Prison Decayed: How Prison Films Support the Expansion of the Penal Estate

This article was published on the NMP website in 2006

by Paul Mason, Cardiff University

Introduction

Ten years ago, Michael Howard, then British Home Secretary delivered his speech to the Conservative party faithful at their annual conference:

Prison works. It ensures we are protected from murderers, muggers and rapists - and it makes many who are tempted to commit crime think twice...This may mean that more people will go to prison. I do not flinch from that. We shall no longer judge the success of our justice by a fall in our prison population. (Michael Howard, Conservative Party Conference, October 1995.)

Two years previously, his counterpart in the Labour Party and then Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair, was writing in The New Statesman that Labour should become 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime'(1993: 100). The increased politicisation of British criminal justice policy, over the last ten years in particular, has been matched with a correlative hardening of penal sanctions, a development mirrored in the United States (Garland 2001; Mathiesen 2000; Wacquant 2005; 2006), to the extent that now 'a failure to talk tough on crime is akin to political suicide' (Newburn and Jones 2005). Such a stance has meant that in November 2005, the prison population in England and Wales was 77,421, the second highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe (Prison Reform Trust 2005).

However, the contention that high prison rates mean lower crime is fundamentally flawed and remains a myth (Christie 2000; Dyer 2000; Jacobson 2005; Parenti 1999). This, coupled with the injustice and inhumanity of a system which locks up the socially excluded (Prison Reform Trust, 2005), a disproportionate number of ethnic minorities (Home Office, 2004) and those with mental health problems (Prison Reform Trust, 2005) clearly demonstrates the pressing need for alternatives to and the abolition of the prison system.

Many see the increased punitiveness in criminal justice policy as a populist reaction to the problems of crime (Garland 2001; Hutton 2005; Johnstone 2000; Loader 2005; Pratt 2000; Roberts et al. 2002; Ryan 2006). That pressure from an angry public, mediated through tabloid headlines, demands more displays of repressive punishment such as longer prison sentences, boot camps, tighter controls on sex offenders, anti-social behaviour orders and so on. Punishment becomes crueller, more emotive and ostentatious (Pratt 2000) as public insecurities about crime and the criminal intensify.

However, what has been lacking in this analysis is any engagement with media representations of prison and punishment, how and why they may contribute to the punitive in the public sphere. Only Mathiesen (Mathiesen 2000; 2001; 2003) has offered any meaningful thoughts on how media discourses around prison may intervene in the penal debate, and these are relatively brief. Adopting a similar position to those writing on penal populism, he posits that changes in government discourse around criminal justice policy have shifted from legal and moral values to opportunistic and media/public driven ones. The nature of public debate around crime and punishment has consequently altered, no longer predicated upon 'principled legitimation' (Mathiesen 2003: 3). He further suggests that media reporting magnifies violent and serious crime such that prison is constructed as the only solution:

In the newspapers, on television, in the whole range of media, the prison is simply not recognised as a fiasco, but as a necessary if not always fully successful method of reaching its purported goals. The prison solution is taken as paradigmatic, so that a rising crime rate is viewed as still another sign showing that prison is needed.'
(Mathiesen 2000: 144)

While Mathiesen's argument is a surely correct, it would be strengthen by an examination of the media coverage of prisons to which he refers. I offer here an examination of one prison discourse in popular culture: the prison film. I will argue that, over the last ten years the prison film has represented incarceration around two elements, both of which significantly impact upon debates around penal reform and abolition. Firstly, the graphic exploitation of violence and sexual assault in prison films is predominantly depicted voyeuristically and remains severed from any abolitionist or reformist context. While scenes of explicit brutality may present opportunities for the prison film to challenge the very existence of the penal estate, any oppositional discourse is subjugated to the lurid mise en scene of violence and sexual assault. Secondly, the representation of inmates as dehumanised other and deserving of harsh treatment, coupled with an avoidance of abolitionist narratives in death row films reaffirms the prison as the cornerstone of criminal justice sanctions. My analysis looks at English language prison films given a cinematic release between 1st January 1995 and 31st December 2005. This amounts to 28 films which are listed at the end.

1. EXPLOTING VIOLENCE, AVOIDING CONDEMNATION

Many of the films in the sample represent prison as a brutal, uncivilised place which punishes, degrades and humiliates. Potentially, such a construction of the penal system suggests a discourse of reform. Namely, an exploration of the futility and inhumanity of incarceration, made visible by such texts, presents an opportunity to raise the profile in public debate and mobilise opinion towards reform and abolition of the prison industrial complex.
 
However, a closer reading of the sample reveals not only a reluctance to challenge the existing penal system, but a scoptophilic treatment of violence, rape and death. Such acts are frequently presented in narratives across the sample, rarely framed within any considered or developed critique of prison. Instead, these elements offer are located within an exploitative agenda, in which vivid violence, rape and other sexual assaults are foregrounded. These are constructed in two principle ways, through pre-emptive talk and iconography; and in graphic displays.
 
PRE-EMPTIVE TALK, FEAR AND PRISON ICONOGRAPHY

In the sample analysed, prison is habitually and, crucially, immediately constructed within a discourse of violence and fear. The films define prison through its capacity for brutality and to instill terror. It is constructed in this way from the outset and, as I discuss later, rarely shifts or challenges this initial construction. Such a discourse is frequently built visually and aurally through the early scenes of prison. This often occurs via long shots of the prison façade accompanied by aggressive rap or rock music (Down Time, dir. Sean Wilson, 2001; A Letter From Death Row, dir. Marvin Baker & Bret Michaels 1998; Slam, 1998; Prison Song, dir. Darnel Martin, 2003) or the doom-laden orchestral score (Brokedown Palace or Just Cause, dir. Arne Glimcher, 1995). Alternatively, the viewer experiences the first steps inside the prison from the point of view of the newly-convicted inmate as they are processed through the system.

In The Mean Machine (dir. Barry Skolnick, 2001) for example, Danny Meehan, the film's protagonist, is shot walking towards the camera, along a corridor. When the scene cuts, the camera has switched behind him as he walks up the steps and into the main prison where he, and consequently the audience, is greeted by a cacophony of noise and abuse from other inmates shouting directly into the camera. This scene is very similar to the entrance into the main prison of newly convicted Slim in Down Time, and variations on this scene are to be found in Slam, Prison Song, A Letter From Death Row and Animal Factory. In the latter, the entry of new inmate Ron Decker to prison is again shot from his point of view, as the camera pans round the prison exercise yard, inmates are framed in close-up, mostly in vests, heavily tattooed, muscular and lifting weights, or prowling round the yard, staring. The correlation between prison and violence (as well as masculinity) is clearly expounded in these initial constructions of prison.

In other films in the sample, frequently those dealing with death row, the audience is positioned with, and as, the outsider: as a lawyer defending the convicted inmate (Just Cause, The Chamber (dir. James Foley, 1996), Last Dance (dir. Bruce Beresford, 1996)), a friend (Dead Man Walking (dir. Tim Robbins, 1996)) or a journalist (Life of David Gale (dir. Alan Parker, 2003)) but still within the fear/violence discourse. This is accomplished primarily through a focus on security, threat and danger. In all these texts, the visitor is repeatedly seen passing through wire gates, steel doors, metal detectors and other scanning equipment. Aural cues of incarceration are prominent in these scenes: doors slam, buzzers sound, keys jangle, gates creak and footsteps of prison officers echo, all mixed with the foreboding drone of the film's soundtrack. In Just Cause, retired and visible uneasy lawyer Paul Armstrong is asked by a laughing prison guard 'This your first time, Mr Armstrong?' In The Life of David Gale, journalists Bitsey Bloom and Zack Stemmons are taken through a maze of gates, doors and corridors on their way to meet Gale. There are several close-ups of razor wire and a sign which reads "No Hostages Will Exit". Their (and our) guide to the prison then says: 'We have three concerns here - safety, safety and safety. The visitation area is entirely secure, we just ask that you don't touch the glass".
It is not only through these opening scenes that the discourse of prison is formed. Threat and fear are consistently communicated through talk. But like the opening prison scenes, this occurs pre-emptively through inmate exchanges around fears of being beaten or raped; while guards and governors are at pains to remind inmates of the dangers of life inside:

Every day someone gets shanked in here. Every day someone gets beaten up in here. We got predators in here, son. We got people who will cut your throat for nothing at all but a packet of cigarette. You mind your business in here, son - do you understand where you are?
(Prison guard to new inmate, Ray in Slam)

I run a prison full of murderers and rapists. It's my job to discipline them anyway I can. Most of these guys have broken every rule in the book. It's my job to teach them respect. People like you better pray to God that people like me doing my job while they're in there. Because one of these days these scumbags are going to be out on the streets and then you better pray you're not walking down the street - you or one of your self-righteous, liberal friends - or one of these good ol' boys decides he's gonna put a bullet in that pretty head of yours.  (Warden Felcher to Prison Board visitor in A Letter From Death Row)

The dramatic and colloquial language borrowed from prison slang - "shanked" (stabbed) and the reduction of the prison population to "murderers and rapists" and "scumbags" serves to situate the prison firmly within a discourse where prison means constant threat of attacks and fear. These warnings to inmates also act as notifications to the audience of what they can expect to see during the film - explicit and graphic violence contextualised by nothing more than its location: a prison. This is concisely expressed in Prison Song, 'you're gonna have to fight - make no mistake about it - this is jail'.

