John Bowden – Yesterday’s Day of Action (UK)

June 12, 2012 325 Magazine

FREEDOM FOR JOHN BOWDEN AFTER 32 YEARS OF PRISON – SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON AGAINST THE LIES OF SOCIAL WORKER BRENDAN BARNETT

From LEEDS ABC:

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Day of Action in support of John Bowden yesterday. It has undoubtedly had an impact on those who are used to being able to get away with anything completely challenged. The situation with the lying social worker Brendan Barnett is still unresolved however, and the Parole Board seem apathetic at best. John is still in a high security prison 32 years after he went to jail, he needs our continuing support. Please do whatever you can.

Brendan ‘Pinocchio’ Barnett, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628 brendan.barnett@edinburgh.gov.uk)
Michelle Miller, Chief Social Worker, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628 michelle.miller@edinburgh.gov.uk) NB Michelle Miller also works out of Waverly Court, see details for Peter Gabbitas below.
Peter Gabbitas, Director, Health and Social Care Department, Waverly Court, Level 1/8, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8DG. (Telephone 0131 553 8201 Fax 0131 529 6218 peter.gabbitas@edinburgh.gov.uk).

Social Work Advice and Complaints Service, Waverley Court, Level 1/7, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BG. (Telephone 0131 529 6217 Email socialwork.complaints@edinburgh.gov.uk).
Letters and cards of support to John at: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Shotts, Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7 4LE.
You can also send e-mails to John (or any other prisoner) via: http://www.emailaprisoner.com
You can download John Bowden’s pamphlet ‘Tear Down The Walls!’ free of charge from the PDF section of the Leeds ABC website at www.leedsabc.org
Other articles by John can be read on the Leeds ABC website, as well on the websites of our sister ABC groups in Bristol, Brighton, and London.

Leeds Anarchist Black Cross

‘Criminalising Children In The Care System’ by John Bowden (UK)

 June 9, 2012 325 Magazine

June 11th Day of Solidarity with long-term prisoner John Bowden called by ABC Leeds.

Criminalising the behaviour of working class children and feeding them into the Criminal Justice System is a practice that has existed for generations and is now responsible for Britain having the unenviable reputation of Europe’s worst jailer of children in terms of the numbers imprisoned.

“State raised convicts” form a substantial part of the adult prison population and all share a common genealogy of Children’s Homes, Approved Schools, Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions, and finally the long-term prison system. Many children who through no fault of their own enter the so-called Care System are percentage-wise seriously at risk of graduating into the Criminal Justice System and a life disfigured by institutionalisation and social exclusion.

There are currently 10,000 children in local authority care, their number doubling in the past four years, and the government’s current “Austerity” agenda with its attack on state benefit and services will so deeply impoverish an already desperately poor section of the population that the number of children from this group entering the Care System is bound to increase significantly.

A leading magistrate and member of the Magistrates’ Association Youth Courts Committee, Janis Cauthery, has openly condemned the care system for operating as a doorway into the penal system by regularly prosecuting children for behaviour such as pushing, shoving, and breaking crockery. Behaviour that in normal circumstances would simply be punished by parents is frequently being referred to the police by Children’s Homes and children are being charged with criminal offences and placed before the criminal courts. Ms Cauthery has warned that children in care who receive criminal records for what is in reality normal adolescent behaviour are being drawn into a “vicious cycle” of crime, joblessness and imprisonment, that would go on to seriously affect the lives of their own children. Ms Cauthery said: “Many of the young people we see coming to court have never been in trouble before going into care. These young people are often charged with offences that have occurred within the care home, including damage (e.g. to a door, window, or crockery) and assault (often to one of the care home staff involving pushing and shoving). This behaviour is mostly at the lower end of offending, and in a reasonable family environment would never be dealt with by the police or courts. We worry about these children being criminalised”. She added: “Surely the home has a duty to try to help the young people and find other solutions rather than resorting to the courts for minor offences which, in a normal family environment, would not be thought of as offending behaviour”. She went on to warn that the maltreatment of children in care might be the reason for the “anti-social behaviour” in the first place, which is what classically happens in total institutions when inmates resist and challenge brutal regimes.

Recent high-profile cases when neglect by social workers has seriously contributed to the deaths of children already at serious risk from abusive or drug-addicted parents has created a public mood and climate favourable to the placing into care of even more poor and disadvantaged children, and for many of them an entry route into the penal system. The massive empowerment of social workers in the wake of tragedies like the Baby P case to remove more children into care, often for contentious and contested reasons, makes it reasonable to ask the question if many of these children actually face even greater abuse and the risk of destroyed lives by being placed INTO care.

There is clearly a greater propensity on the part of staff supervising the behaviour of children in care to view any non-conformist or disruptive behaviour on the part of such children as potentially criminal and therefore requiring intervention by the police and courts at the earliest opportunity, which also absolves such staff of the responsibility of working closely and consistently with young people in dealing with such behaviour in an emotionally supportive setting. How much easier to just offload such “difficult” children onto the courts and Young Offender System, where an awful self-fulfilling prophecy then takes place along with the process of criminalisation and institutionalisation. Ultimately, the wider society reaps the cost and consequences of this abandonment of vulnerable children to the Criminal Justice System.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
June 2012

Day of Action in Support of John Bowden Monday 11th June

Imprisoned since 1980, (and in fact for most of his life before that),
John Bowden has been a thorn in the side of the English and Scottish
prison systems for three decades. John has paid a heavy price for being a
staunch defender of prisoners’ rights and a committed opponent of
injustice, spending years in the most brutal conditions, and suffering
numerous physical assaults and treatment that has frequently amounted to
torture.

Over the past decade though, John’s captors have been using a new tactic
to keep him behind bars – the lies of prison social workers and quack
‘psychologists’.

First, a few years ago, Matthew Stillman alleged that the Anarchist Black
Cross were a ‘terrorist organisation’ and that John was therefore a
‘terrorist’ by implication. Brendan Barnett has now made even more
ludicrous allegations against John, but such is the corruption within
Edinburgh ‘Criminal Justice Services’ that John’s complaints have led to
his victimisation, rather than the disciplining of Brendan ‘Pinocchio’
Barnett.

