UK prisons condemned (1)
01 January 1991
UK prisons condemned
artdoc April=1992
Three major British prisons were condemned by the European
Committee for the Prevention of Torture, set up under the
auspices of the Council of Europe. The Committee, which visited
Wandsworth, Brixton and Armley prisons in August 1990, found that
`the pernicious combination of overcrowding, inadequate regime
activities, the lack of integral sanitation and poor hygiene...
amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment'. It also condemned
the use of body belts in the restraint of prisoners. The
Committee's report was not published by the Government until
December 1991, when the Home Office published its reply to the
condemnation. By then, it had announced its intention to close
Brixton's `F' wing, the psychiatric wing which had produced 14
suicides since 1989. It had also moved teenagers out of Armley
prison in Leeds following a number of teenage suicides there. But
its protest that conditions had got better since the visit was
undermined by the annual report of the Chief Inspector of
Prisons, Judge Tumin, which came out at the same time. Tumin
complained that nothing had been heard of promised reforms, and
that `expectations in the prison service are too low'. He said
remand prisons were `cramped and claustrophobic', with `filthy
medical facilities' in the reception area, that workshops were
still largely unused and training and education undervalued,
while treatment for mentally ill prisoners remained far worse
than in the old hospitals many had been discharged from.
Too many charges
The conditions in many of Britain's prisons have also resulted
in the highest ever rate of prisoners being charged with offences
against prison discipline. The latest Home Office report,
published in October, shows that in 1990, 81,790 offences were
punished, equivalent to 1.8 charges per head of the prison
population. The figures suggest that people who complain are
charged with offences against good order and discipline: over
half the charges related to disobedience or disrespect to prison
officers, or `idleness'. Only 5% were heard before a Board of
Visitors; the rest were heard by the prison governor. Over-
representation
Another report, commissioned by the Home Office, and published
in December by the Prison Reform Trust, showed that black people,
unemployed, homeless, uneducated and mentally ill people were
vastly over-represented in prison. Sixteen percent of prisoners
were black, compared with 5% in the general population, and their
sentences were on average almost twice as long as those of white
prisoners. In addition, 31% of convicted prisoners, and 44% of
remand prisoners, were unemployed. Homeless people accounted for
12% of the convicted population and 17% of the remand population,
confirming suspicions that magistrates were more likely to remand
homeless and jobless people to prison rather than allow them
bail. No educational qualifications were held by 43% of the
inmates, and about a third suffered from some form of mental
illness.
Report to the United Kingdom government on the visit to the
United Kingdom carried out by the European Committee for the
Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment (CPT), Council of Europe, 26.11.91; Annual Report of
the Chief Inspector of Prisons, December 1991; Statistics of
offences against prison discipline and punishments: England and
Wales, 1990 (Cm 1651), October 1991; Independent 16.12.91.
Statewatch Vol 2 No 2 March/April 1992