Rape and sexual assault talk is also prevalent in the sample. In several films, new inmates are referred to as "fresh meat" (Life (dir. Ted Demme, 1999); Down Time, Prison Song). In Animal Factory, the older experienced Earl offers advice to new inmate Ron:

Young man - there are a lot of animals in here - sexual deviants, inverts who might try and pressure you....a young man looking the way you do without a great deal of penitentiary experience might find himself compromised: might find himself in need of a friend.

This advice is echoed by long-standing friend, Frank, to the soon-to-be incarcerated Monty in 25th Hour (dir. Spike Lee, 2002):

This is my advice to you - first figure out who's who. Find the man nobody's protecting and beat him until his eyes bleed. Let them think you're a little bit crazy but respectful too. Respectful of the right man - you're a good looking boy Monty - it won't be easy for you.....We do what we do to survive.

25th Hour is undoubtedly the clearest example of the pre-emptive talk of violence and sexual assault in the sample. The narrative traces the last 24 hours of freedom for Monty Brogan, a man about to begin a seven year sentence for drug dealing. One of the key narratives concerns Monty's anxiety over what awaits him when he reaches prison. Hours before he is due to begin his sentence, he confides his trepidation to Frank, and visualises his first night in prison:

The place is overcrowded - they got bunk beds lined up in the gymnasium to handle the overflow. I'm going in a room with 200 other guys.....So picture his. First night, lights out. The guards are moving out of the space, looking back over their shoulders laughing at me. You are miles from home. Door closes - boom: I'm on the floor; I've got some big guy's knee in my back. I'll give it a little go but they'll be too many of them. Somebody takes a pipe out from under a mattress, starts beating me in the face - not to hurt me, just to knock all my teeth out so I can give him head all out and they don't have to worry about me biting,

Without showing any of this, 25th Hour contributes to the discourse of prison constructed in previous cinematic narratives, where jail is synonymous with sexual assault and interpersonal violence.

These initial scenes, and in the case of 25th Hour the entire film, help to fix the meaning of imprisonment, to frame the discourse of incarceration as cruel and sadistic. However, while such scenes could form part of a critique of prison as a criminal justice sanction - the vindictive and pointlessness of custody - the dominant discourse remains entrenched in the violence itself rather than in denunciation of it.

Many of the 'tag lines' - the soundbites which appears on posters and in trailers further exemplify this: 'On The Inside The Rules Are Brutal And The Stakes Are High' (Animal Factory, dir. Steve Buscemi, 2000); 'Their Graduation Present Was A Trip To Paradise, But They Never Thought They Would Land In Hell' (Brokedown Palace, dir. Jonathan Kaplan, 1999; 'All in Line for a Slice of Devil Pie' (Slam, dir. Marc Levin, 1999).

GRAPHIC VIOLENCE

I do not wish to dwell on detailed accounts of the graphic violence portrayed in virtually all the sample, but its nature and treatment by the texts requires some exploration. I have suggested that the discourse of prison as violent and inhumane not only fixes the meaning of prison at an early stage, but importantly that it is rarely used to critique the role of penality in society. The persistent violence in Animal Factory, Down Time, Fortress II: Re-Entry (dir. Geoff Murphy, 1999), Mean Machine, Prison Song, Under Lock and Key (dir. Henri Charr, 1995) and Undisputed (dir. Walter Hill, 2002) reduces 'the reality of violence into spectacle' (Jarvis 2006: 159). Both the explicit nature of the violence, and its scoptophilic treatment by films in the sample are well illustrated by the first scenes of prison in Mean Machine. After three minutes depicting the arrest of ex-England football star Danny Meehan, the radio announces the news while Meehan is shot. Lit by a red light lying in a police cell:

Newsreader: "Meehan will serve his sentence at Longmarsh high security Prison"

cut to close up of violent fight between two inmates sat at a table, others cheering, then back to close up of Meehan in his cell

Newsreader: "Famous for its rehabilitation programme"

cut back to fight, then back to Meehan

Newsreader: "reformed characters"

cut back to fight and inmates exchanging money, all shown on a CCTV screen in a room where prison officers look on. Cut back to Meehan in cell

Newsreader: "and modern conditions"

Cut to bloodied face and vest of inmate

In addition to set piece brutality - sexual attacks in showers (American History X, Animal Factory, Undisputed and spoken of in The Hurricane (dir. Norman Jewison, 1999)); fights in the dining hall (Brokedown Palace, Fortress II: Re-Entry and Sleepers, for example) and exercise yard (Life, Prison Song, Slam) - violence is represented as casual and frequent. Stabbings, scaldings and slashings occur with such regularity that they become normalised, what Baumann has termed 'the production of moral indifference' (cited in Jarvis 2006: 159).

This indifference towards the brutality in, and indeed of, prison - the silence and absence of challenges to the very existence of prison within the discourse - is replaced, substituted and shrouded by incessant depictions of such violence. This construction of the penal estate is tied in with the second key component of the discourse of incarceration in the sample: the reinforcing of prison as an essential element of the criminal justice.

2. REINFORCING PRISON, SUPPORTING EXECUTION

OTHERING INMATES

The prison film narrative in the sample is centred round the inmate , usually one recently convicted. Prison is experienced through the eyes of this individual, such as their entry into the penal system discussed previously. Frequently, the new inmate is constructed sympathetically from the outset. This is achieved in one of three ways. Firstly, and most evidently through their innocence and consequent wrongful conviction (Under Lock and Key, A Letter From Death Row, Brokedown Palace, A Map of the World, The Hurricane). Secondly, where the inmate has committed the crime, the film offers mitigating circumstances such as a crime of passion in Undisputed and Tomorrow La Scala; or self defence / provocation in Prison Song and Chicago (dir. Rob Marshall, 2002). Thirdly, where there are no mitigating circumstances and the individual is guilty, the sentence appears unnecessarily harsh, often delivered by an inscrutable judge shot in close up. For example, Cindy Liggett is given the death penalty for aiding and abetting a botched robbery in Last Dance; and after stealing $5 from a post office and being sent to Alcatraz, Henry Young spends three years in solitary confinement after trying to escape in Murder In The First. The marginal nature of innocence, guilt and its underlying morality is further explored by 25th Hour in which the convicted Monty Brogan's two friends are revealed as a crooked Wall Street stockbroker and a guilty college teacher, seduced by one of his students. These events and revelations occur in the danger-red hue of a packed nightclub to the sounds of the hottest new talent DJ Dusk: the equivocal time between night and day, light and shade, good and evil.

This sympathetic portrayal of inmate protagonists once again offers the possibility for prison film narratives to explore the injustice and cruelty of incarceration. Through the eyes of an innocent, harshly treated woman or man, the penal system could be exposed. Although ostensibly this appears to be present in the discourse of prison constructed in the sample, it is achieved through a process of representing the rest of the prison population as dehumanised monsters and animals, and consequently as "other" (Greer and Jewkes 2005; Hall 1997). While the prison hero/ine is afforded character, emotional development and agency, the rump of the jail is mere cardboard cut-out and cliché. Consequently, prison is constructed as necessary, to keep these psychotic deviants caged and incapacitated. Despite its empathetic portrayal of, on occasion, several inmates, the meaning of prison is once again framed around danger and fear, thus underscoring the apparent necessity for prison's very existence.

Echoing the presence of violence in the sample discussed above, the othering of the inmate population occurs both explicitly and implicitly, and again, early in the exposition of the prison. This occurs in voice-over in Sleepers accompanying a panning shot of the exercise yard:

It was not a group of innocent boys at Wilkinson. Most, if not all, the inmates belonged there, and a number of them were riding out their second and third convictions. All were violent offenders. Few seemed sorry for what they had done. And as for rehabilitation - forget it.

In Tomorrow La Scala, prison officer Kevin stands in front of a metal door and addresses the theatre group who are visiting:

We're going to meet the lifers. These are an entirely different breed to the rest of the prison population. They're in here an average of 12 years, some as long as 20 years and all have committed pretty serious crimes. Point of paramount importance - no fraternising, be friendly but don't be their friend.

There are frequent references to, and reduction of the prison populations to "rapists", "murderers", "animals" and so on. Visually, there is an emphasis on physical form, strength and the potential for violence with inmates regularly depicted with shaved heads in tight vests, tattooed, pushing weights (Animal Factory, Down Time, Slam, Prison Song, Undisputed, American History X and A Letter From Death Row). These often wide, panning shots establish the prison population as an homogenous other. This is complemented by individual, superficial cameos of psychotic monsters, who are defined by the brutality of their crimes, such as The Monk in Mean Machine, Sullivan in Just Cause and John Toombes in Lucky Break. Con Air (dir. Simon West, 1997) offers a pertinent example of all of these elements. The protagonist, Cameron Poe, a highly decorated soldier who, having been convicted of manslaughter after protecting his wife in a fight, is put on a transport plane home with an array of long term inmates being transferred to a maximum security prison. In a scene lasting more than nine minutes, each inmate is shown in slow motion as they are escorted onto the plane accompanied by two helicopters and a phalanx of ten armed guards. For each one, the scene cuts to a CCTV screen with computer graphics detailing their crimes, sentence and life history, this is complemented by an explanation:

US Marshall Larkin: 'This one's done it all - kidnapping, robbery, murder, extortion"

Cut to overhead shot of guards. Cut to close up of bus door opening, cut to close up from ground upwards of Cyrus with helicopter in background.

US Marshall Larkin: 'His name is Cyrus Grissom, aka Cyrus The Virus - 39 years old, 25 of them spent in our institutions'

Cut to close up of his feet with chains in slow motion at ground level

US Marshall Larkin: 'But he bettered himself inside - earned two degrees including his Juris Doctorate. He also killed 11 fellow inmates, incited three riots and escaped twice. Likes to brag that he killed more men than cancer. Cyrus is a poster child for the criminally insane. He is a product of the system.'