You can read about the affair in these previous articles:
http://leedsabc.org/another-attempt-to-sabotage-john-bowdens-parole-by-prison-hired-social-worker/
,
http://leedsabc.org/update-from-john-bowden-about-lies-written-by-prison-hired-social
-worker-2/ , http://leedsabc.org/support-for-john-bowden/ ,
http://leedsabc.org/corrupt-social-workers-attempt-to-rid-themselves-of-prisoner-john-bowden/
,
http://leedsabc.org/end-lies-and-corruption-in-edinburgh-criminal-justice-
services/ , and
http://leedsabc.org/lying-prison-social-worker-invited-to-audition-for-pinocchio/

As John says in his most recent article
(http://leedsabc.org/corrupt-social-workers-attempt-to-rid-themselves-of-prisoner-john-bowden/):

“Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, or what used to be known as the
plain Social Work Department, have seriously compromised their
professional integrity by defending a member of staff who deliberately
told lies in a report to the Parole Boards in an attempt to sabotage my
chances of release from prison. Behaving like corrupt policemen instead of
traditional social workers seems now to be acceptable practice at
Edinburgh Social Services.”

To rid themselves of John Bowden, so as to avoid having to deal with his
complaints, Edinburgh ‘Criminal Justice Services’ are now trying to
instigate John’s removal from the Scottish prison system back into the
English one. Two years ago, the Parole Board recommended that John be
moved to an open prison, something the Scottish Prison Service have
stubbornly ignored, and it is inevitable that if John is moved into a
different prison system any ‘progression’ to open conditions will be
delayed even further, if indeed it ever happens at all. John has been a
tireless critic of the human rights abuses frequently perpetrated by the
English Prison Service, and we believe that they would like him to die in
jail.

Once again, as with the Matthew Stillman campaign a few years ago, it is
time for supporters of John Bowden, and opponents of injustice everywhere,
to step up to defend John, and to send a message to the prison
authorities, that whether they are in jail or out of jail, no comrade of
ours is ever alone. Furthermore, these corrupt social workers need to know
that their lies and machinations will not go unchallenged.

We are therefore calling for a Day of Action in support of John Bowden on
MONDAY 11th JUNE. Please organise what you can – banner drops, demos,
phone-ins, letter writing, etc – and please help spread word of this call
as widely as possible.

Some useful contacts:

Brendan ‘Pinnochio’ Barnett, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal
Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131
469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628)

Michelle Miller, Chief Social Worker, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre,
Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR.
(Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628) NB Michelle Miller also works
out of Waverly Court, see details for Peter Gabbitas below.

Peter Gabbitas, Director, Health and Social Care Department, Waverly
Court, Level 1/8, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8DG. (Telephone
0131 553 8201 Fax 0131 529 6218).

Social Work Advice and Complaints Service, Waverley Court, Level 1/7, 4
East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BG. (Telephone 0131 529 6217 Email
socialwork.complaints@edinburgh.gov.uk).

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, 4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7NS.
Scottish Prison Service HQ, Communications Branch, Room 338, Calton House,
5 Redheughs Rigg, Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. (Telephone 01259 760 471 Fax 01259
762 003 E-mail gaolinfo@sps.gov.uk

Ian Whitehead (Governor), HMP Shotts, Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7
4LE. (Telephone 01501 824000 Fax 01501 824 001 ).

Letters and cards of support to John at: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Shotts,
Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7 4LE.

You can also send e-mails to John (or any other prisoner) via:
http://www.emailaprisoner.com

You can download John Bowden’s pamphlet ‘Tear Down The Walls!’ free of
charge from the PDF section of the Leeds ABC website at www.leedsabc.org

Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services continue to cover up their treatment of John Bowden! Please write letters of complaint

Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, or what used to be know as the plain Social Work Deptartment, has seriously compromised its professional integrity by defending a member of its staff who deliberately told lies in a report to the Parole Board in an attempt to sabotage my chances of release from prison. Behaving like corrupt policemen instead of traditional social workers seems now to be acceptable practice at Edinburgh Social Services.

In an official report for the Parole Board written on the 29/2/2012 Brenden Barnett, who works for Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, made the following incredible claims about my original case in 1980. “Secondary motives for using violence described by the trial judge and acknowledged by Bowden himself suggest a pattern of behaviour that allowed for the predatory targeting of vulnerable human beings on the margins of society defined by race or sexuality”. “Bowden has suggested that his victims were easily discriminated against on the basis of race or sexuality”. “There has been no investigation of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden's targeting of individuals, i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worthy of attack; ethnic background, deviant sexuality”.

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support Barnett's bizarre claims and in fact I was convicted in 1982, alongside two other men, of the murder of a white Caucasian heterosexual male during a drunken party in South London. If ethnicity was any sort of factor in the case it was actually represented in the defendants, two of whom were Irish and the third second-generation Irish; the victim was a native white south Londoner. Neither the police who investigated the case or the prosecution authorities or indeed trial judge had ever claimed that either racism or homophobia had played any part in the case; Barnett's claims are a total lie, as he well knew.

Naively, I imagined that by officially complaining to Barnett's superiors his lies would be exposed and the record put straight as far as his report to the Parole Board was concerned. Instead I was about to enter a sort of Kafkaesque nightmare.

On the 2/4/2012 I was interviewed by Jackie Peters, Manager for “Risk Management Services” and Barnett's immediate boss, and Sheila Ritchie, a “Sex and Violent Offender Liaison Officer”, and also a colleague of Barnett's. Both made it absolutely clear that they intended to defend and support their colleague no matter what, even if it required some twisting of the facts and a total disregard of the truth. Throughout the interview I was treated with obvious contempt and at one point I was actually asked if any of my victims (I was convicted of one murder) were black or homosexuals. Despite my constant protestations that neither race or sexual orientation played any part whatsoever in my conviction, as the official files make clear, they steadfastly determined to somehow defend and justify Barnett's lies. I eventually realised that the interview was meaningless and their intention was simply to defend their colleague, so I told them that I would pursue my complaint beyond them and do whatever it took to expose Barnett's lies. In their subsequent report they would describe this as a “threat” against Barnett. They also alleged I had been “angry and aggressive” towards them and tried to shift the focus from Barnett's lies onto my behaviour during the interview, which they insinuated suggested a potential risk to both themselves and the wider community. The issue of Barnett's lies in their report was glossed over and my complaint rejected. It's important to remember here that we're not dealing with some miner factual inaccuracy or a biased interpretation of established fact, a fairly common phenomenon in social work reports on prisoners; Barnett wrote blatant lies in his report, claims that had absolutely no basis in fact or reality, lies that are easily disproved by reference to the mass of information in my prison and social work file, and yet those supposedly responsible for investigating my complaint decided that Barnett had done absolutely no wrong and his report was completely acceptable. Protected by an occupational culture that views and treats “offenders” as things to be monitored, supervised and policed, authoritarian characters like Barnett believe they have total power over those under their supervision and with it the absolute right to increase their demonisation and dehumanisation, even by writing blatant lies about them.

