I was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to eight years in prison for breaches of court orders imposed by the Family Court. Prior to breaching the aforementioned court orders I was a father, a musician, a YouTuber and I had just gained a place on a post-graduate law degree course. I was not involved in a life of crime, so when I was convicted and sentenced, I was sold the idea of rehabilitation, education, progression to an open prison and the idea that I could turn around my life and work towards my release, engaging in Open University study. I was told and sold the idea that the Prison Service was not there to punish me, that losing my liberty was the punishment.
But then the reality started to place its indelible mark on my soul. There was no keyworker who I was told would be assigned to me to encourage, inspire and assist in my sentence plan. There was no sentence plan. There was no exposure to positive influence or structure to enable progression. The only reality was the overcrowded, violent drug-riddled university of criminality that you see in the media.
During my two years in prison so far, I witnessed the injustice of the appeal process. I witnessed the most heart-breaking and extreme cases of mental illness. I lived through suicide after suicide. One drug overdose after another. Daily, weekly, monthly acts of violence. I witnessed more drugs in prison than I have ever seen outside. I have seen the blatant corruption of officers who facilitate a drug trade so lucrative that drug dealers would rather operate from prison than in the community.
I began to see just how many remand prisoners were needlessly held in prison and how many people were in prison because of drug addiction. A perpetual loop of low level crime to feed out of control drug usage.
I began to study prison policy and found breach after breach. Not only to prison instructions but in terms of human right violation and an incentives system not used to reward and promote good behaviour, but designed to punish and degrade.
In 2017 the Lammy Report recommended prisons have an Incentives Forum and the Prison Service adopted the recommendation. It stated that a forum must be in place to review the fairness and effectiveness of the local incentives policy. Forums must involve staff and prisoners, including Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Gypsy Roma and Traveller prisoners, and all groups with protected characteristics.
There is no forum here. There is no fairness here. There is no equality here. And what about the holy grail of rehabilitation? Is the reason for the system I describe simply an unfortunate accident? Is the system broken or is it like that by design? Is it really the perfect business model?
To answer we have to ask other questions like is it in the interest of the Ministry of Defence to rehabilitate when it uses my labour to sew its sandbags for £2.50 per day. Is it in the interest of DHL, who make millions supplying me with my weekly canteen in which I pay over the odds for coffee, milk, bread etc out of the £2.50 I am paid per day? Or of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation when they make millions charging for the television in my cell or photocopies for my legal case?
Is it in the interests of GeoAmey or Group 4, who make hundreds of millions transporting prisoners to courts and prisons? Or of prison education departments paid by government to put people through low level courses that never progress to usable qualifications?
You give people no opportunities and every opportunity to reoffend. You leave mental health issues undiagnosed or untreated and mask the problem with drugs. You make family relationships near on impossible to maintain. You pay prisoners insufficient money to save for a future. You systematically degrade, dehumanise and demonise them. You reward bad behaviour and condone criminality in prison, knowing that this behaviour will continue on the outside, ensuring a return to prison. You make sure drug-driven criminality prospers in prison, feeding addictions and criminality.
You may think that this does not make sense, but you only have to look to the plight of the IPP prisoners. Even after this sentence has been decreed inhumane, these prisoners are still being held at His Majesty’s pleasure. Is this not enough evidence that the true agenda is to keep the prisons full?
I am writing this because I know that I am not who I was. I am now a person who is unmoved, unafraid and undeterred by violence. I see violence and inhumanity too often for it to shock me. I trust no-one and I allow no-one to become close to me. I do not show kindness because my kindness is taken for weakness and I never cry because all my human emotions have been buried in the grave of my soul. I chose to be none of these things but that is what this environment has created. I would love to give back to society a proud, loving, sensitive black man, creative in nature with a degree and a love of humanity; however the prison service wants to give back to you an angry black man with no hope, mentally ill, prone to violence and criminality, and destined to come back to this place or one like it.
I hope I have given an idea of the truth of British prisons and you will consider next time you read about how someone released from prison reoffends exactly why this has happened. Was it because probation failed and that was the result of a broken system? Or was it because we have designed a system to profit from the most traumatised and dehumanised people in our society? The perfect business model?
Elavi Dowie (A0444EF)
HMP Lindholme, Bawtry Road, Hatfield Woodhouse, Hatfield, Doncaster DN7 6EE