This last comment, of prison being to blame for the dehumanising process, does offer an alternative reading of the construction of inmates in the discourse. It could be suggested that the portrayal of the prison population in the sample represents precisely the barbaric nature of prison, and thus this depiction of inmates offers a challenge to the existence of the penal estate. However, for such a discourse to exist, one would need to witness the progression of dehumanization, the mechanistic process of imprisonment which turns a free wo/man into a monster (Mason 2003; 2006b). This counter discourse, a reappropriation of meaning (Hall 1997) does occur in Animal Factory. As the name suggests, the film, written by an ex-inmate is concerned with this very process. New inmate Ron Decker is portrayed as increasingly corrupted by prison drawn into the violence and power structure between inmates, until he eventually escapes. Even if one accepts that the backdrop of superficial characterisation and othering of the prison population is used to reinforce Ron's demise - that all inmates have become like they are because of the system - this counter-strategy is conspicuous by its absence the rest of the sample.
 
The othering of inmates, through fixing them to their crimes, appearance and difference to the prison hero/ine leads to the construction of a pro-prison discourse. With a prison population constructed as predominantly highly dangerous, morally bereft and beyond redemption, the prison becomes the only institution capable of offering a solution. Further, the representation of the heroic, often innocent inmate appears to offer the possibility of a reformist or abolitionist discourse, but like the depiction of violence, this opportunity is used for the reverse. That process is also present in the final element of the discourse I wish to discuss, the support for the death penalty.
 
SUPPORTING THE DEATH PENALTY

The sample analysed contained six films set on death row and although space precludes any detailed exploration of this element of the discourse, I want to offer some brief points about the representation of execution in these films and how this too is located within a discourse of imprisonment which ultimately supports the institutions of prison and the death penalty. Further, that the discourse here is similarly double-edged to that concerning violence and the representation of inmates. Namely, that while it posits abolition of state killing, its construction of meaning centres around the justification of it.

The discourse analysis of these particular films supports Sarat's argument, that despite the attempt to demonstrate that the death penalty is wrong, the discourse in these films is not one of abolition, nor does it challenge its rationale within the criminal justice system (Sarat 2002). This occurs in two ways in these films. The first is to limit the exploration of the use of the death penalty to whether or not the protagonist is deserving of it. This is explored either through a did-they-didn't-they commit the crime (The Chamber, Dead Man Walking, The Green Mile, The Life of David Gale) or an examination of what Sarat calls 'the calculus of desert (sic)' (Sarat 2002: 213), namely whether the death penalty is the appropriate penalty for the crime committed (Last Dance, A Letter From Death Row). Thus, what appears to be a discursive challenge to state killing, through a sympathetic portrayal of the condemned, is fundamentally a narrow representation which avoids broader questions about the use of executions in contemporary societies. Furthermore, the death penalty is used in the majority of these films to enable the redemption of the protagonist: John Coffey's messianic sacrifice in The Green Mile; David Gale's death to prove the fallibility of the justice system in The Life of David Gale; the redemption of Matthew Poncelet, Sam Cayhall and Arlen Bitterbuck in Dead Man Walking, The Chamber and The Green Mile, respectively.

Secondly, and in contrast with the incessant violence of the other prison films, the executions are fixed at a denotative level. Thus the scenes immediately before the moment of death are concerned with process, administration and system. In echoing Sarat's memorable phrase, 'fetishizing the technology of death' (Sarat 2002: 237), straps, buckles and probes are attached, death warrants are read out and switches are flicked. The stark white rooms in The Chamber, Dead Man Walking, Last Dance and The Life of David Gale communicate the sterile, clinical nature of state executions. The absence of the horror of an execution is replaced by ritual, procedure and bureaucracy which once again, locates the discourse of the death penalty within a framework of legitimacy and necessity.

Discussion

I began by discussing the increased use of prison as a penal sanction in the UK and how many have seen the punitive turn in criminal justice in recent years as a populist measure. Mathiesen is right to highlight the important role the media plays in this process and it is surprising that so little analysis has been undertaken given the invisibility of prison, the consequent reliance on the media for information about it (Levenson 2001; Mason 2003) and the complex meshing between political and media culture and in particular crime and punishment. The US presidential election defeat of Michael Dukakis to George Bush in 1988, for example, has consistently been linked to the case of William Horton, an inmate serving life imprisonment for murder in Massachusetts, where Dukakis was State Governor (Estrich 1998; Jamieson 1992; Loader 2005; Newburn and Jones 2005). Horton was released for a weekend visit during which he stabbed a man and raped the man's girlfriend. Bush's campaign team launched a negative television campaign against Dukakis in two adverts. The first, contrasting Dukakis' support for the furloughing of inmates with Bush's support for the death penalty; the other suggesting that Dukakis offered a revolving door prison policy, fuelling public fears about crime and their perception of a liberal prison policy.

In the last two British elections, the Conservatives ran similar campaigns. In 2001, their election broadcast portrayed inmates being let out of jail early and committing crimes and suggested this had led to at least two rapes (BBC Online, 15th May 2001) and in 2005 they ran a poster campaign with the slogan 'How would you feel if a bloke on early release attacked your daughter? Are you thinking what we're thinking?' (Mason 2006a).

The discourse analysis of prison films over the last ten years reveals several discursive practices which bolster the support for prison, and arguably its increased use. The graphic and frequent violence and sexual assaults depicted and/or spoken about serve to fix the meaning of imprisonment to such brutality. However, rather than providing a condemnation of the penal system, the brutality remains scoptophilically represented, revelling in the stabbings, rapes and beatings between, and of, inmates. Inmate violence is part of a representational practice which constructs the prison population as inhuman other. Where the inmate hero/ine is depicted sympathetically through their innocence or harsh treatment, this is played out against a backdrop of a prison populated by psychotic, violent and brutal inmates. Such a construction contributes to a cinematic discourse representing prison as the only effective means of incapacitation and punishment. Finally and similarly, films which appear to offer a challenge to the death penalty side step the abolitionist argument and choose instead to concentration upon the suitability of the punishment and its technological aspects, framed within a discourse of bureaucracy.

While this analysis does not attempt to draw any firm conclusions about how such a cinematic discourse of prison may directly impact upon public opinion, it suggests that cultural constructions of prison are an important component of in populist punitiveness of current criminal justice policy. Prison films, as discursive practices, continue to bolster the existence of the prison industrial complex and remain silent on questions of reform and/or abolition of prison. Meanwhile, administrations such as those in the UK and the US remain wedded to an unjust, cruel, inefficient and dysfunctional penal system and consider punitiveness useful political capital.

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Notes

1. The one exception in the sample was The Green Mile (dir. Frank Darabont, 1999) in which the central character is Paul Edgecomb, a head prison guard on death row.

2. There is a graphic death in The Green Mile, where a deliberately botched procedure leads to the condemned Eduard Delacroix burning to death in the electric chair. However, Sarat has suggested that this merely suggests that 'there is nothing that decent people should find offensive or gruesome about a "normal" execution' (Sarat 2002: 239).
 

Film List

Just Cause (1995, dir. Arne Glimcher)

Murder in the First (1995, dir. Marc Rocco)

Under Lock And Key (1995, dir. Henri Charr)

The Chamber (1996, dir. James Foley)

Dead Man Walking (1996, dir. Tim Robbins)

Last Dance (1996, dir. Bruce Beresford)

Sleepers (1996, dir. Barry Levinson)

Con Air (1997, dir. Simon West)

American History X (1998, dir. Tony Kaye)

A Letter From Death Row (1998, dir. Marvin Baker & Bret Michaels)

Slam (1998, Marc Levin)

Brokedown Palace (1999, dir. Jonathan Kaplan)

Fortress 2 (1999, Geoff Murphy)

The Green Mile (1999 , dir. Frank Darabont)

The Hurricane (1999, dir. Norman Jewison)

Life (1999, dir. Ted Demme)

A Map of the World (1999, dir. Scott Elliott)

Animal Factory (2000, dir. Steve Buscemi)

Down Time (2001, dir. Sean Wilson)

Lucky Break (2001, dir. Peter Cattaneo)

Mean Machine (2001, dir. Barry Skolnick)

Prison Song (2001, dir. Darnell Martin)

The 25th Hour (2002, dir. Spike Lee)

Chicago (2002, dir. Rob Marshall)

Tomorrow La Scala! (2002, dir. Francesca Joseph)

Undisputed (2002, Walter Hill)

The Life of David Gale (2003, dir. Alan Parker)

The Longest Yard (2005, dir. Peter Segal)

Dear Santa

This was originally published on the No More Prison Website in December 2007

By Alison Henderson


Dedicated to Sandra currently residing in HMP Styal.
 

 
Dear Santa,

Me and Mum would always write

dear Santa Claus a note,

but this year Mum won't be around

so this is what I wrote:


Dear Santa if I had one wish

to make all on my own,

it would be to release my Mum

and let her please come home.


Grandma makes the Christmas roast

with lots of food to eat,

but this year in the dining room

there'll be an empty seat.



I know it's far too much to ask

so this year there's no wish,

but Santa could I ask you to

deliver my Mum this.................



Trust me Mum you will get through

don't cry or shed a tear,

we'll celebrate our Christmas day

when you come home next year.



You told us to enjoy ourselves

but I can't promise that,

I'll miss you telling Christmas jokes

wearing your party hat.



