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mardi 5 décembre 2017

La prison comme laboratoire de maladies : Tuberculose, norovirus dans une prison anglaise gérée par G4S (1600 détenus). Et en Belgique ?

(photo la prison de Oakwood)

Sur le rapport sur la santé des détenus belges voir l'article de Annick Lovine paru dans Lalibre en bas..

SOURCE


Inmates struck down by TB and Norovirus at Oakwood Prison
By Jessica Labhart | South Staffordshire | News | Published: Dec 4, 2017

Cases of TB and norovirus have been reported at a Midlands prison.
HMP Oakwood in Featherstone, near Wolverhampton
One inmate at HMP Oakwood, in Featherstone, is suffering from tuberculosis and ‘around 30’ have the sickness bug.
G4S, the security firm that runs the prison, confirmed the case of TB last week.

The diagnosed inmate was immediately sent to hospital for treatment of the condition which spreads through people inhaling tiny droplets from the coughs or sneezes of an infected person.
It mainly affects the lungs, but it can affect any part of the body, including the stomach, bones and nervous system.

Now, G4S has confirmed that as well as screening inmates for TB, staff are dealing with an outbreak of the sickness bug norovirus, which has already affected 30 prisoners.
The firm says it has isolated the affected inmates to try and halt the spread of the winter vomiting virus too.

The category C male prison has more than 1,600 inmates.

Deputy director for HMP Oakwood, Sean Oliver, said: “We have identified one case of tuberculosis and the prisoner affected has received treatment at hospital and since returned to prison.
“The health of our team and the prisoners in our custody is our priority and alongside our healthcare provider, Care UK, we are liaising with Public Health England and screening those who may have been in close contact with the person affected.”
Symptoms of TB, according to the NHS Choices website are: “a persistent cough that lasts more than three weeks and usually brings up phlegm, which may be bloody, weight loss, night sweats, a high temperature, tiredness and fatigue, loss of appetite and swellings in the neck.”

Tests to find out if someone has the illness include a chest X-ray, blood tests, and a skin test.
National advice on how to tackle the condition states: “Always cover your mouth when coughing, sneezing or laughing.
"Carefully dispose of any used tissues in a sealed plastic bag. Open windows when possible to ensure a good supply of fresh air in the areas where you spend time and avoid sleeping in the same room as other people.”

Speaking of the issue of norovirus at the prison, deputy director Oliver added: “Around 30 prisoners in one of our house blocks contracted Norovirus this week. We are working closely with the prison’s Care UK healthcare team to treat the men affected.
“In order to prevent the illness spreading further, those men who are unwell are being kept in isolation and separate from the rest of the prisoners we look after.”
Symptoms of Norovirus include sudden feelings of nausea, projectile vomiting and diarrhoea.

The news comes as last year, prisoners were taken to hospital after falling ill after taking so-called ‘legal highs’ while serving time at the prison.
Earlier this year, a report by the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) stated the prison had an ‘ongoing issue’ with drones flying in mobile phones and drugs to inmates.
The Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

Read more at https://www.expressandstar.com/news/local-hubs/wolverhampton/2017/12/04/break-out-of-tb-at-hmp-oakwood/#DZcj3IpqZi81KKPZ.99

Les détenus belges sont en mauvaise santé

ANNICK HOVINE Publié le mercredi 18 octobre 2017

Une étude publiée mardi montre qu’ils consultent un médecin 24 fois par an en moyenne. Contre 3 pour le citoyen lambda.
La prison rend-elle malade ? Un détenu consulte un médecin… 24 fois par an en moyenne, dont 18 fois un généraliste et 3 fois un psychiatre. 
Même si on sait que les détenus s’adressent au médecin pour des raisons non médicales (demander un matelas, évoquer un conflit…), la comparaison avec le citoyen lambda est éloquente. Hors les murs, les adultes (âgés de 20 à 50 ans) se rendent en moyenne trois fois par an chez leur médecin de famille, selon l’enquête de l’Institut scientifique de santé publique (ISP) réalisée en 2013. Autre indication : à peine la moitié des personnes incarcérées (51,2 %) déclarent être en bonne santé, pour trois quarts de la population moyenne.

Ces quelques données sont extraites d’un rapport, rendu public mardi, par le Centre fédéral d’expertise des soins de santé (KCE). Aujourd’hui, c’est le SPF Justice qui finance les soins, détermine le cadre de travail, les procédures et même les quotas d’heures de consultation ! Il existe une volonté politique de les transférer vers le SPF Santé publique. Le Centre fédéral d’expertise a été chargé de faire une analyse critique de l’organisation des soins de santé dans les prisons belges et de proposer des scénarios pour le futur (lire ci-contre).

Où est le psychiatre ?

Six équipes de 30 chercheurs ont ainsi pris le pouls des détenus dans les 35 prisons du pays entre avril 2015 et avril 2016. Leur diagnostic est sombre : bon nombre de prisonniers sont en mauvaise santé, souffrant de troubles psychiques, de maladies infectieuses (tuberculose, HIV…) et d’assuétudes.
Ceux qui sont restés en prison au cours de toute la période ont quasi tous (94 %) reçu au moins une prescription médicale, précise l’étude. Pour quels maux ? Les problèmes de santé mentale arrivent en premier : 43 % des prescriptions concernaient des antidépresseurs et des anxiolytiques. On constate pourtant "une quasi absence de contacts avec un psychiatre" dans certaines prisons, disent les chercheurs. Une observation confirmée au cours des entrevues avec les médecins durant leurs visites.

Conflits de loyauté

En principe, les détenus ont droit à des soins de qualité équivalents à ceux qui sont prodigués à l’extérieur par des prestataires de soins indépendants. On en est loin. Pas question de mettre en cause les personnels de santé qui, "avec les moyens du bord", assurent un travail qui mérite considération et respect. Ce sont plutôt les conditions dans lesquelles ils doivent exercer qui posent problème et génèrent des conflits de loyauté. Exemple ? Les médecins des prisons sont impliqués dans les procédures disciplinaires. La direction doit demander l’avis préalable d’un médecin, qui est parfois… le médecin traitant de l’intéressé, avant une mise en isolement.
Les détenus doivent demander une consultation chez le médecin via un formulaire à remettre à un agent pénitentiaire. Où est la confidentialité ? Pour les urgences, il n’existe pas de système de garde uniformes; le "check-up" d’entrée n’est pas assez approfondi; il n’existe pas de dépistage systématique des maladies infectieuses; la distribution des médicaments ne respecte pas toujours les horaires d’administration ni le dosage par prise…
Le rapport pointe encore l’insuffisance de gestion centralisée des soins, la pénurie de prestataires et les retards de paiement des médecins - ceci expliquant d’ailleurs sans doute cela.

La réforme ne sera pas simple

Il faudra beaucoup d’énergie et des ressources supplémentaires pour hisser la Belgique "hors de la zone d’infamie" des statistiques internationales, pointent Raf Mertens et Christian Léonard, directeur général et directeur général adjoint du Centre fédéral d’expertise des soins de santé. "Ce ne sera pas une réforme facile : la culture pénitentiaire n’est pas nécessairement compatible avec celle des soins", pronostiquent-ils.
D’autant que le transfert des soins de santé pénitentiaires de la Justice à la Santé publique ne sera pas budgétairement indolore. Si le KCE n’a pas trouvé de données précises concernant le coût d’une telle opération dans les pays qui ont déjà procédé au basculement, les dépenses de soins de santé aux détenus y ont augmenté… de 20 à 40 %. De quoi faire vaciller la volonté politique ?

