Prison from the prisoners family's experience.

I came across this posting on the Guardian Theatre Blog  from November 2006 from the Father of a young prisoner.  Well worth a read.

Its difficult to have any sympathy for a child who is arrested and then convicted of robbery with a knife, Lock them up, Tag them, capital punishment, stick them in the army, just a few things I have said as a father to my three boys, three boys who for most of there lives did nothing wrong at all. 

Our oldest son is 23 and is currently awaiting a hip replacement on our crumbling NHS waiting lists, he had the accident nearly 2 years ago and we are still waiting, our youngest son has been mostly ignored, he is not a bad child, far from it, he does nothing wrong at all, but our middle son Craig, is a young offender, he is not one of these children who was in with the wrong crowd, my son was the wrong crowd.

We would sit at home worried about the fact he had to get a bus and a tube to school, we were terrified of them getting mugged, it was with absolute horror that we learnt that our son Craig hadn’t been mugged, but was in fact the mugger.

It was a very quick decline into suspensions, police visits, cautions and eventually, expulsion, its quite ironic that the Government go on and on about how parents will feel there wrath if they don’t get there kids to school, our son didn’t go for over 2 years and no one called, no one came and the one school we did go along to, I was called a white c**t by a pupil, so I decided that if the teacher couldn’t control this child, what chance did they have with mine.

My son has been in 4 jails in 2 months, he has been hospitalised 4 times, twice at the same prison, a prison were they held an internal investigation over my sons injuries and came to the conclusion that he was to blame, both his mum and myself were not invited and I am ashamed to say that even though my son was complaining about the guards, I didn’t listen, I wish I had.

On another visit to see him, we were told that it was going to be closed visit, no one had called to let us know and we were told that either my wife or my son was going to have to wait in the car, after a big argument we were ushered into a small smelly room with 3 inch glass between ourselves and Craig and to our horror our son was brought in with plaster of Paris on both arms, cuts on his face and a face filled with hate.

How could this have happened and we not be told, how can our son be hospitalised and no one called to say what happened, our son then told us that he had started a fire in his cell because the guards were antagonising him outside and he felt it was the only way to get them in, he was overcome with smoke and once again, no one called us.

I put up an almighty fuss and was told to leave the prison, I was told on the way out by a guard that my son ‘got what he deserved’ and that ‘we’ ( the guards) didn’t start the fire’These were trained people who were meant to be looking after my son, not abusing him.

My whole out look on prisons changed, I began to get this horrible feeling that my son may be in danger, I know that sounds like an over protective parent, but I know my son, I know what he’s capable off and he is not scared of anyone and if a grown man is going to be aggressive against my son, then my son will fight back, before he was jailed ( my son hadn’t been in trouble for 18 months prior to the court case) he had been accepted into the Irish guards, he had started college and was on a painting and decorating course, the judge ( who was deliberating over his last case) took none of this into consideration and jailed him and since the jailing, he has been hospitalised 4 times and this included 2 restraints by the guards, he has had his nose broken, this required surgery, and always seems to be in trouble, again I must add that he had not been in trouble outside the prison for 18 months, not once in all that time had he brought any trouble to our home.

I began to worry that there maybe major problems in the jailing of young people and I began digging.

In his 2 months in 4 young offenders units, my son has been restrained twice, resulting in injuries to his head and arms, he has had his nose broken, he was given Prozac by Ashfield YOI, even though the two non private prisons said there was nothing wrong with him, he has been involved in a fire in his cell, he has been moved with us being told and more to the point he received a forced strip search.

I saw my son 20 minutes after he was stripped by force and in my opinion, it was done for no other reason than a punishment, his arms were still red raw from were he had been held down, there were marks on his head from were his head was banged on the floor and he was upset, I was so upset, I had to leave.

2 days later I attended a meeting in the city were Mr Philip Wheatly was giving a speech on his guards and prisons, I told him about my son and he said we were unlucky, I found the mans remarks to be condescending and if this is the attitude of the prison guards boss, then what chance does my son have.


Sean Doyle
Guardian 28 November 2006

Strangeways 20 years ago

Twenty years ago British prison's saw their most serious unrest.  Eric Allison looks back at them in an excellent article in the Guardian

For the prisoners, it was a justified protest against the appalling conditions in which they were being kept, and against the often brutal treatment handed out by their keepers. For the prison's governor, it was an "explosion of evil".

