Prisons - new material (74)
01 October 2009
Crowded prisons at highest strain in a decade, Anne Owers warns, Aida Edemariam. The Guardian 12.12.09. In an interview with the newspaper, Ann Owers, chief inspector of prisons, warns that the prison service is “under greater strain than at any time in the past decade as it struggles to cope with record numbers of inmates and dwindling resources.” Owers said: “I haven’t seen prison governors so worried about the future in all the time I’ve been doing this job. There is now a real risk that gains that have been made, sometimes slowly and painfully, could be lost.”
Resumo da comparécencia da delegación española perante o Comité contra a Tortura das Naciones Unidas, Esculca, no. 27, December 2009, pp.9-13. A useful summary of the Spanish delegation’s appearance before the UN’s Committee against Torture (CAT) in Geneva on 12-13 November 2009 in which a number of longstanding concerns were dealt with, and information was sought concerning progress as regards recommendations made by successive rapporteurs on matters including incommunicado detention, the appointment of a detainee’s doctor or legal counsel of choice, the investigation and prosecution of cases in which torture was alleged by prisoners, dispersal, the situation of unaccompanied foreign minors, detention centres and harassment in prisons, among others. The Spanish delegation’s spokesman defended incommunicado detention and dispersal as a result of the serious problem of terrorism, arguing that the latter is “respectful of everyone’s rights”. Suicides and sexual abuse in prisons decreased, abuse against female detainees were “isolated cases”, repatriations complied with human rights, reports of round-ups and abuses suffered by expelled Senegalese people were untrue, video-surveillance systems had been installed in 50% of police stations, and it was not proven that Spanish bases were used for CIA “rendition” flights. Committee members replied by reiterating concerns, particularly about pardons enjoyed by officers convicted of torture, incommunicado detention and access to lawyers of choice. Available at: http://www.esculca.net/pdf/bole0027.pdf
Give Prisoners the Right to Vote, and Everybody Benefits. Robert Chesshyre. The Independent 12.2.10. The Committee of Ministers at the Council of Europe has complained at “British foot-dragging” over its promise (made “reluctantly and under extreme pressure from the European Court of Human Rights”) to introduce votes for (some) prisoners. The Committee has warned that the “substantial delay in implementing the judgement has given rise to a significant risk that the next UK general election will be performed in a way that failed to comply with the Convention of Human Rights.”
Locked Up Far Away: the transfer of immigrants to remote detention centers in the United States. Human Rights Watch pp. 88. (ISBN-1-56432-570-9). This report presents data (analysed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University) which shows that 53% of the 1.4 million “non-citizen” transfers (the transfer of immigrants facing deportation to detention centres far from their homes) have taken place in the USA since 2006. Most occur between state and local jails that contract with the ICE agency to provide detention bed space. The report's findings, based on the new data and interviews with officials, immigration lawyers and detainees and their family members, concludes that the practice “often erects insurmountable obstacles to detainees’ access to counsel”, “impede their ability rights to challenge their detention, lead to unfair midstream changes in the interpretation of laws applied to their cases, and can ultimately lead to wrongful convictions.” The alternative, to give detainees a fair hearing, does not appear to be on the agenda. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/12/02/locked-far-away-0
Turnkeys or professionals? A vision for the 21st century prison officer. The Howard League for Penal Reform 2009. This report calls for a radical and fundamental review of the role of the prison officer that questions their role, purpose, professional status and points to a new future that serves the public. The report says that: “In order to achieve this, prison officers need to be educated rather than simply trained, and the role of prison officer should move to become a profession. The prison officer should be seen in the same terms as a social worker, nurse or a teacher. We suggest that it should be a graduate profession.” Importantly, this “vision relies on a radically reduced prison population whereby only those people who have committed serious and violent offences and are a continuing danger are incarcerated”.
ACLU Obtains List Of Bagram Detainees. American Civil Liberties Union, 15.1.10. The ACLU argue that the US government did not hand over this information voluntarily but after a freedom of information lawsuit filed by the ever-vigilant American Civil Liberties Union. The list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram on September 2009, but other vital information including their citizenship, how long they have been held, in what country they were captured and the circumstances of their capture has been redacted. The list is available on the ACLU website: www.aclu.org/national-security/redacted-list-detainees-held-bagram-air-base