A ‘not for profit’ publication /57,000 copies distributed monthly / ISSN 1743-7342 / Issue No. 140 / February 2011
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the National Newspaper for Prisoners
Early prison recordings, Opera, Hip Hop, Rock and Roll, Album/Game reviews ... plus much more!
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‘Something of a Time Bomb’
More than 1000 ‘Psychological Assistants’ recruited in the last five years
T
he recruitment in the past five years of “Psychological Assistants” - people who are not required to have any experience or qualifications whatever to do the job - to work in the publicly run Prison Service in England and Wales, has been 10 times greater than for ‘Trainee Psychologists” and 20 times greater than for ‘Chartered or Registered Forensic Psychologists’.
Psychologists joining the public sector Prison Service in the last five years Chartered Psychologist Trainee Psychologist Psychological Assistant
49 98 1015
Total
1162
required. In these circumstances there will always be the temptation, indeed, the inevitability, of using unqualified members of staff to undertake work of critical importance. In a letter in this issue of Inside Time (Fit to practice? page 3), a prisoner at The Mount complains that his wildly inaccurate risk assessment and psychology report for the Parole Board was, in fact, compiled by a trainee. Such complaints are not, by any means, uncommon. And yet a letter seen by Inside Time written by a Senior Psychologist working in a large prison in the North of England, and addressed to a Member of Parliament, boldly asserts: ‘We have explained in previous correspondence that all staff writing reports are fully trained to do so. Where the authors are Forensic Psychologists in Training, the report is also supervised by Chartered/Registered Forensic psychologists. This is in line with National guidelines’.
The Ministry of Justice figures given in a Parliamentary Question show that in the past five years the number of “Trainee Psychologists” and “Psychological Assistants” combined, was more than twice the total number of qualified Psychologists registered with the statutory regulator - the Health Professions Council.
Commenting on the ratio of qualified staff to trainees and assistants, David Crighton, formerly Acting Chief Psychologist at the Ministry of Justice, told Inside Time: ‘the figures appear to show something of a time bomb’. That apart, it would seem to be an existent scandal.
The 253 Registered Forensic Psychologists working in prisons and Y.O.I.s in England and Wales in 2010 (table page 30) were few in number compared to the thousands of prisoners for whom interviews, reports and courses were
Further comment by Kerry Manning independent psychologist page 30 Are prison psychologists always legal? by Bob Johnson page 30
Jeremy Moore represented Barry George in his successful appeal proceedings and subsequent re-trial where he was acquitted.
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a voice for prisoners since 1990 the national newspaper for prisoners published by Inside Time Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of The New Bridge Foundation, founded in 1956 to create links between the offender and the community. Inside Time is wholly responsible for its editorial content. Comments or complaints should be directed to the Managing Editor and not to New Bridge.
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Trevor Grove - Former Editor Sunday Telegraph, Journalist, Writer and serving Magistrate. Geoff Hughes - Former Governor, Belmarsh prison. Jim Knox - New Bridge Trustee and Management Consultant Eric McGraw - Former Director, New Bridge (1986-2002) and founder of Inside Time in 1990. John D Roberts - Former Company Chairman and Managing Director employing ex-offenders.
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If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Medical Inappropriate joke .....................................................................................................................
confidentiality?
R. Gleave - HMP Hull
........................................................
I write in response to Kevin Bennett’s letter ‘Peeping Females’ (November issue) and the October issue regarding male staff peeping through the doors at female prisoners at HMP Holloway. These articles also made us laugh here at HMP Hull. Though we laughed, it is a serious breach of trust. I was in a similar position recently for which I was put on basic for the act of masturbating. Though I was actually on the toilet at the time in what I believed to be the privacy of my own cell. I was put on basic after receiving only one strike because the female officer who reported me stated that it was still happening after her third time of looking through the spy hole. At no point did she knock on my door to let me know she was there, let alone shout ‘Female on the landing’. Looking through the door flap, staff have a clear view of the toilet area. At HMP Doncaster the cells are the same design as here at Hull, but prisoners there raised, through the complaints system, the subject of the staff being able to view them on the toilet. Action was taken by the governor and he authorised every cell to have a curtain around the toilet area for the sake of decency. But getting back to the subject of peeping female staff, here at Hull there is what can only be described as a design fault with the showers. There are 4 shower cubicles on each of the 3 landings and that enables staff and other prisoners to look down at the lower landings and view naked prisoners in the shower. Many prisoners, including myself, have had to resort to wearing boxer shorts in the shower to stop us being perved at. When I reported this to a high-ranking officer I was not taken seriously and was spoken to as though I was some sort of shy little boy. All such incidents reported to staff should be dealt with in an appropriate manner and not treated as a joke.
Importing Guantanamo
..................................................................................................................... John F Kelly - HMP Garth Now one can conclude that our government has condoned, even facilitated, the torture of British citizens abroad, perhaps it should come as no surprise to learn of the wholesale torture being inflicted upon our citizens here at home in British prisons.
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The Prison Reform Trust has recently published their report Unjust Desserts. Within this document is outlined the terrifying plight of IPP prisoners. Although the IPP scheme had only been running for 5 years (at the time the Report was compiled), already this sentence had created a massive increase in mental health problems amongst IPP prisoners, underscored by a near 50% rise in suicide rates (when compared to the non IPP estate). With huge swathes of the legal profession, including some judges, all seriously questioning the cruelty, to say nothing of the viability, of the scheme, it would be only ‘just’ to totally abandon the project and revert to former sentencing practise. Evidently the 2008 tinkering with the scheme only added layers of greater complexity and muddle to an unsustainable obscenity. Even the Prison Governors Association felt obliged to issue a press release, on 8th of July 2010, titled ‘A Stain on our Criminal Justice System’, wherein they pull no punches in stating the ‘basic principles’ of decency, trust and fairness are totally undermined by the IPP scheme.
Michael Boylan - HMP Kilmarnock Of all the abuses I have witnessed in my time as a prisoner the casual disregard of a prisoner’s rights and personal dignity by prison staff is the hardest to understand and accept. I could give numerous examples but privileged medical information is a fair place to start. It is common practise throughout the prison system that at a specific time each day an officer will stand at the end of a landing, workshop or other communal area and shout ‘Methadone! Come and get your methadone!’ The recipients of this drug will then be asked to queue up for their medication. Being prescribed methadone carries an undeserved stigma, it brands the recipient as an ex heroin addict. To join this queue after a prison officer has informed the entire prison that this is the line for methadone is a completely unnecessary daily humiliation. It undoubtedly breaches a prisoner’s human rights and disregards any thoughts of medical confidentiality. I do not believe this practise is specifically designed to degrade prisoners; it is just one example of the careless disregard of a prisoner’s personal dignity which has been ingrained into the psyche of the average prison officer.
Email a Prisoner Sponsors of the Mailbag section To find out more about the EMAP service see page 21 for details and look for the orange flash under the adverts of firms and organisations using the service.
The current government has had the courage to recognise that tinkering with a thing only makes it absurdly and inoperably complex. Abandonment and back to basics is the only solution.
EMAP
Please note that it is only the ‘empire building’ psychologists who seek to applaud the spurious benefits of the scheme. As the whole affair is tantamount to false imprisonment and the wilful infliction of torture upon IPP prisoners, then perhaps psychologists, alongside the architects and other proponents of the scheme, should face a ‘class action’ for wreaking such conscious and methodical suffering on others. Doubtless they will equally applaud the fact that such charges carry the potential of life sentences and an IPP.
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Star Letter of the Month Congratulations to Ben Barnes - HMP Nottingham who wins the £25 cash prize for this month’s Star Letter
Please take me back to prison ..................................................... Ben Barnes - HMP Nottingham I write about an issue that has been ongoing since June 2010, and which remains unresolved. My home area is the city of Plymouth, Devon, which is why I’ve spent part of my imprisonment at HMP Dartmoor. Around the 4th of June 2010 I was transferred from Dartmoor to HMP Nottingham, from where I was subsequently released. HMP Nottingham is approximately 155 miles from my home area. Having been released under license conditions I was forced into a hostel, in Nottingham, called Trent House. I had never been to Nottingham before and had no family, friends, nor connections to the place at all! In spite of the position I found myself in, I made every effort to turn my life around and adhered strictly to the terms of my license. Probation told me that I had to stay in Nottingham, despite the distance from family and friends. I asked to attend Brackenhurst Agricultural College, but this was refused. I then asked for training as a forklift driver, British sign language, gardening, bricklaying, or plastering – anything that might give me a new skill and a chance in the job market – but I was refused permission for any of these. I then asked if I could have a new CV made up, again the answer was NO! How are you supposed to get rehabilitated, even on the out, if probation refuse to help? In the end, after getting no support from probation or the hostel staff, I walked into the central police station and asked them to arrest me and send me back to prison. At first the police refused, but I stood there until I had broken my curfew – a condition of my license – and I was arrested and eventually returned to prison. I can now apply to be transferred to a prison nearer my home for when I am released next time. The truth is that no one gave a damn about my situation. I received no support whatsoever from probation, and I think it’s disgraceful. Editorial Note. This is a disgraceful tale. We have sent Mr Barnes’ letter to the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) for a reply which we hope will provoke an investigation into whose side the Probation Service is on.
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Fit to practice?
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Blame the government for Ford riot
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Name Withheld - HMP The Mount I note that on page 26 of the January issue Consultant Forensic Psychologist David Crighton has misled your readers. I say this because the trainee psychologist who wrote my HCR – 20 risk assessment and psychology report for my parole hearing (which destroyed my chance at cat D) did not portray me correctly as per my answers to her questions. She also wrote things in her report that I did not even say, hence she has lied, and I can prove it. Because of her inaccuracies and lies I reported her to the BPS (British Psychological Society), and received a reply from Kaval Panchel who referred me to the HPC (Health Professional Council). But, when I complained to them the case manager from the Fitness to Practise department, Cara Donald, informed me that as the psychologist in question is not registered with them there was nothing they could do. So, you might want to let your readers know that if they feel they may want to complain about a psychologist they should first make sure that the person in question is actually registered with HPC. Otherwise all that waffle about ‘the best interest of the service user’ means absolutely nothing.
