Britain operates a criminal justice system in which citizens and non-citizens are treated differently. When any foreign national is imprisoned, whether a court recommends that they are deported or not, and whether or not they have previously successfully claimed asylum or been given residence on the basis of marriage, the Immigration Service is informed about their situation and begins moves to deport them at the end of their sentence on the basis that their continued presence is ‘not conducive to the public good’. Nicki Jameson reports.
It is indisputable that the lackadaisical attitude of the Home Office towards deporting overseas prisoners who have finished their gaol terms is scandalous. As a result of the Home Office’s sheer incompetence hundreds of men and women from other countries who have completed their punishment languish for months in prisons and detention centres at the expense of the British tax-payer, waiting for the paperwork to be completed so they can be sent home. These are prisoners who are not seeking asylum and have no desire to do anything other than be deported. But this ‘foreign prisoner scandal’ is not the one which hit the press on 25 April and led to the exit of Home Secretary Charles Clarke.
Instead Clarke was forced out because over a seven-year period between 1999 and 2006, 1,023 foreign national prisoners who had completed their criminal sentences were not considered for deportation and were instead released as though they were British citizens. This meant that, instead of immigration investigation, they would have been subject to whatever level of probation supervision and hostel placement would normally have accompanied their particular sentence. Such supervision is itself extremely variable, leading on the one hand to weekly media outcries following murders and rapes committed by people supposedly under the supervision of the probation service, and on the other to a vast number of recalls to prison of people who have committed no further crime but have missed a probation appointment or changed address without permission.
The numbers concerned are in effect tiny – in the region of 90,000 people are released from prisons in England and Wales each year – and the danger to the public negligible, but it was more than enough for the government’s opponents and the press. Just before the local elections, for papers like the Daily Mail the combination of bogeymen was irresistible. Every attack on terrorists, asylum seekers, benefit scroungers, out-of-control youths, drug addicts, paedophiles and generalised low-life scum came together in a mighty cacophony of outrage against ‘foreign convicts’ and the soft Home Office that had let them out.
The readers of such papers, especially those in middle England who never actually see any of the people they fear and vilify, have already been told repeatedly that sentences are short, the courts are soft, prisons are luxurious, illegal immigrants are everywhere and the government fails to deport anyone ever. So it would not have been hard to convince them that they were now under a new, terrifying kind of siege. And presumably they would not then have lost any sleep over the citizens of the countries to which these apparently dangerous people should have been sent instead of ‘running around’ in ours.
Goodbye and good riddance to Clarke
The writing was immediately on the wall for Charles Clarke, who hung on for a while, promising to sort the mess out, but was finally sacked on 5 May, and replaced by Defence Secretary John Reid.
Clarke had become Home Secretary in December 2004 following David Blunkett’s sudden exit after an investigation into the allegation he had fast-tracked a visa application for his married lover’s nanny (probably the sole occasion on which he had assisted a low-paid overseas worker to come to this country). Blunkett had been Home Secretary since 2001 and conveniently left office on the day the House of Lords ruled that indefinite detention of suspected terrorists under his Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCSA) was discriminatory, disproportionate and incompatible with the Human Rights Act. In comparison to Blunkett, Clarke has been depicted as somewhat soft, although a quick glance at the last 16 months shows this to be far from the case. Liberals were encouraged by a speech to the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) in September 2005, in which he emphasised the need for education, jobs and housing for released prisoners to prevent reoffending. Caught on the hop by Pauline Campbell (see article on Styal and New Hall pickets) at a Fawcett Society meeting on women prisoners he even admitted that prison doesn’t work! But words are cheap and no action, legislation or cash backed them up.
Clarke’s ‘achievements’ at the Home Office included:
1. Control orders Following the House of Lords judgment, the ATCSA indefinite detention provisions were replaced by ‘control orders’. A wide variety of restrictions can be imposed on individuals, ranging from the prohibition of the use of specified articles or substances, through a range of restrictions on association, communication, movement and residence, up to the obligation to remain at a certain place, including house arrest.
2. Immigration Introduction of a five-point work-permit system and abolition of indefinite leave to remain for asylum applicants.
3. Detention periods Although the government was defeated on its attempt to extend detention for terrorism suspects from 14 to 90 days, this period has still been doubled to 28.
4. Glorification of terrorism Blair refused to back down despite opposition from all quarters and Clarke presided over a prolonged parliamentary wrangle, ending with the passing of legislation against ‘glorifying’ the actions of ‘terrorists’ in the past, present and future. How exactly this attack on free speech will be used remains to be seen.