Huit fois plus de suicides en prison

Pour la réforme des soins de première ligne, le KCE a retenu deux scénarios. Un : le maintien du système actuel, mais sous l’égide du ministre de la Santé publique. Deux : un système, également sous la tutelle de la Santé publique, où les prestataires de soins (généralistes, infirmiers, psychologues, psychiatres, kinés, dentistes…) fonctionneraient dans une dynamique interdisciplinaire, sous la coordination du généraliste. Une majorité des intervenants marque leur préférence pour ce second scénario.
La balle est désormais dans le camp des décideurs. Si la politique pénitentiaire relève toujours du fédéral, l’offre de services aux détenus a été transférée aux entités fédérées par la sixième réforme de l’Etat. C’est dans ce cadre que le ministre des Maisons de Justice, Rachid Madrane (PS), a initié lundi une Conférence interministérielle sur l’aide derrière les barreaux. "Les détenus sont des citoyens à part entière", rappelait-il à l’issue de cette rencontre. Le plan d’action mis au point par les 13 (!) ministres francophones concernés inclut notamment la prévention de maladies infectieuses (comme le sida) et la santé mentale. Indispensable quand on sait que le taux de suicide est huit fois plus élevé en prison qu’à l’extérieur.
Annick Hovine

vendredi 27 janvier 2017

Two appeals / Deux appels / Twee oproepen : Stop Prison building ! Construction de nouvelles prisons : Stop ! Stop de bouw van nieuwe gevangenissen (UK January 2017/ France septembre 2016)


UK : Pressure mounts for immediate halt to prison building

POSTED BY RECLAIM JUSTICE NETWORK  JANUARY 26, 2017

The Guardian has today published a letter from the Reclaim Justice Network calling for an immediate halt to the government’s prison building programme. The statement, organised by the Network, has amassed more than fifty signatories from service delivery organisations, professionals, activists and academics.
A public meeting is being organised to discuss to the future of the building programme and the opportunities for building safe and healthy communities instead of prisons. Details of this will be announced shortly. To receive updates, join the Reclaim Justice Network mailing list.

The letter printed in The Guardian can be read below.
Wednesday’s opposition day debate on prisons served to highlight the ongoing crisis in the system. At the same time, the government’s “prison-building revolution” is gathering pace, with plans to expand prison capacity by at least 10,000 places. This appears to be a revival of the “Titan prisons” policy opposed by penal reformers and mothballed in 2009. It should be halted immediately. For example, the new prison recently proposed for the site of HMP Wellingborough will more than treble its capacity to 1,600 and grand claims have been made about the opportunities that this will bring in terms of local jobs and financial investment. These plans are being rushed through without full public scrutiny and democratic debate.
The numbers of people criminalised and sent to prison have already spiralled out of control to a record high. Yet prisons do very little to address the needs of people experiencing harm or violence. Building more prisons is not the answer to the current acknowledged failings of the existing system. Rather than investing £1.3bn in building new prisons, the government should be prioritising policies that radically reduce the number of people in prison. This could include meaningful jobs, social housing, healthcare, education, transport – for all.
We are calling for an immediate moratorium on prison construction and a national debate about how to build a safer society and secure communities instead of continuing with a failed policy of criminal justice expansion. We need to build safe and healthy communities – not prisons.

Tom Kemp Reclaim Justice Network Professor Peter Squires British Society of Criminology Will McMahon Centre for Crime and Justice Studies Deborah Coles Inquest Andy Gregg Race on the Agenda Dr David Scott Open University Kate Paradine Women in Prison Jan Cunliffe Joint Enterprise Not Guilty by Association Jodie Blackstock Justice Dionne Nelson Women’s Resource Centre Chryssy HunterBent Bars Project Kevin Blowe Network for Police Monitoring Professor Phil Scraton Dr Sarah Lamble Birkbeck University Professor Pat Carlen Gina Stokes Anawim WWT Professor Joe Sim Pazuzu Gaylord Action for Trans Health Ian Marder Community of Restorative Researchers Margaret Gardener False Allegations Support Organisation Dennis Eady South Wales against Wrongful Conviction Kushal Sood Trent Centre for Human Rights Annys Darkwa Vision Housing Services Gerry McFlynn Irish Council for Prisoners Overseas

The following list of individuals also signed the letter, but were not listed in the published version by The Guardian:

Zack Ahmed, Priscilla Alderson, Helen Baker, Alana Barton, Jessica Bolton, Mary Bosworth, Louise Broadbent, Helen Brown Coverdale, Laura Carrington, Bevali Carver, Kathryn Chadwick, Mary Corcoran, Julie Costley, Jan Cunliffe, Julie Davies, Claire Davis, Anita De Klerk, Deborah Drake, Karen Evans, Finola Farrant, Andrew Henley, Kate Herrity, Anita Hobson, Hope Humphreys, Lisa Ja’afar, David Jones, Terese Jonsson, Stephanie Kewley, Sophie Lewis, Martine Lignon, Jayne Linney, Maureen Mansfield, Agnieszka Martynowicz, Tammy McGloughlin, Gillian McNaull, J M Moore, Alexandra Phillips, Nat Raha, Rebecca Roberts, Abigail Rowe, Rachel Seoighe, Andrew Sperling, Philippa Thomas, Steve Tombs, Rona Topaz, Luk Vervaet, Martin Wright

France : Construction de nouvelles prisons : une politique qui mène droit dans le mur

Le gouvernement annonce la construction de 10 000 nouvelles places de prison pour l’horizon 2024. Une réponse ambitieuse et audacieuse ? Non, une vieille recette qui a déjà fait la preuve de son inefficacité.
69 375 : c’est le nombre de personnes qui étaient détenues dans les prisons en juillet dernier, la France atteignant ainsi des taux de détention inégalés depuis le 19e siècle. Contraignant 3 à 4 personnes à partager des cellules de 9m2 en maison d’arrêt et autour de 1 500 personnes à dormir chaque nuit sur des matelas posés au sol. Au mépris du principe de l’encellulement individuel et de la dignité des personnes, près de 15 000 personnes sont en « surnombre » et une quarantaine de maisons d’arrêt connaissent un taux d’occupation de plus de 150%.
Pour y remédier, le gouvernement annonce la construction de 10 000 nouvelles places de prison pour l’horizon 2024. Une réponse ambitieuse et audacieuse ? Non, une vieille recette qui a déjà fait la preuve de son inefficacité et que les gouvernements successifs continuent pourtant de nous servir comme la seule solution pragmatique… restant sourds aux résultats de nombreuses études et statistiques qui la pointent au contraire comme inopérante, que ce soit pour endiguer la surpopulation carcérale ou pour réduire la récidive.