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Contents
Ian Hitchings - Gwent
Mailbag ......................... pages 2-9
The New Year eve riots at Ford open prison could have occurred at any time because of the system used by this government’s Prison Service Offender Management Unit for prisoner categorisation and allocation. Through decades of government neglect, spaces in closed prisons are now so short that this irresponsible government are fast tracking newcomers straight into open conditions. So the once stringent security-risk assessments which were necessary for obtaining a prisoners categorisation status have now become so relaxed and non-existent, any prisoner can voluntary apply themselves for their re-categorisation to a “D” category status.
Newsround .............. pages 10-17
It never seeks to amaze me who the Prison Service Offender Management Unit automatically locates into open conditions, despite the presentational risks that they might pose to the public. Proof of this can be found in the numerous times police warn the public not to approach absconders as they are dangerous. Let’s face facts here; at least 70 prisoners had absconded from Ford Prison over a 12 month period. Amongst them were three murderers and 11 foreign nationals, who simply walked out. What the hell was this government thinking by giving asylum seekers the privilege of being detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in open prison conditions? God only knows! Don’t blame the prisoners for these riots or the prison staff for their failures, as the blame should lie firmly at the government’s door for their decades of unfortunate and regrettable neglect of the prison service. See pages 22-23
Diary ........................... pages 18-19 Planets ............................... page 20 Astrology ........................... page 21 Comment ................... pages 22-30
Ford New Years’ Eve riot .. Pages 22-23
Thoughts for the Day ....... page 31 Quote of the month ....... page 32 PSI Updates ........................ page 33 Valentines ................. pages 34-35
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Mailbag
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. minutes before Julian’s arrival, Justice Minister Kenneth Clarke had a look around the jail before leaving.
Julian Assange is a hero! ........................................................ Paul R Denton - HMP Wandsworth I was privileged to meet WiKiLeaks founder Julian Assange when he was on remand here at HMP Wandsworth. He was dressed in prison greys and carrying a plastic bag. He was given a single cell opposite the Principal Officer’s office. Everybody wanted to meet him and shake his hand, and he looked a bit shellshocked by the incredible amount of media attention. Tall, thin, and grey-haired, his face showed a thoughtful soft-mannered and intelligent man. He shook my hand and said ‘Julian, Aussie’. Obviously a man of few words. I said ‘Paul Denton, South Africa, I’m also a political prisoner’. Outside the walls the vans of the international media were holding a vigil, which meant that the prison authorities were on their best behaviour for a change. Only
The impact Julian Assange has had around the world is truly amazing. I cannot help thinking that had WiKiLeaks been around when America and Britain ‘believed’ Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, perhaps the invasion of Iraq might have been avoided. Perhaps if governments were more transparent then brave soldiers would not have to invade other countries under false pretences. The truth is, with Iraq, we didn’t wait for a second UN resolution and instead of the Iraqis seeing the Americans as liberators they saw them as invaders. This is why I believe that WiKiLeaks performs an important function and can, in fact, save the lives of our troops. What WiKiLeaks is doing is making the world a safer, more accountable, more transparent place. Julian Assange should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is a hero of the people and a history-maker. Sadly, after only one night on our wing he was moved to the segregation unit for ‘his own protection’. If so-called ‘intelligent’ people like Sarah Palin and Robert Gates want Mr Assange ‘neutralised’ then they must have something to hide and everything to fear. I hope the dismantling of power structures within the western bloc will show that humanity can live in peace.
Views expressed in Inside Time are those of the authors and not necessarily representative of those held by Inside Time or the New Bridge Foundation.
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org nonsense again, and lose what I had only just begun. In the end, I decided that if I were to do anything with my life, I first had to try. I duly filled in the necessary forms and found to my delight that Kleeneze did not care if I had a criminal record. I also disclosed to our up lines in the business and they respected me for it; saying that it must have taken some guts. They also do not care about my record and support us just as much as they do with other team members.
Catalogue of successes
........................................................ Geoff - former prisoner In response to the headline article in the December issue, ‘Priority for former prisoners’, I would like to tell you about an experience I have had. I left prison in September 2009, and looked for work while signing on. As my legal obligation required, I disclosed to any potential employers that I dealt with. You can imagine the responses I got. I have worked all my adult life, so I was determined not to let this problem get in the way of getting back into work. As it happened, a leafleting job practically fell into my lap, and although the pay was very low, and the hours were long, I was set on getting off benefits and start earning a living again. Meanwhile, my partner had a small Kleeneze catalogue round, which she had started while I was inside. It gave her something different to do with her day, and she could meet new people and earn some money while so doing. I was sceptical of the potential of Kleeneze, though I did help her occasionally. Initially, I would go out with her after dark when she did deliveries, and later when I had acquired a car I would help when it was raining. Gradually I became more and more involved and I took over some of the work when her Dad was taken into hospital. By December 2009, my interest was piqued enough that I invested in enough catalogues so that we could do a round in some villages near us. This was a huge success, but I still wasn’t completely convinced it was for me.
So I started a round completely separate from Ali, in a different part of town, as an experiment to ‘see if it really worked’. To my amazement, it did. It was a difficult decision to let go of the leafleting work, even though I hated it, in favour of something I had to build virtually from scratch. The leafleting money was low but regular, and the work was hard. But eventually the penny dropped that Kleeneze was something worth getting into. I finally made the decision to quit the leaflet job, and jumped in feet first, going full time in our business at the beginning of May 2010. Since then, we have begun to build our own team of distributors, with the intention of growing our business and ensuring our financial security. Nobody is going to tell me I can’t work because of something stupid I once did, and no one is going to deprive me and my family of our self respect and a future worth having. There are a lot of people who offend once and never again. Just because someone has been to prison does not mean they will automatically re-offend and they should not be judged in this way. Kleeneze does not judge and has not even asked what my offence is. The government wants ex-prisoners to get back into work but the disclosure laws make this virtually impossible for years after release. The stigma of being an ‘ex-con’ does just as much damage. Being self-employed and running my own business means that I can never be made redundant or sacked, and I do not have to answer to anyone about my past. What I was taught inside about getting training and employment after prison was a load of crap as it did not relate to the real world outside and people’s attitudes to having been in prison.
Before I became involved, my partner Ali said I should be registered as a distributor. The thought of doing so made me worry again, as I didn’t want to go through the whole disclosure
I hope this helps someone in my position, or soon to be. It is not all doom and gloom if you have the right attitude. Millionaire James Caan said that “it is your attitude not your aptitude that determines your altitude”.
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
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Powder-keg on a shoestring
What’s in a name?
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Operation Dis-enhancement - Dartmoor
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Keith Rose - HMP Long Lartin
A. Moobeng - HMP Dartmoor
John Burns - HMP Albany
Whilst Inside Time may have an extensive readership within prisons, it is perhaps surprising that the national media find it necessary to trawl through its pages in search of any item with which they can denigrate prisoners.
Robert Coello was a convicted sex offender, so there are those who will say he got his ‘just desserts’, but I think the rumour which says he was ‘boasting about his crimes’ is total crap. He left Albany for Grendon in order to sort his life out. So what has happened to the selection procedures at Grendon? If Grendon has to ‘work psycho-dynamically with serious and violent offenders’, some of whom are described as ‘damaged, dangerous and disturbed’, then where is the staff culpability in this murder? Before anyone is accepted for a period of assessment on the induction wing at Grendon, a protocol for checks occurs. So what happened here? Did the men involved, for example, have any adjudications in the 6 months leading up to their acceptance at the prison? Or was a ‘calculated risk’ taken? Dr Wilson argues that Grendon suffers from ‘a lack of resources’, so why run such a powderkeg on a shoestring? One cannot do anything on the cheap, but neither can one use a plaster to fix a large hole.
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In the December issue of Inside Time, Colin Gunn reported his Ombudsman success in an ongoing battle with Whitemoor prison officers to call him Mr Gunn. In response to his letter, the tabloid press and several TV channels ran extensive hate campaigns against him over a period of several weeks. As the Ombudsman found in Colin’s case, it is not unreasonable to expect to be called Mr Gunn. Perhaps if every time the name ‘Gunn’ was bellowed on a landing at Whitemoor, all prisoners within earshot sought cover or crashed to the floor in anticipation of a shooting incident, Whitemoor staff may have been quicker to use the honorific ‘Mister’. In 2010, some 54,000 people changed their names by deed poll. In the not too distant past, one prisoner, like Colin, tired of being addressed by his surname, changed his name by deed poll to ‘Sir’. It amused him to be addressed as Sir for the rest of his sentence. English law states that you can call yourself anything you like. If you want to go through life as R2D2, 3CPO, Luke Skywalker, or Darth Vader, then there is nothing to stop you. Extending that thought, perhaps prisoners seeking more respect should take advantage of deed poll law. Changing your name to My-Lord, Majesty, Your Highness, Great One, Magnificence, and so on, are entirely valid.
There is something rather alarming going on here at HMP Dartmoor. I will call it Operation Dis-enhancement - a massive and ruthless campaign to take away every prisoners Enhanced status and make us all Standard or Basic. Whether this is a cost-cutting exercise or simply because the screws cannot stomach seeing us with DVDs, Playstations, and wearing our own clothes (now banned on visits, incidentally) is something only they know. It all started one afternoon when we returned from work and found a slip tucked under every door instructing us to appear before the governor and explain why we should not lose our Enhanced status. The onus of proof used to be on staff as to why they would downgrade a prisoner from Enhanced to Standard or Basic, but now it is up to us to prove why we should remain on Enhanced! On the day of the ‘Enhancement Review Meeting’ the governor started by asking us what we were convicted of, how long we were serving and whether we pleaded guilty or not. I’m still wondering since when has our offence or our plea at court got anything to do with being Enhanced? Or was it just a ploy to embarrass those prisoners on the VPU? Most prisoners answered these unwarranted questions but others objected to this line of questioning, pointing out that it was irrelevant to the issue in question. Unsurprisingly, those who questioned were later told that their behaviour was unacceptable and resulted in an IEP warning. Another example of IEP being used to bully prisoners. Within a week of the review most prisoners lost their Enhanced status via slips being tucked under their doors saying ‘sorry to inform you that you have lost your enhancement as you no longer meet the requirements expected of our enhanced prisoners’. The lucky few who escaped this situation also received a slip stating ‘you will remain on Enhanced but you are reminded that should your behaviour fail then your status will be reviewed immediately’. People have worked hard to earn Enhanced status and spent years in different institutions on Enhanced level only to lose it when they arrive here at Dartmoor. This cannot be right. If you are thinking of transferring to this prison then my advice is ‘Don’t’, unless you want to spend the rest of your sentence on Standard or Basic. I also know that when this letter is published I will lose my Enhanced status, but people must be warned about what is going on here. keepfighting-170x260-2010-v3:swain-170x260 17/11/10 16:37 Page 1
So, if you as a prisoner feel that you are not getting the respect you deserve, Archbishop, Eminence, Your Grace, etc are all valid, lawful possibilities. You could even change your name to Hewett, and thus claim kinship with Prince Harry the Ginger!