I love you Mum with all my heart

be strong and please don't cry,

Christmas day will come and go

and time will soon fly by.



I know you made a big mistake

but what is done is done,

prison's stole our Christmas but....

they'll never steal my Mum.



To Mum With Love.

John Bowden - Return to Resistance

Reposted from the No More Prison Website

In a time when prison are so overcrowded why don't prisoners rise up and challenge the treatment and conditions imposed on them? This article, written by John Bowden a prisoner who has been involved in prison struggle, gives his insight.

Return to Resistance

What has become of prison revolts in the British prison system? Where now are the open expressions of collective anger and solidarity that fueled the uprisings and jail riots of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and created the iconic images of Hull 1976 and Strangeways 1990? What happened to the spirit of revolt that used to periodically shake the British long-term prison system and engender a philosophy of prisoner empowerment and solidarity, a philosophy that situated the struggle of prisoners at the very forefront of the universal struggle for human rights and even social revolution?

Has the British prison system now become so responsive to and accommodating of the rights of prisoners that revolt and protest has been rendered unnecessary and redundant? I think not. In fact British jails are now more chronically overcrowded than ever before and inmates virtually warehoused in conditions and under regimes probably worst than they were twenty years ago. The despair and misery created by such conditions is reflected in rates of self-harm and suicide that are inexorably growing, along with the length of sentences now dished out. And like never before the treatment of prisoners is increasingly influenced by a political climate and manipulated public mood supportive of even greater repression and revenge. Yet nowhere, apparently, is there the spirit of solidarity and organised resistance amongst prisoners that was so evident twenty years ago, no-where the readiness to fight back and literally raise the roof in protest. Instead of defiance there seems now only passive acquiescence and an acceptance of conditions and forms of treatment that previously would have mobilized disobedience and revolt.

Silence in the face of intolerable oppression is a disturbing phenomenon; in conditions of extreme cruelty the will to resist is inherently human and wholly characteristic of a healthy and intact human spirit possessing an integrity unique to our species.

Why then has the militancy that seemed to characterize the behavior of long-term prisoners, especially, towards the prison system been replaced by conformity and submission?

Organizationally, the prison system in terms of methods of control, prison architecture and design, etc, has developed significantly since the last major prison uprising at Strangeways in 1990. Before the Strangeways revolt the physical space of most large prisons was more or less controlled by the prisoners themselves and scrutiny and close supervision of that space by the jailers was difficult and haphazard. Apart from punishment/segregat ion units, most prisoners were housed in large wings where they were allowed to circulate freely and create a certain degree of autonomy of physical space; complete oversight and surveillance was impossible and control often tenuous, and where incidents of protest were sparked off they tended to spread without containment, developing a momentum that reached into most areas of the prison. Large group solidarity was a common feature of life in the long-term prisons and was reflected in the balance of institutional power which dictated that the co-operation and good will of prisoners was a vital and necessary prerequisite of relative control.

Changing the physical architecture of prisons was to become a key component in the state's strategy of eradicating large scale protest and seizing back control of physical space. The new-generation of prison architecture and the extensive re-design of prison space started in the early 1990s purpose-built small group control into wing lay-outs and won back completely the control of space from prisoners.

In Scotland where bloody revolts had convulsed the prison system during the 1970s and 1980s a massive building programme transformed the old open-plan halls and galleries into new “super wings”, enormous structures where space is divided and sub-divided into small self-contained units holding under 50 prisoners, all closely monitored and observed in small manageable groups. This separation and concentration of prisoners into small groups under almost microscopic surveillance effectively prevents and undermines the potential for large-scale disturbances by quickly identifying and weeding out “ringleaders” and containing and isolating conflict when it occurs. By transforming the physical space and design of jails institutional power has shifted back in favour of guards and removed the spectre of mass prison uprisings.

In and of itself building methods of control into the physical fabric of prisons does not eradicate completely the possibility and existence off rebellion, and when trying to understand the reasons for such a radical downturn in the prison struggle the wider social and cultural context is equally relevant.

The term “millennium prisoner” is now often used as a derogatory label by prisoners themselves for the current generation of prisoners who seem on the whole to have reconciled themselves with the institutional interests of the prison system and possess absolutely no memory of a time when prisoner culture was imbued with a spirit and attitude of resistance. This is not just a generational phenomenon but a social and political one also and reflects a fundamental change in the nature of the wider working class community from which most prisoners are drawn. On the whole the prisoners who revolted and fought the system during the most turbulent decades of prison protest, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, were products of close knit industrial working class communities with strong traditions of trade union organization and militancy; solidarity and mutual support were the lifeblood of these communities and informed the instincts of even those on the wrong side of the law. The generation of prisoners who riot and fought at Pankhurst in 1969, Hull in 1976 and Strangeways in 1990 were from communities still nourished by class consciousness and a “them and us” attitude, as well as an understanding that sticking together and showing solidarity was the most effective way of securing collective benefits and rights.

During the 1980s and 1990s the Thatcherite onslaught tore the heart and soul out of working class communities and transformed them into wastelands of depression, hopelessness and defeat, and bred a generation of young people saturated with cynicism, alienation and absolutely no memory of a time when principles like solidarity, community and mutual support defined working class identity. Even the more proletariat forms of property-related crime, which in a way represented a sort of elemental form of class warfare, gave way to a more viciously entrepreneurial drug crime based on crude capitalist principles and a contempt for poor communities and those who inhabit them. Drug dealing is a uniquely capitalist from of crime involving massive profit for the few and immense misery for the many, and is informed by a rejection of the sort of values or codes of the old criminal fraternity – never grass, resist authority and never hurt “one's own”. Modern drug dealers in attitude and mentality are the absolute antithesis of what were working class villains and their way or strategy of doing prison time is also radically different; collusion and co-operation with prison regimes has replaced defiance and resistance, and the fighting spirit that sometimes gave rise to a noble vision of positive change and reform; from the flames of revolts like Strangeways came manifestos of radical reform and an understanding and imperative that prisoners are as deserving of full human rights as any other human being. Today those sort of noble aspirations seem to have given way to a mood of defeat and conformity.

As microcosms of society prisons, in an often brutally exaggerated way, reflect the social condition and reality of life of the poor generally, and also the level of political activity and struggle of that group. When the poor are subdued and disorganized and kept under the heel so are those in prison; the reproduction of a junkie culture amongst prisoners accurately reflects what has taken hold in most poor and working class communities and districts on the outside.

What then are the chances of defiance and militancy re-emerging amongst large groups of prisoners and re-defining their current relationship with prison authority? The inexorable drive towards greater incarceration and the construction of virtual penal cities in the form of massive “Titan jails”, will eventually result in whole chunks of the poor and disadvantaged population being walled into factories of repression; sooner or later that repression, no matter how sophisticated and well-organised, will meet with resistance. There has always been a cyclical quality about protest, revolt and resistance, both in prison or outside in the wider world, and periods of quiescence and absolute social control are always fragile and essentially dependent on people co-operating in their own subjugation as opposed to control being imposed by force and coercion alone. As the South African Black Consciousness activist Steve Biko once said, “The greatest weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed themselves”. Those who administer the prison system equate a good prison with a well-controlled prison; the prime function of prison is to imprison efficiently and maintain absolute control over the imprisoned. Issues of human rights and respecting the inherent human dignity of the prisoner do not register in the mentality of the penal operator and ground has never been conceded on these issues unless prisoners themselves have forced them onto the agenda.

There is a direct relationship between the limited liberalization of prison regimes in the British long-term jails during the 1970s and 1980s and the protests and demonstrations of that period that forced the system to concede ground. No significant reform of the prison system has ever been achieved by anyone other than prisoners themselves, usually as a result of collective direct action, and the progressive erosion of those reforms over the last 20 years is as a direct result and consequence of the change in prisoner culture and the diminution of collective struggle amongst prisoners. Unless the spirit of struggle is re-discovered, therefore, nothing will prevent a nightmarish vision of the prison world coming to pass; the mass imprisonment of social problem and poor people in huge privately-controlle d jails where human rights are abandoned completely in the interests of profit and the total and absolute control over the imprisoned. It's maybe in all our interests ultimately that we see the return of a militant and unmanageable prison population.



John Bowden
6729
HM Prison Glenochil
King O'Muir Road
Tullibody
Clackmannanshire
FK10 3AD

Demo protesting the death of Karen Ann Fletcher in Holloway Prison

This was originally published on No more Prison's website in 2005.

HMP HOLLOWAY


Report on Prison death demonstration held on Wednesday 09.11.05 to protest against the death of Karen Ann Fletcher, 30, who died on 28.10.05

By Pauline Campbell

• 16th demonstration since protests began in April 2004;
• two-hour demonstration was attended by 25 protesters (including two ex-prisoners).
• Prison van halted at 2.55 pm, as it attempted to take prisoners into the jail.
• While the van was stopped, Duty Governor Mr McCaighy, and his colleague Mr Ryan, came out of the prison, and requested that the vehicle be allowed to enter the jail.
• Request refused on the grounds that it was unsafe to allow prisoners to be taken into Holloway, following the recent death.
• Police were called, and approx 15 officers attended the incident.
• 3.15 pm: I was arrested (my 10th arrest since last year) for an "alleged obstruction of the highway", and taken to Islington Police Station.
• Handcuffs were not used at this arrest.
• After two and a half hours, I was released without charge. Custody Sgt White and his Inspector made the decision that it was "not in the public interest to continue with a prosecution".
• I was held in the custody suite but not, on this occasion, locked in a police cell.
  
