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the militancy that seemed to characterize the behavior of long-term prisoners, especially, towards the prison system been replaced by conformity and submission?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

Child Abuse

John Bowden writes from Perth Prison

In 2004 15 year old Gareth Myatt died whilst bring “restrained” by three members
of staff at a privatized children's prison called Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Warwickshire. In the same year 14 year old Adam Rickwood hanged himself in another privatized children's jail, Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in Co. Durham. A Judge later ruled that the guards who “restrained” Adam
shortly before his death had used unlawful force on him. Six years later and following a sustained campaign by parents of imprisoned children and groups like the Children's Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) a shocking government document detailing control methods used on children, some as young as 12, in custody has been revealed under the Freedom of Information Act.

Published by the Prison Service in 2005 and classified as a restricted government document, the manual provides staff in secure training centres with authorization to inflict physical pain on children with so-called “restraint and self-defence techniques”. The methods of physical force described in the manual are so legally questionable that the government was prepared to be taken to a tribunal to fight against disclosure of the document despite a ruling by the Information Commissioner that it should be publicly released. Previously government officials had even refused to provide a copy to the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee. Eventually the Ministry of Justice was forced to back down and release the document; it's contents made the reticence of the Justice Ministry to shame with the public, such information all too self-explanatory.

Some of the “restraint” methods used against children in custody approved by the Justice Ministry, currently headed by the liberal-thinking Ken Clark, include:

• ramming knuckles into the ribs of children and raking shoes down the shins.
• It also authorised staff to: “Drive straightened fingers into the young person's face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person's groin area”.
• “Use an inverted knuckle into the trainee's sternum and drive inward and upward”.
• “Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person's ribs until a release is achieved”.
• “Nose distraction techniques” - sharp blows to the children's nose – had already been found by the Court of Appeal to have been routinely and unlawfully used against children in at least one secure training centre.

The contracting out of such brutal methods of control and punishment to institutions run by private firms for profit raises an obvious moral question and issue.

Instructions issued to staff in the secure training centres reveal a calculated understanding that such “control techniques” could lead to serious injury to the child and even death; “the techniques could risk a fracture of the scull and temporary or permanent blindness caused by rupture of the eyeball or detached retina”. There is also an acknowledgement that some techniques could cause asphyxia; staff are told that while applying headlocks to children that “if breathing is compromised it could lead to a medical emergency”.

Carolyne Willow, national co-ordinator of CRAE, said: “The manual is deeply disturbing and stands as state authorisation of institutionalised child abuse. What made former ministers believe that children as young as 12 could get so out of control so often that staff should be taught how to ram their knuckles into their rib cages? Would we allow teachers. etc., to be trained in how to deliberately hurt and humiliate children?

Images of Abu Graib prison in Iraq are evoked by instructions instruction to force difficult children to “adopt a kneeling position while a second member takes control of the head by grabbing the back of the neck while cupping the chin”. Whilst in this position steel handcuffs are applied to the child. Ms Willow describes such methods as ”The ritualistic humiliation of children and a clear abuse of human rights”.

Phillip Noyes, director of strategy and development at the National Society for the prevention of cruelty to children said: “These shocking revelations graphically illustrate the cruel and degrading violence inflicted at times on children in custody. On occasions these restraint techniques have resulted in children suffering broken arms, noses, wrists and fingers. Painful restraint is a clear breach of children's human rights against some of the most vulnerable youngsters in society and has no place in a decent society”.

During the 12 months up to March 2009, restraint was used 1.776 times in the UK's four secure training centres.

In the Houses of Lords on 21 July 2010 Lord McNally in response to questions about the methods of control described in the manual said “we use the word “children” very casually to describe often very large and quite violent young people in these centres”, and “we also have a duty of care to the staff who deal with these often very violent young people”. Often disturbed and unruly children, some as young as 12 years of age, are metamorphosed in Lord McNally's mind into large and physically violent young adults as he tries to defend what Ms Swaine the legal director of CRAE, describes as “Guidance given in a staff authorised manual to violate human rights because is allows staff to deliberately hurt children outside cases of life-threatening necessity”.