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I write in regard to the article by Dr David Wilson, ‘Grendon: A Prison in Danger’ (November 2010 issue). The murder of Robert Coello shows that something in Grendon’s selection procedures has gone seriously wrong. And I would like to remind commentators that it was ‘The murder of Robert Coello’ and not ‘The death of…’ as the latter phrase is euphemistic in its description. I cannot believe that nobody heard or saw anything whilst this man was being stamped to death. One finds it difficult to break wind in prison without it being witnessed, so I cannot understand how, in a prison that purports to only accept people who want to change their lives, this could happen.
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Mailbag
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Whose money is it, You’re fired! .................................................................................................................... anyway?
David Baker - HMP Frankland
I was recently watching the TV show The Apprentice, and decided to take a leaf out of Lord Sugar’s book. I told the OMU and my Offending Manager ‘You’re fired!’ In retaliation they have dropped me from Enhanced to Standard. I find this rather amusing, like a divorced partner doing something spiteful because I had finished with them. I hope they don’t want maintenance money! However, the whole episode got me thinking. There are 85,000 plus prisoners in the system, and if we all decided to use our legal right of refusal at the same time, like the right to refuse courses which are supposedly ‘voluntary’, then OMU and Probation would be well and truly snookered. In fact, they would be out of a job, because if no one was doing courses then the system wouldn’t need anyone to facilitate them. ‘Yes’, I can hear those apologists and lovers-of-the-system, the ‘keep-your-head-down’ brigade, saying – ‘But we wouldn’t progress’. Yes, you would, and a lot faster than you do now. Think about it – prison is constantly moving, people get convicted by the courts every day and each jail only has so many cells. If the whole prison population was refusing to do courses and the prisons were refusing to progress them, then the system would grind to a halt. Where would they put the people who are being convicted daily? Remember the government are closing 6 prisons. You, the prisoner, have more power over your destiny than you think. Courses are a social experiment, an attempt by governments, terrified of the tabloid press, to show people that they are doing something to tackle the crime rate. Courses clearly don’t work, they just provide employment for trainee psychologists and in-house Probation Officers, and allow some prison officers to have a fancy title like Offender Manager. They even call these courses ‘treatment’ – well, excuse me, I didn’t even know I was sick! You don’t have to have courses imposed on you, and they can only get away with it because of prison’s divide and rule policy. If everyone refused to participate then there is nothing they could do. Sooner or later we will be allowed to vote, and in some marginal seats up and down the country a few hundred prisoner’s votes could decide the outcome in a particular seat. And in a hung Parliament a few seats can mean the difference between government and opposition. For too long we have let the system push us about, but 85,000 prisoners refusing to do any courses and voting tactically could drastically change the way prisons are run. Think about that the next time you are sitting on a sentence plan board and being spoken to like you are a five year-old. Just tell them - OMU, Psychology, Probation, Offender Manager – You’re fired!!! If enough of us do it then they would soon change their tune. If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters (concise and clearly marked) to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, if you have a query and for whatever reason do not wish your letter to be published in Inside Time or appear on the website, or yourself to be identified, please make this clear. We advise that wherever possible, when sending original documents such as legal papers, you send photocopies as we are unable to accept liability if they are lost. We may need to forward your letter and /or documents to Prison Service HQ or another appropriate body for comment or advice, therefore only send information you are willing to have forwarded on your behalf.
........................................................ Alan Kerridge - HMP Stocken I am approaching my SED and have been told by HMP Stocken that when I am released I will be issued with no more than £100 in cash. This includes the £46 discharge grant. The last time I was released from this prison the same rule applied. I was given a cheque for the rest of my private cash/spends. Along with this was a letter to the NatWest Bank, stating that the cheque could be cashed ‘instantly’ at any NatWest branch. I was released on Christmas Eve and had to travel some 45 miles from a rural prison to a hostel. By the time I arrived I was too late to cash the cheque at a Nat West branch, so I was forced to go to a Money Exchange shop, who charged me 20%. I have asked the prison to give me cash for the whole balance of my money and offered to sign the disclaimer form, PHX131, which PSO 7500, (Finance) section 10.2.17 allows me to do (apparently). I say apparently because I am not allowed to see PSO 7500! It cannot be found in the prison library. The prison have refused to issue either the disclaimer form or the cash. They insist on a cheque. In my view, this is money that I have worked for and saved in order to help me start again when I get out. I think I should be entitled to have it in cash if I want it, but Prisoner’s Monies say I should have ‘exceptional circumstances’. I have no discharge address or bank account and the prison will not help me open one. They will not consider a ROTL the day before discharge, even though I’m a Cat D. This matter is very typical of the lack of common sense or compassion I’ve experienced at Stocken. The governor has apparently said that PSOs and PSIs are ‘only for guidance’. So we are being treated like children.
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Yes Minister!
........................................................ Kevin Willis - HMP Usk
In response to Shek Ahmed’s complaint (December issue) about psychometric tests, I would say that these do not only adversely affect those with different cultural backgrounds. In general these ‘tests’, which by the nature of their name either result in ‘success’ or ‘failure’, subject us all to this Americanised system that requires only a ‘yes/no’ or ‘true/false’ answer. Some of these questions either do not have a right or wrong answer, or do not even have a believable scenario presented within the question. Also, they do not take into account that an individual may not be qualified to even answer a certain type of question. I made the same kind of complaint that Shek Ahmed did and was also told ‘you must answer the questions’. I was actually told by the officials - ‘Yes, it is a weak system but it’s all we’ve got to work with’. So, making guesses to these questions is something I now term as the ‘Hacker/Appleby Syndrome’ - which comes from the episode of Yes Minister when Jim Hacker asks Sir Humphrey to give him a straight answer to a straight question? Sir Humphrey replies ‘So long as you are not asking me to resort to crude generalisations or vulgar over-simplifications such as a simple yes or no, I shall do my utmost to oblige’. Nuff said?
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
If this Mirror story had any truth in it ...
..................................................................................................................... No name supplied - HMP Risley I would like to draw attention to a situation that prisoners are facing daily here on B wing at Risley, and I would like to hear a response from the prison.
Charles Bronson - HMP Wakefield CSU
So how can I get my side heard? ‘The Butter Riot’ … I have no excuse, it’s just a build up of madness. My visitors have been banned, I’m in solitary, no progression, my mail is stopped, they’ve set dogs on me, starved me, stopped my art, they tape my phone calls, do me with nerve gas and pepper spray, and they keep me in a cage! What’s next??? Add it all up and ask yourself what would you do? How would your head be? Could you cope with so much hopelessness? I’ve had 36 years of this bollocks and I’m really getting tired of it now. Hopefully one day they will kick me to death, problem solved. Even the old screws say what has been done to me is wrong, they even tell my brother and mother that I should be freed. This evil corrupt system has created me, de-humanised me, and now they are ashamed and embarrassed of their creation. It’s a bloody disgrace. Amen.
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Maintaining family contact made impossible
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If this Mirror (6 December 2010) story had any truth in it, then why am I not nicked? Or in patches? Or in the same cell? These mad stories are fed to the media every time I’m close to a parole hearing. Some screw is getting a nice few quid out of this crap – and burying me at the same time. I’m banned from talking or seeing the media because the system is afraid of me exposing them for what they are … parasites.
Mailbag
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Charles Bronson in prison ‘escape bid’ scare
A top security jail has been placed on high alert over a birthday escape plot by Charles Bronson – dubbed Britain’s most dangerous convict. A recent search by officers at Wakefield prison found that the window in his cell was unsecured. A special staff meeting at the West Yorkshire facility heard the opening could lead him to an exercise yard. And though superfit Bronson, who does 2,500 press-ups a day, would need to scale a wall to get his first taste of freedom since 1974, an insider said: “We know the significance of the window being disconnected. He remains very dangerous despite his age and could easily take out the watch in the yard before getting over the wall.” Warders were also placed on alert over a possible kidnap attempt three weeks ago when he took on 12 of them in the gym after covering himself with butter. An insider said: “There are concerns about Charlie’s state of mind. He is again finding it difficult to get his head around being locked up for life. He’s been co-operative during searches but his behaviour has changed since the gym incident. He’s a bomb waiting to go off.”
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I am into the 6th year of an IPP sentence. In my sentence plan, and no doubt in the sentence plan of many other prisoners, it says that I should maintain family contacts. It is also widely understood that good family bonds lower the risk of reoffending. In my own personal circumstances several of my family members have passed away during this sentence. Now my father is seriously ill. Until I arrived at this jail I would phone him every day. But the regime here makes it impossible for me to use the phone. There are 4 phones here on B wing, but since before Christmas only 3 of them are working. We get association from 6pm to 7pm, officially, but very rarely do we get unlocked at 6pm. It is normally 6.10 or 6.15. But even with the full hour of association there would be little time for me to use the phone. There are 120 inmates on this wing, so if you gave everyone a minimum of 10 minutes on the phone that would be only 18 people getting to use it. What about the other 102 inmates? Every act of violence I’ve witnessed since I’ve been here has been due to the phones (or lack of them). People easily get involved in heated exchanges over waiting to use the phones and the situation is open to bullying and is causing mental distress to those who can’t phone home. I am an IPP and have no wish to become involved in high risk situations, therefore I have had to give up on the phone. This cannot be right. We have been told that B wing is getting another 2 phones, but they have been saying that for months. What’s the point of having sentence plans that tell us to ‘maintain family contact’ and then make it almost impossible for us to do so?