Que disent les chiffres ? Que depuis 25 ans, près de 30 000 places de prison ont été construites, un effort immobilier inédit entraînant une hausse de 60 % du parc pénitentiaire. Sans effet cependant sur la surpopulation car dans le même temps, le pays a emprisonné toujours plus et de plus en plus longtemps, sous le coup de politiques pénales essentiellement répressives. Des politiques qui seraient rendues nécessaires par une insécurité grandissante, entend-on dire. Une idée reçue là aussi démentie par la réalité, le taux de criminalité étant globalement stable, les homicides et violences sexuelles ayant même diminué ces dernières années. En France comme ailleurs, la courbe du nombre de personnes détenues n’est pas tant liée à celle de la délinquance qu’aux choix de politiques pénales des gouvernants. Des politiques qui se sont concrétisées dans notre pays par l’allongement de la durée moyenne de détention et par une incarcération massive pour des petits délits, avec une augmentation de plus de 33% du nombre de détenus condamnés à des peines de moins d’un an de prison en cinq ans.
Surtout, construire plus de prisons, ce n’est pas mieux protéger la société. Au contraire. La prison produit ce qu’elle entend combattre : elle aggrave l’ensemble des facteurs de délinquance en fragilisant les liens familiaux, sociaux ou professionnels, favorise les fréquentations criminogènes, et n’offre qu’une prise en charge lacunaire – voire inexistante – face aux nombreuses problématiques rencontrées par la population carcérale en matière d’addiction, de troubles psychiatriques, d’éducation, de logement, d’emploi, etc. Conséquence : 61% des personnes condamnées à une peine de prison ferme sont réincarcérées dans les cinq ans. Des chiffres qui tombent à  34 et 32% pour une peine alternative à la prison comme le travail d’intérêt général ou le sursis avec mise à l’épreuve. Tandis que les moyens manquent cruellement aux personnels et aux structures qui assurent l’accompagnement socio-éducatif et l’hébergement des sortants de prisons et personnes condamnées en milieu ouvert, le gouvernement prévoit d’injecter trois milliards d’euros supplémentaires aux cinq milliards déjà engloutis dans l’accroissement et la sécurisation du parc pénitentiaire en une décennie.

Où s’arrêtera cette fuite en avant carcérale ?

A l’heure où plusieurs de nos voisins européens ferment des prisons, où les Etats-Unis réalisent que l’incarcération de masse les a menés dans une impasse coûteuse et inefficace, la France, elle, fait le choix d’une continuité aux coûts économiques, sociaux et humains exorbitants. Pour lutter efficacement contre l’inflation de la population pénale et carcérale, c’est d’une politique pénale humaniste, ambitieuse et audacieuse, visant à investir massivement dans la prévention, l’accompagnement et le suivi en milieu ouvert, dont notre société a besoin.

Organisations signataires :

Action des chrétiens pour l’abolition de la torture (ACAT-France), Association national des juges de l’application des peines (ANJAP) , Association des secteurs de psychiatrie en milieu pénitentiaire (ASPMP), Avocats pour la défense des droits des détenus (A3D), Ban Public, CASP-ARAPEJ (Centre d’action sociale protestant – Association réflexion action prison et justice), CGT-Insertion Probation, Citoyens et Justice, Emmaüs-France, Genepi, Ligue des droits de l’homme (LDH), Observatoire international des prisons, section-française (OIP-SF), Prison Insider, Secours catholique, Syndicat des Avocats de France (SAF), SNEPAP-FSU, Socapsyleg, Syndicat de la magistrature (SM)

lundi 22 juin 2015

Thirty-three children have died in English child prisons since 1990 ! Book : "Children behind bars" by Caroline Willow


Source

Prison, a treacherous place for a child

Thirty-three children have died in English child prisons since 1990. A powerful new book exposes how Britain’s most vulnerable children are routinely damaged by the state. 


When Alex Kelly was six years old, medical examinations revealed that he had been repeatedly raped over many years. He was subsequently taken into the care of Tower Hamlets council.
In January 2012, when Alex was 15, he hanged himself at Cookham Wood young offender institution in Kent. He’d been there for four months. For most of this period, Alex had no allocated social worker, and council workers argued with one another over their responsibilities to him.
Late last year, after an inquest jury concluded that “systemic failure” by the local authority and inadequate safeguarding within the prison had contributed to Alex’s death, the solicitor Mark Scott, speaking for Alex’s father, said: “Alex was extremely vulnerable and a child in need of care but instead was treated as a child in need of custody.” (PDF here)
Children who have suffered the most horrendous hardships in their early lives find little mercy in the state-organised punishment of penal incarceration. From everything that could be known about a child, we select a fraction of his or her behaviour – that which has breached the law – and construe their ‘master status’ as young offender.
Many other descriptors could be used (if label we must) to more accurately reflect children’s lives and circumstances, including victims of poverty, maltreatment, bereavement, educational exclusion and institutional racism. There is no question that the vast majority of child prisoners will have suffered serious human rights violations. 

Alex Kelly

Alex was one of 33 children to have died in English child prisons since 1990. That’s when the UK signed an international children’s rights agreement to use detention only as a measure of last resort.
There has been a massive reduction in the number of detained children over the past five years but, still, the UK remains one of the chief child incarcerators in Europe.
In 1991, there were 572 children held in prison service institutions; in March 2015, there were 706. A further 186 were detained in three secure training centres run by the international security company G4S. (Children were moved out of Hassockfield secure training centre, run by Serco, at the end of last year).
Just 11 per cent of children in custody (112) were kept in secure children’s homes, establishments governed by the Children Act 1989 and run by local authorities.
Only two of 47 Council of Europe member states, Russia and Turkey, detained more children than the UK in September 2013, the latest date for which Council of Europe figures are available.

They are children

A few years ago I set out to write a book about two boys, Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood, who died following ‘restraint’ in secure training centres in 2004. I wanted to find out what they were like as people, what made them laugh, what they enjoyed doing, what plans they had for their lives. I hoped to be able to write about them in such a way as to encourage policymakers to make connections with the children in their own lives they love and cherish, and to thereby stimulate radical action.
Then I read Cruel Britannia, Ian Cobain’s book on the British state’s use of torture, and I decided to widen the scope of my work to examine the many harms caused by child incarceration. Having been a children’s rights campaigner for many years, I was already well aware of many of the scandals. But I knew there was much more to investigate and expose.
My early career as a child protection social worker had equipped me to ask uncomfortable questions, to interrogate information and ‘facts’ presented by adults in positions of power and to always stay firmly focused on the child’s feelings and perspective. Several hundred FOIs, analysis of dozens of parliamentary questions, 24 interviews and months of research and writing, and here we are.
My book, Children Behind Bars, catalogues the mistreatment of vulnerable children held behind perimeter fences and banged up in cells for 14 or more hours a day, sometimes over a hundred miles from home.
These are children banished to young offender institutions known to be violent and unsafe, and secure training centres found by the High Court to have been sites of “widespread unlawful use of restraint”.
Child prisoners are exposed to practices that would invite state intervention were they to happen in the community. A parent who locked a child in a tiny room for more than 20 hours a day would, at the very least, be sent on a compulsory course to correct his or her abusive behaviour. Yet such mistreatment is routinely perpetrated by a punitive state that abandons child protection norms when it comes to young offenders.
What else might explain the lack of public outcry following an inspection report on a Staffordshire prison in March 2014? This told us children were being locked in cells that were “the worst [inspectors] had seen for some time. Some cells were filthy, gloomy and covered in graffiti, and contained offensive material, heavily scaled toilets, damaged furniture and smashed observation panels”. [PDF]
Many of the cells holding children on their first night in the prison were “in an uninhabitable state”.
Three quarters of child inmates were held in pairs in cells designed for single occupancy. The inspectors noted: “Cells were cramped with not enough furniture and inadequate toilet screening.”

