FRFI 162 August / September 2001
Over 20% of prisoners in England and Wales are now from ethnic minorities, compared to 5.5% of the population as a whole, the highest proportion since records began. In the year 2000, 13% of the 65,000 prisoners were classed as ‘black’, 3% as South Asian and 4% as Chinese or from ‘other’ backgrounds.
Black prisoners suffer daily discrimination in the context of the prison ‘privileges’ system and within allocation to education and work in prison, and moves to different prisons, especially ones of lower security category. And they are subjected to constant verbal and frequent physical abuse from racist
prison staff.
Following the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence, all public bodies were urged by the government to root out institutionalised racism. The Race Relations Amendment Act 2000, which came into force in April 2001, extended the scope of previous legislation from discrimination in employment, provision of goods, facilities and services, training, education and certain other specified activities, to prohibit race discrimination in all public sector functions (with certain notable exceptions, such as immigration, where the government has given itself carte blanche to discriminate on blatantly racial grounds against anyone it would like to keep out of the country.)
Following the passing of the 2000 Act, the Prison Service introduced various new measures supposedly designed to confront institutionalised racism, and no doubt to head off discrimination cases which prisoners might bring against it. However, not only have the majority of these measures not so far improved the lives of black and minority ethnic prisoners, some have made them worse. Changes in legislation and procedure are virtually meaningless without sweeping changes to the all-pervading racist, bullying culture which prevails in British prisons. In January 2001 a prison officer at Frankland prison, Durham, was sacked for wearing Nazi insignia to work. In July three north London prison officers were arrested for possession of fascist propaganda, following a police raid on their homes. These card-carrying fascists are just the tip of a huge racist iceberg.
The Prison Service’s main policy on Race Relations is contained in Prison Service Order (PSO) 2800, which was issued in 1997. Using a form called a Racial Incident Report (RIR) form, prisoners can register complaints about racially discriminatory treatment. Their allegations are then reported by the Race Relations Liaison Officer (RRLO) to the governor, who appoints the RRLO or another staff member to investigate.
The Prisoners Advice Service and solicitors specialising in prison law are unaware of any occasion on which a prisoner has successfully made a complaint of racist treatment, using the complaints procedure laid down in PSO 2800, which has been upheld by the Prison Service, or of any occasion where prison staff have been disciplined for racist treatment of prisoners. On the contrary, prisoners who have made complaints about racist treatment have frequently received more punitive treatment as a result.
To give just one example, a prisoner in Devon wanted to complain about an officer’s racist language. He asked another prison officer for a RIR form. She attempted to dissuade him by asking if the officer had been joking and referred his request to a Principal Officer, who again tried to dissuade him. The prisoner then returned to his cell. Ten minutes later, he was moved to the segregation unit. The following morning he was handed a piece of paper which stated: ‘you have made an allegation that you have been the victim of racial abuse by a member of staff. Other inmates have given information that this is a false and malicious claim and you are trying to make trouble for that officer…You will remain segregated until the RRLO can properly investigate these claims and allow for the smooth running of the prison’.
Not surprisingly, given the outcome of the investigation had been announced before the investigation had taken place, the RRLO then concluded that there was no evidence to support the allegation. The Prison Officers’ Association, a long-standing bastion of racism within the prison system, has always been aggrieved at the abolition of the disciplinary charge of ‘making a false and malicious allegation against an officer’ and has long campaigned for it to be reinstated. Segregating a prisoner who complains of racism and accusing him in advance of the investigation of making a ‘false and malicious allegation’ is tantamount to reintroducing the old charge by the back door, with even less possibility of defence or redress than exists within the kangaroo-court disciplinary process.
In July 2000 the Prison Service amended the Prison Discipline Manual to introduce four new ‘racially aggravated offences’: 1) racially aggravated assault; 2) racially aggravated damage to property; 3) racially aggravated threatening, abusive or insulting racist words or behaviour; 4) displaying, attaching or drawing threatening, abusive or insulting racist words, drawings or symbols.
With the first three offences, prison governors were told that in cases where a racist motive was suspected, they should simultaneously charge prisoners with the existing assault, property damage or threatening/abusive/insulting words and behaviour offences as well as with the new racially aggravated ones. If the racially motivated charge is proven, the other one must be dismissed; if a racial motive is not proven, the prisoner can continue to be charged for the more general offence.
In practice, virtually no genuinely racist prisoners have been charged with any of these offences. Instead there have been repeated incidents of prisoners who accuse prison staff of racism being themselves charged with using ‘racially aggravated threatening, abusive words or behaviour’. Some prison staff seem to have such little understanding of racism that they appear to genuinely believe that calling someone a racist is in itself a ‘racially aggravated’ action. This is despite the fact that the Prison Service’s own definition of a ‘racially aggravated’ offence is quite clear and involve, ‘hostility based on the victim’s membership (or presumed membership) of a racial group’.
And while this farce is played out, black prisoners continue to be verbally abused, physically battered and murdered in British prisons. It will take more than fine words about ‘tackling institutionalised racism’ to overturn years of racial victimisation and brutality. Putting the investigation of prisoners’ complaints about their treatment into the hands of genuinely independent outside investigators would be a start.