Booking misery ........................................................ Andree Pattinson - Mother My son has been sentenced to 7 years, first time in prison. He was in HMP Manchester 250 miles from home, he was moved to HMP Stafford on 13 December, and I had a visit booked at HMP Manchester for 16 December. I tried to contact HMP Stafford visiting line on Tuesday afternoon, automated message, ‘visit line closed’. I called the operator who said she was sorry but “the lady who was covering didn’t come back after lunch so there is nobody there to answer the phone’? I tried on the Wednesday; again ‘the lady hadn’t turned up for work’. I couldn’t attend the prison on the Thursday 16th as there is no way they would honour the visit from HMP Manchester. I was unable to make the journey before Christmas due to the distance and also the extreme weather, so my son had no visit, before Christmas. I was sent a VO from my son for HMP Stafford. I tried to book a visit on 29 December, their first day back after Christmas, bless them eh - from 9am and the line was constantly busy, I pressed re-dial more times than I care to count, becoming increasingly frustrated and losing the will to live!! I swear the phone was off the hook.
My son has not had a visit for 6 weeks!!!! I called this morning 30 December, line constantly engaged - again, I called back after lunch time, and upon hearing the automated message untold times I called the operator who told me that due to staffing levels there was nobody to answer the phone and there wouldn’t be anybody there until the New Year. I was dumbfounded. Prisoners have rights too surely? What exactly does Peter Small, the Governor at HMP Stafford do all day? One can only imagine, because he is certainly well un-interested in the welfare of prisoners trying to maintain family ties and relationships. It appears that the Operator at HMP Stafford is well used to this problem and apologies, not her fault by any means and then helpfully offers to take your number, been there, seen it, done it and guess what? Nobody ever calls you back!!! My son is due to be moved again, early in the New Year, being leap frogged back to Kent, hopefully. If there is ever anyone to answer the phone I will book a visit, if he is moved before the visit I pray I won’t go through the misery I have had to put up with dealing with HMP Stafford. I am ranting because I am furious, I don’t know if you have heard of this problem with Stafford before but it is so out of order.
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Mailbag
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
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The police, a law unto themselves?
The Prison Service don’t own our money .....................................................................................................................
Andrew Spence - HMP Swaleside
Darren Jenkins - HMP Shepton Mallet
I would like to air my views on what would appear to be a policy of immunity from prosecution for police officers. The actions of the police at the recent student protests were, in my opinion, diabolical. I believe that the police antagonised the protesters up to the point where there was no option but to defend themselves. But the most shocking media coverage was the inhuman treatment of a young disabled man, suffering from cerebral palsy, who was hit with a truncheon, dragged from his wheelchair and thrown to the ground, and then dragged to the pavement. Just what has this country come to when a disabled and extremely vulnerable person can be treated in this atrocious and brutal way by someone who is supposedly there to serve and protect the public?
Thank you for publishing my letter regarding access to savings accounts (Mailbag January issue) under the new P-Nomis system. I noted the response from Paul Norman of NOMS with some interest. Unfortunately he failed to address my full query!
is not wasting the £2 on canteen as he cannot access his savings account, yet he is encouraged to transfer the large accrued amount to an external account where it can accrue interest. This is not circumnavigating the rules on spending – I never even mentioned spending!
Part of my query was what would happen if a prisoner accrued a large amount of money in his savings account and wanted to send this to an outside bank account in order to benefit from the interest? Mr Norman advised that ‘money deposited in the savings account should not be available for use until release’ and pointed me in the direction of PSO 4465 parts 1 and 2. There are a few interesting sections in PSO 4465 which readers who are having trouble with their P-Nomis savings may benefit from perusing. For example, section 2.1 states that if a prisoner acquires cash exceeding £500 they should be advised that it is in their best interests to transfer the excess to an external bank account.
After all, what gives the Prison Service the right to benefit from the interest on my money? They have no right to hold my, or anyone else’s, money to ransom until release. My original query was regarding the purchase of Premium Bonds from my savings account, and if anyone else is having similar problems doing this then might I use Mr Norman’s advice and turn your attention to PSO 4465, section 2.17. This section says that a prisoner (at the governor’s discretion) may send money from his private cash to purchase Premium Bonds.
You might think that the police would have learned their lesson after their treatment of Iain Tomlinson at the G20 protest. This man is clearly seen on screen posing no threat to police or public, in fact he was just trying to get home from work, when he was attacked from behind by a uniformed police officer for no apparent reason. If the CPS had film of you or I doing the same thing they would have no hesitation in pressing charges. Then, as if to add insult to injury, the CPS decided that no charges should be brought against this police officer. It just goes to show that you can attack and kill with impunity, and even be filmed doing it, just as long as you are a servant of the state. Other protesters were hit on the head with police weapons with so much force that one of the victims had to have brain surgery over his injuries. Again with no police officer held to account. Then there was the shocking film of a woman being assaulted inside a police station, being violently dragged to a cell and thrown to the ground causing a head injury. In this case a police officer was arrested, charged, and sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. Then, 2 weeks later, he was released by the Appeal Court. His crime was caught bang-to-rights on CCTV. For some reason the CPS feel it is right to treat law-breaking police officers as though they are some sort of ‘special’ case. It seems there is one rule for the police and another for the general public.
Typical of the Prison Service
..................................................................................................................... Greasy Barker – HMP Lindholme I felt compelled to write in response to January’s Mailbag - ‘J White - PS To The Governor At HMP Guys Marsh’ – concerning a complaint made by the governor about mention of using a mobile phone to photograph an injury, by a doctor in a previous issue of the paper. I would like to point out to J White that it is not just prisoners who read Inside Time, and that advice from the GP about photographing an injury with a mobile phone was quite brilliant. I find it absolutely typical of the Prison Service to jump all over an innocent mistake by a GP offering information on a very sensitive subject. Where are such detailed responses from the Prison Service, quoting rules, regulations and sub paragraphs, etc, when they themselves make a mistake? There are plenty of letters about them in Inside Time – inappropriate behaviour by staff, lack of in-cell sanitation, staff opening Rule 39 mail, overpriced canteen goods, to name but a few. Where are your comments about those things J White? Typical, the only time you hear from a governor is when they want to lecture you about your behaviour whilst keeping silent about their own.
Section 2.12 says that prisoners wishing to make contributions to pension plans and other suitable savings should be permitted to do so, while section 2.15 clarifies that serving prisoners are allowed to open suitable savings accounts via postal transactions. Best of all, section 2.16 says that if the savings option within PIES (P-Nomis) is utilised, it is in the prisoner’s best interest that large amounts of money should be held in external bank accounts! So it would seem that the advice given by Mr Norman is wrong in light of the above. I would argue that the P-Nomis savings account is an excellent tool for saving if the prisoner can get his prison to manage it correctly. I can see nothing in the rules that prevents a prisoner, such as myself, saving £2 per week into his P-Nomis account until that account has a balance of say, £100, and then requesting that that amount be transferred to an external account. This is both sensible and practical – the prisoner
Hours a day Days a week Emergency Defence Service
The Prison Service may restrict use of our money but they certainly do not own it. Happy savings!
....................................................... Danny - ex prisoner
n
Paul Norman’s reply (January issue - Mailbag ‘Who owns my savings?’) is garbage! And if he took 1 minute to read it he would know it. He says himself, “Money should only be transferred to savings from the prisoners spending account, not from private cash.” In other words, you are cutting back on your weekly spends to save. Then he says, “Once money is deposited in the savings account it should not be available for use until release as otherwise this would enable prisoners to circumnavigate the rules on spending which are set out in Parts 1 and 2 of Prison Service Order (PSO) 4465, Prisoners? Personal Financial Affairs.” Please tell us, Mr. Norman, how is putting monies in a savings account (let’s say £5 a week) from your SPENDS account and then transferring the money back at a later date any different to leaving £5 a week on your spends till you have the required amount? Answer, NO different, it just makes it easier to save. In both cases, should you choose to, you would have the same amount to spend. For the record, while at Parkhurst I and all other inmates WERE allowed to transfer monies from our savings accounts to our spends accounts and they were one of the first nicks to adopt the NOMIS system in the country so please don’t even try to say the system won’t handle it.
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
If you would like to contribute to Mailbag, please send your letters to ‘Mailbag’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Mailbag
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Help for Pagans Get professional help ..................................................................................................................... ........................................................ Gabriel Wood - HMP Standford Hill I was just flicking through the January issue of Inside Time when the word ‘rehabilitated’ caught my eye. So I read the contribution from ex offender Mandy on page 6. I read it again and again and I still cannot believe that a so-called trained counsellor could write such misguided rubbish!
Why no poppies in jail?
........................................................ Beverley Davies - Grant Giving and National Initiatives Manager
She says ‘the struggle out of offending behaviour is far more painful and, in lots of cases, far more damaging than staying in past patterns of behaviour’. So, is she trying to tell me that going into rehab to try and address my issues is going to be more damaging than injecting heroin into my bloodstream, or more painful in the long run? I know she cut a long story short but the denial revealed in her opening sentence and her total lack of responsibility was shocking. She says she was a victim of abuse for 35 years and that she just ‘fell’ into drug abuse, as though she played no part in it. Then she goes on to blame her children for her drink and drug abuse. I have to ask – are you for real?
I am writing to say that we would be delighted to send Poppies into HMP establishments for prisoners to enable them to both show their respect during Remembrance tide and offer a donation.
Maybe Mandy should get some professional help for herself. She says she now trains counsellors – now that really is damaging.
Conspiracy theory
Dedicated staff
If prisons wish to have supplies, staff should contact the Poppy Appeal at: The Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal, RBL Village, Aylesford, Kent ME20 7NX.
Paul Donlin - HMP Preston
The Four Cs - HMP Holloway
As the prison population tops 85,000, and it appears that everything the government do to reduce that population just seems to do the opposite, surely we must ask the question WHY? Why, in just over 10 years, has the prison population more than doubled?
We are sure that you don’t normally get letters praising prison staff; however, we feel that it is necessary to do just that. HMP Holloway is one of the prisons that often gets bad publicity and bad HMCIP reports, yet within this prison there are officers who go above and beyond the call of duty, without any recognition. Staff on Level 4, especially on the Mother and Baby Unit, are dedicated, respectful, caring, and treat us like human beings.
Insurance worries? ........................................................ Chris Bath - UNLOCK As one of the authors of the report highlighted in Francesca Cooney’s article ‘Time is Money’ last month, I feel duty bound to let people know that they and their families are not totally excluded from insurance. Ten years ago, UNLOCK helped to set up the first specialist insurance policy for people with convictions. Since then we’ve been encouraging competition in the market to lower the cost of policies, resulting in a list of 17 brokers which we provide to anyone who needs it. If your prison doesn’t have it available, let us know. Write to:UNLOCK, 35a High Street, Snodland, Kent ME6 5AG.
