UK: Payouts for prison beatings and racial discrimination
01 August 2008
The Prison Service has agreed to pay more than £120,000 to prisoners who said they had suffered beatings and racial discrimination by prison officers.
Fifteen former inmates at Leeds prison sued the service, alleging they had suffered abuse and discrimination between 2003 and 2005. The allegations from Asian and black inmates included being choked and beaten, being denied jobs in the jail and being left vulnerable to attack by other inmates. The Prison Service settled the case as a court hearing into the allegations began. Thirteen of the prisoners claimed they had been discriminated against on the grounds of race and religion, with some claiming they had been racially harassed and victimised. Of the 13, seven said they had been assaulted by staff and two accused staff of failing to protect them from alleged assaults by inmates. The remaining two inmates brought claims for alleged assaults by prison officers.
The Ministry of Justice said:
"We did not take lightly the decision to settle these claims and did so only on strong legal advice. Had the matter continued to trial the cost to the taxpayer would have risen substantially and disproportionately to the value of the claims."
The terms of the payout were confidential, it said. The settlement is the latest in recent years to have seen the Prison Service pay damages or settle claims for alleged abuses, including at the former young offenders' institution at Portland, and at Wormwood Scrubs, where it was admitted that beatings and an attempted cover-up had taken place.
Last year an inquest jury found a series of failings by the Prison Service contributed to the death of Shahid Aziz (30), who was stabbed by his cellmate, Peter McCann (25), at Leeds prison on 2 April 2004. The prison was in such chaos that an assessment of the threat McCann posed to fellow inmates relied solely on asking him whether he was dangerous. McCann said he was not, and was classified as safe enough to share a cell with another prisoner. He was moved into a cell with Aziz and within an hours had murdered him. In an interview with the prisons and Probation Ombudsman, a female race relations officer at the West Yorkshire jail admitted she had dismissed an earlier complaint from Aziz. When told he wanted to speak to a race relations officer, she replied: "You are looking at one. Go away, not interested."
The Guardian 25.4.08