UK: "Shut YOIs" call as racist killer is jailed for life
01 November 2000
The killer of nineteen year old Zahid Mubarek was found guilty of murder at the beginning of November and sentenced to life imprisonment at Kingston crown court. Robert Stewart, a violent racist, beat Zahid to death as he was sleeping in his cell on 20 March, the day before he was due to be released after ending a 90-day sentence in Feltham Young Offenders Institution (YOI) for stealing a packet of razor blades. An internal inquiry into the murder by the Prison Service found numerous failings, including the lack of checks on racist letters in which Stewart threatened to kill his cellmate. Zahid's death prompted the head of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, to admit that his organisation was "institutionally racist" a finding echoed by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham, who in November called for the government to shut down the "barbaric warehouses" that serve as Young Offenders Institutions.
Last June the National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) called an emergency meeting, "Behind Closed Doors: Racism in Prisons and Detention Centres" which focused on the "culture of racism" in prisons and detention centres. At the meeting the NCRM pointed out that:
The fact that Zahid was killed in a Young Offenders Institution and shared a cell with a known racist and violent person has raised fundamental issues of culpability and negligence in the prison regime".
While an internal Prison Service inquiry pointed to numerous "failings" leading to Zahid's murder, the Mubarek family pressed the Minister of Prisons, Paul Boateng, for an independent inquiry. In November the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) announced that it will conduct a formal investigation into racism in the Prison Service. The CRE investigation will focus on Feltham YOI, Brixton prison in south London and the Parc private prison in Wales, and belatedly acknowledges the extent of a problem that has been the focus of black communities' protests for the past twenty years or more.
The CRE "formal investigation" came about because of the commissioners understanding "that racial discrimination may be rife in some areas of the Prison Service" and "public concern about the murder of Zahid Mubarek whilst in Prison Service custody (HMYOI Feltham) and the belief that the murder was racially aggravated...". The CRE believes that the Prison Service may have committed unlawful acts under several sections of the Race Relations Act 1976. If the inquiry does reveal unlawful discrimination the CRE can "force the Prison Service to comply with a legally binding Non Discrimination Notice, requiring action to stop racially discriminatory practices and behaviour."
The terms of reference for the CRE investigation are:
To inquire into HM Prison Service, with reference to the need to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination and the need to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between people of different racial groups...The investigation will be limited to events occurring between mid 1991- and July 2000 in HM Prison Parc and between January 1996 and November 2000 in HM YOI Feltham.
The terms embrace six specific areas of investigation: i. the nature and frequency of racial incidents in prison; ii. the nature and frequency of complaints of racial discrimination by staff and prisoners and barriers to complaints being made or registered; iii. the way complaints by staff and prisoners are dealt with by governors and/or officers; iv. The nature and effectiveness of action taken in response to complaints; v. the circumstances leading to the murder of Zahid Mubarek in HM YOI Feltham. The final point relates to the findings in reports on individual prisons by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons.
Last August the head of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, admitted that his organisation was "institutionally racist" and that there are "pockets of blatant and malicious racism" among prison officers. His findings are shared by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dav