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Why, when the 4 years and above parole system has ended, is the Parole Board seemingly unable to cope with their work load? Why do we now spend more time banged up in cells than the prisoners of the 1940s? Why do we have more life-sentenced prisoners than the rest of Europe? Why? Well, in my opinion, it is in the interest of everyone who works in the Prison Service to keep it growing, just like any other business. The more prisoners, the more prisons there are, the more jobs there are for prison staff. One big conspiracy? You decide.
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As first time mothers, and prisoners, the idea of having a baby in prison was extremely daunting, scary, and unimaginable. However, with the understanding nature of the staff, the process that we had to go through was made manageable and endurable. Staff are approachable at all times and show understanding and empathise with the situation we have found ourselves in. We would like to say a huge thank you for the support they have shown us while being in prison with young babies.
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Jo Mathews - Pagan Federation Prison Ministry Manager With reference to Mike Heaton’s letter (January issue) about the subject of Thor’s Hammer, I would like to point out that this item is certainly NOT on any ‘banned list’. Faith items are available on the National Product List (NPL) and it is there that Local Product Lists (LPL) are compiled for each prison on an individual basis. Obviously, due to various limitations, not everything will make the LPLs. When an item generally needed for Pagan worship is requested by prisoners, most prison chaplaincy departments will contact myself, as the appointed faith advisor for Paganism to the Prison Service, for advice. I am very surprised that HMP Wymott did not do this. Thor’s Hammer is a widely popular symbol of Northern Tradition faiths, as Mr Heaton quite rightly points out, and I have never in all my years as a Pagan, or as PFPM manager, heard of it being equated to a Maltese Cross. The two symbols have absolutely nothing in common in either looks or meaning. When items are being questioned and an unsatisfactory answer is being given as to their denial of use, I am more than happy to mediate with the Prison Service on behalf of Pagan prisoners. In my experience many requests are denied by prisons often due to a simple lack of knowledge of Pagan faith matters. My contact details are listed in PSO 4550 annex H, which is available to all prison staff on the prison intranet system. Pagan prisoners can contact me for advice and guidance on Pagan matters at the official Pagan Federation Prison Ministry (PFPM) address listed in PSO 4550 annex H - PFPM, PO Box 1318, Bagshot, GU19 5YN.
CHARLES HILL & CO SOLICITORS Immediate Visit, Proactive & dedicated clear advice & effective representation in all aspects of prison law • Adjudications: Advice & Representation • Licence Revocation & Recall (Urgent intervention & Review) • Parole Board Hearings • HDC Conditions and Breaches • Re-categorisation & Cat A Reviews • Allocation and Transfer Issues • Criminal Cases • Confiscation Proceedings • Appeals & CCRC Applications • Complaints about Maltreatment • Tariff Setting & Written Representations • Appeals • Human Rights For immediate help & assistance please call Mr Chris Isichei on 07737 146 733 or Mr Nathaniel Nwoke
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10
Newsround
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
The Inspector calls ... Nick Hardwick - HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Inside Time highlights areas of good and bad practice, along with a summary of prisoner survey responses, at HMP-YOI Swinfen Hall, HMP Ashwell and HMP Kingston. Extracts are taken from the most recent reports published by HM Inspectorate of Prisons ‘convincing action plan’ from NOMS to address these weaknesses.
HMP-YOI Swinfen Hall
Young adult long-term training establishment Announced inspection: 7–11 June 2010 Report date: September 2010 Published: November 2010
7% say they have been assaulted by staff; 14% are foreign nationals; 36% are IPP prisoners; 39% say the IEP system is unfair; 43% are under 21 years old; 46% say visitors are treated well; 48% have had legal letters opened by staff; 50% said food was bad or very bad; 53% had been there for over 4 years; 57% were treated well in Reception; 61% say it is difficult to see the dentist; 67% said staff treated them with respect.
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Restrictive rules and procedures were disproportionate The Inspectors found it to be a reasonably safe prison with little drug use and a very effective Personal Officer Scheme; however the emphasis on security means that there are restrictive rules and procedures which were disproportionate and affected prisoners unnecessarily. Whilst newer wings provide a reasonable environment the older parts of the prison are poor and prisoners’ beds were too near the integral toilet. Access to cleaning materials was poor, many prisoners are locked up for as much as 22 hours per day and only have access to showers every other day. There was insufficient activity for the prisoners who were allocated to courses which bore no relation to their sentence plan. Some prisoners with many years to serve were allocated to ‘Employability’ courses whilst others were reallocated to courses for which they already had qualifications. There was a poor provision of education which was often cancelled. The Inspectors call for a
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time to move on and made a number of recommendations. Staff-prisoner relationships tended to be distant and access to work and many facilities were hampered by unnecessary security restrictions. On a more positive side the Inspectors reported that Resettlement arrangements were impressive, strategic management was sound, sentence planning was effective and there was a range of programmes and reintegration services to support prisoners to avoid future reoffending. Ashwell, the Inspectors said, “badly needs to be removed from the uncertainty over its future that has hung over it since the disturbances of April 2009.” They called for NOMS to make a quick decision and allow Ashwell to continue its role as a ‘confident and effective training prison’. 7% are on IPP sentences; 11% lost property on arrival; 13% have a disability; 46% said it was difficult to see a dentist; 50% said staff had opened legal letters; 55% have children under 18; 57% said it was easy to see the IMB; 64% didn’t know how to get drugs; 68% were treated well or very well in Reception; 80% are on Enhanced IEP.
.....................................................
HMP Ashwell
Category C training prison
to provide a safe environment for prisoners with good Safer custody arrangements, little bullying or violence and few instances of selfharm. Security was well managed and proportionate, and staff rarely resorted to use of force or segregation. The prison was clean and bright with good staff/prisoners relationships and an effective personal officer scheme. Health services were much improved. Purposeful activity was provided for all prisoners with good access to the Library and Gym: however, education provision was limited. The range of courses provided too few opportunities for progress to higher levels. All new arrivals spent the first two weeks on an innovative induction programme after which they were allocated to activities. Food was found to be good but Inspectors commented that; “Breakfast was inappropriately served the evening before it was to be consumed and the baguette meal for Sunday tea was served far too early.” Visits were generally good with few delays, and they took place in a relaxed atmosphere with free refreshments. Visitors were positive about their experience. 7% are gay or bisexual; 28% are over 50 years old; 49% had not been in prison before; 50% said staff had opened legal letters; 57% thought Healthcare was good; 61% had been there over 4 years; 68% said the IEP system is fair; 86% said staff treated them respectfully; 86% were treated well in Reception; 88% are lifers.
Announced inspection: 7–11 June 2010 Report date: October 2010 Published: December 2010
Still suffering from the aftermath of the disturbances 18 months ago The Inspectors found that the damaging aftermath of the disturbances 18 months before were still visible around the prison and continued to impact on its operation and the prison appeared to be in limbo; unclear whether it would remain open and, if so, what its role would be. Staff were risk averse and security was disproportionate to the current risks posed by the reduced population. Inspectors said it was
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Chief Inspector of Prisons inspection schedule 2011
HMP Kingston
Male Cat B & Cat C life-sentenced prisoners
Announced inspection: 16–20 August 2010 Report date: October 2010 Published: December 2010
The inspection reaffirmed previous findings that Kingston is a safe and decent place The Inspectors found that Kingston continued
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Ministers may water down European ruling with 12 month proposal onment, though it could mean compensation payouts of up to £160 million to prisoners.
January 2011
Prime Minister David Cameron has now had to accept that the Commons may not agree with Government proposals to grant the right to vote to convicted prisoners serving sentences of four years or less (Noel Smith writes). The proposal, a response to the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (Hirst v UK No 2) that a blanket ban on prisoners being allowed to vote in elections is illegal, would have meant the Government granting voting rights to around 28,000 prisoners. But the threat of a cross party rebellion means that Cameron may now have to accept the much lower cut-off point of twelve months impris-
The change of tack comes after fierce opposition by MPs, including the Conservative 1922 Backbench Committee, and the unlikely tag-team of David Davis (Conservative) and Jack Straw (Labour). It is thought that lowering the criteria for prisoners voting to a maximum sentence of twelve months would make the proposal more acceptable to Members of Parliament, though still illegal to Strasbourg. John Hirst, who won his case in 2005, has commented that the Government did not ‘have a cat in hell’s chance’ of persuading the ECHR that it was complying with its ruling. He said, ‘If I’d have gone to court and said I’m not accepting a judge’s life sentence where would that put us? You have to accept that the law applies to everybody and it applies to the Government. David Cameron is not above the law and he’ll find that out very shortly’. The recent ruling by the ECHR in favour of an Italian lifer who was denied the vote (Scoppola v Italy) will further weaken the Government’s case. There is a forthcoming debate on the prisoners vote issue in Parliament, and it is thought that this may be the coalition government’s first Parliamentary defeat since coming to power.
Morton Hall, Ashwell and Lancaster Castle to close The Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has announced that the 392 women at Morton Hall prison are to be transferred to other prisons and the prison will become a holding centre for failed asylum detainees waiting for deportation. The MoJ said the change will take place as soon as possible. The current staff will be retained. Morton Hall will continue to be managed by the Prison Service on behalf of the UK Border Agency. The closure of Morton Hall will be a good thing if it signals a reduction in the number of women kept in prison but as it reduces the number of establishments for women, it is likely to lead to even more women being held great distances from their homes. Both Ashwell and Lancaster Castle are also likely to be closed by March. In total, nearly 900 prison places will be lost. Lancaster Castle stands on land owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and has been a prison since the 17th century; it also houses Lancaster Crown Court. Up to 250 prisoners will be moved and 300 staff will lose their jobs or be redeployed. The local council has been looking at ways to involve private finance to turn the prison into a major tourist attraction. A riot at Ashwell, last year, saw significant damage to about two-thirds of the accommodation and the Ministry of Justice say it would not be financially viable to rebuild the prison. The C cat prison held about 200 prisoners but most have been transferred out since the riot. No action has been taken against any of the rioters. Late News: It has now been announced that HMP Ashwell will be closed by the end of March.