What the manual actually reveals is an attitude and mindset that believes damaged and already brutalised children can be made to conform by the use of even more brutality and cruelty. In reality what such treatment creates is more severely disturbed young people seriously alienated from and actively hostile to society. What is being manufactured in these secure training centres are ticking time bombs that are then delivered into the wider community. A disproportionate number of seriously violent offenders and long-term prisoners are the product of a childhood spent in children's homes and youth custody institutions where physical abuse and violence formed a routine part of their treatment. When the lesson being taught to children in custody is that power is represented by the power to hurt and control then that lesson will eventually be learned and practised in their own lives. What is sown behind the walls of child prisons will eventually be reaped by the wider community. The campaign to stop the abuse of children in custody shouldn't be viewed as it is by tabloid newspapers and those responsible for that abuse as the prerogative of “wishy-washy liberals”; the wider society should realise that it has a vested interest in stopping the de-humanization of imprisoned children.


John Bowden
August 2010
HMP Perth

Child Abuse - The British State's Continued Guilt

Child Abuse - The British State's continued Guilt

By: John Bowden. (Noranside Prison. Scotland)
  

Britain has a long and pernicious history of abusing and brutalizing working class children confined to state institutions, so it was hardly surprising recently when a statutory instrument amending the rules governing the treatment of children in "secure training centres" legitimized the use of so-called "physical control in care restraint techniques", one of which authorized staff to inflict blows to the face of children, euphemistically called the "nose distraction technique".

Of course the use of overt physical violence to control socially marginalized and powerless children in penal-type institutions is nothing new and for decades Borstals and Detention Centres operated regimes that were intrinsically brutal and designed to teach a "tough lesson" based on fear and intimidation. The death of a child in the notorious Reading Detention Centre in the late sixties partially exposed the regime of terror that operated in such places, although the state was always careful to maintain the illusion that it neither sanctioned or created the violence routinely inflicted on children in such custodial settings. More recently the extraordinarily high incidence of suicides, self-harm and death in suspicious circumstances of children in Feltham Remand Centre suggest that intimidation and brutality remain the standard methods by which children in custody are treated and controlled.

Thirty children have died in penal custody since 1990, the youngest, Adam Rickwood, was just 14 years old. Just over a third of boys and girls in custody have felt unsafe at some time. One in ten boys and girls in prison say they have been hit, kicked or assaulted by a member of staff.

Traditionally the state has never publicly admitted or condoned the deliberate use of violence against children in custody, which is why the statute authorizing the use of overt brutality in subduing "disruptive" children inmates was so disquieting and shocking. In fact, so horrific was the scenario of state-sanctioned thugs physically brutalizing children in a prison setting that the more liberal elements in the government in the form of the Parliamentary Joint committee On Human Rights announced that it would be reviewing the use of such "restraint" methods in children's' prisons, claiming that such methods had been introduced without any reference to human rights legislation. Subsequently children's minister Beverley Hughes announced that she was suspending the methods pending a report by a panel of medical experts. Her concern was obviously not based on any moral reservations about beating up children in prison, but simply a worry about possible legal consequences.

In October of 2007 the Prison Officers Association offered it's own enlightened contribution to the issue of controlling disturbed and already brutalized children in jail by calling for a change in the rules that would allow prison staff to be able to use batons on children as young as 15.

The psychological damage inflicted on children in custody is well-researched and well known; 85 per cent of prisoners in youth custody institutions show signs of personality disorder, with 10 per cent exhibiting signs of severe psychotic illness such as schizophrenia. Into this mix of mental suffering and pain the state wants to throw some good old fashioned physical brutality. This by any definition is child abuse and it is systemic and organized, and thousands of working class children are irreparably damaged by it.

The state's assault on the rights and freedoms of working class children under New Labour has been sweeping and vicious, and the number of 15 to 17 years olds in prison custody has increased by 86 per cent since Labour took office. In tandem with this mass criminalization of already socially disadvantaged children is the creation of prison regimes openly designed to brutalize them even more.

The media and tabloid press, usually very keen to whip up hysteria and a climate of hatred against child abusers when campaigning for tougher laws, have remained consistently quiet about the abuse of children in closed institutions, creating a silence and invisibility around these children that increases their vulnerability and ill-treatment. Each year over 70,000 children are dealt with through the criminal justice system and around 12,000 of them are incarcerated in penal-type institutions that are no more than training grounds for the adult long-term prison system. This represents the wholesale destruction of young working class lives in the interests of a system that is itself inherently anti-social and predatory towards the poor and powerless.

The imprisonment of children is barbaric and one of the worst forms of state cruelty, and unless we speak out and campaign against it we are all in some way complicit in it.