In July 2018 we reported on the trial of five former prisoners who were charged with ‘prison mutiny’ at Lewes prison in Sussex.[1] A year later, none of the brutalising conditions which caused the prisoners to protest have improved. Nicki Jameson reports.
In March 2019 the Chief Inspector of Prisons published a damning report of an unannounced inspection in January. The report describes conditions in the prison as ‘deeply troubling and indicative of systemic failure’. The prisons inspectorate uses four key indicators for what it describes as the ‘healthy prison’ test; in three of these (Respect, Purposeful Activity and Rehabilitation) Lewes had declined, while in the fourth (Safety) it remained the same. The decline in ‘Purposeful Activity’ was particularly acute, with ‘over 40% of prisoners still locked up during the working day’.
In the period since the previous inspection in 2016 there had been five self-inflicted deaths and incidents of self-harm tripled, with 300 in the six months before the latest inspection. Of the 54 recommendations in the 2016 report, only 10 had been implemented; likewise, of 45 ‘action points’ from the ‘Improving Lewes (Special Measures) Action Plan’, agreed in August 2018, 39 had not been implemented.
System-wide barbarity
In July 2019, the Chief Inspector published his annual report for 2018-19. This report on the entire incarceration system clearly illustrates that the same issues faced by prisoners in Lewes pervade all men’s Category B and C prisons in particular: ‘With their high through-put of prisoners, their often worn-out fabric, their vulnerable populations and their levels of violence and illicit drugs use, they were this year the prisons that, as in previous years, caused us most concern. Staff shortages had been so acute that risks to both prisoners and staff were often severe, and levels of all types of violence had soared. Meanwhile, the appalling impact of illicit drugs, particularly new psychoactive substances (NPS) had been underestimated and … many prisons were still suffering from the debt, bullying and violence they generated.’
This is illustrated with examples including:
Exeter prison: ‘… where inspectors reported very high levels of vulnerability, self-harm and suicide, cell call bells were routinely ignored by staff, even when they were not busy.’
Birmingham prison: ‘[Where] we found a number of particularly vulnerable prisoners living in squalid cells. One prisoner, despite having been formally assessed as vulnerable, was in a filthy, flooded cell which had the blood of another prisoner on the floor.’
Deadly refusal to implement changes
It is abundantly clear that none of the multiple checks and balances that are supposed to stop the worst abuses in the system have any effect whatsoever. As stated above in relation to Lewes, the majority of the Chief Inspector’s own recommendations and those set out in Prison and Probation Service Action Plans are not adhered to. The Annual Report describes a similar picture across the system.
Also on the list of bodies whose recommendations are being systematically ignored, is the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), which has the task of investigating deaths in custody. As had been the case for the previous two years, the PPO’s recommendations ‘had not been adequately addressed in about a third of prisons we inspected’.
This is particularly horrifying, given there were 83 self-inflicted deaths in male prisons in England and Wales in 2018-19, an increase of 15% from 72 the previous year, accompanied by a staggering rise in levels of self harm: with 45,310 reported incidents in 2018, an increase of 25% from the 36,347 incidents in 2017. Self-harm had increased in two-thirds of the adult male prisons inspected this year, and the inspectorate made major recommendations about serious deficiencies in suicide and self-harm prevention measures at 14 of them, presumably with little confidence these would be implemented.
Not only are prisons routinely ignoring the independent bodies’ recommendations, they are also lying and pretending to have implemented changes:
‘In January 2018, the Justice Select Committee held an enquiry following publication of our report into the inspection of HMP Liverpool in September 2017… During the evidence session it emerged that the prison was reporting through line management that 66% of the recommendations we had made at our previous inspection were on track to be implemented. The true picture was very different. During the inspection we found that only 25% of our recommendations had been achieved. The Select Committee expressed concern that [the Prison Service] was effectively “marking its own homework”…’
Undaunted, the inspectorate is busily creating yet another mechanism. Inspections of prisons which have been served with an Urgent Notification will now be followed by an Independent Reviews of Progress (IRP): ‘Our first IRPs at HMPs Exeter, Chelmsford, The Mount and Birmingham have suggested that a great deal of energy has gone into responding to Urgent Notifications and some other very concerning inspection reports, but that in some instances the response has been disappointingly slow…’
No book club
Most Category B and C prisons fall into two groups: the old, 19th century decrepit ‘locals’, built in city centres, such as Lewes, Liverpool and Exeter, and the newer modern, often privately run, prisons, built in more remote locations, such as Lowdham Grange or Oakwood. While physical conditions are obviously far worse in the first group, with broken windows, vermin and infestation the norm, both types are beset by violence, drugs and lack of opportunity for education or rehabilitation.
Extinction Rebellion founder Roger Hallam is currently touring the country, speaking to audiences of climate change activists, to whom he is extolling the virtues of mass incarceration as a tactic for achieving social change, and imploring his audiences to sign up ‘to go to prison this autumn’. Hallam describes the British prison system as like a ‘second rate retreat centre’ or a ‘book club’, where you can go for a week or so, have a rest from the rat race and come out refreshed.[2] The day-to-day barbarity faced by thousands of working class men and women who did not sign up to be in prison but have ended up there, mainly as a result of poverty, alienation and chaotic living under capitalism, tells a very different story.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 271, June/July 2019
[1] ‘Lewes mutiny trial collapses’ www.revolutionarycommunist.org/britain/police-prisons/5308-lewes-prison-mutiny-trial-collapses
[2] Video of Hallam’s speech can be found on the Red Fightback YouTube channel www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=DS6-gzFWepA
