Criminal Neglect.

      As this pandemic spreads it tentacles across the globe, we should always think of the most vulnerable and do our utmost to protect them. Yet one section of the most vulnerable are being ignored, the prison population. It's not as if they were an extremely tiny section of our community, there are approximately 9 million individuals locked up in prison across the world. Half of that mass of individuals are held in three countries, with the "good ol' US of A" leading the pack. The prison rate in USA per head of population is 724 per 100,000, in Russia it is 581 per 100,000, in China, that leader of the evil empire it is 118 per 100,000. England and Wales, on their own sit about the midway mark of the world's incarceraters with 118 per 100,000. US is also among one of the highest of women prisoners per head of population at 8.7%.
      Strange that the so called leader of the free world and defender of freedom should be the country that locks up more of its own population in prison cells than any other country on the planet.
      Another very disturbing figure on prison populations, especially during this Coronavirus pandemic, is the fact the practically all the world's prison are over crowded, with Kenya being the worst offender with it prison population being 284.3% of its occupancy. Even that most capitalist developed country in the world is guilty of this sardine policy with its prison population being 107.6% of its occupancy. Prisons are not on the whole, places of the best conditions nor descent medical care and hygiene, add over crowding to this toxic mix, and you have the perfect conditions for spreading this pandemic. To ignore these facts is extreme criminal cruelty and gross criminal neglect.
      A world with approximately 9 million individuals lock up in over crowded prison cells is not a free and democratic world, let's grasp this fact and do our utmost to bring down the prison system and the authoritarian regimes that foster these conditions.

Country	Prison population	Population per 100,000	Jail occupancy level %	Un-sentenced prisoners %	Women prisoners %
US	2,193,798	737	107.6	21.2	8.9
CHINA	1,548,498	118	N/A	N/A	4.6
RUSSIA	874,161	615	79.5	16.9	6.8
BRAZIL	371,482	193	150.9	33.1	5.4
INDIA	332,112	30	139	70.1	3.7
MEXICO	214,450	196	133.9	43.2	5
UKRAINE	162,602	350	101.3	19.5	6.1
SOUTH AFRICA	158,501	334	138.6	27.5	2.1
POLAND	89,546	235	124.4	16.8	3
ENG/WALES	80,002	148	112.7	16.4	5.5
JAPAN	79,052	62	105.9	14.7	5.9
KENYA	47,036	130	284.3	45.6	42
TURKEY	65,458	91	77.4	47.7	3.3
NIGERIA	40,444	30	101.5	64.3	1.9
AUSTRALIA	25,790	125	105.9	21.6	7.1
SCOTLAND	6,872	134	107.5	21	4.4
N IRELAND	1,375	79	91.5	37.4	2.2

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Do The Peple Of Scotland Deserve This??

 

        The UK as a whole has the highest prison population per head of population in the whole of Western Europe. However Scotland takes pride of place as the leader in incarcerating its population with the highest per head of population. We're a wee country but we're very good at locking our people up in cages.

      This from Scottish Legal News:

      Scotland has the highest prison population rate per head in Western Europe, with 150 people held in prison for every 100,000 of the population, according to a new report.
       Meanwhile, in England and Wales there were more than 140,000 admissions into prison in 2017—the highest number in western Europe, according to report Prison: the facts, which reveals that, despite the number falling in recent years, England and Wales still have over 40,000 more admissions to prison than Germany, the second-highest—which has a significantly larger national population.
     The comparative figures are taken from the latest available Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics.
       The rate of prison admissions, which accounts for the effects of differences in national populations, shows that England and Wales have a rate approximately three times that of Italy and Spain, and almost twice as high as Germany, with 238 prison admissions for every 100,000 people.
       The UK as a whole continues to be an outlier in western Europe in its use of custody, with significantly higher prison populations than other countries. Scotland’s prison population rate per head, 150 per 100,000 of the population, is closely followed by England and Wales, with 139 per 100,000. Northern Ireland by contrast imprisons 76 per 100,000.
      Scotland also has the highest proportion of probationers under supervision for “offences against persons” in all of Europe.

     While the UK and Scottish government continue to believe that we are somehow, a more criminal population than the rest of Western Europe and proceed with this ancient and barbaric practice of caging people, they refuse to consider the conditions in which they are incarcerated.  

From The Guardian: 

    Europe’s anti-torture watchdog has described conditions in Scotland’s overcrowded prisons as an emergency situation, in a damning report that highlights a rise in drug-related violence, the overuse of segregation, and inmates confined to their cells for lengthy periods of time, sometimes in less than 3m2 of living space.
    Julia Kozma, who led the delegation of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) when they visited five Scottish prisons last October, described witnessing an influx of new arrivals at HMP Grampian. She said it was “like an emergency situation” as staff searched frantically for spare mattresses.
     “We don’t see the numbers going down so the emergency is becoming more and more the norm,” she added.

