The abuse of psychiatry to punish ‘difficult’ prisoners has a long and disturbing history in the British prison system, writes long-term prisoner JOHN BOWDEN. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, especially, the role of prison psychiatrists in suppression of rebellious prisoners became well established; for example via their involvement in forcibly administering tranquillising drugs to prisoners in a practice which became known as the ‘liquid cosh’.
For particularly determined prisoner ‘troublemakers’, the spectre of maximum-security psychiatric hospitals such as Broadmoor and Rampton could quite easily become reality with psychiatrists recruited to apply the necessary pathological labels and facilitate the ‘nutting off’, of sane but ‘difficult’ prisoners. Rampton, especially, acquired a notorious reputation for brutal treatment by prison officer ‘nurses’ and punitive-minded psychiatrists.
During the 1990s the overt abuse of psychiatry to control dissent in prison was replaced by the introduction of Close Supervision Centres (CSCs) – control units with regimes of clinical isolation, solitary confinement and physical violence. However, prison psychologists and psychiatrists continued to provide input into the ‘behaviour modification’ of CSC prisoners – ‘good behaviour’ would earn a prisoner a graduated progression back to mainstream prison life, whilst ‘negative behaviour’ would ensure even worse treatment. So cruel and brutalising is the treatment of prisoners in the CSC that mental breakdown is commonplace.
In 2010, as reported previously in FRFI, life sentence prisoner Kevan Thakrar was placed into the CSC at Woodhill prison after being charged with the attempted murder of three guards at Frankland prison. He was acquitted on grounds of self-defence, after his trial heard how, as a result of earlier physical brutality by prison guards, he now suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Since his allocation to the CSC, Kevan has never ceased responding legally and politically to the inhumane treatment inflicted on prisoners there. This has resulted in increased victimisation and repeated transfers around the limited confines of the CSC system. He is currently in a CSC-designated cell in the segregation unit of Full Sutton prison in York.
In support of possible litigation against Kevan’s continued location in the CSC, his solicitor commissioned an independent psychology report, which unsurprisingly confirmed that Kevan’s PTSD was being made significantly worse by the CSC regime and recommended he be returned to a mainstream prison environment. Instead of adopting this recommendation, the CSC management has now decided that Kevan should be transferred to the notorious Rampton special hospital for ‘assessment’.
This is nothing other than a move to consign Kevan to a place where, under the guise of ‘treatment’, he can be buried, silenced and effectively destroyed. More than ever now he desperately needs solidarity.
Supporters of Kevan are holding a protest on Monday 16 February 12-2pm outside HM Prison Service, Clive House, 70 Petty France, London, SW1H 9EX. Letters of solidarity can be sent to Kevan Thakrar A4907AE, HMP Full Sutton, York YO41 1PS; letters of protest should be sent to the head of CSC, Alan Parkins at HMP Woodhill, Milton Keynes MK14 1PS.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 243 February/March 2015
