Prisons - New material (56)
01 March 2004
Prison Nation: The Warehousing of America's Poor. Tara Herivel and Paul Wright (eds.) Routledge 2004 (ISBN 0-415-93538-5). Collection of essays edited by prisoners' rights activists in the USA, both involved in producing the excellent Prison Legal News. Prison Nation contains articles from serving prisoners on prison conditions and prisoner resistance in the USA, including prescient contributions on organising against prison labour, the malign state of prison medicine, racism and repression in US jails and an overview of prison litigation 1950-2000. Prison Nation is essential as a resource both for those inside and out involved in organising/supporting prisoner resistance, and those whose interest in penal issues is an academic one.
Tortura en Euskal Herria, Informe 2003, Torturaren Aurkako Taldea (TAT), pp. 267, March 2004. This report collects the testimonies of 78 prisoners who have suffered torture by the Spanish national police, Guardia Civil or the Ertzaintza, the Basque regional police force. A section is dedicated to the methods of torture that are used, which includes diagrams, and other subjects that are treated are the judicial and medical procedures that are in place to investigate complaints.
"Chaos meets order the result is tragedy", "£400 short of a life" and "How Joey beat the system", Nick Davies. Guardian 13-15 April 2004. Three-part investigation by Davies into "the lives of offenders in a London court", showcasing the day-to-day deficiencies in the criminal justice system such that "the boozers, the junkies, the poor" are failed (and jailed) rather than receiving the social interventions they need. As Davies concludes "You could see the whole process of criminal justice as one section of the working class arresting another so the middle class can argue about what to do with them." That the criminal justice system might therefore objectively operate so that "what to do with them" precludes "effective alternatives" in favour of a deliberate "warehousing" of the poor, appears not to have been considered. Moreover, Davies' conclusion that the "failures" are "everybody's fault" (within the criminal justice system) and arise from "the complex mechanics of gathering the fine detail of so many different kinds of evidence" set against "the demands of a rights-based trial system" actually chimes well with the arguments by David Blunkett that a cabal of defence lawyers and criminals exploit the adversarial system against the interests of "the real victims."
Psychology in Prisons, Charles Hanson. This paper is authored by Hanson - a serving prisoner and miscarriage of justice activist - on offending behaviour courses, Sex Offender Treatment Programmes and their effectiveness. Available from mojuk@mojuk.org.uk
Jail Capital of Western Europe, Enver Solomon, Prison Report no 63 (March 2004), pp8-9. Solomon writes: "homicide rates in England and Wales are no lower than elsewhere in Europe. Could it simply be that our thirst for retribution is much greater than our European neighbours?"