CCTV shows moment prison officers laugh as they drag prison inmate down a prison corridor.

 

     The blame for this inhumane and barbaric situation lies squarely at the feet of the state and its loaded judicial system. The state oversees a system of intolerable inequalities and continues to pass legislation that ensures that this system of exploitation and inequality persists. Though its priority is to unsure that the wealth and power of the predatory class is preserved, by caging those who dare to transgress its loaded legalities that are legislated to protect that class, they in no way provide for the humane treatment of those so accused and caged.

         The report reserves its greatest criticisms for the treatment of inmates at the Cornton Vale women’s prison, where the delegation found “women who clearly were in need of urgent care and treatment in a psychiatric facility, and [who] should not have been in a prison environment”. They included one woman who had bitten through the skin and muscle of her arm down to the bone and another who set fire to her hair in her cell. Since the delegation’s visit it is understood these women have been transferred to a medium secure psychiatric facility.

     There is no democracy or justice in a society that cages humans and then heaps humiliation, degrading and often violent conditions on them. If we want a better society then we have to treat all our people as human beings. Our present economic system does not allow for that.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk      

Prison Island, UK.

       Looking at the policy of the British state regarding prisons, the impression one gets is that the UK population is the most criminal in Europe. The massive increase in the UK  prison population, up 82% in the last 30 years, puts England and Wales as the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, with Scotland coming in as the third. However it is the definition of criminality that sets the standard. In the UK, those in prison with mental health problems is as high as 80%, prison is the last place for such vulnerable people. A very high proportion of the remaining approximately 20%, are there because  of social and economic problems and injustices.

    Prisons are not there to take "bad" people out of society and reform them, but are there as instruments of repression, to protect the wealth and power of the cabal of corporate and land owning parasites that control the economic system.      The UK state is involved in a massive expansion of prison building, because they see the need to be more repressive to contain the anger and frustration of the ordinary people, they see that anger and frustration as a possible threat to their privileges and power. So it must be contained. More and more legislation, more and more ways of taking people of the street, of closing down opposition. More and more surveillance tracking your every move. More and more prisons to deposit those caught up in their all encompassing dragnet. While a prison stands, nobody is free, the prison shadow hangs over us all. 

This PDF from Prison Watch gives greater detail to the march of the UK repressive state.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Rehabilitation And All That Crap.

Understanding and Tolerance.
        This UK “democracy” charade that we live under has many anomalies, none more so than our prison system. Spouted as the land of freedom, tolerance, compassion, England locks up more of its population than any other Western European country, a staggering 147 per 100,000 of its people are in prison. Since the start of 1993, the number of its citizens locked up in prison has risen from 41,600 to more than 80,000. Further increases are expected. Of course Scotland follows the same trajectory with a 10% rise since 1996/97 to almost 7,000. Northern Ireland saw a fall in the 90's but has now started to follow the UK trend, up to around 1,400. Another massive rise has been in the number of citizens serving life or indeterminate sentences, 7,600 in August 2006, a rise of 27% in a year.

Overcrowding and Ever Growing Prisons.
      Many prisons have more inmates than their target limit, but are at a level considered “safe”. According to this definition, prisons have been overcrowded every year since 1994. Of course the state always works on the theory of ever increasing problems with its citizens, so always plans for more spaces. Since 1997, more than 17,000 extra prison spaces have been created. A further 8,000 are planned,

Bad People, or People With Problems?
      Most perceptions of prisoners are fashioned by the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, and come under the category of “bad “ people. However facts prove otherwise. Almost 50% of prisoners ran away as a child, this compares with 11% of the general population. Almost one third of female and 50% of male prisoners, were excluded from school, with a large majority having no qualifications. Prisons are also dumping dens for for a large amount of those with mental health problems. The prison population has a very large proportion of those with two or more mental health problems. In the general public this figures is less than 5%, in prisons that figure is 72% of male and 70% of female prisoners who fall into that category.

Despair and Violence.
     Prisons are described by the powers that be, as places of rehabilitation, but are in fact places of despair and violence. In the year 2005-6, a shocking 63 prisoners took their own lives. There are on average, over 20,000 incidents of self harm a year. 50% of those who self harm are women, though the account for only 5% of the prison population. To further undermine that false theory of prisons being places of rehabilitation, approximately two thirds of prisoners are re-convicted within two years. Among the younger prisoners released, aged 18-21, almost 75% are re-convicted within two years. And to finally kill of that “rehabilitation” crap, approximately one third of released prisoners have no place to stay, and a majority will have no job on release. Added to that is the brutal fact that six out of 10 employers automatically exclude those with a criminal record. 