Is lack of parole affecting good order in prisons? At a POA briefing for MPs, at Westminster on 19th January, to discuss the recent disorder in a number of open prisons, one of the delegates identified the withdrawal of parole in recent years as a possible cause of the lessening of control in prisons (Paul Sullivan writes). The delegate pointed out that if prisoners toed the line and didn’t get into trouble they used to be rewarded with an earlier release under the parole system, but now the Parole Board is scared to release anybody. Even if they have done all the courses and jumped through every hoop, there is no benefit or reward for being compliant. Days can only be added to a sentence for very serious offences so there is no incentive for prisoners to be passive and keep to the rules because they will be released at the same time anyway. Could it be the POA are asking for the same thing as prisoners - go back to the system of rewarding compliant prisoners with earlier release? Ford New Years’ Eve riot pages 22-23
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Sex offences increase again despite overall fall in crime The number of sexual offences rose by 7 per cent last year while crime continued to fall, according to the latest set of official figures reported in The Times. Sex crimes were the sole category of offences recorded by police in England and Wales to increase in the year to the end of September. The number of the most serious sex offences, including rape, indecent assault and sexual abuse of children, rose by nearly 3,500 to 44,700. It means that sex offences have risen for the past two years, having fallen from a record high five years ago. The Home Office said that one reason could be that more people were willing to report sex offences to police. Others suggested that the rise could be linked to cultural changes and the increasing sexualisation of society. David Wilson, Professor of Criminology at Birmingham City University said: “The increase in the number of sexual offences
might have been caused by a number of factors, but we are turning a blind eye to several cultural developments and transformations to simply dismiss this increase as a result of a greater willingness to report sexual assault. “The most important of these transformations must be related to the growth of the night-time economy, where young people are asked to drink to excess and socialise in ways that they might not choose if they were sober.” He said that people were willing when drunk to push the boundaries and that in some cases this involved sexual behaviour. The rise in sexual offending marred two sets of figures published by the Home Office indicating that crime was falling overall. The murder rate was at its lowest in 13 years while overall, the number of crimes recorded by police was down by 7 per cent. The British Crime Survey (BCS) saw overall numbers fall by 5 per cent.
Percentage change of recorded crimes England and Wales, September 2010 compared with previous year -18%
Criminal damage -7%
Domestic burglary
-10%
Other burglary
-14%
Offences against vehicles 0% -5%
Other theft offences Robbery Violence against the person
-4% Sexual offences -2% -1% -7%
+7% Drug offences Fraud and forgery Total recorded crime
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Let’s hang on to our magistrates What do Charles Darwin and Thomas Hardy have in common? Both, says Trevor Grove, writing in The Daily Telegraph, were magistrates. For 650 years, Justices of the Peace have been the bedrock of our legal system, sitting in court in threes to dispense justice with the help of a legal adviser. JPs deal with 95% of criminal matters (very few such cases end up before a judge and jury), yet their services are entirely free: they receive not a penny in payment. How odd, then, that at a time when ministers are preaching the merits of community activism, they’re undermining “this paragon of localism”. Dozens of local courts will fall victim to the cuts, a loss that will rob local communities of the chance to administer local justice. Much of Trevor Grove the work for which JPs are trained is now being handed to the police or other officials: a “huge number” of serious offences, including violent assaults, are being dealt with outside court by means of fines or cautions. The Government should beware: JPs only volunteer because they think it will help their community. Take that away and they’ll start to “question their own purpose”. Trevor Grove is a JP and Chairman of the Board of Directors of INSIDE TIME
Compensation for prisoners reaches £3.5m In 2010, 3,166 prisoners in England and Wales won compensation totalling over £3.5million, according to a Parliamentary written answer. Compensation was paid for injuries suffered in attacks, falls and other damage which is deemed to be the fault of the Prison Service. Claims were also made for breaches of the Human Rights Act. Most of the payments were for less than £1,000, with a lot of smaller payouts for delays in being released because paperwork was not ready in time: prisoners can claim £100 for every extra day they are kept in jail.
• Nearly 100 prisoners won compensation between £5,000 and £10,000; • 41 were paid between £10,000 and £20,000; • 2 received between £50,000 and £100,000 ; • 2 between £100,000 and a quarter of a million. Among the payouts were: • £1,609,250 was paid out in medical negligence cases; • £534,628 was paid out in compensation for assaults by staff; • £259,943 was paid out for unlawful detention.
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A spokesman for Ministry of Justice said, ‘Like all citizens it is open to prisoners, staff and third parties to pursue civil litigation claims for any perceived wrongdoing. Each litigation case is dealt with on its merits and, so far as the evidence allows, all claims are robustly defended.’
2009/2010 Compensation Claims by estate Article 5 Assault by prisoner Assault by staff Injury-other Slip, trip and fall Medical negligence Other Property Unlawful detention 2009-10 2009-10 totals totals
85,500 13,050 107,057 534,628 202,831 205,153 1,609,250 240,878 28,231 259,943 3,284,321 3,284,321
Totals for previous years 2004-05 2,379,577 2005-06 4,475,771 2006-07 2,155,357 2007-08 1,482,670 Figures from Hansard 2008-09 1,669,312 Breakdown for 2010-11 not available 2009-10 3,284,321yet
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Prison inspectors highlight ‘slopping out’ at Bullwood Hall and Gloucester
13
The things people say… Some of the dodgiest claims made in 2010
At Bullwood Hall, despite criticism of the ‘NightSan’ system in their last report 3 years ago, inspectors found the system was just as bad in their latest inspection, in September 2010, of the Cat C prison, which holds 228 foreign national prisoners.
Not the greatest political shake up since 1832
Prisoners on A, B, C and D wings still have to use a night sanitation system, described by inspectors as ‘inefficient’, and report long delays when the system is working. The prison had ignored previous recommendations to have more staff and longer unlock during its frequent break downs.
“The biggest shake up of our democracy since 1832, when the Great Reform Act redrew the boundaries of British democracy, for the first time extending the franchise beyond the landed classes.”
Inspectors report how prisoners, even in double cells, are issued with ‘degrading potties’ to use and the ‘frequent problem of urine and faeces being thrown out of windows’. In their latest report, published in January, the Inspectors again call for either in-cell sanitation or a system to ensure prisoners have 24 hour access to toilets. An inspection at Gloucester (a B cat local holding 285 prisoners), in August 2010, also found problems with ‘slopping out’. Inspectors, commenting on C wing, said, ‘Cells were small and badly ventilated: they had no toilets or basins and prisoners could only access these by an electronic call system or they had to rely on pots and slopping-out. Recesses – the communal toilet, shower and slopping out areas – were in a poor state of repair and filthy. A and B shower facilities had been recently refurbished and so were a little better. They had in-cell toilets but in small shared cells these were not adequately screened.’ In their 2009 report, Gloucester IMB said they had been promised an end to ‘slopping-out’ but after this was cancelled the Prisons Minister told them; ‘[slopping-out and using potties] were not intrinsically unhygienic and that a modesty curtain was provided.’ The IMB argued that such arrangements – usually in shared cells – are inconsistent with the Government’s respect and decency agenda for prisons and remedies should therefore be found.
Brown gets defensive about budgets
“The defence budget has been rising every year ... The only time the defence budget has been cut was in the 10 years before 1997”. Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister’s Questions, 10th March 2010
Gordon Brown had to correct himself both in Parliament, and in evidence he gave to the Chilcot Inquiry. Real-terms defence spending (once inflation is taken into account) was 10 per cent higher in 2010 than in 1997, but the year by year figures show the defence budget fell four times while Labour was in power.
A muddle over migration
“Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling - down from 237,000 in 2007 to 163,000 in 2008, to provisional figures of 147,000 last year.”
Gordon Brown MP, podcast on immigration, 26th March 2010 On the eve of the election campaign, the PM mixed up two different sets of figures to paint a more flattering portrait of immigration trends. The statistics he used for 2009 are an under-estimate, because they don’t include all migrants. The figures he used for 2007 and 2008, however, do. The Office for National Statistics confirmed that net migration had in fact increased to 198,000 – the opposite of Brown’s claim.
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Dodgy crime statistics “Violent crime almost doubled under the last government.” David Cameron MP, Prime Minister’s questions 7th July 2010 The claim is based purely on one set of crime figures, which don’t take into account changes in the way offences are counted by the police. The more reliable set of figures for comparing long-term trends show violent crime has gone down, not up. Cameron was slapped down by the statistics watchdog for selective use of the figures. And as his shadow home secretary had already been ticked off for the same statistical shenanigan, he really had no excuse.
A stellar beer price?
Clegg might have had a point were he referring to the introduction of secret ballots, giving women the right to vote or even Labour’s devolution of power to Scotland and Wales in 1998. But he wasn’t, and his plans to scrap identity cards and introduce fixed-term parliament couldn’t really hold a candle to the 19th century forms which extended the vote beyond the landed gentry and abolished the rotten boroughs.
“I think if what you’re trying to do is stop supermarkets from selling 20 tins of Stella for a fiver that’s what we’ve got to go after.”
Fees fiction
David Cameron MP, interview with Manchester Evening News about a ban on cheap alcohol, 11th August 2010
Nick Clegg MP, speaking to broadcasters, 9th December 2010
“All the part-time students and the demonstrators wouldn’t pay any upfront fees whatsoever.”
Is there really such a good deal to be had on Stella? There is no evidence that the reassuringly expensive stuff could be bought as cheaply as the PM suggested. Although there’s nothing to stop a supermarket from selling it dirt cheap, an extensive pub crawl up and down the aisles couldn’t find such a bargain.
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Nick Clegg MP, speech on constitutional reform, 19th May 2010
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On the morning of the crucial vote on top-up fees, the Lib Dem leader talked up the lastditch sweeteners, including the scrapping of upfront fees to part-time students. But contrary to his claim, only two-thirds of part-time students were eligible for new fee loans – leaving 100,000 still saddled with stumping up the cash for their tuition.
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Newsround
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Lifers reoffending ‘more often than figures suggest’ Life sentence prisoners reoffend more often than official figures suggest, the chairman of the Parole Board of England and Wales has indicated.
we were working on figures when I first arrived which I thought were robust only to find when I examined it that they weren’t robust.”
Sir David Latham said that current estimates, which suggest that between one and two per cent freed on parole go on to commit further “serious” crimes, were not “robust”, writes Victoria Ward in the Daily Telegraph.