Those who employ Barnett and those who work alongside him in the Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services must ultimately take responsibility for his behaviour because by defending and supporting him they have seriously compromised their own integrity and are complicit in his dishonesty and abuse of power. A more senior social worker, Stephen Laird, signed off Barnett's report and therefore gave the official seal of approval to his lies, which is why those supposedly investigating my complaint, Peters and Ritchie, felt an even greater predisposition to support Barnett, even if his lies regarding my original offence were obvious and indefensible. This is how corruption spreads within institutions like the police and Social Services; defending and supporting colleagues who have abused their power, especially over people considered something less than human and utterly powerless, creates complicity and a culture of abuse generally. The prison system and police are riddled with this culture, which is why the abuse and death of people in custody is widespread and why those directly responsible are rarely identified and prosecuted. It would seem that the “Criminal Justice Services” generally, including social workers and probation officers, are also contaminated by this culture of lying and treating “offenders” as people stripped of all basic rights; my experience with Barnett and his colleagues certainly illustrates this.

Undoubtedly at my next parole hearing Barnett will claim that by challenging the lies in his report I have also challenged his authority over me and therefore I represent a “High Risk of Re-offending” because of my adversity to being supervised by Barnett in the community. As always Public Protection will be cited and used as a justification for my continued imprisonment, when in reality I shall probably remain in jail simply because I challenged Barnett's lies.

I have now complained to Peter Gabbitas, Director of Health and Social Dept. in Edinburgh, who has overall responsibility for Barnett and his colleagues, and he has yet to even acknowledge my letter, which suggests a disinclination on his part to recognise either my existence or that of my complaint. Incredibly it would seem that a pathological liar like Barnett has the absolute freedom to describe someone in an official report as a “racist and homophobic” serial killer without a shred of evidence, and absolutely no-one in his entire dept has the integrity or moral courage to criticise or expose him, and that apparently includes even the dept's Director. The complete absence of any basic integrity amongst those at Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services is both scandalous and deeply worrying for those under it's supervision.

The response of Barnett and Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services to my exposing his lies has been to ask the Scottish Prison Service to engineer my removal back to the English prison system, and on the 4/5/2012 Sharron Di Ciacca, Legal Service Manager of the Scottish Prison Service, wrote to me informing me that such a transfer would take place soon. Moving the “problem” on is of course a classic method of controlling and punishing “difficult” prisoners.

Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services should not be allowed to suppress or simply get rid of “offenders” who complain about and expose individuals like Brendan Barnett, and I ask all groups and individuals concerned about the treatment of prisoners and ex-prisoners at the hands of a corrupt social work dept like Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services to write letters or e-mails of complaint to the following addresses:

Scottish Public Services
Ombudsman
4 Melville Street
Edinburgh
EH3 7NS

Social Work Advice and
Complaints Service
Waverley Court
Level 1/7
4 East Market Street
Edinburgh
EH8 8BG

Michelle Miller
Chief Social Worker
Grindlay Court Social Work
Centre
Criminal Justice Services
2-4 Grindlay Court
Edinburgh
EH3 9AR

Peter Gabbitas, Director
Health and Social Care
Dept
Waverley Court
Level 1/8
4 East Market Street
Edinburgh
EH8 8BG

John Bowden, 6729
HMP Shotts
May 2012

Is the Parole Board deciding on the continued detention of life sentence prisoners before their hearings?

April 30, 2012 by John Bowden

Periodically reviewing life sentences by the Parole Board is a process required by law and such reviews, known as Tribunals, are intended to assess the current level of risk presented by life-sentence prisoners at the expiry of Tariff point of their sentence; Tariffs are the minimum
length of time trial judges specify a lifer should spend in prison to satisfy the interests of retribution and punishment. Once the tariff point has been reached or exceeded by the lifer then the Parole Board has a legal duty to review and make an informed decision on the lifer's continued imprisonment.

The review process itself, known as an 'Oral Hearing', at which the lifer is present, is conducted like a semi-judicial hearing where reports by social workers, prison staff and psychologists are considered and assessed, and the lifer is given the opportunity to present their own case for release. It is from these hearings, or Tribunals, that the critically important decisions are made about the lifer's future,
especially the one regarding whether to release or not. It would be absolutely wrong, as well as unlawful, if a decision regarding release was made BEFORE the 'Oral Hearing' had taken place and the paper work regarding that decision was written up to convey the impression that the decision had been made following such a hearing. In the case of a lifer called Malcolm Legget there exists
indisputable evidence that such an unlawful practice took place and its discovery was purely by accident and incompetence on the part of the Parole Board.

On the 6 February 2012 a parole hearing took place at Shotts prison in Scotland to consider the case for release of Malcolm Legget who has been in jail since 1986. During the hearing Mr Legget asked that a prison-based psychologist, Sharron McAllister, be produced as a witness at the hearing to explain what Mr Legget claimed were significant inaccuracies in her report regarding him. The panel
agreed to Mr Legget's request and the hearing was adjourned for a period of six months.

On the 21 February the Parole Board for Scotland wrote to Mr Legget saying the panel had made a definite decision regarding his continued imprisonment and had decided not to direct his release. It claimed the reason for its decision was that it still considered Mr Legget a risk to the community. Understandably, Mr Legget was concerned and confused by what appeared to be a final decision of the Parole Board when in fact his hearing had been adjourned and not yet concluded.

Then on the 24 February Mr Legget received a second letter from the Parole Board informing him that the information in the previous letter had been what it called 'an error'. Mr Legget is convinced
that in fact the letter from the Parole Board of the 21 February was a pre-prepared decision made before the hearing on the 6 February and the real 'error' was that it was delivered to Mr Legget before the definitive conclusion of his hearing.

If Mr Legget's suspicion is true, and the letter from the board on the 21 February suggest it is, then it indicates a serious and unlawful abuse of Parole Board procedure and power, and the rubber-stamping of the continued imprisonment of life sentence prisoners without proper procedure.

It also constitutes a clear breach of human rights under Article 5[4] which states that, “Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful”. This clearly stipulates that a proper, legally-based hearing should take
place to sanction the prisoner's detention, and in the case of the lifer the parole hearing is constituted to consider the continued detention, or not, of the life sentence prisoner who has reached or
exceeded the time stipulated he should remain in jail. The so-called Oral Hearing is the forum where reports and evidence is considered by the panel, which is usually composed of a judge or legally qualified person, and a psychologist and senior probation officer or criminologist. It is from the evidence presented at these hearings, conducted in the presence of the lifer, that the final decision to
release or detain is made. The letter Malcolm Legget received from the Parole Board on the 21 February would suggest that a decision to continue detaining Mr Legget was made in private and before the Oral Hearing itself. Clearly, if this did happen then ether a unique and unlawful precedent was created, or the rubber-stamping in private of the continued detention of life sentence prisoners is an established practice and the Parole Board is operating on an unlawful basis.