 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

No Prisons, No Borders.

      It is a strange fact that as we become, supposedly, more civilised, we lock up more people than ever. That, supposed pinnacle, of Western development America, locks up more people than any other country on the planet and is responsible for a quarter of the world's prison population. The UK has one of the highest prison populations per head, in Europe. These two countries strut the globe shouting "freedom", while the holding the accolade of locking up more of their citizens than anybody else in the West.

 

      The concept of prison is outdated in any truly civilised country, it was built on a failed and false premise. Take a "bad" person, punish them and they will become good. It then was modified to take a "bad "person, lock them up and they will see the errors of their ways and reform. The fact that over the centuries we have seen the prison population grow, can only mean, it is failing, or we are becoming a more "bad" species. Of course we all know that prisons are really there to keep the population in thrall to the established power. There is no place for prisons in any free and civilised society.

An interesting article originally from MediaPart before being translated by Lena Theodoropoulou and appearing in Xpressed:

      ---“Prison was built on the principles of philanthropy: during the time of their incarceration, the offenders would reflect, would improve, would be reborn. History defeated this sad nonsense. A prison can only be constructed on the foundations of absolute spiritual cruelty; otherwise imprisonment is just based on the hope that everything will go well after it ends, hence on something completely inconceivable”. When Catherine Baker (journalist of the libertarian movement, author and supporter of the abolition of prisons) was writing these words in March of 1984, in France there were 38,600 persons held in prisons. Thirty years later this number has increased to 69,000 and the average time of incarceration is more than double (from 5.5 to more than 12 months).----

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Mental Health Prisons!!!

   This system throws up many anomalies, for example, we produce an abundance of wealth, but the majority struggle for a decent life. Is that beyond our imagination to put right? I'm sure we can all come up with a fairer way of producing and distributing the wealth we create, but it would have to be outside capitalism to have any pretence at fairness. Another anomaly in this quagmire of greed we call the capitalist system, is “law and order”. The figures for England and Wales, for the year ending March 2013, state that there were 8.6 million crimes. This is a decrease of 9% on the previous year, it is also the lowest figure since 1981 and is less than half the peak figure of 1995.

     So there we have it, falling crime rates across the country, and that's where the anomaly comes in. The prison population in this country has been rising steadily over the years. In England and Wales since 1993 to the present time the prison population has grown from 40,000, to today's figure of 97,000, in Scotland it rose from approximately 6,000 in 1997 to today's figure of around 7,000. Only in Northern Ireland has the figure fallen I,600 in 1996 to approximately 1,400 today, but Northern Ireland is a special case because of the “troubles” and the state's brutal repression, in the 80's and 90's.

        This land of falling crime has more than 150 prisons and we incarcerate more of our people than any other European country. In England and Wales it is 149 per 100,000 of the population, with Scotland following close behind with 139 per 100,000. How do you square that circle, falling crime, increase prison population? One way to look at it, is that across the country as a whole, we have approximately 1% of the population with mental health problems, our prison population has 10% with mental health problems. So that would be one answer, we lock people up who have mental health problems, instead of offering them care and treatment. Just another brutal statistic from a brutal, uncaring, exploitative system.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

ARE WE JUST A BAD LOT??

        Looking at the figures of the prison population in Scotland, and comparing them with the prison population in other European countries you begin to ask yourself some questions. Take Northern Europe and look at the figures for other countries with a similar population. Denmark, population approximately 5.5m, prison population, just over 4,000. Finland, population approximately 5.3m, prison population, 3,100. Norway, population just under 5m, prison population, 3,600. Ireland, population approximately 4.5m, prison population just over 4,400. Not a lot of difference there, but let's look at Scotland, population approximately 5.2m, prison population 8,178, for the year 2011/12. This was an increase of 4% over the last decade. You are looking at approximately double the prison population in Scotland compared to other European countries of similar population size. What makes the situation worse is that this 8,178 prison population is housed in a prison system with a design capacity of 7,840.

      Could it be that we Scots are just a bad lot, just a wee land of terrible people? Or could it be that we have more problems in our society, poverty etc.  get locked up for problems related to mental health and addiction, or is it simply that we have a more authoritarian government in this country. Probably a combination of all of the last three.

        Prisons are never about justice, they are about control, they are about protecting the establishment, the status-quo, about protecting the wealth and power of those who rule over us. The more they feel threatened, the more the prison population will grow.

ann arky's home,