I know I often spout about the callous indifference to human welfare and dignity, the savage brutality and the arbitrary decisions in prisons but the case of an 18 year old pregnant woman being held in privately managed by Sodexo HMP Bronzefield, Surrey, surely goes down as among the lowest of the low for the treatment of a prisoner in a UK prison, I wonder if profit from people's misery had anything to do with staffing. It seems that the pregnant young woman pressed the buzzer for help, a guard shone a torch in and saw nothing unusual. The young woman was on her hands and knees at this point. Unable to reach the buzzer again she passed out, when she came-to, her baby was lying on the floor of the cell dead. A child dead, a young woman's life torn asunder, a family in distress. A deed that is beyond comprehension.
The usual inquire was held, and of course as usual, lessons have been learnt, and of course, changes will be made. The fact that this happened in a UK prison in the 21st. century is an indictment against the entire prison system. This sort of thing is totally incompatible with any civilised society. Every brick in every prison is a tombstone to human decency, and the only answer to such callous indifference to human life and dignity is the total abolition of the prison system and the type of society that requires and fosters these cages of human repression.