John
Bowden 6729
HMP
Shotts
April
2012

Update From John Bowden About Lies Written In A Report By Prison Hired Social Worker

Brendon Barnett, a criminal justice social worker in Edinburgh, has so compromised himself by writing blatant lies in a report to the parole board to try and sabotage my release that his employers should seriously consider his suitability as a social work professional.

Social Work Advice and Complaints Service in Edinburgh are currently investigating my complaint that in a report submitted to the parole board in February Barnett wrote what he knew to be total lies and did so without any concern that his lies would inevitably be found out. This suggests either a serious personality disorder on Barnett's part or a belief that whatever he wrote the system would support him and never hold him properly accountable. It will therefore be interesting to see how my complaint is treated by the social work complaints service and how the system deals with someone who thinks it's completely acceptable to use their position to destroy the lives of people considered too marginalised, powerless and stigmatised to defend themselves.

In response to an article that I wrote exposing the lies in Barnett's report, Barnett submitted a second report to the parole board obviously motivated by a determination to inflict greater punishment for my having the temerity to speak out. In his second report submitted on the 22nd March he accuses me of being 'very selective' in my use of quotes from his first report and 'manipulative' in my 'editing' of them. He claimed that I wrote and distributed the article as a 'crude attempt to intimidate and cow' him. He also made reference to a warning or threat in his first report that my continuing to use the internet as a means of exposing dishonest reporting by social workers should be considered by the parole board as sufficient reason to deny my release.

In terms of my reason for writing and distributing the article about the lies in Barnett's first report, my actual motive was to try and highlight a pattern of behaviour on the part of prison-based psychologists and social workers that compromises their professional integrity by blurring the boundaries between an often vindictive prison system and the supposed professional independence of 'criminal justice workers' like Barnett. Although not formally employed by the prison system Barnett clearly had contact with and was influenced by senior prison staff whilst writing his first report and obviously believed he now shared with them such total power over me that I would be completely defenceless to his lies; in fact what he actually succeeded in doing was undermining the basic integrity of his report and illustrating how so-called criminal justice professionals like social workers and probation officers are often used by prison staff to legitimise the otherwise blatant victimization of prisoners. Either way, my essential motive in writing and distributing my article was to bring attention to a clear abuse of power by Barnett and also to an obvious and repetitive pattern of lies in social work reports written on me for the parole board. In fact, Barnett's lies, although uniquely unbelievable, fit a consistent pattern of dishonesty and lies in reports submitted to the parole board since at least 2007. The motive is clear: to prevent my release by any means necessary.

Barnett claims that in my article exposing his lies I was selective in my choice of quotes from his first report and manipulative in my editing of them. In fact, I lifted the quotes verbatim from his report and selected those that were obviously untrue in the extreme, such as the claim that I was convicted of hate crimes against ethnic minorities and gay people. In a typical example of this he wrote, “Bowden has not only used a political analysis of his own history but also those of his victims suggesting they were individuals easily discriminated against on the basis of race or sexuality”. This is EXACTLY what Barnett wrote free of any manipulation or editing by me. He also wrote, “Bowden has suggested that his victims were easily discriminated against on the basis or race or sexuality” and “There has been no investigation of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden's targeting of individuals, i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worthy of attack: ethnic background, deviant sexuality”. Despite a mountain of official reports and evidence relating to my life before prison and the circumstances of my 'offending behaviour', which Barnett would have been familiar with, he decided to introduce a racist and homophobic dimension to my case that has absolutely no basis in fact or reality. The question therefore has to be asked why?

Prison-based social workers often exaggerate, distort and misrepresent facts when writing reports for the parole board, but rarely are naked lies written in reports that are examined by a judicial body like the parole board. In 2007 a prison-based social worker, Matthew Stillman, wrote a report for the parole board preparing to consider my release in which he described a prisoner support group, Anarchist Black Cross, as a 'terrorist organisation' and my connection with it as sufficient reason to deny my release. Stillman, a right-wing American, claimed that ABC's politics were 'Terroristic' in his opinion, though would subsequently also claim that he was encouraged by senior prison staff to use the term 'terrorist' in his report to the parole board. Political definitions, no matter how distorted, are however completely different to blatant lies, there are only two explanations for Barnett writing such outrageous lies in his report to the parole board, either plain incompetence [difficult to believe when one considers his otherwise forensic eye for detail in the report] or straight forward malevolence. Either explanation is almost secondary to the imperative that he should be sacked or removed from a job where he is able to inflict serious damage on people's live.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
April 2012

Indefinite Internment Without Trial

'If they come for me tonight they will
come for you in the morning' – Angela Davis

In Britain today there are a group of men held in prison without trial or any form of due legal process, and they are being detained indefinitely. These men have committed no crimes in Britain and are being held at the behest of a foreign state, the U.S., whilst their extradition to that country has been ruled unlawful by the British court. Their continued imprisonment, in breach of the most elemental civil and human rights, has clear implications for every citizen in the U.K. because if the rule of law is suspended in the case of any unpopular minority then dangerous precedents are set that will eventually be used against anyone or any group viewed as worthy of 'special measures'.

There are currently seven men, all of Middle Eastern and Asian extraction, being held in a small isolation unit at Long Lartin maximum-security prison in Worcestershire, some of whom have been there for almost ten years. Originally designed and used as a prison punishment unit, the Detainee unit is very much a
prison and it's inhabitants are kept strictly separated and isolated from other prisoners in the jail. Methods of small-group isolation and control are applied which over a prolonged period of time are known to have a seriously damaging effect on the mind and personality. In June of 2011 the Chief Inspector of prisons, Nick
Hardwick, was extremely critical of the situation of the prisoners confined to the Detainee unit and in a report on the unit wrote, “The Detainee unit at HMP Long Lartin is a prison within a high-security prison. It holds a small number of individuals suspected but not convicted of involvement in international terrorism and held under immigration or extradition law. Some have been held for many years as they fight removal from the UK and all are held in the highest security conditions. We have previously raised concerns about holding a small number of detainees, who already inhabit a kind of legal limbo, in a severely restricted environment for a potentially indefinite period. The risks to the mental and physical health of detainees of such lengthy, ill-defined and isolated confinement are significant.”

The existence of this group of prisoners is proof that none of our legal traditions and rights are safe from serious compromise and surrender, and their continued detention in conditions of virtual solitary confinement makes a complete mockery of the belief that anyone is truly safe from arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, especially when the state decides to widen the focus of it's 'War on Terror'.