Another inspection report that same month tells of children at Wetherby young offender institution in West Yorkshire locked in cells so small they had to sleep “in close proximity to the toilet”. [PDF]
In a third report — released in August 2014 — inspectors who visited Hindley young offender institution, near Wigan, expressed concern about the prison’s punishment and rewards scheme. At weekends, children on its lowest level spent at most 135 minutes out of their cells. Boys sometimes had less than 15 minutes’ daily exercise in the open air. [PDF]
Here’s how Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, sums up the effects of imprisonment on children:
“It’s intellectually stultifying, it’s emotionally inhibiting, it’s sexually inhibiting, it’s frightening, your educational opportunities are restricted. In every aspect it’s negative.”
Six years ago, after investigating the treatment of children and adults with mental health problems and learning disabilities by the police, courts and prisons, Labour peer Lord Bradley reported:
“The prison environment, with its rules and regimes governing daily life, can be seriously detrimental to mental health.”
The Children’s Commissioner for England documented the case of a primary school girl who had suffered domestic violence and family breakdown. As a newly imprisoned teenager, she refused to leave her cell for the first six weeks.
Imagine a child in the community spending the whole of the school summer holidays locked in an austerely furnished room with a toilet, and food trays delivered to the door.
The experience of being sent to prison is deeply traumatic, as this boy told the Howard League for Penal Reform:
“My first night in custody was the worst night of my life. I’d never been lonely before. I felt so lonely.” 
Joseph Scholes left his parents a note before he hanged himself in prison a month after his 16th birthday: “I’m sorry, I just can’t cope.”

See no evil. . .

How can we explain the lack of outrage shown by the general public, the media and among politicians, in response to 33 children dying in institutions run by the state? Do people know?
Information drips from different sources. It is difficult to get the full picture.
There is research and testimony published by campaign groups, human rights bodies and academics. Some of the most shocking evidence is in court reports, inquest transcripts, coroners’ notes and other official documents that take some tracking down.
Then there is the use of euphemism and what psychologists might call avoidance techniques. Officials rarely use the siren call of child abuse when it comes to prisons. 
“Inappropriate” was the adjective chosen by the prisons inspectorate to describe the routine handcuffing and strip-searching of vulnerable children brought to a specialist unit because they could not cope in an ordinary prison.
“Significant weakness” was how Ofsted noted the absence of nurses, in contravention of the rules, during the use of restraint in a secure training centre. Inspectors gave the commercial contractor G4S three months to rectify the breach. In February 2015, inspectors who had visited another G4S-run secure training centre communicated their “concern” that a child with a fracture was denied medical treatment for 15 hours.
Former head of the prison service, Martin Narey, told parliamentarians of “the possibility that the public greatly underestimates the full extent of the discomfort, pain and deprivation of liberty for anyone of any age”. He said: “For a child it is particularly traumatic.”

Significant harm

Knowingly causing children discomfort, pain and trauma fits the definition of significant harm in the Children Act 1989 – the part of the law sending social workers to front doors.
Harm in the 1989 Act means ill treatment or the impairment of a child’s health or development, including, for example, impairment suffered from seeing or hearing the ill treatment of others.
Development encompasses a child’s physical, intellectual, emotional, social or behavioural development. Health means physical or mental health. Ill treatment includes sexual abuse and other kinds of mistreatment that are not physical.

For many years Chris Callender has worked with children in prison, as a solicitor in law firms in Leeds and London and as the legal director of the Howard League for Penal Reform. I asked him if any of his cases involved a child suffering significant harm in prison. He said:  
“Most of the cases are likely to be bullying or intimidation or risk from either other prisoners or officers within the context and confines of the imprisonment. I can’t think of many cases where those young people were free from those issues.

So I just think that incarceration in YOIs [young offender institutions], particularly YOIs, the risk of harm – whether through fights, through turf wars, through bullying, threats from officers to children, or children to children – is endemic.”
According to government child protection rules, physical abuse encompasses hitting, throwing and “otherwise causing physical harm to a child”.
Emotional abuse can include “conveying to a child that they are worthless or unloved, inadequate, or valued insofar as they meet the needs of another person”. It may include silencing the child, belittling them and having inappropriate expectations. Serious bullying, and making children feel frightened and in danger a lot of the time, is a form of emotional abuse.
Sexual abuse can include “forcing or enticing a child to take part in sexual activities”. Neglect is the persistent failure to meet the child’s most basic needs.

You’d be terrified

In July 2013, the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that parents would be ‘terrified’ were their child to be incarcerated in Feltham young offender institution in London.
Had this been a statement from the head of the Care Quality Commission about an older people’s home, or a hospital for people with learning disabilities, the establishment in question would have been closed down. Prison service managers seem to have superhuman resilience to exposures that would topple other organisations.
Feltham young offender institution was the prison in which Zahid Mubarek, a British Asian teenager, was placed in a cell with profoundly disturbed Robert Stewart of the same age. On 21 March 2000, Stewart battered Mubarek into a coma with a table leg. Such was the minimal staffing in the institution, and the physical layout, that it was Stewart himself who first drew attention to the ferocious attack by ringing his cell buzzer.
Nick Hardwick: 'If you were a parent with a child in Feltham you would be right to be terrified'
Zahid died in hospital. The public inquiry into his death heard that prison officers had devised a game called ‘Coliseum’, whereby incompatible inmates would be deliberately detained in shared cells to incite violence and staff made bets on the outcome.
The inquiry was unable to substantiate those claims. However, it discovered that three white prison officers had handcuffed an ethnic minority prisoner to the bars of his cell, removed his trousers and smeared his bottom with black shoe polish. The officers were given official warnings.
Two white trainee prison officers who urinated on a black trainee during a training course were dismissed.
The then head of the prison service Martin Narey admitted: “It goes beyond institutional racism to blatant malicious pockets of racism.