  
  
  
  

Comment:

"It is believed that Karen Fletcher was recently transferred to Holloway from Styal Prison, Cheshire. Her death, the fourth at HMP Holloway since April 2004, again raises questions about the legal duty of care owed to prisoners. In addition, a Holloway inmate remains on a life support machine, after being cut down from a makeshift noose at the jail in May 2004. The Chief Inspector of Prisons' report, published earlier this year, highlighted problems of dirt and vermin at HMP Holloway."

• Demonstration was attended by local photographers and reporters.
• Prison Governor did not respond to a note sent into the prison.

Pauline Campbell

Remember Caroline Powell

This report was originally published on the No More Prison Website in January 2007

Mother-of-five, Caroline Powell, died on 5 January 2007 while on remand at Eastwood Park Prison, Gloucestershire. In response Pauline Campbell held a demonstration on Wednesday 24 January 2007 outside the prison. It was the 20th such demo organised by Pauline following a death.


During the demo Pauline Campbell was arrested (Its her 14th arrest on prison death demos), and charged (for the fourth time)

Pauline Reports:

Following the tragic death of Caroline Powell on 5 January 2007, a demonstration was held outside the prison on the afternoon of Wednesday 24 January 2007. Around 10-15 people attended the protest, including reporters and photographers. Protesters had travelled from London, Shropshire, and Cheshire, to protest against the death of this vulnerable young woman, aged 26, who died in the 'care' of Her Majesty's Prison Eastwood Park. Caroline leaves behind five motherless children, the youngest aged 18 months. Ms Powell was on remand, and legally innocent, when she died.

At 2.55 pm, Reliance prison van FX04 BUP, was stopped as it attempted to take prisoners into the jail. The driver was informed that (a) protesters regarded the jail as unsafe in view of the recent death; (b) the vehicle would not be allowed into the prison; and (c) he should take the women to a place of safety. Officers from Avon & Somerset Constabulary were called to the prison. Six officers arrived, and one began filming the demonstration. The sergeant read aloud a printed notice, then handed the copy to me. Dated 24.01.07, it reads: "To whom it may concern: I am the senior police officer here. I believe that you are committing, have committed, or intend to commit an offence of trespassing with the common purpose of deterring, obstructing or disrupting lawful activity and I require you to leave immediately. Failure to obey my direction may render you liable to arrest. If you return to the land as a trespasser within 3 months you will also commit an offence for which you may be arrested. Sergeant 1958 Ogborne." At 4.20 pm I was arrested for "aggravated trespass and obstruction of the highway", and taken to Staple Hill Police Station, South Gloucestershire. Handcuffs were not used.

We arrived at the police station at 5 pm; detention was authorised at 5.30 pm.

Photographs, fingerprints, and DNA were taken. I objected (as I have done on a previous occasion) to mouth swabs being taken by a police officer, and expressed the view that taking body samples from any orifice should be done by a nurse or doctor, not a police officer. I refused to sign the form which acknowledged that my prints had been taken and that the officer had informed me the prints would be kept on file for I.D. and crime investigation purposes. It was explained to me that it was within my rights not to sign.

I was locked in a cell; allowed to contact the duty solicitor while detained; then subsequently charged ("aggravated trespass - fail to leave land"). My reply to the charge, logged in police records, was: "Caroline Powell died on 5 January 2007 at Eastwood Park Prison; she has left behind five motherless children, and that explains the demonstration and my arrest today." Reporters and photographers from local newspapers attended the protest, which was also covered by local radio. BBC Points West attended the demonstration, and a news report was included on regional television at 6.30 pm. The news item, broadcast into about five counties, included footage showing the arrest. I have been granted unconditional bail to appear in North Avon Magistrates' Court, Kennedy Way, Yate, Bristol, BS27 4PY, on Thursday 1 February 2007 at 9.45 a.m. At 7.45 pm, I was released from custody. A police car returned me to Falfield, to enable me to collect my car.

Additional information

(1) Caroline Powell's grieving family are receiving support and advice from INQUEST, London: www.inquest.org.uk Caroline's father asked to be put in touch with me, and we spoke on the telephone on 23 January 2007, the day before the demonstration. He expressed wholehearted support for the protest, and said he was "100% behind the demonstration". Family members are grieving deeply, and preparing for the funeral, and therefore were unable to join us outside the prison.

(2) An invitation was sent to Steve Webb, MP (Lib Dem), inviting him to attend the demonstration. In his e-mail reply to me, dated 22.01.07, he said: "Thank you for letting me know of your forthcoming demonstration. I will be at Westminster on Wednesday and will be unable to attend, but I am grateful to you for letting me know of the demonstration and certainly agree that the issue which you are highlighting is an important one."

(3) On the afternoon of the demonstration, a letter was sent into the prison (via a visitor), addressed to Governor Tim Beeston, asking if he would meet protesters at the prison gates. The letter was returned to me, unopened, at the end of visiting. The prison had apparently refused to accept the letter as it did not quote the prison's full postal address.

Comments

"The deaths of two women prisoners this month (Caroline Powell at Eastwood Park Prison, and Lucy Wood at HMP Peterborough on 15.01.07) again bring into sharp focus the fatal consequences of sending vulnerable women to prisons that cannot meet their human needs.

"Thirty-four women have now died in the 'care' of women's jails since my daughter died in 2003. All were owed a legal duty of care. Courts must stop sending women to their deaths.

"Caroline Powell was on remand at Eastwood Park Prison and was legally innocent when she died. Her father told me it was her first time in jail. I am still struggling to understand what useful purpose is served by herding so many vulnerable women into institutions that are not equipped to deal with their complex needs. The harsh and punitive treatment of women offenders is a disgrace."

(Figures refer to self-inflicted deaths; England and Wales)

Photographs

Six print size colour photos are available

(No's 1, 2 and 3: taken before the arrest; No. 4: the arrest; No's 5 and 6: immediately following the arrest)


Freelance photographer: Guy Smallman
Tel 07956 429059

E-mail: guy@guysmallman.com
Web: http://www.guysmallman.com/


Note:


Photos can be used for free by progressive and campaigning groups (Guy Smallman must be notified of their use).

Local papers (usually free) must notify Guy Smallman of use.


National papers pay going rate and notify Guy Smallman of use.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Liberal Criminology

by:  Caries Hanson


The trends within the discipline of criminology have been to search for a methodological and ideological update of liberal thinking.

The cry should not be for a new criminology as a distinct body of knowledge that promises equality within the framework of mechanisation or the state.

The recent trend has been to latch on to authoritarian Marxist principles for meaning and survival, as political and economic elites have historically done, but this only suggests the desperation of criminologists to avoid the choices that have to be made. If anything we should be defining a different world without criminology or the science of punishment in which the hierarchical institutions of the state are dissolved.

By assuming definitions of crime within the framework of law by insisting on legal assumptions as sacred, criminologists comply in the concealment and distortion of reality of social harms inflicted by persons with power.

The world is full of strife, war, misery, injustice, poverty, crime, and exploitation along with rulers, governors and humiliators of the downtrodden. Specific persons pose serious threats to our freedoms because they wish to use each and every one of us instruments of their freedoms. They surround us with their language, concepts, theories, ideas and meanings.

In the process they construct powerful hierarchies and institutions to control manage and teach ideas, legitimising their acts to create docile legally conditioned animals. They teach and coerce us into their values and make it in each person's interest to uphold the political economy which benefits them only.

It is not the social harms punishable by law, which cause the greatest ills of the world. It is the lawful harms, those unpunishable crimes justified and protected by law, the state and the ruling elite's that fill the earth with misery, want, strife, conflict, slaughter and destruction. War and the health of the state are the misery most obviously produced and the most cleverly concealed.

Liberal criminology has become a 'gatekeeper' for state domains of control, the value assumptions of hierarchical authority, of centralised controls and a safety valve and temperature gauge in the limits on how far the state can go.

The liberal writings of the various sociologists, criminologists and psychologists are given much attention in criminology which is indicative of the continued fascination with power, control and the models of the mechanical world. Their thinking is that man is the centre of the universe, but that they are the centre of man. They prescribe what is good and acceptable and how the world and life processes should be managed.

To remain part of the 'status quo' and the academic scene requires at its least submission to a shearing of consciousness, that is tantamount to a shearing of ones humanity, to stand by and observe is to participate, passivity is activity, passivity is assent.

If social scientists have emerged as the market researchers for the state, criminologists, sociologists and psychologists have become the locksmith's, they provide as do all other branches of the social sciences the rationale for the maintenance of the state and its control of its dissidents, but they shield the eyes and close the noses of people to the destruction of themselves as people.

They prefer to spend their time on researching shoplifting, parking-meter fraud, offending behaviour in general and the dubious interventions, which they promote with gusto than the struggles of humanity.

Historically it is not surprising to find statements about justice reflecting the ideology of the state, of law and the existing economic order. The just were always the state.
In the context of the liberal state, the 'black-bag* magicians issue forth no statements about the quality of life, but rather the quality of certain lives, of liberalism and of systems that have no regard for individuals. They have accepted the divisions of the world as it suits the destroyers rather than its creators. They are mercenaries, 'guns for hire* willing to compartmentalise themselves into as many parts as is necessary to carry on 'business as usual' with minimum interference, in so doing they define and label victims of the state.

Rather than smashing idols that take away clarity and vision, these so-called 'scientists' of human nature have posed themselves as minor idols (mandarins) and breathe the uneven breath of the saint who considers himself beyond humanity.