The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, claimed in response to the release of Abu Qatada that 'indefinite internment without trial' does not exist in the U.K. This is a lie. He is fully aware that in the Detainee unit at Long Lartin a group of men are currently being held in exactly that unlawful situation as a gesture of acquiescence to American power.

John Bowden
March 2012
HMP Shotts

Another Attempt To Sabotage John Bowden’s Parole By Prison Hired Social Worker (UK)

March 12, 2012 325 Magazine

It seems that the state and its loyal agents in HMP Shotts, Scotland, are
currently manufacturing reasons to present to the parole board as to why
John Bowden should be kept in jail. One of the entries in the ‘Parole
Intelligence Summary’ says: “Intelligence provides that Bowden either
posts blogs or has them posted on his behalf on the following website:
http://breakallchains.blogspot.com/. Further intelligence provides that
this website is pro-prisoner and anti-establishment. So it seems that even
writing anything supporting prisoners’ rights is sufficient reason to keep
John in jail – he’s not being kept in because they consider him a risk to
the public. Here is the latest article from John and contact address for
complaints and also to write to him:

Another Attempt To Sabotage John Bowden’s Parole By Prison Hired Social
Worker

The changed role of probation officers, and in Scotland social workers,
from ‘client centered’ liberal professionals into ‘criminal justice
workers’ focused essentially on ‘public protection’ and ‘managing risk’
has in many cases led to serious abuses of power as what were once
considered vocations of social conscience have been transformed into
little more than the revenge of the middle class.

Nowhere more is this so than in the case of prison-based social workers
and criminal justice probational/supervision officers who are little more
than appendages of repressive state power and act as a legitimizing and
respectable cover for that power.

The collaboration of prison hired social workers in the victimization of
prisoners labelled ‘control problems’ was exemplified by Matthew Stillman,
a social worker employed by Perth and Kinross Council in Scotland, who in
2007 whilst on placement at Castle Huntley open prison in Dundee wrote a
social work report for the Parole Board in which he described the
Anarchist Black Cross support group (ABC) as a ‘terrorist organisation’
and my support of it as sufficient reason to deny my release after 30
years in jail. As a direct consequence of Stillman’s report I was removed
from Castle Huntley open jail where I was preparing for release and
returned to maximum security conditions. Following a public campaign by
the ABC and an internal investigation by Perth and Kinross Council,
Stillman’s claim was exposed as a deliberate lie and he was quietly moved
to another job. Stillman would subsequently claim that senior management
as Castle Huntley jail had encouraged him to make the terrorist claim in
his report. What the episode actually illustrated was the malleability of
‘criminal justice professionals’ by a vindictive prison management and how
willing such ‘professionals’ compromise their integrity in the interests
of career and power.

This was again illustrated in February of this year before another
scheduled parole hearing to consider my release when the Parole Board
asked a community based social worker in Edinburgh, Brendon Barnett, to
prepare a post release supervision plan report. Told by the prison
authorities that I was refusing to co-operate with an assessment for
psychology based behaviour modification programmes, Barnett wrote a report
clearly intended to influence the parole board to deny my release
indefinitely. Like Stillman, he also wrote lies in his report, but this
time the lies really did defy belief.

When claiming to describe my original offence in 1980 and my ‘patterns of
behaviour’ at the time of the offence, Barnett wrote in his report: “His
victims were individuals easily discriminated against on the basis of race
and sexuality”. “There was a pattern of behaviour that allowed for the
predatory targeting of vulnerable human beings defined by race or
sexuality”. “Individuals were deemed worthy of attack on the basis of
ethnic background and deviant sexuality”. “There has been no investigation
of the values and beliefs that informed Bowden’s targeting of individuals,
i.e. what particular characteristics deemed a person worth of attack:
ethnic background, deviant sexuality?” Incredibly, without any reference
to official records, i.e. police reports or trial transcripts, Barnett
committed his outrageous lies to a report intended for the Parole Board, a
body thoroughly conversant with the facts of my original offence.

The actual facts are these. In November 1980, during a drunken party at a
flat in South London, Donald Ryan, a white Caucasian, heterosexual man was
killed by 3 other white Caucasian, heterosexual men, one of whom was me.
The police who investigated the case, the prosecution authorities and
trial judge who tried the case, have never claimed or suggested there was
a racist or homophobic dimension to the case, and why would they?
Barnett’s claims were a complete invention. In the preamble to his report
Barnett claimed that all his information was derived from ‘core documents’
and ‘source material’; this was also a lie. An explanation as to Barnett’s
motives in writing such reckless lies is possibly provided by other parts
of his report. Under a heading he terms “Compliance” he writes: “Bowden’s
time in custody has been characterised as a sustained and deliberate war
of attrition with the prison service. It is reported that earlier in his
sentence he often began riots, dirty protests and hunger strikes. As his
sentence progressed Bowden developed a strategy of intellectual analysis
of the system he is subject to. He appears to conceptualize his activities
in the light of a particular ideological awareness and as part of a wider
struggle”. He then provides the Parole Board with website references for
various articles I’ve written criticising the prison system and cites
Stillman’s report as a reference source. He concludes this part of his
report with – “Bowden questions the whole validity of the prison system
and the honesty, professionalism and impartiality of those charged with
his assessment and supervision”.

The core motive for Barnett’s lies are clearly revenge for Stillman, and
this is made explicit in a paragraph of the report entitled “Professional
Boundaries”. Under this he writes: “Bowden is known to have aired
grievances on the internet with regard to particular professionals
involved in the assessment of his level of risk. He appears to have
authored articles that have been forwarded to various websites naming
professionals involved in the parole process, suggesting readers contact
them directly. He has suggested a named social worker’s “right wing views”
(Stillman) influenced his assessment of Bowden”. He then issues a clear
threat: “Should he repeat these actions (publicising the names of social
workers) this could be deemed a rejection of the conditions of release”.
What Barnett is actually saying is that should I dare to expose and
publicise his outrageous lies then I risk imprisonment until death.

Brendon Barnett is supposedly a social worker employed by the Criminal
Justice Services in Edinburgh who last year was instructed by his
employers to prepare a post release supervision plan for me and present
it’s features in a report for the Parole Board. Instead he abused his
position by collaborating with the prison system to prejudice the parole
process and sabotage my release. Rather stupidly, instead of basing his
disgusting allegations on historical fact and official record, he
obviously regurgitated lies from Micheal Mansfield’s “Memoirs Of A Radical
Lawyer”, that Mansfield himself has now publicly admitted were completely
untrue. Brendon Barnett should be sacked.