Sexual abuse of child prisoners

There were 181 boys in Feltham at the time of the ‘terrified parents inspection. Almost a third of children reported victimisation by a member of staff. And 300 acts of violence had been perpetrated by children on each other in the six months preceding the inspection. The inspectors found a segregation unit, which also held young adults, with “ingrained dirt on floors and walls”. [PDF]
The prisons inspectorate’s survey of children held in 11 prisons the previous year found 32 per cent of boys and 22 per cent of girls had felt unsafe. More than one in 10 boys and almost a quarter of girls reported being subject to insulting remarks by prison staff. Physical abuse by staff was reported by 4 per cent of the boys. [PDF]
At least nine boys reported sexual abuse by staff and the same number said other boys had sexually abused them. In one prison unit staff sexual abuse was alleged by 6 per cent of the boys. One in every 20 boys reported racial or ethnic abuse by staff. Nearly one tenth of children reported bullying by prison officers in another piece of research; child-on-child bullying was even higher. [PDF]
An FOI request I made to the prisons inspectorate revealed that, between July 2009 and March 2014, inspectors reported 130 child protection allegations from 112 children to prison child protection staff or managers following 30 routine inspections of young offender institutions and secure training centres in England.
Surveys in only two of the inspections resulted in no allegations of child abuse.
The actual incidence of abuse may be much higher. Surveys of children in unsafe surroundings are unlikely, on their own, to elicit the true level of abuse and other concerns.
The Ministry of Justice agency that runs prisons is called the National Offender Management Service, or NOMS. Early in 2014 NOMS disclosed that it had paid £252,370 in compensation over the past five years to individuals detained as children or young adults in 12 English prisons.
Payouts in respect of two child prisons — Warren Hill and Hindley young offender institutions — amounted to £76,000 between 2008/09 and 2012/13. Officials refused to disclose the nature of the claims, supposedly to protect the identity of claimants.
No data was provided for Ashfield young offender institution (which held children until 2013). As a private prison, it is obliged to provide information only as specified in its government contract, I was told. Nor can such data be unearthed using FOI requests, since private prisons are not covered by FOI legislation.
Imprisoning children means more than depriving them of their liberty. It squanders precious time that could be spent investigating what has gone wrong in their lives and changing it. Adolescence is a period of massive transformation, when even teenagers living happy lives require careful handling. Imprisonment is a deliberate act of rejection, banishment and exclusion – the very antithesis of what these children need.
Child prisoners rarely move from being fully included in society one day, to outsiders the next. Barrister and peer Lord Carlile, who conducted an inquiry into the treatment of child prisoners, described the “animalised, brutalised structure” of prison life that compounds what has been missing in the lives of these children. 

Hard lives, inside and out

Our prisons are filled with the poorest, most disadvantaged children who often have considerable mental health and learning difficulties. Even before they begin the admissions process, which involves being given a number, removing clothes and answering questions about suicidal thoughts and substance misuse, the lives of most child prisoners will have told them that they are worthless – certainly worth less than other children.
Analysis of the forms completed when a child has contact with the criminal justice system shows more than a third of girls have been abused and many have endured significant bereavement or loss (29 per cent) or witnessed family violence (24 per cent). Only 17 per cent live with both their parents. [PDF]
 
Children learn in prison that suppressing their feelings and being outwardly tough is the best way to survive. The chances are they believe this already.
Hunger is a common complaint. In January 2014, prisons minister Jeremy Wright told parliament the prison service spent an average of £1.96 a day on prisoner meals in 2013/14, an 11 per cent reduction on the previous year. Even hospitals spend three times as much.
In a recent study of food in young offender institutions, only one of the nine prisons achieved the policy requirement of having no more than 14 hours between evening meal and breakfast.
In June 2014, children were served mouldy bread in Cookham Wood young offender institution — while inspectors were on the premises. [PDF]

I can’t breathe

Coroners and judges have ruled that unlawful restraint regimes continued unabated for many years in secure training centres. Human rights bodies have criticised the UK’s reliance on pain infliction as a tool of restraint.
INQUEST, the charity that supports the bereaved families of children and adults who have died in police and prison custody, told the government in 2007: “the violation of the rights of this large body of children goes worryingly beyond inhumane and humiliating treatment. It has been proved forensically that it presents a persistent risk of injury, suffering or death.” [PDF]
It is a matter of public record that large numbers of children have been injured, many very badly, following restraint in penal institutions over the past decade.
In November 2011, parliament was told that 285 ‘exception reports’ had been submitted to civil servants since 2006 by commercial contractors G4S and Serco in respect of the four secure training centres. The two companies are required to produce these reports whenever children’s breathing has been compromised during restraint, or they have suffered serious injury requiring hospital treatment.
There are details that do not make their way to parliament, such as the five children who suffered six wrist fractures during restraint in Castington young offender institution between January 2007 and September 2008. A reply to a question in parliament in December 2007 reported that only one child had suffered such an injury after restraint in that prison that year. Even the government’s correction in September 2009 did not result in the true figure being recorded. 
The internal report I obtained through an FOI request states that none of the five children was restrained because they were fighting and that most of the injuries were sustained in areas without CCTV.
A separate internal prison review was undertaken after six incidents in which children were thought to have suffered a fractured or broken bone during restraint in Hindley young offender institution (one suspected fracture was later found to have been wrongly diagnosed). The injuries occurred between February 2009 and April 2011, and only one of the situations arose because a child was fighting. One boy made an official complaint to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman after he was moved to another prison. It was upheld.
Information obtained from the Youth Justice Board records, on average, 84 self-harm incidents in young offender institutions, and 16 in secure training centres, every month throughout 2012. Between 2007/08 and 2011/12, 81 children in young offender institutions and 17 in secure training centres required hospital treatment following self-harm.
One teenage girl incarcerated in a women’s prison in Wakefield self-harmed so badly she needed blood transfusions. She was passed back and forth between prison segregation and hospital until her lawyer at the Howard League for Penal Reform obtained a High Court injunction in 2005 preventing her return to prison.
Her barrister, Ian Wise QC, said:
“There were women prison officers who were trying to do the right thing for [the girl] I’m sure, but they were just totally out of their depth. I mean these people have got no training on mental health issues.”

Now, strip

As a child protection social worker, I worked with children who had been sexually assaulted in their own homes. I spent a lot of time reassuring children they were not to blame and no-one had the right to hurt them. Some years later, during my work on Lord Carlile’s inquiry, I met children who had been strip-searched in secure training centres. They said they felt embarrassed, degraded and uncomfortable. One girl told me about being strip-searched during her period; she had to pass her sanitary towel to staff for inspection. [PDF
Had I still been a social worker, and these children were telling me about their fathers, uncles or children’s homes workers, they would have been officially classed as victims of child abuse. But as child prisoners such routine attacks on their integrity were authorised by the state.
Children in young offender institutions have reported being made to squat in front of officers without their underwear.
Routine strip-searching was banned for female prisoners several years before the same policy change for children.
When Lord Carlile concluded that strip-searching is not necessary to maintain good order and safety, the Youth Justice Board promised a review. Its then chair, Rod Morgan, argued in The Guardian: “Some young people arrive in custody with drugs or weapons hidden on their bodies and clothing. The consequences of drugs or knives inside a secure establishment are not hard to imagine, and every precaution, including searching, has been taken to stop this.”
So Morgan and the Youth Justice Board must have had robust evidence that strip-searching was necessary?
Not so.
The Youth Justice Board began collecting strip-searching data only in 2011, five years after the Carlile Inquiry reported and eleven years after it was given legal responsibility for booking children into prisons.
Rod Morgan resigned in January 2007, telling BBC Newsnight: “I have to say to you that a custodial establishment, no matter how good we make them, is the worst conceivable environment within which to improve somebody’s behaviour.”