To them human experiences that do not meet standards of certainty and cannot be measured by the dubious methodology of the social sciences are abandoned as irrationalities. In so doing these 'experts' of life continue to defoil the natural living world, they also defoil the minds and tongues of its human inhabitants. They control language about what is real, coin and fit words for the kaleidoscope of illusions they design, thus we live in a culture in which people have no sense of their position.

Criminologists especially among the social scientists continue to demonstrate an outright rejection, at least a reluctance to believe that the methodology of science can be viewed in the context of ideology. They believe as if law and state are absolutes and the impeccable foundations of the correct world, receiving authority by way of some absolute divine right.

Though criminologists have been concerned with social relationships, social organisation and disintegration, the underlying philosophy of thought has been essentially the same as that of he physical sciences, people are seen as 'out there', as objects, things that can be viewed and reviewed as under a microscope, dissected, labelled and stuck back together.

They demonstrate little questioning of the sources of authority that dictate who is to be observed and controlled. They continue to assume the benevolence of the cloak of rationality, observation and policy to define the sick, the criminal and the withering members of the world. In so doing they hang out shingles advertising their messianic nature, their secret priesthood to save and restore for the right price those whom their research and policies set up.

In becoming more vociferous about their authority and 'mandarin' status, they have begun to lose their 'flock', to be without convinced believers, they have become beyond belief, beyond the human, in exchange for becoming a source of ideological comfort for the stomping elite.

Many social scientists still see the world of social problems to be the world before their 'scientific' legally corrected and state corrected eyes.

For continued membership of the elite class, these mandarins, and the 'do-gooders'. And the reformists pay their dues by mitigating the guilt of the elites, by providing scientific rationale for the destruction of various scapegoat groups. Given people to look at without an historical relative view of law and illegality, social scientists see 'abnormalities' as conflicts residing within the soul, the person rather than within the ideas, values, interests and authority of the powerful and crime as one form of resistance to these ideas, interests and persons.

What behaviour the criminal law cannot contain within its domain to hunt out the pathological, institutionalised psychiatry, psychology and social work in its sheepish submission to positivistic modes of thinking, will seal tight.

Those who seek meaning for their personal lives are the first to be acted upon, those who retreat, 'bail out' or rebel and for whom no community exists become ready victims of the one forced reality of the state.

The problems of justice have always been a problem of 'people management, responded to in the form of a well regulated 'stable' and a humanitarian system of criminal justice under existing existing economic and political arrangements. Some communities now become managed like some farms with the influx of the do-gooder, social worker, 'out-reach ' worker, community workers, sociologists and psychologists who seek to measure conflicts and the shifting of resources but always within the rule structure of the game warden.

Even the notion of the therapeutic state has evolved historically through humanitarian motivation, though this motivation may have been involved, it was certainly accompanied by control motives and policies of recognised safety valve effects.

The judiciary, which is an integral part of the drama, requires some attention. With its black robes (priests of the state) enforced deference, demanding linguistic superiority and unintelligible jargon, the judiciary cloaks the basis of law and the reality of equity in myths of fairness, the show never stops.

The very processes of law are designed such that the processed person is ignorant of the process and required to have others act on his or her behalf in a language that is incomprehensible. These processes are carried out in a series of legal, psychological, medical and sociological invasions of the person. The processes of law reduces humanity, objectify persons as cases to be disposed of, sold to the highest bidder of diversion or to penal programmes. What human alienation might have existed, the legal processes completes, destroying belief on oneself.

Apologists for the criminal process present defences for the necessity and continuation of law - 'the rule of law'.

In their reification, such bodies hide the fact that law is one instrument by which men have attempted to resolve the question of authority. They hide the fact that the rule of law is rule by men often through violence coercion, brutality, isolation and punishment. The analysers do not analyse the roots of grievances, inequality, injustice and abuses or the reasons why we have become a 'suing society'.

To believe that justice can be culled from bureaucratic red-tape processes in which the actors have no human stake in the processes is to believe in slavery, defend the sources of injustice and to promote the continuation of the slave plantation.

According to the social science ideology, each person is determined by forces of which he or she is unaware of As a consequence, he or she is not responsible for his or her actions, the offensive act signifies (is a symptom) that the actor is sick, unbalanced, unsocialised or chromosomically deviant.

The actor is a criminal, his or her whole being is criminal, he or she is different than others and therefore unequal, a part of the world that needs re-ordering. Conflicts must be resolved scientifically by experts who understand the malaise of the criminal, they can 'treat' the criminal into compliance and obedience through castration, lobotomy, psychological intervention (brainwashing) and when all else fails by lethal injection or the hangman's noose.

The criminal needs to be re-educated, to be bureaucratically processed, medically or scientifically judged different and where necessary contained and isolated until he or she thinks, feels and acts 'correctly'.

Though science and law are conflicting ideologies especially regarding the issues of responsibility, volition and state benevolence, they are as equally serviceable to those in power. Both focus on the individual through symbolic deterrent processing or treatment, both uphold the superiority of the 'experts' judicial or scientific and both postulate one-reality consensual view of the world. Neither question the current political-economic-social order, rather both owe their presence and allegiance to serve, to maintain the present order.

The whole of society has come to take on the properties of a 'total institution' best characterised as an asylum. The state lias become the 'protector', the 'parent', the 'teacher' and the 'punisher'. The 'Nanny State' and its squads have reduced the individual to total property, the tool - the inert extension of the machine of the state.

If you seek positions of power or that of intervention on behalf of elites or power structures, to be a decision maker or to make a career of directing others you are part of the corruption of the state in its oppression. To make a life activity of exercising power is to perpetuate a malevolent state of human affairs.

If you are seeking positions of power or decision making for others, it is you that become criminal, inspecting, bossing, registering, ordering, rehabilitating, paroling, spying, informing or executing places one firmly within the pattern of power holder.

The misery, hunger, wars and strife far surpass the harm of common theft, that the former are intentionally clothed in myth aggravates the harm of the acts themselves. Punishment, retribution, deterrence and protection are concepts logically consistent with imposed authority and loss of human dignity. They are bye-words for ceremonies of enslavement in a society in which slavery is cherished. Treatment, re-education, therapy and behaviour modification are concepts logically consistent with state scientism, the up-dated technology of bureaucratic control.

In the past those who posed a normative threat to localised religious ruling elites were designated as sinners, witches or heretics and met with whippings, brandings, and banishment even death. Those who posed a threat in the early capitalist state alliance were designated as criminal and imprisoned where they were subject to economic exploitation. In current times, those posing a threat to the welfare-scientific states are likely to be designated as mentally ill, socially disordered or even as victims.

Those who refuse to accept the conditions of the welfare state megamachine are sifted, sorted and designated until they reach the components of the paper by which they are processed, in other words social lobotomomization.
Since the late 19th century there has been an increase in the number of people criminalized and sent to penal 'dustbins' and 'warehouses' large expenditures are required to maintain the flow, necessitating an expansion of prison building programmes. Prison overcrowding, idleness and the potential threat of riot and disturbance with consequential lack of control have caused the power structure to seek ways to ease the pressures whilst at the same time retaining the symbolic values of criminalizing members of the 'dangerous class', hence probation, community service, parole and electronic tagging.
Within the social sciences the ideology of determinism was taking hold, its proponents held that each person was propelled by forces - economic, psychological, anthropological or physiological all of which he or she is unaware of, human kind therefore was not capable of exercising free-will, man was determined, the individual as a consequence was not responsible for his or her acts or character.

Punishment or confinement was inappropriate; deterrence foolhardy, fixed sentences were counter-productive to the reduction of crime. The individual must be diagnosed scientifically and a cure prescribed. Indeterminate sentences were required to protect societies and bring about a cure, the actor becomes the focus not the act, the criminal was invented because of ones behaviour, thoughts or mental-health attitudes, states were symptomatic of the person's essence, illness.

The criminal now is not a human person committing an irrational act but rather someone different - criminal (determined and different) or pathological, the criminal is not a person with an alternative or authentic morality or reality, he is undersocialized and in need of treatment

Social structure, social change, human diversity, similarity and human need now takes precedence over duty as the basis of society.

Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, therapists and counsellors and other sundry 'treatment experts' have now entered the prison and juvenile 'fortresses', criminals now have to be studied, each one's unique and different characteristics must be located and rooted out, lawyers in feeding off this approach now employ the various differences to crime on behalf of their clients, pathology, mental incompetence, insanity, the weather, age, gender to the extremes of whether the defendant 'victim' was breast fed as a child.

Understanding the criminal mind has become a rich industry in recent years. The so called 'experts' have cast themselves as interpreters of 'monsters minds', occasionally even casting the criminal as a victim of one sort or another but invariably complicating rather than simplifying the matter. If taken seriously the result of such pseudo-science and history will be moral mayhem.

Individual treatment programmes have never been fully practised and rarely if ever showed results except at Auschwitz.

Locating he pathology in the community rather than in the individual has lead to numerous attempts to correct and control the criminal and drug sub-culture. Out-reach and street-gang detached worker programmes which focus on the local community does deter certain specific persons from lives of crime or drug abuse but it will never alone dam the floodgates of its production.

There is a move within the Criminal Justice System towards de-institutionalisation and an ideology of de-criminalization and diversion in search for alternative management stratagems. Dc- institutionalisation means closing the gates of the 'fortress' prison in favour of therapeutic communities and community based sentencing. The reasoning implies that the community must get involved, that members of the community are responsible, that the community must participate in the control of its problem persons, that the offender must be integrated into the local community.

This decentralisation of institutional diversion presents the appearance of local control (more mythology) but is also a movement towards the welfare state.

Such programmes are institutionalisation, its form (reform) is worse because it makes the problem and remedy (control) less stark.