Please write letters of complaint to:
Michelle Miller Chief Social Worker Officer
Grindlay Court Social Work Centre
Criminal Justice Services
2-4 Grindlay Court
Edinburgh
EH3 9AR
Fax: 0131 2298628

Please send letters of support to:
John Bowden 6729
HMP Shotts
Canthill Road
Shotts
Lanarkshire
Scotland
ML7 4LE

The Abuse of Children In Privately Run Prisons

By John Bowden

After more than a decade of unlawful abuse and brutality within child prisons run by private security companies it took the deaths of two young people and the inquests into those deaths to finally expose the sort of violence routinely inflicted on children held in such institutions. A subsequent legal action brought by the Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) laid bare completely what had been going on in these places, and on the 11th January the High Court delivered a judgement that was absolutely damning of the privately owned and run “Secure Training Centres” (STC) and the brutality of their regimes.

In his judgement Judge Justice Foskett said that in bringing the case CRAE had shone “a light into a corner which might otherwise have remained in the dark,” and indeed it was a corner of the penal system where the brutalisation of already damaged children in the name of so-called “restraint” was endemic and institutionalised and actively encouraged and promoted by the government's Youth Justice Board. It was also revealed that none of the statutory agencies charged with monitoring the care and treatment of children in the STCs did anything to stop the unlawful treatment. Clearly the human rights of such powerless working class children counted for nothing.

What the ruling finally exposed were places where a culture of abuse had been allowed to flourish and where the victims were too terrified to complain and accepted such treatment as an inevitable part of their captivity. In his Judgement Justice Foskett said, “I do not think there can be any doubt that in the vast majority of cases the detainees made the subject of an (unlawful) restraint technique would simply have accepted it as part and parcel of the routine in the STC. There is, of course, also the inevitable reluctance that there would have been on the part of the young detainee to “rock the boat” by making a complaint.” Too frightened to complain on their own behalf, the children subjected to abuse and ill treatment were given absolutely no protection by social workers or prison inspectors who knew exactly what was going on. Justice Foskett said in this regard, “It is a legitimate comment that until the deaths of Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood, and the investigations and inquiries that resulted from these deaths, none of the agencies in place to monitor what took place within an STC had identified and/or acted to stop the unlawful nature of what was happening.” In fact, so-called monitors from the Youth Justice Board actively encouraged restraint techniques (which were often injury inducing) that were criticised by the United Nations, the European Torture Committee and Parliamentarians on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. These techniques included the “nose distraction” technique, which involved members of staff punching non-complying children on the nose; other “restraint” techniques included punching children in the ribs and yanking their thumbs back. 14 year old Adam Rickwood was subjected to the “nose distraction” technique hours before he hung himself.

The extent of the abuse was also revealed in the judgement. The number of violent “restraints” on children ran at over 350 per month across the 4 STCs up until July 2008. Hassockfield STC seemed to use an almost gratuitous amount of violence against it's child inmates and during a six month period in 2004 applied violent “restraint” approximately 570 times.

The widespread use of unlawful violence over such a prolonged period was allowed and encouraged to take place because those employing it operated without any accountability and because an environment of frequent staff brutality was obviously considered appropriate for difficult and rebellious working class children.

Despite delivering a scathing condemnation of the STC regimes, Justice Foskett refused to make a judgement requiring the state to identify victims and notify them of their right to seek compensation. He claimed that such a judgement might have a “springboard” effect in creating a mass of compensation claims from both children and adults abused in state institutions. There was no suggestion either that a police investigation should be conducted into what took place in the STCs over such a prolonged period, nor any inquiry into the culpability of senior management at G4S and Serco or why both companies are continuing to run and operate penal facilities for children. In effect, everyone involved in the unlawful abuse of children in the
STCs for over a decade got off scot-free.

An important question that emerges from this case is why the care and custody of already damaged children is still being entrusted to profit-driven private companies like G4S and Serco, who have clearly shown by this case a total disregard for the human rights of those in their custody? Running jails for profit is always morally dubious, but when it has been clearly established and proven that children have been so brutalised by regimes operating in privately owned child jails that some of them have been driven to kill themselves, then the whole corrupt business needs to be fundamentally questioned.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
January 2012

Racism in the Close Supervision Units (CSCs)

A recent admission from the manager of a brutal control-unit at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes, euphemistically called the “Close Supervision Centre” (CSC), that prisoners suffering with mental illness are being held there has raised serious questions about the selection process for a unit that was supposedly created to hold only the most dangerous, subversive and unmanageable prisoners in the jail system.

Information provided by Kyle Major, a prisoner currently in the Woodhill CSC, would indicate that it isn't just the mentally ill that have been erroneously labelled “control problems” and sent to the CSC; it seems that ethnicity and a particular brand of religious faith also qualifies one for a place in the CSC.

Of the 23 prisoners currently held in the CSCs at Woodhill and Wakefield prisons at least 12 of them are of the Muslim faith, which begs the obvious question as to why such a numerically tiny proportion of the overall prison population in England and Wales are so dispropotionately over-represented in the CSCs?

The existence of racism in the prison system and indeed the wider criminal justice system has long had an evidential basis and ethnicity influences one's chances of receiving a prison sentence if convicted of a criminal offence and also the quality of one's treatment once inside the prison system. Cultural conditioning amoungst an overwhelmingly white prison staff is largely responsible for perceiving black prisoners as intrinsically “difficult” and potentially “disruptive”, and for those black prisoners who frequently complain or question their treatment the
label of “control problem” is quickly applied and the attendant repessive measures vigorously applied. Skin colour and ethnic identity in prison has always influenced and determined the degree of punishment inflicted if behaviour and attitude towards authority is an issue. When Islamphobia is thrown into the mix then repression against a targeted group of prisoners can assume a deadly edge.

For some time prison staff have been leaking stories to the media about “Muslim prison gangs” recruiting followers and creating disruption in the prison system, and the prison authoritites have publicly revealed the existence of a police / prison service intelligence unit dedicated to monitoring the activities of “Muslim extremists” within the prison population. The image created is of large gangs of black and Asian Muslim prisoners spreading their nefarious influence amoungst other prisoners and actively recruiting potential foot soldiers for terrorist activities in the outside community. Although there is no real evidence to support the scenario created it does provide a context for the victimization of Muslim prisoners and their over representation in brutal prison control units like the “Close Supervision Centre”.