How to dehumanise

In June 2011, inspectors observed “petty and restrictive” rules operating in Lancaster Farms young offender institution. Only children on the highest level of the behaviour management scheme could wear their own clothes and even this was restricted to their cells and during other very limited periods. [PDF] Earlier inspection reports showed this to be institutionally entrenched.
Five months into the new millennium, inspectors found the prison was experiencing “problems getting Prison Service clothes small enough for many of the residents” and recommended: “Small clothing should be available from Central Prison Service Stores.” [PDF]
This was five years after the NSPCC had published a report from survivors of abuse in care. One of the violations depicted in the report concerned the humiliation of being forced to wear communal clothing:
“If we did not achieve so many points we were not allowed to wear our own clothes.”
The final inspection of Warren Hill young offender institution in Suffolk before it became an adult prison in April 2014 reported that children were made to wear prison clothes but could keep their own underwear and socks. The only washing facility for underwear and socks was cell basins, so “many chose to wear prison-issue underclothes”. [PDF]
A children’s charity was asked to review safeguarding in child prisons and its 2008 report observed that journeys to the young offender institutions get them off to a frightening start. They often arrived late after hours spent in a small, uncomfortable cubicle within a van, frightened not only about where they are being taken to but what will happen to them if the van crashes. [PDF] Some children were given plastic bags to urinate in, a demeaning practice reported by inspectors as recently as March 2014.
Deborah Coles is the co-director of INQUEST and has been working for the charity since before teenager Philip Knight hanged himself in an adult prison in Swansea in 1990. She told me:
“I didn’t have children when I was involved with Philip Knight, and 1994 was when [my son] was born and I do think that, as my kids have grown up, and you see the vulnerability of your own kids who are in supportive environments with food on the table, have got a home, are relatively stable or go to a nice school, and then you look at these kids who are in prison, it just makes you ... it hits you in a different way actually, it makes you even more ashamed.”
Since Philip’s death, inquests have recorded a verdict of suicide for 12 children’s deaths in penal custody, and accidental death for eight of the children. There were four narrative verdicts, five open verdicts, three verdicts of misadventure and one unlawful killing. Accidental death and misadventure are verdicts given when juries decide a death was unintended; narrative verdicts are detailed statements of the background issues surrounding a person’s death; and an open verdict means there was insufficient evidence to return another verdict.
All but four of the children whose deaths were judged to be suicide were known to have self-harmed in the past or were being monitored at the time of their death. You wouldn’t have to be a child psychiatrist to doubt whether the remaining four could withstand imprisonment. One had developed serious alcohol problems after the death of his mother from cancer on his 14th birthday. Another had severe learning difficulties and was worried about his parents who both had cancer. A third child had endured chronic bullying and requested to be placed in segregation for his own safety. The parents of the fourth child criticised  the prison for not allowing their son his medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Two of the 33 children who died as prisoners, 15-year-old Gareth Myatt and 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, were held in secure training centres run by G4S and Serco respectively. These boys died four months apart, 10 years ago, after being subject to appalling forms of restraint.
Gareth Myatt
Before he lost consciousness, Gareth told the three guards holding him down that he could not breathe. The response was that if he could speak he could breathe. He died minutes later from positional asphyxia. The Youth Justice Board suspended the use of the seated double embrace, the authorised hold used on Gareth, two months later.
Adam was subject to ‘nose distraction’ — the official euphemism for a severe assault to the nose — just hours before he was found hanging in his cell. Adam’s nose bled for about an hour, and his request to go to hospital for an X-ray was refused. He left behind a note asking what gave staff the right to hit a child in the nose.
Ministers eventually withdrew this particular technique. However, the deliberate infliction of pain by other methods remains.
Adam RickwoodNone of the 33 child deaths in prison has been dignified with a public inquiry. Adam Rickwood’s mother told me she is still not certain what her son was wearing when he lost consciousness, since the prison had mislaid some of his clothes.
She described Hassockfield secure training centre in County Durham as “the scariest place I have ever witnessed”. Adam himself, in one letter home, described “a 30-foot wall and cage all around me”.

Politicians and large unpleasant thugs

Michael Howard, the home secretary who signed the first contract for a secure training centre, famously said in 1993 that child offenders “are adult in everything except years”.
Fifteen years later, Labour’s secretary of state for justice, Jack Straw, was asked whether he would reverse the UK’s standing in Europe as the greatest child incarcerator. He replied:
“Most young people who are put into custody are aged 16 and 17 – they are not children; they are often large, unpleasant thugs, and they are frightening to the public.”
On that very day, Straw’s prisons minister told parliament there were 458 children in young offender institutions and secure training centres who were known to be at risk of self-harm, 419 at known risk of drug dependency, 310 with known mental health problems and 91 at known risk of bullying. Nearly 400 children were in prison for the first time. 
The justice secretary should have been aware that, of the 30 child deaths in custody there had been at the time of his speech, 24 were children aged 16 or 17. All 30 of the dead children were boys.
The coalition government’s justice secretary Chris Grayling announced through the Daily Telegraph in July 2013 that his department was reviewing the punishment and rewards scheme in child prisons: “It seems ludicrous to me that we dole out privileges regardless of how children behave,” he wrote. “Luxuries must be a reward for good behaviour not an automatic right.”
An international review of prison mother and baby units observed that girls in the G4S-run Rainsbrook secure training centre “can even earn the privilege of putting posters on the walls”. [PDF]
Grayling asserted that children would “face tough sanctions” for breaching a 10.30 pm lights and television curfew.
There are many reasons children come to rely on artificial light and television and radio into the early hours, including fear, loneliness and restlessness.
I have spoken with children who have had everything removed from their cells as a sanction, including photographs and education certificates from walls. Not one of them has ever told me that this helped improve their behaviour.



This is the first of three edited extracts from Children Behind Bars: why the abuse of child imprisonment must end. Part two tomorrow: Mothers and sons. On children who have died in UK prisons. And Wednesday: The sex abusers guarding Britain’s most vulnerable children. Detailed references can be found in the book. 
Children Behind Bars can be purchased from Policy Press here (£12.99 plus £2.75 postage and packing). Subscribers to the Policy Press newsletter receive a 35 per cent discount. You can sign up here.
Original illustration is by Reece Wykes, working in charcoal, digitally enhanced. Wykes is a London-based illustrator and animator freshly graduated from Kingston University. He tweets @ReeceWykes

dimanche 9 février 2014

Grande-Bretagne : Suicide à la Prison de Manchester


HMP Manchester - Grande-Bretagne

Suicides en détention. Il faudrait se préoccuper de tous les prisonniers,
déclare un ex-détenu...

Voici le témoignage d'un ancien détenu de la prison HMP Manchester (High Security Male Prison), paru dans The Guardian (07/02/14) : Deaths in custody review should look at all prisoners

Quand j'étais incarcéré, j'ai été témoin combien le désespoir conduit au suicide de détenus de tout âge, et pas seulement des jeunes...

« J'ai entendu un choc dans la cellule de Michael. Avant qu'ils viennent ouvrir, ça a pris une vingtaine de minutes.

Le gouvernement britannique a annoncé qu'il mettrait en place une commission d'enquête indépendante sur le décès des jeunes de 18 à 24 ans en détention. Je veux leur dire quelques petites choses sur les morts en détention, sur les décès des jeunes et des moins jeunes aussi.