Small residentially based prisons or institutions (hostels, halfway houses) which improve the living conditions of its captives take the appearance if not the heart out of the 'fortressed ' reality of elite control,

The fact is that among the persons to be deinstitutionalized few could return to the community. They do not control the substance of law, their schools, their economies, the police, or the social structures. For them the community represents one more piece of baggage of the elites programmes. One cannot be integrated into a community when community does not exist, but this is the ever-increasing language of the welfare state. The structure is not changed only the managerial mode. The other strategy is behaviour or mind control through the use of dubious pseudo-scientific psychological practices.

The great fear is that the potential for social harm has no limit, who controls, treats, conditions and demolishes whom? How? And why?

Can we all become subject to behaviour modification and all in effect be indeterminately sentenced?

To all those who have explored, there have been no successful correctional programmes yet they have all been successful in retaining a pool of persons for processing. One cannot participate in the therapeutic state without realising that persons with the greatest sense of sociability are resolutely criminalised or submitted to the therapy.

The history of deviance designates and state responses has reflected the modes believed to be best to secure obedience and control. The designates and responses have also reflected the historically and geographically specific economic and social conditions of the time. Sinners, criminals, the mentally ill and the poor (surplus) have been responded to with banishment, brandings, prisons, factories, asylums and lobotomies and in the process welfare consumptive worthlessness.

For the new mandarins, the Blairites, the liberals and the 'centre left' concern for human liberty and the ideals of a just society are to be treated with scorn, taken as naive, primitive impracticable and Utopian. Technological managerial ideologies and the authority based economic hierarchies they protect dismiss all concerns for liberty and justice and any non-hierarchical forms of society.

Today the state has succeeded in meddling in every aspect of our lives.

From the cradle to the grave it strangles us in its arms, pursues us at every step, it appears on every street corner, it imposes on us, holds us, harasses us, it regulates over all our actions and in the process accumulates mountains of laws in which the shrewdest of lawyer is lost. It creates an army of employees, an evil band who have only one religion - control, manipulation and an easy buck. For social workers, probation officers, community workers, counsellors, psychologists who ' hook up' with any political party, they do so in order to be guaranteed maximum appointments for a minimum of work.

Within the order of the new mandarins, justice is transformed into universalistic treatment, equality is uniformity, the mandarins pervert their 'proficiency' in managing people and societies into a justification for doing so.

Those who administer or scientifically manage the lives of many are now servants of the ruling elite by the very nature their work, if they are not in fact the elite. Those most concerned about social problems are not quite at one with themselves in their desire to change them, solving social problems would necessitate a change in the organisational mores from which they arise.

The humanitarian for all his allegiances to the humanitarian mores, the drug counsellor seeking to divert the drug and substance abuser, the social worker the underprivileged and the probation officer the offender remain members of our society and as such is under its organisational mores. They wish to improve the conditions of victims but not interfere with the structures which create them. Until they give up their allegiance to the organisational mores and in some cases run squarely against them they must continue to treat symptoms without removing the causes.

No one loses by giving verbal expression to humanitarianism, the 'do-gooder1 is perfectly adept at this, but many would lose by putting humanitarianism into practice and certainly someone would lose by any conceivable reform.

Significant reforms within the prison system have not always come about by liberal intervention. In many cases reform has come about as a 'knee-jerk' response from the realisation that some prisoners are now more articulate, more socially and politically conscious and seek to by-pass the status quo in exposing their control and being that loss of control is their defeat they resort to compromises.

Other changes have resulted from the direct action of those who sought not reform or structural changes but an overhaul, it was not reformist in content, rather it was revolutionary in practice - Strangeways, Parkhurst, Hull, Dartmoor and Whitemoor!

Prisons have always been run by the consent of its inhabitants, do-gooders and reformists keep them 'in check' on behalf of the state, only those selected by the state are indeed allowed to enter our prisons, control must be maintained.

These people survive because of the 'safety valve' they operate on behalf of the state and the Prison Service to the extent that they are funded directly or indirectly by state operated organs. Organisations like the Preservation for the Rights of Prisoners founded by Dick Pooley on the exercise at Dartmoor prison. The League of Human Rights Observance founded in Parkhurst Prison and Radical Alternatives to Prison were all inspired by prisoners themselves and were always outside the sphere of the influence of 'do-gooders' probation officers etc.

The prisoners active involvement presented a revolutionary approach and found expression through such organisations, protests within prisons for a time mounted and certainly PROP became the focus of concern to the Home Office and indeed the do-gooders for they were bereft of control, these individuals wanted to believe that only they had the special skills and insights to articulate prisoners grievances, it never occurred to them that like the state appointed Boards of Visitors to prisons, they were merely seen as a safety valve and at times that valve was to blow.
Their self assumed monopoly on prison reform and manipulation had revealed them to be totally worthless at the crucial time, they became empty vessels,

Today we have The Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism Group and the Anarchist Black Cross who campaign for what they view as prisoners of the state, neither pull any punches and are always ready to expose abuses and denial of human rights, even the organisation of protests and limited financial assistance to prisoners.
Prisoners cannot rely on the do-gooders or indeed those self-assumed or self-appointed egocentric prisoners who assume such roles because of the benefit of being more articulate than their fellow 'cons', you do not negotiate from a position of weakness or from the surrender to the pseudo-reformists.

Today with this in mind and with the various government reports in recent years which do no more than show disaffection within the penal system, a new method of control has been introduced - The Incentive and Enhanced Privilege Scheme, the carrot and the stick to keep prisoners 'in line', to set prisoner against prisoner, a divisive mechanism based more on psychological intervention, but we hear little from the 'reformers' on the subject of the proposals to incarcerate those individuals considered dangerous irrespective of whether they have committed an offence or not, where does it stop? Who is dangerous and who decides? Indeed what is being dangerous?

After a thousand years of the right to jury trial that looks now set to end as does the shifting of the burden of innocence in specific cases and sentences become longer, and the prison building programme being extended to accommodate even more prisoners, where are the 'do gooders'?

In the final analysis, control by the elites will always remain intact and who really cares about that?



HMP Kingston, June 2000

Impressive detail but at its heart a failure to understand Prison: A critical review of the Zahid Mabarek Inquiry Report

By: John Moore - (July 2006)


Published on 29th June 2006 the Report of the Zahid Mabarek Inquiry is a weighty document that recounts in detail the prison history of Robert Stewart, Zahid's killer and the management and operation of Britain's Young Offender Institutes. Its 692 pages paint a detailed picture of the day to day reality of imprisonment both in terms of the vulnerable, powerless and damaged people we cage and the violent, lawless, and unproductive regimes they are subjected to. Racism, bullying, endless hours locked up doing nothing, managerial chaos, injustice, endemic self harm, incompetent medical services and much more is carefully documented. But this reality is no great revelation, generations of prisoners have recounted equally horrific accounts of their experiences and even the Governments own inspectorate regularly publish reports detailing one failed prison after another.
 

Over two hundred years ago the prison missionary John Howard visited prisons and was horrified at what he found. Like every subsequent prison reformer he believed that the abuses and failings he had discovered were the result of poor administration, staff deficiencies, inadequate policies and architectural defects. From Howard to today the grim and painful reality of prison life has not been seen as an intrinsic consequence of prison but as a defect susceptible to an easy fix. The Mubarek Report follows in this tradition with a long list of recommendations it confidently believes will resolve or mitigate the problems uncovered. This is a dangerous illusion. Feltham was no aberration - Imprisonment almost inevitably leads to abusive and violent regimes. That is the nature of prison. If we really want to stop further deaths we need to face this reality, stop trying to reform the unreformable and instead close Feltham and other prisons.
 
The violence of prison

Zahid Mubarek life ended violently in prison at the hands of another teenager, Robert Stewart. The report into his death seeks to address the problem of prisoner on prisoner violence. It seeks to do this without addressing wider issues of violence within prison.

Prisons exist to punish - they are meant to hurt. Although this pain is primarily intended to be mental rather than physical the very act of imprisoning someone involves deliberately inflicting violence on him or her. Prison reformers, academics and prison administrators tend to try and avoid this reality but those who have to endure prison understand that they are receiving pain and violence as an intended facet of their punishment. Power within prison, both official and unofficial, is based on the capacity to enforce through violence. For example regular strip searches in prisons humiliate and degrade. If resisted they are violently enforced. Earlier this year the Carlise Report on the treatment of children in prisons gave examples which included a 16 year old girl strip searched during her period who had her stained sanitary pad examined in front of her and then given back to her to reuse and a 15 year old boy having to part his buttocks and roll back his foreskin for inspection by prison officers.

In addition to institutional violence daily acts of individual violence occurs throughout the prison. As well as prisoner on prisoner violence, regular staff on prisoner violence occurs, as well as prisoner on staff violence and staff on staff violence. Much of the staff on prisoner violence and some of the staff on staff violence are legitimised by the system and are carried out quite openly. The Mubarek Inquiry team itself uncovered many examples of violence. They report that:

"three white members of staff handcuffed an ethnic minority prisoner on Raven to the bars of his cell, removed his trousers and smeared his bottom with black shoe polish"

Interestingly they add a footnote advising that despite the considerable embarrassment to the prison service and Home Office caused by this racist assault being discovered by the Inquiry the employees involved were not dismissed.

The Carlise Report identified that staff in Young Offender Institutions, and Secure Training Centres regularly used pain compliant techniques to impose discipline on children. These Home Office approved techniques were described in the report:

"using the thumb - fingers are used to bend the upper joint of the thumb forwards and down towards the palm of the hand;
using the ribs - involves the inward and upward motion of the knuckles into the back of the child exerting pressure on the lower rib: and
using the nose - staff use the outside of their hand in an upward motion on the septum."