Parole Board figures for 2009/10 showed that five percent of 1,797 life sentence prisoners under active supervision in England and Wales were sent back to prison.
Sir David Latham
As a result, he said that it was difficult to know whether the right parole decisions were being made.
Adam, 14, described as a ‘vulnerable child with mental health, drink and drugs problems’ was at the centre 150 miles from home, although rules stated he should be no further than 50 miles. A second inquest was ordered because the jury at the first inquest was not told about his violent treatment at the Centre. Assistant Deputy Coroner Jeremy Freedman told the panel: ‘It is agreed now by all the interested parties that what happened to Adam in the early evening of that night was both unlawful and illegal.’ Four male carers were ‘restraining’ him when, they claim, they thought he might bite one of them so they used an unlawful ‘nose
Inside Time reviewed the controversial ‘Physical Restraint in Care’ manual in the September 2010 issue.
insideinformation the Comprehensive Guide to Prisons & Prison Related Services
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“That consultation is ongoing and we will be making changes later this year.”
distraction’ where the straight fingers of a hand are punched up under the nose: this made his nose bleed and damage was found at the subsequent post mortem. Video recording should have been made of any restraint but was not done on this occasion.
r
Sir David said: “The problem has been that
The Ministry of Justice said a review of reoffending statistics was under way. A spokesman said: “There is no reason why, under our planned new way of measuring reoffending rates, they will be higher. Indeed, they may be lower. We are revising our methods to ensure that we have the most robust analysis available.
At the new inquest into the death of the youngest person ever to die in custody, Adam Rickwood, the inquest was told that he was treated unlawfully by the ‘carers’ at Hassockfield Secure Training Centre shortly before he hung himself in 2004.
ar
Sir David said he was not comfortable with having to rely on unpublished calculations and “anecdotal” evidence when deciding whether to release prisoners who had been given minimum jail terms. He called for more research by the Ministry of Justice to help determine exactly how dangerous life sentence criminals were.
But the figures did not show how many were recalled for committing further offences as opposed to breaking the terms of their licence by other means, such as failing to comply with the terms of their release.
New inquest into youngest suicide begins
Trial by innuendo is an ugly sight. The pursuit of Christopher Jefferies, the retired English teacher suspected of murdering Joanna Yeates, should worry anyone who cares about due process. He has been accused of buying hair dye, liking poetry and even of being an active Lib Dem. Being a Liberal Democrat may seem eccentric but elevating it to dangerous does nothing to improve the chances of getting justice for the Yeates family. On New Year’s Eve the Attorney-General reminded editors of the Contempt of Court Act, 1981. But the Act is toothless. In any event, the warning came too late for Mr Jefferies.
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m Do you know...? 1% of all the money spent on food is spent on fish and chips. 2% of lawyers say they have misbehaved at office parties. 3% of women say their career is the most important thing in their lives. 4% of men say it takes them less than five minutes to get ready for a night out. 5% of women are natural redheads 6% of London-based jobseekers say they have a lucky item of clothing. 7% of kittens are named after a celebrity. 8% of 18-25 year olds believe that drinking tea or coffee during pregnancy could affect a baby’s hair colour. 9% of people say the superpower they would most like to have is teleportation. 10% of men put on makeup before a night out. 11% of London-based jobseekers say they have a lucky interview colour. 12% of 18-25 year olds think a Caesarian section is a religious group. 13% of dependent children live with cohabiting but not married parents. 14% of workers dread Christmas and would rather give it a miss altogether. 15% of workers have vomited on a colleague at an office party. 16% of Britons are 65 or over. 17% of men aged 16-64 have never worked 18% of people say they have saved more money since the start of the recession. 19% of Britons are under 16. 20% of 18-25 year olds think the umbilical cord is a musical note. 21% of people are put off by complicated recipes. 22% of adults have ordered food or groceries over the internet in the past year. 23% of children have been to Paris by the time they are 12.
24% of Londoners wash their bed linen once a month or less. 25% of Britons are obese. 26% of students would vote for Joanna Lumley as Prime Minister. 27% of recorded crimes in Northern Ireland are violence against the person. 28% of women over 35 say they never make love.
Sunderland FC has signed David Miliband for £50,000 a year. Not to play football, supporters of Sunderland will be relieved to know, but to advise the Club. But what on earth is he going to advise them about? In any event, shouldn’t MPs advise their local football club free of charge, as many, indeed, do? Miliband doesn’t even support Sunderland but friends say he’s got to fill in his days somehow now he’s a full-time MP.
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29% of employers relax their dress code in the summer months. 30% of holiday planners are worried about extreme events. 31% of people think bank or credit card fraud has increased over the past two years. 32% of people say that reality tv programmes make them furious. 33% of all marriages take place in church or other religious building. 34% of parents have spent some of the money they set aside for their children. 35% of mothers say their daughter is a daddy’s girl. 36% of household waste in Wales is recycled. 37% of under-35s feel connected to the natural world. 38% of under-35s don’tfeel connected to the natural world. 39% of women would rather play online bingo than watch World Cup football. 40% of women arrange tax and insurance for the family car. 41% of people don’t feel that their blood pressure rises when they become stressed. 42% of people regularly eat in bed. 43% of primary school children go to school in a car. 44% of people have bought from online auction sites and marketplaces in the last six months. 45% of teachers say behaviour in their most recent or current school is inadequate. 46% of people on a date pretend to under- stand what their date says to them, even if they don’t. 47% of men say they have had a fling with a friend’s wife or girlfriend. 48% of men say they look at a girl’s chest before her face. 49% of men have never or only occasionally smoked cigarettes. 50% of women watch wildlife programmes on television.
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News in Brief
Sarah Palin is aiming to run for President in 2012 ‘Armenia needs me’ she claims.
There is a tense moment when three blondes believe they have won ‘Best in Show’.
With increasing congestion in the capital there is concern that the Mayor of London’s’ special adviser on Transport may not be the right man for the job.
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16
Newsround
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Like them or not, guns are as American “ as covered wagons. The revolutionaries and
THE TUCSON TRAGEDY: FIRE AWAY You might think that attacks like the one in Tucson Arizona would lead to tougher gun restrictions. But you’d be dead wrong.
pioneers who forged that nation and peopled its wilderness really did cling to their guns as tenaciously as they clung to their religion. And while modern cosmopolitans may be shocked by the gun violence in the country - the worst among wealthy nations by far; well, that’s an American tradition too. Gun control is not. The mayhem in Tucson has revived a debate over America’s gun culture that resurfaces every time some lunatic over-exercises his right to bear arms. How could Jared Loughner be considered too dangerous to attend community college but not too dangerous to buy a Glock? Why are we allowed to pack heat at a Safeway when we can’t pack shampoo in our carry-ons? Does the Second Amendment really protect the right to a magazine that holds 30 bullets? It’s a necessary debate, but in the political arena, at least, the results are consistently lopsided. As National Rifle Association (NRA) executive vice president Wayne LaPierre proclaimed two years ago, the guys with the guns make the rules.
Image courtesy The Week
Arizona, with its Old West heritage, has been at the forefront of the gun rights movement. Last year, it passed a law making it the third state - after predominantly rural Vermont and Alaska - to allow citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Another law allows Arizonans to carry guns in bars as long as they’re not drinking. The vast majority of the state’s politicians – including Loughner’s primary target, U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifforrds, a Democrat and gun owner – are strong Second Amendment supporters. Congressman Trent Franks, a Republican and gun owner, points out that Arizona has a much lower gun-violence rate than Washington D.C., which has much more restrictive gun laws. “Criminals always prefer unarmed TIME MAGAZINE victims,” Frank says.
”
IN ONE YEAR 100,000+
People in America shot in murders, assaults, suicides, accidents or by police intervention.
66,768
People who survive gun injuries.
31,224
Deaths from gun violence.
17,352
People that kill themselves.
12,632
People murdered.
3,067
Children and teens who die from gun violence.
2,161
Children and teens murdered.
613
People killed accidentally.
351
People killed by police intervention.
IN ONE Day 268
People in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, accidents or by police intervention.
86
People who die from gun violence, 35 of them are murdered.
8
Children and teens die from gun violence.
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Newsround
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
It’s slavery by the back door
17
Compare
The United Kingdom
to
The United States
If The United States were your home instead of The United Kingdom you would...
Consume 2.3 times more oil
The United States consumes 2.6400 gallons of oil per day per capita while The United Kingdom consumes 1.1719.
Use 2.2 times more electricity
Stephen Fry hosting the BBC 2 Quiz Show QI Stephen Fry: Where are one percent of American adults? You’re talking about between 2.5 and 3 million. Alan Davies: Jail. AD: Really? That many people are locked up? SF: Well, 2.3, which is one in every 99.1 adults. Proportionally, Americans imprison twice as many as South Africans, more than three times as many as the Iranians, more than six times as many as the Chinese. No society in history has imprisoned more of its citizens than the United States. Clive Anderson: We do pretty well though don’t we, we sort of top the European league? SF: We’re ahead of China, Turkey and India, with 148 prisoners per 100,000.
four chocolate chip cookies. It’s astonishing. It is a bit bonkers. But the racial numbers are a bit worrying, I mean the gender numbers; it’s one in 20 men aged twenty to thirty four is behind bars, but for black males that’s one in nine. There are more 17 years old black people in jail than in college in America. So 5% of the world are American – 25% of all prisoners are American. JC: And isn’t the real controversy with all this the business end of it? SF: Well, that’s true, as you rightly say, it is a business. JC: Because it’s not just licence plates, they make loads of stuff ..
JC: He took nine!!
SF: Well, one of the things I should have said when talking about contraband is that you’re not allowed to bring into America anything that’s been made by forced labour or prisoners but in America, you can almost say, if you are thus minded, that they’ve reinvented the slave trade. They produced, for example, 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bulletproof vests, ID tags and other items of uniform. 93% of domestically produced paints, 36% of home appliances, 21% of office furniture, which allows the United States to compete with factories in Mexico, because of course the workers can’t refuse to work for 25 cents an hour ...
SF: Yes. Kevin Webber, 26 years for stealing
JC: It’s slavery by the back door.
CA: It’s the ‘three strikes and they’re out’ ... Jimmy Carr: I mean a legal system that’s based on baseball – it’s all so bizarre. SF: Absolutely right. What it means is, if the first two ‘strikes’ you are convicted of are serious enough, no matter how trivial, will get a life sentence, 25 years or more. So, for example, Leandro Andred is serving two consecutive 25 year terms for shoplifting nine videotapes ...
