As the capitalist economic crisis deepens and its impact is felt more viciously on the lives of the poor and working class, the reshaping of the welfare state into a carceral state is becoming a social reality for more and more of the poorest and disadvantaged. The increasing starving of resources for public services like the NHS, welfare benefits and social housing contrasts sharply with a massive expansion of the prison system. Former long-term prisoner JOHN BOWDEN writes.
In June, then Tory prisons minister Victoria Atkins announced that the government would be spending £3.8bn on significantly expanding the capacity of the prison system to prepare for tougher sentencing. A significant proportion of that money will be given to private corporations to construct, operate and staff more prisons. Atkins promised that 20,000 new prison places would be created, raising the prison population of England and Wales to 100,000. At 80,800 in England and Wales, and 7,500 in Scotland, Britain already has the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe.
The reality is that the more prisons are built, the more quickly they will be filled and overcrowded. Prisons in Britain are already bursting at the seams, and remain in lockdown, as it suits the prison authorities and Prison Officers Association to keep everyone confined to their cells.
In a report published in early July, following its June 2021 visit to Britain, the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) wrote: ‘In its visit reports on prisons in England dating back to the 1990s, the CPT has repeatedly highlighted the cumulative deleterious effects on the lives of prisoners of chronic overcrowding, poor living conditions and the lack of purposeful regimes. Moreover, during the 2016 visit, the CPT’s delegation found that these long-standing problems were exacerbated by a significant escalation in levels of violence. Similar findings were made by the CPT during its 2019 visit and the Committee once again concluded that the duty of care to protect prisoners was not always being fully discharged, and that the environment in the adult male establishments visited remained fundamentally unsafe for both prisoners and staff.’
Prisons are not just used as instruments of social repression against the most marginalised and disadvantaged, but also as weapons of political repression during times of political and social unrest. This significant expansion of the prison system takes place in the context of the approaching spectre of a potential wave of working class resistance and the increasing criminalisation of protest.
Traditionally the so-called radical left in Britain has failed to recognise or understand the true purpose of prisons as state weapons of class repression or the struggle of prisoners as an authentic part of the wider class struggle, but the time is approaching when that realisation will be forced upon them.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 289 August/September 2022