Staff on staff violence is far more common in prisons than is generally acknowledged. Bullying of staff by colleagues is endemic and violence and humiliation an established ingredient of the training on new prison officers. Again despite not looking for this the inquiry stumbled across:

"two white trainee prison officers urinating on a black trainee during a training course"

This culture, particular during training, ensures that those who staff our prisons are aware of the centrality of violence in their day-to-day work. The Inquiries attempts to address violence between prisoners without recognising either the violence inherent within prison regimes or the daily acts of violence perpetrated by staff on prisoners are doomed to failure.
 
The Fantasy Prison

Over recent years a massive gap has emerged between the descriptions of prisons by prison reformers, the government, the media, academics and prison administrators and the daily reality of prison as experience by prisoners and front line prison staff. It is important to understand the difference between the "fantasy" prison and the real prison. The fantasy prison is well managed, focused on rehabilitating and educating prisoners, experiences no violence, respects prisoners rights and is characterised by the happy faces of prisoners and staff working together. It has a comprehensive set of policies, actively challenges racist behaviour of staff and prisoners, and produces law abiding ex-prisoners who have seen the error of their past criminality and are committed to living law abiding lives.

Of course no such prison exists except in the minds of civil servants, home office funded academics and prison reform charities. For them reports like those of the Carlise and Mubarek Inquiries by exposing the ordinary reality of prison challenge their imaginary world. The recommendations are important not because they will change the real prison but because by the prison service going through the motions of implementing a number of token 'improvements' it allows prison apologists to maintain their belief in their imaginary best friend - the fantasy prison.

The Mubarek Inquiry report demonstrates the gap between fantasy and reality by its treatment of whistle blowing. This is an important issue. The prison officer culture responsible for so much of the brutality experienced by prisoners (and to lesser extent junior staff) relies on a code of silence. New staff will, early in their career, witness violent assaults on prisoners by their colleagues. Do they ignore them, report them or join in? Reporting will result in the officer being rejected and ostracised by other prison staff. Their allegations may be "disproved" by other staff giving evidence that no assault took place. Their working life will be made hell. Most staff initially try to ignore their colleagues abuses but often this is resented and a situation will be engineered when the new staff member will drawn into an assault and peer pressure exerted. As soon as they succumb they are corrupted by the culture. It only takes a token kick and their colleagues know they are "one of us" and welcomed them into the fold. Those that enjoy the violence become active participants, those who don't try and avoid it but do nothing to stop it. All are contaminated.

The Mubarek Inquiry talks about whistle blowing in the context of policy. It refers to the 1998 Public Interest Disclosure Act and concludes on the basis of paper work:

"The Prison Service has responded to this important statutory initiative in a positive way."

However if the Inquiry had stepped outside the fantasy prison of policy and procedure manuals and had observed the employment Tribunal taking place in Leeds in November 2005 (whilst the Mubarek Inquiry was sitting) they would have found out that whistle blowing in the real prison did not only receive a violent reaction from other prison staff but an equal vicious and nasty response from the Senior Management of the Prison Service. At Wakefield Prison Carol Lingard had reported another Prison Officer for abusing Prisoners. Her complaints were dismissed by management and she was left at the hands of the bullies. The Tribunal was somewhat less impressed than the Murbarek Inquiry in the Prison Service's response to whistle blowing. It awarded Ms Lingard £477,000 damages, a massive award. Ms Lingard left the prison service, a colleague who gave evidence in support of her claim have been transferred to other prison where she faces potential victimisation, whilst the thugs remain, protected by the POA (Prison Officers Association), at Wakefield. The failure to refer to this case or other similar ones is a major and inexcusable deficiency in the Mubarek Report.
 
Reform doesn't work

Both the Mubarek and Carlise Inquiry reports show details of the violent and abusive reality of imprisonment for children and young people. The picture they portray is not new and similar revelations have been made through Inquiries and autobiographical accounts of prison. The response to these revelations is always a combination of horror - how could things be that bad - and urgent prison reforms "surely we can make things better?"

What is missing is a realisation of the obvious. If the deficiencies and abuses so carefully documented by the pious Prison Missionary John Howard are still occurring why do prison reformers still equally piously claim that the very solution "reform" which has a two hundred year history of failure - is the answer? Surely they must know that the reforms will fail and the abuses continue? John Howard could claim that there was insufficient history for him to have known the futility of his ideas. However that excuse is not available to contemporary prison apologists.

The Mubarek Inquiry Report continually touches on prison reform with no apparent awareness of the history of prisons or penal ideas. It suggests investigation the benefits of mixing older and younger prisoners in blissful ignorance that for decades their separation was advocated by reformers and academics not only essential but potentially as a cure for crime! The reports recommendations relating to the treatment of mentally disordered offenders are not dissimilar to the routine practices and policies in operation a hundred years ago. Like so many before them the Inquiry team time and time again ignore the fundamental nature of prison and suggest administrative and procedural solutions. Often their ideas have in fact been tried in the past and failed. Nothing it seems recycles as well as prison reform clichés.

Prison reformers have started to justify their faith by picking up specific examples of prisons that were far less abusive and violent than Feltham or other contemporary British Prisons. They are of course partly right. Prisons do vary and some can claim to have had regimes that were decent. Maconochie transformed Norfolk Island in the middle of the nineteenth century from a punitive hell into a relatively civilised community. The Special Unit at Barlinne Prison was as Jimmy Boyle's account of it illustrates a serious attempt to deliver a just, constructive and non-abusive regime. Moczydlowski certainly transformed Poland's Prisons between 1981 and 1996. Many of the early open borstals provided decent and constructive regimes.

However equally important to the positive aspects of these and similar examples is that they all proved to be unsustainable. All four saw the positive aspects of their regimes eroded over time and ultimately a return to the brutal and abusive normality of prison. Short-term reforms are possible but in the long term reform simply doesn't work. Those who campaign for it can only do so by ignoring history. They are deceiving both themselves and others. Why?
 
Race Culture and Faith

The fact that the criminal justice system and all its institutions are racist to the core should be beyond debate. Black, Asian, Irish and other ethnic minority prisoners have through their direct experience testified to this reality. The Mubarek report, despite providing direct evidence of racism displays little understanding of either the nature of racism or its role within prisons. The report seems to suggest that racism has somehow crept into prisons, that it is an aberration that requires an administrative response, a modicum of management commitment and the prison will return to its natural "equal opportunities" status. The Inquiry team admitting they did not have the resources "to determine whether the scourge of institutional racism has now been eradicated from the Prison Service" sums up this naivety. As if!

Keith particularly struggles when having to evaluate the experience of Muslim prisoners. The response of both the state and society to the events of 9/11 and the subsequent moral panics and war on terror have had dramatic impacts on the lives of Muslims living in Britain. Those caged in our prisons have been the most vulnerable. They are isolated, outside the protection of the law, exposed to violence, and defenceless. The report suggests that the experience of Muslim prisoners may be linked to "Islamaphobia in society" and this requires the extension of the Lawrence Inquiries definition of institutional racisms to be broadened to include religious intolerance. Keith however makes clear that this recommendation should not be taken as "suggesting in any way that the Prison Service should be regarded as institutionally infected with religious intolerance". The Report's failure to cast any light on the daily abuse, violence, victimization and brutality experienced by many Muslim prisoners is deeply worrying.

Racism is ingrained in prisons and the people who work in them. Any meaningful attempt to introduce anti racist practice or policies into prisons would cause a backlash from those who work in prison that would make them unmanageable. A modest observation by the Chief Inspector of Prisons that Prison Officers should not wear St George pins saw a vicious media response against "political correctness" despite the reality that every prisoner knew that those who wear them are not only racists but also normally paid up members of fascist political parties.

Going beyond the Mubarek Report.

Those of us who understand that prisons are fundamentally flawed institutions and beyond reform need to be cautious in our welcoming of reports like the Murbarek Inquiry. Whilst we should welcome any light that is thrown on the abusive and violent reality of prison we need to be clear that these reports are also an attempt to legitimise the very institutions that generate the abuses they investigate. This legitimisation must be exposed and resisted

However sensational the revelation of this reports we must stress that they are in fact boringly normal. The racism, violence and abuse is not some aberration, it is the normal reality of prisons. It is not a malfunction requiring reform it is prison. Reform offers the illusion that the racism, violence, pain and abuse can be removed from the prison. It seeks to legitimise prison by offering the possibility, at some unspecified future point that prison will shed these embarrassing characteristics. These are however intrinsic to prison and as history has repeatedly taught us the reforms will fail.

The Mubarek Report is at its heart an exercise in legitimising the institution of the prison. Yes it does confirm the brutal reality of prison that former prisoners have consistently reported. But it perverts this truth seeking to portray it as evidence of institutional malfunctioning rather than the more damming truth that this is simply prison. This deception is necessary to allow the Report to offer up the possibility that these defects are resolvable by implementation of a list of recommendations. This is also a deception. This second deception ensures that the reality exposed in the report doesn't lead to the questioning of the legitimisation of prison. The problems exposed we are urged to be believed can be resolved without us having to consider the possibility of not caging either Zahid Muberak or Robert Stewart.  That is an agenda that Prison Reformers, Home Office Funded Academics and, Prison Administrators are happy to co-operate with. But it will not fundamentally change the racist, abusive and violent institutions that are British Prisons. To achieve that change requires the closure of Feltham and all other Prisons.