Behind bars
At the end of February there were 10,625 foreign national prisoners in British prisons. In November 2004 there were already a record 9,000 in England and Wales, one in eight of the overall prison population, following an almost threefold increase in numbers over the previous decade. At The Verne men’s prison in Dorset and Morton Hall women’s prison in Lincolnshire foreign national prisoners made up half or more of the population; and in Belmarsh, Blundeston, Brixton, Coldingley, Cookham Wood, Downview, Drake Hall, Feltham, Highpoint, Send, Swaleside, The Mount, Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubs, a quarter or more.
A 2004 PRT report, Going The Distance – Developing Effective Policy and Practice with Foreign National Prisoners highlighted how foreign national prisoners were suffering because of lack of information, language barriers, isolation, mental health concerns, racism and lack of respect.
Prisoners from other countries face concrete difficulties with communications, not only because of language, but because of the expense of overseas telephone calls and because the Prison Service demands that all numbers phoned are first vetted; a process which can take weeks for numbers within the UK and becomes more difficult and lengthy when they are overseas.
Further, the procedures for dealing with foreign national prisoners’ applications for parole, transfers to lower security prisons or release on temporary licence are different to those for British nationals, as the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) has to be consulted. Whatever your political view on the current ‘scandal’ there is no dispute as to the inefficiency of the IND and such applications can take months.
The backlash
As if all this were not enough, the current hullabaloo is affecting every prisoner who is not a British citizen, and some who are. Not to mention further exacerbating general racism towards foreigners and intolerance of ex-prisoners of all nationalities.
Open prisons have been instructed to send anyone who was not born in Britain to closed gaols, where their cases will be individually reviewed to see if they can be allowed back. Lawyers, the Prisoners Advice Service and the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns have heard from scores of prisoners who have been suddenly moved in this way, including a large number of EU citizens and at least one person who has a British passport. Other prisoners who were anticipating moves from closed to open prisons have been told they are cancelled. FRFI has received a letter from Littlehey prison about a prisoner who was due to be released on 28 April but was told the day before that he would be kept in prison, despite having been granted parole and been given an order from IND that allowed him to be released on condition he reported regularly while his asylum claim was decided.
Double punishment
The real scandal at the heart of this situation is that non-British citizens are punished twice if they commit a crime. While many of the foreign national prisoners currently in gaol in Britain want to return home as soon as possible, a significant number have been living here for many years, have families, had jobs and were settled here; some arrived as tiny children and have no recollection of their country of origin and do not speak its language. For them, deportation is an additional and far worse punishment than imprisonment. In the wake of the current ‘scandal’ there is talk of tightening the law still further. Whatever additional measures John Reid decides to introduce, double punishment is already law in Britain. FRFI has always held to a position of opposing all immigration controls. We believe that in an imperialist nation they can never be anything other than racist. This is never more starkly demonstrated to be true than by a system in which British citizens convicted of a crime are punished once and foreign nationals who are convicted of the same crime are punished twice.
Horrific effects of immigration detention
Between 2 and 15 May 2006 five asylum seekers attempted to commit suicide in Colnbrook by jumping from the balcony or cutting themselves with razors.
On 2 May a young Afghan man attempted suicide. On 10 May, after being severely beaten by eight security officers, Iraqi Kurd Tariq Rashid attempted to kill himself by cutting his throat, stomach and chest, opening a six-inch gash from the left side of his neck down to his breastbone.
The next day, a Jamaican man tried to jump from the second floor, but other detainees managed to restrain him, and an Iranian was found by his cell-mate hanging by a bedsheet from the door handle. He had earlier tried to cut his throat with a razor, but was locked up in solitary confinement, which aggravated his psychological state and led to a second attempt. On 15 May, Rashid’s cellmate, Hiwa Abdullah, tried to kill himself by slashing himself with a razor, after being refused bail for the eighth time. The Home Office has admitted that in the year to 31 March 2005, 858 detainees attempted to self-harm. The following year to 31 March 2006, the figure increased considerably to 1,806.
Don’t expand Styal prison – close it down!
FRFI comrades in the north west of England have attended three recent demonstrations outside women’s prisons. Those on 10 and 18 May were organised by Pauline Campbell, mother of Sarah Campbell who died at the hands of the prison authorities in Styal prison in January 2003, to protest at the deaths in New Hall and Styal prisons of 22-year-old Kelly Louise Hutchinson and 42-year-old Valerie Hayes. The demonstration on 8 April was organised by the No More Prison group to protest against plans to expand Styal to make it Europe’s largest prison for women and to call instead for the prison to be closed. This event was attended by former prisoners Susan May and Sandra Gregory and three mothers, including Pauline, whose children had been killed by the prison system. Don’t expand Styal prison – close it down!
For more information about No More Prison, write to Paul Mason, School of Journalism, Media and Culture Studies, Bute Building, Cardiff University, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3NB or visit the No More Prison website http://www.alternatives2prison.ik.com
FRFI 191 June / July 2006
