Prisons - new material (80)
01 July 2011
Long Lartin unit for terror suspects criticised, Dominic Casciani. BBC News UK 18.8.11. This article discuss the “prison within a prison” identified at Long Lartin by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick. The unit which holds seven men who are suspected – but never convicted in a court of law – of terrorism, pays too little attention to the suspects’ isolation, leading the Inspector to state that there needs to be a better balance between security and humane care. Two men have been held for more than 11 years, while one British citizen, Babar Ahmad, has been held for seven years while contesting extradition to the USA. Hardwick said: “We have previously raised concerns about holding a small number of detainees, who already inhabit a kind of legal limbo, in a severely restricted environment for a potentially indefinite period. We were therefore concerned to find that the detainees were no longer able to mix with the wider prison population. These restrictions had apparently been made on security grounds, although the rationale appeared obscure as sentenced terrorist faced no such restriction in the main prison and not all detainees posed the same level of risk.”
Report on an announced inspection of HMP Ford, 29 November – 3 December 2010. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons 2011, pp. 130. On New Year’s Day 2011, a major disturbance at HMP Ford, West Sussex, which lasted for 22 hours, caused considerable damage. This report describes conditions in the prison a month before the disturbance took place, noting that the inspectors’ had expressed "serious concerns" about the way it was being run. The inspectors had found more than 40% of inmates said drugs were easy to obtain and that alcohol-smuggling, highlighted after previous visits, remained a problem. The report also found the prison was failing to prepare inmates for life outside, leading a spokeswoman for the Prison Reform Trust to comment: "Today's report on Ford reveals a worrying lack of urgency to deal with problems of poor resettlement” The report is available as a free download at:http://www.justice.gov.uk/inspectorates/hmi-prisons/docs/Ford_2010.pdf
Twisted: the use of force on children in custody. The Howard League for Penal Reform, 2011, pp. 6 (ISBN 978-1-905994). This briefing observes that there are more children in custody in England and Wales at any one time than in any other country in Western Europe and that physical force is routinely used on them – often with disastrous effect. It examines the sanctioned use of force on children in custody using statements by young people as evidence.