If, as appears to be the case, some prisoners are being “selected” for the CSCs princibly because of their Muslim faith (or “terrorist idelolgy”) then a condition of their “progression” out of the CSC and return to the mainstream prison population would inevitably be their abandenment of that faith; failure to comply would result in an indefinite stay in conditions of strict solitary confinement and clinical physical isolation. At Woodhil prison the Iman is not allowed to enter the CSC or talk with the Muslim prisoners held there, which re-affirms the belief of these prisoners that their faith is the principle reason for their current location. Prison Service order 51 states quite clearly that “All establishments enable prisoners to participate in corporate worship and other religious activities that encourage their spiritual and personal development whilst in custody”. Clearly this does not apply to Muslim prisoners held in the CSCs. Neither it seems does Article 9 of the European Convention of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance”. Stripped of even this basic human right, over 50 percent of the prisoners currently being held in the CSCs are being punished for embracing and being identified with a religion that the prison authorities view as a threat to “good order and discipline”. If there is a growing militancy amoungst young Muslim prisoners then the behaviour and attitude of racist prison staff is an important
contributory factor in that, as is the psychological and physical brutalisation of Muslim prisoners in the CSCs.

No-one would dispute that in a chronically overcrowded prison system there are serious problems of control and safety, but none of that is remedied by targeting on the basis of race and relgion a specific group of prisoners and subjecting them to treatment that clearly breaches their basic human rights. A similar sort of racist targeting of black Muslim prisoners in the U.S. during the 1960s provoked the catastrophe of the Attica Prison uprising and the virtual wholesale segregation of the prison population along the lines of race and religion. There are clear signs that such a phenomenon is now happening in some English Maximum-Security prisons.

In terms of the prison “Close Supervision Centres” there is clear evidence that racism is influencing the selection process and fashioning the units into weapons of repression and abuse against “Muslim troublemakers”. It's therefore the duty of anti-racist groups and individuals to campaign for their closure.

John Bowden
Shotts Prison
November 2011

The Abuse Of Mentally Ill Prisoners Held In Close Supervision Centres

Prison doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists are currently complicit in the abuse and psychological torture of mentally ill prisoners held in a brutal jail control-unit at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes.

In 1998 the then labour government introduced the so-called Close Supervision Centres (CSC) as a method of punishing and controlling “difficult” and “unmanageable”
prisoners, and explicitly defined both the purpose of the CSC and the type of prisoners it was created to hold. The CSC was designed as an overt weapon of punishment based behaviour modification against prisoners motivated to cause unrest and disruption in mainstream prison regimes; essentially the type of prisoners targeted were “subversives” and violent troublemakers. It was never openly said that within this group of control-problem prisoners earmarked for the CSC would be included prisoners suffering with mental illness or suicide tendencies. Never was it admitted that within a control unit characterised by endemic staff violence and brutality would mentally disturbed and damaged prisoners be subjected to the same degree of abuse and ill-treatment. Yet in August of this year Claire Hodson, operational manager of the CSC at Woodhill Prison, openly stated that a significant number of the prisoners held in the CSC suffered with what she described as a “mental disorder”. Information provided by prisoners within the Woodhill CSC describes such mentally damaged prisoners being driven beyond the limits of psychological endurance by a regime characterised by solitary confinement, sensory deprivation and brutality. The involvement of prison hired doctors and psychiatrists in either mitigating the increased mental trauma and damage caused to such prisoners by the CSC regime or vetting out completely such mentally ill and vulnerable prisoners from the CSC appears minimal or non-existent, which amounts to obvious collusion in the ill-treatment of such prisoners.

Historically of course the collusion and collaboration of the prison doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists in the ill-treatment and repression of prisoners has a long and infamous tradition. In the 1960s and 1970s compliant prison employed psychiatrists frequently and unlawfully assisted prison staff to control and subdue “unmanageable” prisoners by forcefully and unlawfully administering psychotropic drugs in a practice that became known as the “liquid cosh”. Jail psychiatrists also provided their authority to medicate the resistance of rebellious prisoners by facilitating their removal to high-security mental hospitals such as Broadmoor and Rampton in a form of punishment that was known as “Nutting off”. During the 1980s the removal of “difficult” prisoners to jail psychiatric units such as the notorious “F.2.” unit at Parkhurst Maximum-Security jail represented the ultimate punishment for those prisoners too “unmanageable” to be handled in ordinary prison segregation units; few prisoners emerged from places like “F.2.” seriously undamaged psychologically or punch-drunk from the constant “sedation” of mind-destroying drugs administered by completely amoral prison hired psychiatrists. In the totalitarian society of prison such psychiatrists freed from any accountability or legal sanction align themselves completely with the institutional interests of prison regimes and often gladly participated in the institutional abuse of prisoners.

Punishing mentally ill prisoners for behaviour associated with their illness is both morally reprehensible and a unarguable abuse of basic human rights, and all those involved in administering the regime in the CSCs under which mentally ill prisoners are effectively being tortured should be held legally accountable.

During the 1980s a then Tory government with a ruthless antipathy towards state financed and administered health care closed most of the large psychiatric hospitals and caste it's inmates and patients effectively onto the streets under the heading and illusion of “care in the community”. Many of those patients then found their way into the prison system, somewhere hopelessly ill-equipped and disinclined to deal with them in a medically appropriate and therapeutic way. Some of that same group, because of their more “confrontational behaviour” towards prison authority, as defined and interpreted by guards trained only in how to control and lock people up, will find their way into punishment orientated prison segregation-units where further and more deeper brutalisation will take place and greater damage inflicted. Those who respond to that with a more resilient streak of resistance or “inappropriate behaviour” will at some point find themselves consigned to a CSC, where the prison system will really go to work on their minds and spirits. Self-mutilation will then usually manifest itself, and within the Woodhill jail CSC levels of self-harm are disproportionately high (earlier this year a mentally ill prisoner in the Woodhill CSC completely severed both his ears whilst in the showers and in possession of a razor blade), something it's operational manager Claire Hodson knowledgeably describes as a “coping mechanism or as a maladaptive coping strategy, as well as diagnosis of one or more personality disorders”. And yet she is
responsible for enforcing a regime deliberately intended to inflict the worst possible psychological damage upon this particular category of “difficult”
prisoners.

The psychological torture and abuse of the mentally ill anywherein society is a crime
and the CSCs are therefore responsible for operating regimes that are intrinsically unlawful and should be closed and shut down.