Il y a deux semaines, je suis sorti de prison Manchester, après avoir purgé une peine de 10 mois pour vol de voiture. J'ai été détenu dans une aile réservée, une unité de désintoxication. Je n'ai pas de problème de désintoxication. On m'avait mis là parce que la prison était surpeuplée.

Je me suis lié d'amitié avec un gars, un type de 32 ans, un sans-abri. Il s'appelait Michael Delaney. Je l'avais vu mendier dans le centre-ville à quelques reprises, et je lui glissais quelque tune de temps en temps. Michael était sourd et muet. Il était en prison pour avoir contrevenu à une obligation lui interdisant d'entrer dans le centre-ville. Pourtant, c'était là qu'il avait toujours vécu.

Un vendredi de juin de l'année dernière, Michael a été placé dans une cellule juste à côté de la mienne. Il 22 heures passées. J'ai entendu un gros choc. Avant qu'ils viennent ouvrir ça a pris une vingtaine de minutes. J'ai entendu des appels, les gardes, et puis le verrou qu'on ouvrait. 

« Allez chercher le kit... » 
Je savais qu'ils voulaient parler du 'kit de première urgence', celui pour les suicidés. A présent, toute l'aile était réveillée et tous les taulards ont commencé à taper, à faire du bruit. Puis j'ai entendu un officier dire: « Il est trop tard, il est mort... »

Le lendemain, nous avons appris officiellement que Michael était décédé. J'ai été dégoûté d'entendre le personnel parler de sa mort. C'était comme s'ils avaient trouvé une souris dans une trappe de service. Parce que Michael était sans-abri et n'avait pas de famille, personne ne semblait s'en faire.

Le compagnon de cellule de Michael, Lee, m'a dit ce qui s'était passé. Il s'était endormi après l'extinction des feux. Vers 22 heures 15, il s'est réveillé et a vu Michael pendu à la barre supérieure de leur couchette double. Lee a appuyé sur la sonnette d'alarme et a essayé de soulever le corps de Michael, mais il m'a dit qu'il savait que déjà il était mort.

Manchester est une prison de catégorie A, les portes restent fermées pendant la nuit. Pour ouvrir, il faut qu'un maître-chien arrive. La porte de la cellule de Michael n'a pas été ouverte immédiatement.


Lee a remarqué qu'il était tombé un petit morceau de cannabis sur le sol. Il a pensé que Michael avait dû tirer un dernier pétard. Lee l'a remis aux surveillants, en disant que Michael l'avait laissé tomber. Lee a été laissé seul dans la cellule où Michael était mort. Le lendemain, il a été accusé et mis en examen pour possession de drogue.

J'ai travaillé dans cette prison : j'étais peintre, dans l'aile que j'occupais. Une semaine après la mort de Michael, ils m'ont demandé de passer un bon coup de blanc dans la cellule, en me disant que ça sera plus gai pour le suivant.

Selon une enquête, neuf hommes ont perdu la vie par suicide à la prison Manchester depuis 2010. Cela ne me surprends pas.

Même si je suis heureux que le gouvernement s'occupe des décès en détention des 18-24 ans, qu'en est-il des enfants de moins de 18, des vrais enfants ? Quand j'avais 16 ans, à la fin des années 80, j'ai fait 18 mois à Hindley, dans une institution carcérale pour mineurs. Je me souviens particulièrement d'un jeune garçon de Wigan qui s'est tué. Il devaut avoir 15 ans.


Je l'avais entendu dire que d'autres gars se moquaient de lui, je l'avais entendu pleurer dans sa cellule en arrivant. Sa nouvelle paire de baskets lui avait été 'taxée', comme on dit : il avait été assommé et ils lui avaient prise. C'était un endroit violent. Le personnel savait ce qui se passait, mais il fermait les yeux. Les gars les plus durs semblait toujours obtenir les bons jobs. Pendant que j'étais là, trois garçons se sont pendus.

Des Suicides se produisent encore dans des institutions comme Hindley. Il me semble que rien n'a vraiment changé. Mais le gouvernement ne cherche pas  à savoir plus loin. Différents organismes vont et viennent tout le temps, juste pour passer un coup de langue. Ils demandent aux gars s'ils sont susceptibles de s'automutiler. Presque tout le monde dit non. Aux yeux du système, nous sommes tous les mêmes, des perdants et les branches mortes.»
Marlon Hamer, ancien détenu de HMP Manchester - traduction Bruno des Baumettes

Source : The Guardian (07/02/14)
Lire aussi : PressTV (22/02/12) : Manchester prison suicide rate slammed
Mirror (09/05/11) : Inside Strangeways: Brutal reality of life inside notorious jail

SOURCE Bruno des Baumettes

samedi 23 juin 2012

Support JENGBA : JOINT ENTERPRISE: NOT GUILTY by ASSOCIATION (JENGbA) is a grassroots campaign supporting prisoners who have been convicted under joint enterprise but who are not guilty of the index offence.

Jun-22-2012

Help the UK's Wrongly Convicted Tuesday in London

Stand for justice at JENGbA Campaign Fundraiser; sometimes justice is not blind but the wrongly convicted are...
CD cover of Rapper 'Goddaz'
CD cover of Rapper Goddaz has Jordan Cunliffe's picture above the letter A. Goddaz will be joined by Alabama 3 and others to be announced for the special 26 June event.

(SALEM / LONDON) 
- By the time you are done reading this account of a wrongly convicted boy in England; his mother's pursuit of justice, and her support from one of the UK's most famous wrongly convicted men, you just might be asking where you can sign up to help. 
We all must remember that one single victory for a human being's injustice, is a battle won in the war for human rights, and that is in many respects what it is coming down to.

Our newsroom was advised of an upcoming fundraiser that is worth paying attention to. It is a call to assist an important cause for justice in the UK, and I hope people in the London area get out and support this group in their mission for justice by attending the scheduled event referenced below.

Paddy Hill photo: GuardianUK
Janet Cunliffe photo: Guardian UK
Janet Cunliffe is battling the legal system on behalf of her son Jordan, who she contends, was falsely convicted of Murder.
Myself and Paddy Hill (one of the Birmingham Six who was released on Appeal after 16 long years in prison) are guest speakers. We are hoping to raise money for the JENGbA Campaign as well as raising awareness to the abuse of the law of Joint Enterprise and the horror of being a Miscarriage of Justice as Paddy Hill was and my son Jordan Cunliffe's now is.

Both Paddy Hill and Janet Cunliffe have a great deal to say about civil and legal injustice in the UK today. In fact Mr. Hill can talk about the absence of it in ways that would likely make your skin crawl.
His story is one of false conviction under extreme prejudice, and eventual appeal and freedom. This political prisoner was called a terrorist, and then terrorized for more than a decade and a half by his own government. As the record would later show, Paddy Hill and the others were victims of a terrible miscarriage of justice.
"They have nothing in their whole imperial arsenal that can break the spirit of one Irishman who doesn't want to be broken"
- Bobby Sands

As Ms. Cunliffe mentioned, he is one of the 'Birmingham Six'- men convicted for being Provisional IRA (Irish Republican Army) members complicit in the infamous 'pub bombings' of 21 November 1974 in Birmingham, England that left 21 people dead, and 182 injured.
To this day, it is not clear whether the IRA was even involved in the incident, and it is a fact that Dáithí Ó Conaill, a member of the IRA's Army Council, denied any claim to the act the day following the deadly bombings:

If IRA members had carried-out such attacks, they would be court-martialled and could face the death penalty. The IRA has clear guidelines for waging its war. Any attack on non-military installations must be preceded by a 30-minute warning so that no innocent civilians are endangered.