The Strangeways prison riot, which began 20 years ago tomorrow and lasted 25 days, under an unprecedented glare of media attention, left two men dead and 194 injured. It was followed by 51 criminal trials and a public inquiry that proved to be the most searching examination of penal policy in British history, and resulted in sweeping changes to the penal system. These included an end to "slopping out", whereby prisoners had to urinate and defecate in buckets in their cell; the appointment of a prisons ombudsman; and the introduction of telephones on landings so prisoners could keep in closer touch with their families.

But the Woolf inquiry into the riot also unearthed evidence – largely ignored by politicians and the media – indicating that it could and should have been avoided.

For the rest of this article click here

Update - The BBC has an excellent Audio Slideshow of their coverage of the riot/uprising - here

Why I Study Punishment

I came across this article written by Chrysanthi Leon from the University of Delaware

“It would be nice if we could get more access to therapy after the guards rape us.”

This is not the answer I expected to hear. Part of a “judicial envoy” touring a correctional facility for women, I had the opportunity to speak with a few of the women in the special section for mentally ill inmates. I asked them what else they needed to succeed. The first woman I spoke to wanted to know if I was a judge. Although disappointed to hear I am a professor, she did express the wish that I try to get my students to see her as a neighbor and as someone’s mother, not just as a monster. She described herself as a single mother who got carried away in trying to keep up appearances, and began to write bad checks to pay for the latest video games for her sons. She said she didn’t need anything to succeed, she had learned her lesson and would do fine once released.

It was the second woman who shocked me, as much with her matter-of-fact delivery as with the content. In her thirties and the mother of two teenage boys, she appeared thin and anxious, but offered a ready smile. When I asked if there was anything she needed, she immediately asked for more help for women sexually assaulted by guards. She said that when she was raped, all they did was move her to this ward. “When he was zipping up, he told me if I said anything he’d have me put in solitary. That’s my biggest fear. But I’m proud of myself for speaking up; I’ve found that everything is changing for me now that I’ve spoken.” In the time remaining before they called us away, we chatted about going to college and being mothers.

I quickly put aside her comments after leaving the facility, which was actually a lovely campus that could as easily have been a prep school as a prison. I told myself that since I was touring the ward for the mentally ill, it was likely that her comments were the product of her delusions. But the story she told lingered in my mind.

Later that same week, a civil rights activist came to speak to my introduction to criminal justice class. She spoke of the letters from inmates she receives, and told some gruesome stories to illustrate the limits of our current laws. In particular, she emphasized how difficult it is to address harms caused to people in prison. The main mechanism for recognizing prison problems is through lawsuits filed under the eighth amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. But since the passage of a law in the 1990s called the Prison Litigation Reform Act, few harms meet the threshold. For example, courts have determined that being raped by a guard is not a violation of a person’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. She proceeded to tell the story of the woman I had spoken with. Afterwards, I checked, and, indeed, the young mother I spoke with is part of a lawsuit being filed against the prison for a pattern of allowing sexual assaults.

This is why I study punishment. This is why I teach in a department of sociology and criminal justice. This is why I am on the board of the Sexual Abuse Treatment Alliance. Within ten miles of my home, women are being terrorized and tortured in my name. When we delegate the power to punish to our state authorities, the actions they take are on behalf of all of us and are paid for with out tax dollars. It’s still not clear to me what I can do, aside from telling the story. In this cultural moment, when we think of sex crime, we think of the angelic child victims of sexual homicide that dominate the news. We are much less apt to think of adult victims, let alone women who cannot be valorized as blameless and holy martyrs to the beastly desires of bad men. Neither do we care much about people behind bars; instead we choose to view them as deserving of whatever they get. We may have more sympathy for female offenders than for male; this may create an opening for hearing this story. But beyond just hearing this story and others, we must consider what we can do to recognize the humanity of people who have been convicted of criminal offenses. How can we better support the work of the many good people in the justice system and in community and social services who care for them and support them as they re-enter society? How can we move beyond our limited understanding of what sexual violence is and who it affects?

Addressing these issues are practical as well as moral imperatives. As we enter a new decade, I resolve to draw as many others into reasoned debate and passionate inquiry on these subjects as possible, with the hope that some will create the changes we desperately need.