The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Campaigners demand end to "cruel and inhumane" prison segregation units 📂 Archived Message

    Posted by sashimi on December 7, 2020, 10:20 pm

    Ceren Sagir, 7 December 2020

    (quote)
    Civil rights icon Angela Davis demanded that the Royal College of
    Psychiatrists (RCP) stop endorsing "cruel and inhumane" prison
    segregation units in a letter today.

    The letter from over 60 organisations and 200 campaigners was signed
    by Davis, journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, author Selma James, former chief
    inspector of prisons Lord Ramsbotham, miscarriage of justice victim
    Winston Silcott, poet Benjamin Zephaniah and a number of practising
    psychiatrists, co-ordinated by Legal Action for Women and Payday men's
    network.

    The campaigners say that they are "outraged" that the RCP endorses
    close supervision centres (CSCs), prisons within prisons, by
    accrediting them with its "enabling environments" award.

    Prisoners say that they are locked in their cells for up to 24 hours a
    day, fed through a hatch and isolated from family and outside support,
    according to campaigners.

    They have also reported attacks from guards who have then faced no
    punishment and complain that there is no transparent process to decide
    who is placed in the CSC, and therefore there is "no way out."

    Campaigners have also warned that there could be institutional racism
    involved as 50 per cent of prisoners held in CSCs are Muslim, while
    the Muslim population of Britain is under 5 per cent.

    Kevan Thakrar, who has been held in a CSC for over 10 years, said:
    "The brutality inflicted upon the prisoners within [CSCs] exceeds all
    other prison environments in the UK, and they cause the majority of
    its residents to develop major mental illness requiring treatment
    within the secure hospitals."

    Campaigners have compared such levels of confinement and deprivation
    of contact with other people in CSCs to "solitary confinement," which
    the UN has said should be banned in most cases.

    Khalfan al-Badwawi, a survivor of solitary confinement in Payday men's
    network, said: "Solitary confinement works to destroy your sense of
    existence, of belonging and of the meaning of life.

    "The scar is left so deep in the mind that the consequences will be
    carried with me for the rest of my life."

    Amnesty International has also said that those in CSCs experience
    "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

    The RCP's centre for quality improvement said: "The Enabling
    Environments award seeks to improve prisons by changing culture and
    improving environments for both staff and prisoners.

    "It is not an endorsement of closed supervision centres, nor is it an
    accreditation scheme so it doesn't hold the power to enable these
    prisons or any other service we work with to keep operating."
    (/quote)
    -- https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/campaigners-demand-end-cruel-and-inhuman-prison-segregation-units

    Message Thread:


    « Index