At the time, Wikipedia states, IRA sources in London said that the bombs might have been planted by Ulster loyalists "bent on stirring-up a wave of anti-Irish feeling in Britain".
Mulberry Bush Pub bombing: justice4the21.blogspot.com
The political and media attention allowed the British occupational war in Northern Ireland to escalate tensions under the banner of terrorism, and these men were prosecuted for a crime that another group they had absolutely no connection to, actually claimed responsibility... the small militant group, "Manchester Brigade of Red Flag 74"; an organization that reportedly broke away from the International Marxist Group and claimed to have about 500 members.

The bombings brought a wave of anti-Irish sentiment; attacks were waged on members of the Irish community in Great Britain, and then just days after the bombings, the 'Prevention of Terrorism Act' was introduced by the British Government.

The Birmingham Six faced charges based on circumstantial evidence, for murder and conspiracy to cause explosions. Three men were charged with conspiracy and two also faced charges of unlawful possession of explosives.
Convicted and sentenced to life in what a higher court later determined to be a fabricated police case, he and the other men: Hugh Callaghan, Patrick Joseph Hill, Gerard Hunter, Richard McIlkenny, William Power and John Walker, who were physically abused by police and sentenced to life in prison, waited sixteen years behind bars for a successful appeal.
The Birmingham Six on the day of their release with
Chris Mullin MP (centre) Courtesy: innocent.org.uk

A police superintendent and two other police officers would be charged with perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, Wikipedia explains. 

Unlike the Birmingham 6, the police were never prosecuted.
Paddy Hill eventually found his freedom, but for Janet Cunliffe and her son, the pain generated by this same legal system drags on. Jordan, a teenage youth, is serving a life sentence for Murder as one of three teens convicted in the death of a father that tangled with the boys, who reportedly had been drinking, after his daughter told him that they were vandalising a garden; and lost his life in a scuffle with the boys.

While her son was convicted by the courts in the death of Garry Newlove, the boy was prosecuted according to Joint Enterprise; an archaic doctrine introduced hundreds of years ago to outlaw duelling- of all things.

15-year old Jordan Cunliffe
"It means anyone associated with someone who commits a crime can be convicted alongside them for the same offence," JOINT ENTERPRISE: NOT GUILTY by ASSOCIATION (JENGbA), the group holding the upcoming fundraising event, explains.
The case against the youths coincided with a public outcry against teen drinking. By all accounts, the boys involved in this crime were made into examples of how harsh court administered penalties can be, but none of it matters of one of the boys is innocent.

Jordan Cunliffe was 15-years old at the time of this terrible, tragic event that robbed the life of a father of three. Without question, there are no words to describe this callous and tragic event that did not cost one life, but four if you think about it.

The problem with all of it, is that Jordan is legally blind, and he says he didn't lay a hand on Mr. Newlove. The prosecution contended that he was guilty - that he could see the crime, and encouraged it.

Yet as the Guardian wrote of the incident:
    For years, he has suffered from acute keratoconus, an eye condition. A medical report produced at the trial stated: "He is eligible to be registered as a blind person and is unable to perform any tasks for which vision is necessary." The report was accepted by the prosecution and read to the jury.
Janet Cunliffe rallying for her son Jordan.
He was still convicted in an emotionally charged trial. The 2007 incident was used as an example by the Conservative party's David Cameron, then leader of the opposition, who pointed to the death of Mr. Newlove as a symbol of "broken Britain".

The Guardian described the widow Helen Newlove's rage against the three convicted youths as "unrelenting".
    Newlove, who supports capital punishment – she told reporters in 2008 that the UK should have the death penalty – believes the trio convicted of killing her husband should never be released from prison.
While it is always natural for a mother to rally for her son, the conviction of Jordan Cunliffe, based on the existing evidence, truly seems full of holes.

From my perspective, it appears that he was convicted under a response to public pressure, rather than on the actual merits of the case.
Baroness Newlove, the victim's wife, continually appears in the media saying her husband was kicked in the head forty times and that my son stood and watched while this happened. This simply is not true.
Garry Newlove died due to a single blow to the neck and this was inflicted by one person. As Jordan wore no shoes and had no marks to his hands or his feet, this proves he played no part in any attack, and more importantly as Jordan was blind, to stand and watch as Baroness Newlove claims is something he most certainly could not do.

Jordan's mother says the case is an important one that shows just how unjust this legal principle is. It brings into the picture a unique problem: victim's families do not always understand what is happening during the trial; who is guilty or why. A select committee brief inquiry recently concluded this legal principle is "confusing for juries".
Jordan Cunliffe, who is legally blind, was
sent to life in prison at 15 for standing near
a crime that took place, even though he had
nothing to do with it.
If a blind 15-year old child can can slip through the net then this can happen to absolutely anyone. People need to start realising just how vulnerable they are if this law stays as it is. People need to show their support and speak out, no one should be made to take responsibility for someone elses actions, especially if they if they have no knowledge of that other persons actions, and the public need to do this now so that this does not have to happen to them or anyone else.

Janet stresses that the Tuesday, 26th June event, that will be held from 7:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at The Tabernacle, 35 Powis Square, London, WA112AY, is extremely important.

A symbol of the growing awareness of the situation facing so many, is the fact that the Rapper Goddaz has written his latest single about Joint Enterprise, and he will be performing it at the Tabernacle and releasing it on the same day. As a staunch supporter of the campaign he will be donating all the proceeds to the JENGbA Campaign. Click image of the CD cover below, or here to download full size PDF with more details about the 26 June event. More entertainment is planned for this special evening; Alabama 3 will appear, along with other high profile guests.

Janet Cunliffe concluded by saying, "I know it will not be possible for everyone to attend, but please be aware, donate to the campaign or inform anyone you think may be interested."
Click image or here to download full size PDF
JOINT ENTERPRISE: NOT GUILTY by ASSOCIATION (JENGbA) is a grassroots campaign
supporting prisoners who have been convicted under joint enterprise but who are not
guilty of the index offence. We are all volunteers who have a loved one in prison for
something they did not do. We are campaigning to highlight the abuse of "joint
enterprise" to convict innocent people, including children, who are serving
mandatory LIFE sentences.

What is JOINT ENTERPRISE?

Joint Enterprise is an archaic doctrine that was introduced hundreds of
years ago to outlaw duelling. It means anyone associated with someone who
commits a crime can be convicted alongside them for the same offence.
PLEASE SUPPORT US – see our website www.jointenterprise.co
Or come along to our fundraiser in London on Tuesday 26th
Sources:
www.jointenterprise.co
Joint enterprise law questioned by mother of teen convict Eric Allison - The Guardian
Birmingham Six - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Birmingham pub bombings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia