the mentally ill and other powerless people who pay for their crimes by imprisonment. That doesn't mean that the rest of society is crime free. Of course it is not, but in general we do not pay for our crimes.

The reason why the most socially excluded tend to end up in prison is not because they commit more crime but because they are targeted by the criminal justice system.

Prisons are primarily places of punishment; of course there have been good programmes in prisons and certain prisons have for limited periods been positive places, but just because you see a flower in a desert you should not jump to the conclusion that deserts are good places to grow flowers. Prisons are bad places that, all other things being equal, damage those locked up in them, those who work in them and the families of both. We should oppose the buildings of these prisons because prisons are bad places; they are anti-social and will damage many people. But the solution does not lie in smaller prisons or any other type of prison. When a prison becomes a good place, which actual does good to those inside it, then eventually it is either closed or replaced with a punitive regime, the good place quite simply was no longer a prison, to res-establish it as such the good had to go and the pain substituted for it, it had to be re-established as punishment. We saw it with Norfolk Island in the 1840s, with Borstal after the Second World War and with Barlinnie special unit more recently.

We can't support a system that targets the vulnerable and powerless and inflicts pain on them by pretending that smaller units, NACRO running the resettlement or other recycled failed reformative bollocks with make them work. They work already, as places of pain and punishment. They have never and will never work as places of reformation. The problems which lead certain people to be selected for imprisonment are problems of social inclusion that need dealing with in the community.

The orginal article and comments can be read here. My text above is the same as I orginally posted. However the links have been added.

Whose Power? What Influence?

2010-07-26T18:41:00.004+01:00

Last year we all got very angry about the corrupt expense claims of our MPs. However there is an area that is much more corrupting than the expenses - the influence of lobbying.

The scandal of lobbying was highlighted by the Sunday Times sting on three Labour ex-cabinet members earlier this year. But the reality of lobbying is far more insidious. Companies, trade associations and other interest groups have considerable influence on Government policy ensure that decisions reflect their commercial influences rather the wider public interest.

Of course you can't see exactly who is talking to who; what deals are being made and what price is being paid for influence. But it makes you think and certainly in my case possibly a little paranoid. So when earlier this month I saw this in the Daily Mail

I wondered what deals where being done. Later the same day in the Guardian I came across this story

As an employer McDonald's has an appalling reputation which is largely deserved. The word McJob has even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary

Both the decision to cave in on effective regulation of the fast food industry and the appointment of bad employer McDonald's to manage the Olympics volunteering programme are likely to have been influenced by lobbying. Neither are in the interests of ordinary people.

Billy Conolly - Two little boys in blue

2010-07-24T19:19:00.001+01:00

Old but very relevant given the recent CPS decision not to take any action over the killing of Ian Tomlinson

Crime Statistics - Police Fiddles

2010-07-24T08:00:00.000+01:00

Every month or so the Home Office issues a set of statistics which claims to measure the increase or decrease in crime. Politicians, Journalist & the Police all respond as if these figures had some objective reality. But "crime" is impossible to measure for a whole range of reasons. One of these is the capacity for police to manipulate them and I found this story from last year in the Daily Telegraph which illustrates the influence police practices can have on recorded crime.

Police force 'tricks' to 'fiddle' crime figures by David Barrett

The techniques – dubbed "gaming" – are used to create the illusion that fewer crimes are being committed and that a bigger proportion are being solved. Rodger Patrick, a retired Detective Chief Inspector, claimed that the methods are tacitly approved of by senior officers, police watchdogs and the Home Office.

The claims will reignite the debate about the validity of crime statistics after recent figures suggested that crime fell four per cent in the second quarter of this year, and following the admission by a police watchdog that some forces are failing to record violent crime properly.

The techniques identified by Dr Patrick include:

"Cuffing" – in which officers make crimes disappear from official figures by either recording them as a "false report" or downgrading their seriousness. For example, a robbery in which a mobile phone is stolen with violence or threats of violence is recorded as "theft from the person", which is not classed as a violent crime.
"Stitching" – from "stitching up", whereby offenders are charged with a crime when there is insufficient evidence. Police know that prosecutors will never proceed with the case but the crime appears in police records to have been "solved".
"Skewing" – when police activity is directed at easier-to-solve crimes to boost detection rates, at the expense of more serious offences such as sex crimes or child abuse.
"Nodding" – where clear-up rates are boosted by persuading convicted offenders to admit to crimes they have not committed, in exchange for inducements such as a lower sentence.

Dr Patrick, who researched the subject for a PhD, said:

The academics call this 'gaming' but police officers would call it fiddling the figures, massaging the books or, the current favourite term, 'good housekeeping'. It is a bit like the police activities that we all thought stopped in the 1970s.

Serving police officers confirmed that the tricks were being used and gave examples of how they had been implemented. In one case, an offender shot at another man at close range but missed and broke a window behind his target. The offence was recorded as criminal damage rather than attempted murder. In another example, a man robbed in a city's red-light district – an area he had been innocently passing through – was told by officers they would be unable to record the crime without informing his wife he had been the area, leading to the complaint being withdrawn. One detective, who declined to be named, said: "Name any crime and I'll tell you how it can be fiddled." Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said:

This research demonstrates that senior officers are directing and controlling widespread manipulation of crime figures. The public are misled, politicians can claim crime is falling and chief officers are rewarded with performance-related bonuses.

Last month Denis O'Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published an official report into the way police record violent crime and admitted the figures may be skewed by "perverse incentives" around government performance targets. Dr Patrick's research highlighted figures from his own former force, West Midlands, which reveal what happened when senior officers cracked down on one of the gaming techniques.

Rank and file officers were told in 2002 that informal police warnings could no longer be counted as a detection for common assaults. Within 12 months the number of recorded common assaults dropped from 22,000 to 3,000 while thousands more crimes switched to the category "other woundings". "Such a rapid adjustment indicates the organisational nature of the phenomenon and suggests some form of co-ordination and direction by management," the research said."The scale of the 'gaming' behaviours measured in this thesis ... suggested senior officers were either directly orchestrating the behaviour or turning a blind eye to it."

Dr Patrick believes other gaming techniques are still being used in forces across the country. The report also warned that the use of "stitching" was "significant", while "cuffing" had continued after the introduction of Home Office rules which were supposed to guarantee and standardise the way crimes are recorded.
"Cuffing" can involve a situation where a victim of crime is accused of making a false crime report, and is therefore treated like a suspect rather than an injured party, Dr Patrick said. "You cannot have members of the public who have been victims of crime coming to the police for help and being treated like suspects. That is not right and it will erode confidence in the police," he said.

Dr Patrick found that watchdogs such as Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Police Standards Unit had a "general tendency to underplay the scale and nature" of gaming. He was scathing of HMIC's failure to tackle the problem, noting there were no examples of chief police officers being publicly criticised by inspectors for this type of crime figure manipulation. HMIC tended privately to refer examples of widespread gaming to the Home Secretary or the police authority rather than "hold the chief constable to account" because of the risk of political embarrassment, he said. Dr Patrick concluded that HMIC inspectors should be made accountable to Parliament rather than the Home Office, and suggested they should be drawn from other professions rather than solely from senior police ranks.

The real number of children, women and men locked up

2010-07-23T08:00:00.000+01:00

David Scott in an article for criminal justice matters in 2008 calculated that there were over one hundred and eight thousand people detained in the UK. The normally figure quoted in the number of prisoners in England and Wales but this does not include Scotland, Northern Ireland, Refugee prisons or those detained under Mental heath laws.

(Source: Scott, D. (2008) ‘Thinking about detention’, Criminal Justice Matters, Vol. 71, No. 1.)

Although CJM normally requires a subscription this article is in an edition which offers free access.

It includes an article "Prison - more than detentiion?" written by me

Whose Law? What Justice? No charges after killing of Ian Tomlinson

2010-07-22T12:52:00.011+01:00

A visit to the website of the Crown Prosecution Service reveals their proud slogan "Fair, fearless, effective". Their announcement today that there will be no charges over the killing of Ian Tomlinson makes a mockery of these pious platitudes. The assault of Ian Tomlinson has thanks to the internet been viewed by millions of us. I am sure it will be shown again today at regular intervals on all the days news programmes. As we watch it we are being asked to believe that there is no case to be answered by the thug that carried out this attack. We are also being asked to believe that if this attack had been carried out by anyone other than a police officer the same decision would have been taken. It is a decision which is grossly unfair, exposes the CPS's total lack of courage and displays their incompetency. Problems which would have never been allowed to compromise any other homicide investigation have been callously used to pervert the course of justice.

Update (13.12)

I have now read the CPS Press statement. The reasons the CPS has given for their decision are:

No Manslaughter charge

Is justified because "there is a sharp disagreement between the medical experts" with the original pathologist, Dr Patel reaching different conclusions from two other pathologists who carried out subsequent postmortems. They concluded that Dr Patel's conclusions that Mr Tomlinson had died from natural causes made a prosecution impossible. They however make no reference to Dr Patel's current appearance before the GMC charged with conducting not one, not two, not three, but four other autopsies incompetently.

Obviously we need to await the GMC finding in this case. However the findings are likely to be relevant to Dr Patel's credibility as a witness.

Having waited so long to make a decision couldn't the CPS wait a few more days in the hope that the main hurdle to a successful prosecution is removed by the GMC?

No Assault Charge

Apparently you have according to CPS guidelines charge someone with assult within six months. They are satisfied an assault took place buts opps its to late to charge the thug ... oh dear!!

Further Update (13.28)

This is from the Guardian earlier this month concerning the credibility of Dr Patel on which the CPS has made its decision today

FFS couldn't even a CPS lawyer see there may have been a way to challenge his credibility in court?

Confessions of an "independent" economist

2010-07-21T23:17:00.000+01:00

The new liberal/conservative government soon after taking power set up an "independen" Office of Budgetary Responsibility. Its first chairman was Alan Budd who, in a previous life, was a senior economic advisor to the 1979 Conservative government. In this clip he looks back at that Government's economic policy and shares his "nightmare".

The nightmare for those made unemployed, homeless and denied health care was very real.

Who are the biggest killers: Police Drivers or Firearms?

2010-07-21T17:32:00.001+01:00

In today's Guardian Simon Jenkins argues for a dramatic cut in policing budgets. Whilst there is much I don't agree with Jenkins on this one assertion caught my eye. Jenkins claims that 'speeding police cars now kill twice as many members of the public as die from gun offences.' So I decided to check out the facts.

The recent crime figures show that 39 people were killed by shootings. Whilst the IPCC's page on Road Traffic Incidents shows that the latest full year 'civilian fatalities following police related road traffic incidents' are running at 40.

Anyone interested in police spending should read the excellent Centre for Crime and justice Studies report Police expenditure 1999-2009

Satire brutally murdered by Dail Mail

2010-07-20T22:25:00.066+01:00

From Jonathan Swift to Chris Morris satire has played an important part in literary and political life. But today the Daily Mail has produced a story that is so beyond satire as to have effectively killed it

I-Dosing: How teenagers are getting 'digitally high' from music they download from internet

By Daniel Bates

Last updated at 5:57 PM on 20th July 2010

They put on their headphones, drape a hood over their head and drift off into the world of ‘digital highs’.

Videos posted on YouTube show a young girl freaking out and leaping up in fear, a teenager shaking violently and a young boy in extreme distress.

This is the world of ‘i-Dosing’, the new craze sweeping the internet in which teenagers used so-called ‘digital drugs’ to change their brains in the same way as real-life narcotics.

They believe the repetitive drone-like music will give them a ‘high’ that takes them out of reality, only legally available and downloadable on the Internet.
The craze has so far been popular among teenagers in the U.S. but given how easily available the videos are, it is just a matter of time before it catches on in Britain.
Those who come up with the ‘doses’ claim different tracks mimic different sensations you can feel by taking drugs such as Ecstasy or smoking cannabis.
The reactions have been partially sceptical but some songs have become wildly popular, receiving nearly half a million hits on YouTube.
Under one called ‘Shroom’, Berecz wrote: ‘just listened to this... at the beginning I began to see some blinking light (while eyes closed), then the pitch went up and I began to feel that Im sinking into my chair...as the pitch went down I began to feel confident, and very relaxed, and I dont want to stand up from my chair and I dont want to say any words...’
Not everyone is taking i-Dosing seriously - some YouTube videos show young adults ‘i-Dosing’ on Neil Diamond and mocking the whole phenomenon.
But there has been such alarm in the U.S. that the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs has issued a warning to children not to do it.
‘Kids are going to flock to these sites just to see what it is about and it can lead them to other places, spokesman Mark Woodward said. He added that parental awareness is key to preventing future problems, since I-dosing could indicate a willingness to experiment with drugs. ‘So that's why we want parents to be aware of what sites their kids are visiting and not just dismiss this as something harmless on the computer.
‘If you want to reach these kids, save these kids and keep these kids safe, parents have to be aware. They've got to take action.’ He added that another concern is that many of these I-dosing sites lure visitors to actual drug and drug paraphernalia sites.
Schools in the Mustang area recently sent out a letter warning parents about the new trend after several high school students reported having physiological effects after trying one of these digital downloads. ‘We had never come across anything like this and anything that is going to cause these physiological effects in a student, that causes us concern,’ said Shannon Rigsby, Mustang Public Schools Communication Officer.

It goes on (and on) - full story here

On a lighter note earlier this week the Poke revealed the Daily Mail's secret editorial formula.

Tasers & Typos

2010-07-20T19:16:00.001+01:00

Tasers are both becoming widely issued to British police and widely used. Often the use is inappropriate as a Daily Mail article last year when it highlighted police had used their new toys on

Stray Dogs
Runaway Sheep
An 89 year old man suffering from dementia
Children
(and accidentally) on police officers themselves

There is evidence that they are being used routinely with little regard for the safety of the public. Today the Mail published another story highlighting how the police had "accidentally" shot a man working on a friends garden. Having read the story I "accidentally" forgot to bookmark it before I got distracted in reading another story in the mail (see my next blog!!)

So I did a quick search only to find that in the earlier today the story had been published with the authors unedited comments. Fortunately the keen eyed reader who spotted it had taken a screen shot.

The Mail have now removed Mr Cox's "meat and two" and instead given him genitals.

Hat tip JoJo_Wood

the short-term prison sentence (1966 Bow Group Memorandum)

2010-07-20T08:00:00.003+01:00

New Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has been questioning the effectiveness of prisons particularly in respect of short term sentences. One idea he is promoting to try and reduce current numbers imprisoned is to get rid of short sentences - in particular those under six months.

I have been meaning to spend some time writing a detailed analysis of the Liberal/Tory policies on punishment but other priorities have taken precedence. I will however get around to it when time (and life) permits.

Meanwhile digging around in the Whose Crime Library I came across an old Bow Group pamphlet the short-term prison sentence written by Robert Bessell and published in 1966.

Writing at a time that the England and Wales prison population had risen to 'over 20,000' and the cost of running the prisons was over £22 million; a 'colossal expenditure of money and man-power'. Bessell argued for the abolition of the short-term prison sentence - a policy that if implemented would have reduced the prison population to around 6,000.

Central to his analysis was a claim that

there is in prison a hard-core of men and women, probably not very large in proportion to the prison population, with very considerable problems, which there is not the faintest prospect of resolving so long as the entire prison service is overburdened.

The overburdening is blamed on excessive use of prison with 'the great mass of the prison population consists(ing) of a heterogeneous crowd of men with very short-term sentences.'

This argument, that indeed prison could work, if it was not for overcrowding, remains a popular one today, when the England & Wales official population is over 80,000. Given that 20,000 overburdened the system the scale of reduction required is substantial. Indeed when in the early 1930s the population was down to about 9,000 no evidence was produced to show that, at these levels, prison could work in the ways that reformers continue to hope.

Bessell concluded that 'sentences of less than 6 months should, without exception, be abolished.' They 'serve no purpose and meet no need.' Whilst the argument has considerable attractions it does carry dangers. Unable to pass sentences of under six months many Magistrates would increase the sentences on those they had previously sentenced for shorter periods. The alternatives - community sentences - would all be backed up by prison, so many would end up in prison anyway.

But far more important than a detailed examination of the strengths and weakness of this argument is to recognise that it is not new. The very case being promoted by penal reformers and Ken Clarke has been around for many years. What is crucial is to ask why the ideas promoted by Bessell and indeed others prior to him failed to gain policy traction. Why was Bessell's case ignored and in the 44 years since have we seen the prison population continue to rise and the continued use of short sentences (as well as increase in sentence length) be central to policy?

Unless those promoting "rational" ideas in penal policy can explain why these same ideas have been repeatedly rejected they will be unable to make any more progress than Robert Bessell and his contemporaries achieved.

Foreskins and dreadlocks - Prison Security as an Excuse for Abuse

2010-07-19T14:33:00.003+01:00

Strip searches are routine in penal institutions and are justified by arguments about prison safety. Reading prisoners accounts they perceive the process as being more about power and humiliation. One regular requirement, particularly targeted at male children is to require the foreskin to be rolled back in front of the guards to check if anything is hidden there. For those who want to check this out I suggest you carry out a practical experiment to establish just what you can hide in a foreskin without it being visible. [Those of you who don not have a foreskin should find a friend with one to jointly conduct this experiment.]

From my experiments I have concluded it is impossible to hide a gun or a mobile phone. It is also impossible to hide any significant amounts of drugs. Given the humiliation experienced by those subjected to this procedure any security gain is obvioulsly insignificant. In particular its requirement for children is clearly child abuse.

A recent report by the Associated Press highlights another example of how prison security is used an excuse for abuse. They report how at least 48 prisoners in Virginia are kept in solitory confinement solely on the basis that they refuse to co-operate with security policy on hair and beard length. The prisoners in segregation include ten Rastafarians who have been held there for over ten years. Rastafararians objection to hair cutting is not about fashion but a religious belief. Although details of the other prisoners is not available most are likely to be from other faiths who share similiar beliefs (e.g Sikhs). The justification is security. Long hair could be used to hide guns and other items. The impact of imposing "security" regulations that ignore prisoners faiths is that either the prisoner does something that goes against their faith or they are severely punished. In this case ten Rastafarians have been subjected to over a decade solitary confinement for sticking to their beliefs. All in the name of "security".

Excellent Drug Policy Video

2010-07-13T23:29:00.003+01:00

From the new International Centre for Science in Drug Policy

Hat tip - Transform

Mohammadi Ashtiani - Update and New Appeal for Support

2010-07-12T23:13:00.001+01:00

Last Thursday I blogged about Sakine Mohammadi e Ashtiani's impending stoning in Iran. Since then the Iranian Government have indicated that they no longer intend to stone her. However they are still planning to kill her by hanging. I have recieved this appeal from Amnesty International USA for signatories for another appeal to the Iranian authorities. Please support it.

Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian mother of two, could be executed at any moment.

The Iranian government was until recently set to carry out the barbaric use of stoning against Mohammadi Ashtiani for allegedly conducting an "illicit relationship outside marriage," despite the lack of any corroborating evidence against her.

