Prisons - new material (68)
01 January 2008
Abuse of Muslims in Frankland Prison. Help the Prisoners, 2007. This campaign pack examines the racism and violence - and the lack of media coverage of it - inflicted on the 20 Muslim prisoners held at Frankland prison. Part 1 of the pack examines Frankland's longstanding reputation for racism while section 2 considers three case studies of prisoners detained there: Eesa (Dhiren) Barot, Hussain Osman and Omar Khyam.The third section advises on how you can help, with a series of model letters. Available at www.helptheprisoners.org
Their house, their rules, Peter Quinn. Prison Report no 71 (Spring) 2007, pp. 9-10. Quinn is the co-author of a report into brutality by prison officers on inmates at Wormwood Scrubs prison during the 1990s. Six officers have since been found guilty of assaulting and imprisoning 14 prisoners while Daniel Machover, the solicitor who represented some of the prisoners, has spoken of "senior managers and staff drinking during the working day; of a "steroid taking" culture among some of the officers; and of the unhelpful influence Freemasons." Here Quinn says that despite calls for a public inquiry into the scandal none has been forthcoming.
Report to the Government of Ireland on the visit to Ireland carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 2 to 13 October 2006. Council of Europe October 2007. This report finds Irish prisons to be "unsafe for inmates and staff" (Paragraphs 38, 40, 78) and calls on the Irish authorities to eradicate the "degrading" practice off "slopping out from the prison system" (Paragraphs 56, 91). A "considerable number" of prisoners interviewed complained of verbal and physical ill-treatment by the Gardai, the latter consisting mainly of "kicks, punches and blows with batons to various parts of the body." Available at: http://www.cpt.coe.int/documentsirl/2007-40inf-eng.htm
Response of the Prison Reform Trust to the consultation produced by the Department for Constitutional Affairs: "Voting Rights for Prisoners Detained within the United Kingdom - the UK Government's response to the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Hirst v. the United Kingdom" This Prison Reform Trust (PRT) paper points to the anomaly between Article 3 of the ECHR which guarantees free elections and has been incorporated into the Human Rights Act, becoming law in the UK in October 2000, and the electoral ban on sentenced prisoners in Section 3 of the Representation of the People Acts 1985 and 2000. This had led to the contradictory situation whereby British citizens imprisoned in jails overseas are eligible to vote in the UK as an overseas elector but are barred from voting if they are imprisoned in the UK. The PRT believes that the government's "consultation" exercise is flawed because "it precludes a legitimate option from consideration: that all sentenced prisoners should be enfranchised as is the case in many other EU countries."
Shared responsibility, Andrew Dinsmore MP. Prison Report no 71 (Spring) 2007, pp. 11-13. Dinsmore, MP and chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), argues for the inclusion of deaths in custody in the Corporate Manslaughter Bill.<