In 1984 a prisoner, Michael Williams, instigated a high profile legal action against the prison system and Home Office, one supported by the then National Council for Civil Liberties, that challenged the lawfulness of the Wakefield Prison “Special Control Unit” on the grounds that it's regime breached the basic human rights of the prisoners held there. Although his legal action failed it raised the public profile of the Control Unit experiment (originally used on suspected Irish Republican combatants and outlawed by the European Court of Human Rights) and Wakefield closed the control unit. The regime operating in the CSCs, especially in terms of it's treatment of mentally ill prisoners, needs to be similarly challenged and exposed, and the behaviour of those trying to legitimize the abuse inherent in that regime and paid to oversee it held fully and publicly accountable.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
30/9/2011
30/9/2011

Update on John Bowden's recent parole hearing

The use by the prison system of in-house psychologists to medicalise the
personality of “difficult” prisoners and prolong their imprisonment has become
wide-spread and institutionalised. Historically the involvement and collusion of
prison-hired doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists in the ill-treatment and
repression of prisoners has a long and infamous tradition. In the 1960s and
1970s compliant prison psychiatrists frequently and unlawfully assisted prison
staff to control and subdue “unmanageable” prisoners by forcefully administering
psychotropic drugs in a practice known as the “liquid cosh”. Jail psychiatrists
also provided their authority to facilitate the removal of rebellious prisoners
to high-security mental hospitals such as Broadmoor and Rampton in a practise
that became known as “Nutting-off”. In the early 1990s prison doctors at
Wormwoods Scrubs Prison in London were revealed to have conspired and colluded
with prison staff in covering-up the physical brutalisation of prisoners in the
jail's segregation/punishment unit. A number of prison officers were
subsequently prosecuted for having assaulted prisoners and the British Medical
Council called for removal of prison doctors from the council's register.

Psychologists employed by the prison system and based in individual prisons are
used as an integral part of the control armour of these jails in the guise of a
“multi-disciplinary” team based approach to maintaining the status quo and
disempowerment of prisoners. Just as prison doctors have sometimes been used to
cover up the physical maltreatment and occasionally their murder at the hands of
prison staff, so prison employed psychologists dutifully prostitute their
authority to stigmatize prisoners as social misfits, psychopaths and sociopaths,
thereby re-enforcing their marginalisation and de-humanization and the power of
the system over them. In the totalitarian world of prison system-hired
psychologists they are encouraged and allowed to vent their innate middle-class
prejudices and hatred of the poor and most marginalised confident in the
knowledge they will never be held accountable.

In the summer of 2010 the Parole Board informed Glenochil Prison in
Stirlingshire that a hearing was to be held to review my continuing imprisonment
after 30 years and as part of that process a psychological report would be
required to assess my current state of mind and level of risk to the public. A
senior forensic psychologist based at Glenochil, Kirsty Halliday, was asked to
write the report. Halliday had no intention of writing an unbiased and impartial
report, and knowing what was expected of her she immediately sought out the
opinion of prison officers who a short time earlier had transferred me from
Glenochil for what they alleged had been my attempt to create unrest amongst
other prisoners. Before ridding themselves of me the same prison officers had
been the subject of investigations by the Scottish Prisons Complaints Commission
and the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, both instigated by me, because of
their concerted attempt to undermine sentence planning procedures and the
prisoner personal officer scheme at the prison. Halliday writes in the
introduction to her report that she held discussions with these prison officers
to get their “impressions of John Bowden's behaviour whilst he was in the
prison”. The subsequent contents of her report are an obvious reflection of
their hatred and bigotry which she provides with the jargon of forensic
psychology.


She describes my propensity to complain and protest in prison as a symptom of
“paranoia” and a personality disorder, and elaborates on this in the following
way: “His tendency to experience strong feelings of anger appears to be linked
to experiences of paranoid thoughts”; “It also appears that underlying paranoid
thoughts linked to ideas of conspiracies characterize his attitude to prison
authority”; “He has a tendency to lapse into paranoid suspicious feelings and
thoughts”; “He has an issue with authority figures reflected by his responses in
prison”. The image created by Halliday in her report to a Parole Board assessing
my suitability for release is one of a border-line mentally ill prisoner with a
paranoia fuelled hatred of authority and a propensity for physical violence; she
claimed that I had been “consistently violent” whilst in prison. In fact, my
prison records show that  over 30 years I had committed just 3 minor physical
assaults against prison staff, the last one almost 20 years ago. Of course
Halliday omits any reference to my physical ill-treatment in jail, especially a
successful civil action that I launched in 1990 following my sustained
beating-up by prison officers at Winson Green jail in Birmingham. Her dishonesty
extends itself to blatant lies and twisting of facts; she claims in one place
that I was transferred from Castle Huntly Prison in 2008 because I had formed
what she described as an “inappropriate relationship with a female social
worker” at the prison. In fact, it was what the administration at Castle Huntley
claimed was my connection to a “terrorist organisation” (the Anarchist Black
Cross) that provoked my transfer from the prison. The Health Professionals
Council is now investigating the more flagrant distortion of facts in Halliday's
report.

On the 11th March the Parole Board opened it's hearing at Edinburgh Prison and
began to hear witnesses, but adjourned mid-way through the proceedings because
Halliday failed to appear. Glenochil jail was contacted and a video link-up
facility offered to Halliday via which to give her evidence and be
cross-examined but she refused. It might now be necessary for the Parole Board
to request that the Secretary of State for Scotland issues a witness summons
compelling Halliday to attend the Parole hearing when it resumes in May.
Obviously unable to defend the lies in her report Halliday is nevertheless
arrogant enough to believe that the prison system will protect and insulate her
from possible legal proceedings if she refuses to co-operate with the Parole
Board . In the past Halliday has no doubt been rolled out many times by the
management at Glenochil to write and lend her authority to psychological
“risk-assessments” of prisoners that were little more than lies dressed up in
psychological jargon, and probably never before has she had to defend or explain
any of those lies, hence her cavalier attitude on this occasion when called to
submit herself for cross-examination at my parole hearing.


Halliday's behaviour is in fact typical of prison psychologists generally, a
group that over the last decade or so has been enormously empowered as the
Parole Board and criminal justice system's obsession with the future potential
risk of prisoners has increased dramatically. Within the prison system itself
the massive proliferation of psychology based and run behaviour modification
courses and programmes has become a veritable industry giving prison
psychologists a dictatorial degree of power over prisoners, as well as providing
them with enormous career opportunities and financial rewards. Within such a
milieu of vested personal and occupational interest and common institutional
purpose with ordinary prison staff the professional integrity and independence
of prison based psychologists is fatally flawed and compromised. The wide scale
use of middle class professionals like psychologists to legitimize the
repression of prisoners of course breaches all ethical standards and should be
exposed, challenged and opposed by all those interested and involved in the
struggle for prisoners' rights.

John Bowden
HMP Edinburgh
March 2011