Iranian officials were prepared to bury Mohammadi Ashtiani up to her chest and then throw stones at her head until she died. But after a major international uproar, Iranian officials changed their minds.

Mohammadi Ashtiani is now in danger of being executed by other means.

Iran's government just doesn't get it - execution is wrong no matter which means are used.

What's worse - Mohammadi Ashtiani has already been punished for her alleged crime. In May 2006, she received 99 lashes as her sentence and has been imprisoned ever since.

But the fact that Iranian officials have already changed their minds once about Mohammadi Ashtiani's fate proves that they are listening. Iran's draconian policies are not immune to international pressure.

Let them hear how outraged you are. Tell Iran to stop the executions by signing the petition here.

Crimes and Time

2010-07-12T22:59:00.002+01:00

It is often claimed "don't do the crime if you cant do the time". Such a statement, as well as being morally dubious, presumes that the criminal justice system rationally allocates prison time on the basis of just deserts. In fact sentencing is both more random than that and far more bias. More often than not it is the person rather than the crime that attracts the sentence. This can be personal but is often a response to the lawbreakers age, class and race.

Everyday through google alerts I get a couple of hundred news stories delivered to my inbox and today I got the following two stories one after the other in an e-mail.

St. Peters secretary gets prison for stealing $573K

Teen sentenced to prison under new spitting law

The theft of $573K was deemed to require six months in prison whilst the young woman who spat at a policeman got a year in prison and two years post prison supervision. Both pleaded guilty - to do anything else is to risk far more severe penalties- so we only hear the states case. But the idea that courts (or lawmakers) can in any meaningful way weigh up crimes and allocate, as if by science, an appropriate amount of prison time which justly correlates to the specific crime is clearly total nonsense. So both sentencing law and practice develops its own logic and the white collar criminal who carries out a fraud in a calculating way is deemed to need six months whilst the young woman, who lip is cut in a struggle with a police officer and then spits gets a year.

Of course the whole idea of using prison as the standard response to almost all lawbreaking is silly and pointless but the way when it is used it is used disproportionally on the young, social excluded and powerless displays the inherent injustice of the criminal justice system.

"To anyone who even cares, bye,"

2010-07-09T12:00:00.005+01:00

Julie Bindel in yesterday's Guardian writes in detail about the tragic and unnecessary death of Andrea Adams. On the 12 June 2006 Andrea left a note on her kitchen table reading "To anyone who even cares, bye," and jumped out the window of her eighth floor flat.

The article details how a whole range of agencies charged with caring for Andrea failed her. A difficult but important read - please spare five minutes to read it.

What led Andrea Adams to kill herself at 18?

Help Sakine Mohammadi e Ashtiani Live!

2010-07-08T23:42:00.000+01:00

Please support this appeal

Sakine Mohammadi e Ashtiani faces a horrible punishment for an act of nature: sex.

But apparently sex outside of marriage is volatile enough that this woman deserves to be executed by stoning. At least some people in Iran think so. She will almost certainly be murdered by a corrupt "justice" system in a most excruciating way unless WE do something about it. This petition is that something.

Although stoning is sadly not terribly uncommon in some parts of the world, saving one person from this atrocity could help to build the movement against inhumane punishments and executions worldwide and promote more justice in troubled nations like Iran. YOU have power to help stop this, the choice is simply yours to do it or not. I urge you brothers and sisters, for we have no more room for hate in our world, the free MUST remember the forgotten. This is simply our duty to our fellow human, to stand up for her when she cannot. I beg you to share this with anyone who would sign it, as it will send a strong message to those capable of helping this poor woman have her right to life.

By signing this petition here

Further details here

Frightening Statistic

2010-07-08T23:32:00.000+01:00

I was searching for something on the Prison reform trust's website and came across this frightening statistic ...

Every year more children are separated from a parent by prison than by divorce.

In hard numbers this amounts to 160,000 children.

To this number you need to add the 12,000 children locked up each year.

That is an awful lot of children who are damaged every year by imprisonment.

8 Year-Old Transported To Mental Health Facility With Adult Prisoners (US story)

2010-07-07T23:51:00.001+01:00

Came across this news item from the States. Increasingly the link between mental illness and the penal system is becoming stronger both in the US and the UK. Both countries are also poor at recognising that children are children.

Read more details here

Whose Cuts? What Harms?

2010-07-05T13:00:00.006+01:00

The need for massive cuts in public spending is the new common sense. We are told by Liberals and Tories that There is No Alternative. But the reality is we have many possibilities. The road being followed by the coalition is only one option and it is an option that will do a great deal of damage to social equality, the poorest and weakest in our society. The rich and powerful are likely to do very well thank you.

The reality is we already live in a very unequal society. No where is this more apparent than in death rates. Last week the National Audit Office revealed that the poor are still dying 10 years earlier than the rich. At a time when it is proposed to defer the age for State retirement benefits until 70 this is highly relevant. Poor people will be disproportionally effected by this (rich people can chose when to retire) and although man living in Kensington & Chelsea can look forward to over 14 years life after their 70th Birthday in Blackpool men die on average until there are 73.6. This means reducing their retirement from 8.6 years to only 3.6 years.

In fact the reality may be considerably worse. Although the Tory led coalition are protecting NHS spending our health is determined by a far greater range of factors. The NHS treats us when we are ill rather than stopping us getting unwell. An article in the British Medical Journal reported by BBC News has found

Generally the trends showed that when social spending - including support for families and the unemployed - was high, death rates fell, but when they were low, rates rose substantially. In fact, for every £70 drop in spending per person there was a 1.19% rise in overall deaths.

So it likely that the massive cuts in welfare spending currently being proposed will reduce average life expectancy and that this average reduction will disproportionally impact on the poorer. Therefore places like Blackpool will see there average life expectancy reduce from the current 73.6 and move downwards towards the new retirement age of 70.

Fortunately the policies of the Tories and Liberals are not inevitable and the extent to which they will be implemented will be impacted on by the level of resistance they experience. So get active, get campaigning and remember Arundhati Roy's brilliant quote:

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Mickey B

2010-07-01T19:45:00.002+01:00

Earlier today I was planning ahead for the next academic year. I am hoping to run a Prison Films series and was trying to narrow down my list to only six when a friend who attended the ICOPA conference last week phoned. The conference, he reported, had been really good with one of the highlights being the showing of a new film Mickey B. This is a remake of Macbeth, set in prison, starring and produced by prisoners.

I am afraid to say, I had not heard of this film, but a quick search took me to this trailer.

Mickey B Trailer from Educational Shakespeare Co on Vimeo.

The film can be brought from the Educational Shakespeare Company here

Visit to Bridgetown Prison, Barbados, 1837

2010-06-30T08:00:00.001+01:00

As part of my research I have been looking at the development of prisons in the British empire as well as in England. I came across this account by John Scoble of a visit to Bridgetown Prison, Barbados in 1837.

From the council chamber we proceeded into the jail yard, where were collected a large number of negros employed in breaking stones. The male negros are required to break thirty baskets a day – the women twenty five baskets a day. The stones are very hard and the hammers very soft; the consequence is, that it is a most laborious operation. In failure of their appointed tasks, they are flogged both male and female! This I learned on the spot. Among the women thus employed was one very far advanced in pregnancy. I was very much pleased to learn that some of the more powerful negros would break a few more baskets than their required amount, and give their surplus to the weaker, to save them a flogging. From this part of the yard we proceeded to the back of the prison to inspect the tread-mill. It was going when we reached it – fifteen male negros of different ages, from boys to men, were on it, and the cat was in constant requisition on their sides, shoulders, and legs, to keep them up to their work; and even when the miserable creatures kept step properly, if they did not tread down they were flogged. On the top of the tread mill were a number of negros who secured the arms of those that were too weak to hold on by the rail. The usual time for them to be on the tread mill is ten minutes. From the mill we proceeded to the jail. The first room we entered was about thirty by thirty five feet, in which one hundred and ten negros are at present obliged to herd together from four in the afternoon until next morning; how they can live in such an atmosphere as must be created by so large a number of persons being congregated together in a tropical climate, I cannot tell. – The next apartment visited was about half the size. There were confined in it thirty five males, committed for various felonies. The jailer informed me that sometimes negros were incarcerated there twelve months previous to trial, and are then discharged without it. Often when it is inconvenient for the prosecutor to appear, or he does not choose to appear, cases are adjourned to the next Sessions, a period of six months. How iniquitous a system is this! We returned back to the tread-mill. The women were then on; such a sight I never saw before; they were dressed in coarse dowlas, descending from the hips like trowsers, below the knees, and upwards to the bosom, leaving the neck exposed, fitting close round the body. The arms from below the shoulders bare, the legs bare also. The heads shaved quite close, with a handkerchief tied round them. They were up for ten minutes, and had been up during the morning four times before, and were to be put up twice after we left. No difference whatever was made between them as to the amount of punishment. When we arrived, they had been up about three minutes, and the brutal driver was flogging them with the cat with as much severity as he had previously flogged the men; he cut them wherever he listed, and as often as he pleased. We were dreadfully shocked, but determined to witness the whole proceeding. On the mill there was a mulatto woman, perhaps about thirty, dreadfully exhausted – indeed she could not step any more, although she had been on only a few minutes.

The driver flogged her repeatedly, and she as often made the attempt to tread the mill, but nature was worn out. She was literally suspended by the bend of the elbow of one arm, a negro holding down the wrist at the top of the mill for some minutes; and her poor legs knocking against the revolving steps of the mill until her blood marked them. There she hung groaning. and anon receiving a cut from the driver, to which she appeared almost indifferent. When the ten minutes were up, the negro above released her arm, and she fell on the floor utterly unable to support herself, and at last managed to stagger out of the place. Her sufferings must have been terrible. But she was not the only one who suffered. A black girl, apparently about eighteen, was equally exhausted. When we arrived, she was moaning piteously. Her moans were answered by the cut of the whip. She endeavoured again and again to tread the mill, but was utterly unable. She had lost all power, and hung, in the same helpless way with the mulatto woman, suspended by the left arm, held on by the wrist by a negro above. The bend of the arm passed over the rail, and the wrist was held down tightly, so that she could not alter her position, or get the least ease by moving. It was most affecting to hear her appeals to the driver, ‘Sweet massa, do pity me – do sweet massa, pity me – my arm is broke.’ Her entreaties to be relieved were answered by cuts from the whip, and threats that did she not cease to make a noise, he would have her down and flog her. The fear that he would carry this threat into execution led her to suppress her feelings as well as she could. I then engaged the attention of the driver in a conversation and managed to place him towards me in such a position that he could not see the mill, and by a multitude of questions, occupied about two minutes of the time, until the glass had run down; thus saving the poor creature any more flogging. When let go, she sunk on the ground exhausted, but managed shortly after to crawl away from the scene of her suffering. Dr. Lloyd and I went shortly after to that part of the mill where the women are kept; the whole of them were in a state of profuse perspiration, and scarcely able to speak. We examined the legs of the mulatto woman, and found them shockingly bruised, the skin in one part about the size of a dollar torn away. The poor black girl had lost the skin off the bend of her arm, and was suffering dreadfully from the cramp. In reference to the latter female, I observed the driver cut her across the naked ankles, leaving the mark of his cat visible. I spoke a few kind words, which greatly affected them. Thus then, it appears, that in Barbados women committed to the tread mill are catted ad libitum – the driver's feelings alone being the rule which governs him in the use of his scourge. During the whole time these scenes were transacting, the Barbados Legislature were holding their Sessions within thirty yards of the tread-mill.