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year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in The United States is 6.14 while in The United Kingdom it is 4.78.
Be 3 times more likely to have HIV/AIDS
The per capita consumption of electricity in The United States is 12,484kWh while in The United Kingdom it is 5,643kWh.
The number of adults living with HIV/AIDS in The United States is 0.60% while in The United Kingdom it is 0.20%.
Spend 2.4 times more money on health care
Die 0.92 years sooner
Per capita public and private health expenditures combined in The United States are $6,719 USD while The United Kingdom spends $2,815 USD.
The life expectancy at birth in The United States is 78.24 while in The United Kingdom it is 79.16.
The number of deaths of infants under one
With its 310,232,863 people, The United States is the 3rd largest country in the world by population. It is the 3rd largest country by area with 9,826,675 square kilometers. Britain’s American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation’s history were the Civil War (1861-65), in which a northern Union of states defeated a secessionist Confederacy of 11 southern slave states, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic downturn during which about a quarter of the labor force lost its jobs. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world’s most powerful nation state. Over a span of more than five decades, the economy has achieved steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology.
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Make 31.82% more money
The GDP per capita in The United States is $46,400 while in The United Kingdom it is $35,200.
Work 9.71% more hours each year
Employed persons in The United States work an average of 1797 hours each year while persons in The United Kingdom work an average of 1638 hours.
Have 29.62% more babies
The annual number of births per 1,000 people in The United States is 13.83 while in The United Kingdom it is 10.67.
Have 16.25% more chance of being unemployed
The United States has an unemployment rate of 9.30% while The United Kingdom has 8.00%.
Have 28.45% more chance of dying in infancy
Prison Law & Criminal Defence Specialists • Categorisation • Transfers • Adjudications • Licence Recalls • Parole & HDC Applications • Sentence Planning • Disability & Medical Issues For advice, assistance & representation in Prison Law Matters or Criminal Court Proceedings contact:
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18
Diary
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Month by Month by Rachel Billington
Rachel listens to a discussion between two best-selling authors, Wilbert Rideau and Erwin James, who between them served sixty-nine years in prison.
W
ilbert Rideau is one of the most remarkable Americans I’ve ever met. In 1961, when he was nineteen years-old, he was convicted of murder and spent the next forty four years in prison, twelve years of it on death row. It is already extraordinary that Rideau survived since he spent most of the time in the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, where murder, rape and enslavement were commonplace. between 1972-75, sixty seven prisoners were stabbed to death, three hundred and fifty suffered serious knife wounds and forty two died of so-called ‘natural causes’. The reason that Rideau is so remarkable is that he not only survived but flourished in this terrifying place, not because he was tougher than the rest but because he became the editor – the first black editor – of the prison newspaper, The Angolite, which became famous throughout the USA for its exposure of prison iniquities. This included a shocking story about the previously unacknowledged and illegal burns caused by the electric chair. I met Wilbert Rideau at PEN, the writers’ organisation, where he was discussing his just published autobiography, In the Place of Justice, with Erwin James, another survivor of a long prison sentence, twenty five years. In a strange moment when the past meets the present, Erwin James recalled how in his darkest days he was sleeping rough on the streets outside the PEN building where we were gathered.
© Nick Cunard
Rachel Billington with the the Guardian correspondent Erwin James (centre) and Wilbert Rideau.
There are several reasons why In the Place of Justice is such an outstanding book in the prison genre. Most important, throughout, Rideau places his story in the historical and political context. He was a black boy growing up in the segregated South, who killed a white woman. The jury that convicted him was all-white, all-male, in what the US Supreme Court later described as ‘kangaroo court proceedings.’ It was not until 2005 that Rideau’s sentence was changed to manslaughter and he was released, having spent nearly double the usual tariff. Meanwhile his writing inside prison had made
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him famous, even winning him national awards – which should have helped with his struggle to be released but probably did the opposite. It did, however, give him power within the prison where he had his own office and staff, direct access to the governor and prison staff. In fact, under some sympathetic governors, he was doing more to ensure the prison ran smoothly than those who locked him up. Moreover he was travelling all over the US to lecture on journalism and criminal justice at universities and schools. The man I meet wears this long history very lightly. Soft-spoken, smallish and slim, he is no-one’s idea of a high profile criminal. He has brought with him Linda, who met him twenty years before he was finally released and is now his beloved wife and manager. A book tour in a foreign country is never easy but Rideau has the calm of someone who has learnt about what really matters in life. The discussion opens and Rideau and James, both now writers, lecturers and trustees of various prison organisations, but whose lives could have ended as disastrously as they began, talk in a matter of fact and often amusing way about their experiences. As their chairman, I am sitting between them and find myself astonished at their resilience in refusing to give in when the odds were so stacked against them. The audience is totally spellbound. I ask Rideau, ‘When you were first in death row as a young man you began to read seriously for the first time. What did you read and how did that change you?’ His answer is a history book called Fairoakes which taught him about his own background and the history of black America. Up till then, he’d only been allowed religious books. It becomes clear that reading was his way into education and writing his way into a world outside the prison. In the same way, James started doing Open University courses and then turned to journalism until he became a regular prison correspondent for the Guardian. Both men acknowledge the help given to them by many people over the
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Diary
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org years, although James remembered that when he first asked his governor whether he could write for an outside newspaper, the answer came, ‘Do you want forty small no’s or one big no?’ Now he has two books to his name, A Life Inside and The Home Stretch and a third – a more autobiographical work – in the pipeline. Neither man glosses over the enormous difficulties they faced – there is a moving chapter in Wilbert Rideau’s book where he describes the horror of his many years of solitary confinement. In macabre contrast, death row seems to have been less dreadful, with friends in nearby cells, even if some of them were removed at night, never to return. Since England abolished the death penalty in 1968, James did not have to live with this threat, nevertheless there are those in this country who argue for its return. I cannot imagine a better counter argument than Walter Rideau and Erwin James. Neither exonerate themselves from the guilt of their crime – Rideau’s shame at the suffering he had caused led him near to suicide - but both men strive to prove that they can give something back to society. At question time, a young man asks Rideau, ‘Have you ever met an evil man?’ In his quiet way, Rideau answers that he could not presume to pronounce on who might be evil, but that he had met ‘dangerous men’ who he would not like to see outside prison. James picks up the point to tell a story about how a tabloid paper referred to him as ‘a monster’. Most men or women convicted of serious crimes know the media’s tendency to dehumanise criminals by describing them as figures of horror, nearer animals than human beings. It’s a pity that some of these tabloid (or other) journalists did not come along to PEN that evening. If they had, it would be impossible for them to argue that the perpetrator of a shocking crime must be forever defined only by that deed. Wilbert Rideau was described by Life magazine while still in prison as ‘America’s most rehabilitated prisoner.’ In the UK rehabilitation is written up on every prison wall as a
AA LAW
statutory aim; sadly, that’s often where it stays. There can never be many men like Wilbert Rideau or Erwin James but it would be good to think that more might be given the chance.
Nature Notes A monthly feature for Inside Time by James Crosby
glaucous in the strong morning sunlight. A sort of bluish-grey grass, and although very small, they look rather fleshy. Soon their golden trumpets will please the eye and along with other spring flowers, will mark the end of winter; fully promising warmer weather and abounding life, summed up in this beautiful poem by a local poet:
In the Place of Justice, by Wilbert Rideau Profile Books £12.99 A Life Inside - a prisoner’s handbook The Home Stretch - from prison to parole by Erwin James - Atlantic Books £8.99 English PEN’s Readers and Writers programme bring authors into prisons and copies of their books at no cost to the prison estate. PEN stands for the freedom to read and write whoever and wherever you are. In the last few months PEN has taken Mark Haddon into a Secure Unit, a collection of translated work into HMP Holloway, and launched Poetry Review with the poet Karen McCarthy Woolf in HMP Wormwood Scrubs. The poet, Shazea Quraishi, is about to visit HMP Bullwood Hall and a visit into YOI HMP Feltham by Anthony Horowitz is scheduled for next month. We work closely with the librarians, education department and all artists in residence as well as the publishers who donate the books for free. ‘It was interesting to see the story behind the story’ and ‘it was an event I could share with my family’ reflect some of the comments from the women and men inside. As Aristotle said ‘The art of storytelling is what gives us a shareable world’; PEN want to share that world with all communities. Irene Garrow, Readers & Writers, English PEN
A Rutland Spring
I
feel restless today, brimming with zeal and optimism. The sort of restlessness one has when occupied with new ideas, prospects and a clarity of thought that is often ignored. These small changes in thought are often subtle, nevertheless they are apparent and hunched under the broad oak tree, I pondered. Gazing at the cloudless sky, warmed by the sun as its rays disseminated through the fine mesh of twigs and heavy boughs, thoughts of spring emerged; however premature. In whatever way, today’s weather hinted at the promise of spring, I admit it is an annual rumination I have when the great tits begin to sing and the woodpecker drums, the birds are under the same impression too, evident by their illuminating song. Spring is one of the great delights of life and many people privileged with freedom often pass through this seasonal milestone with single-minded apathy. To me the daffodils shall promise me bright, yellow nodding trumpets; the lofty skylark hanging in the air will rouse my spirits with its ascending song and the returning cuckoo, the definitive sign of spring, will be held in deep affection. The emerging lance-like shoots of daffodils look
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19
Celandines fade as bluebells carpet the pollarded wood That echoes to chiffchaff singing somewhere higher, While nightingale captures the season’s mood And competes with Sunday bells from distant stony spire. After warming April’s rainbow showers Have moistened and glistened field and copse Come the first of May’s burgeoning flowers Of cowslips, wild arum and forget-me-nots That adorn the roadside verges of this small shire Now draped in white hedge hawthorn and Queen Anne’s lace. Cuckoo calls while acrobatic swallows fly above the wire And orange tips cavort in airy space. The nestling village street basks in springtime sun With cosy stone and thatch around the shaded green That will witness soon the revelry of May Day fun Epitomising a Merrie England scene By Alister L Lawrence The fieldfares are flocking together in large numbers. Three hundred birds collected over a wood; swarming hordes flighted through the ash trees, and at the brink of darkness the flock changed direction and settled in some distant wood to roost. Very shortly, this winter visitor will make for the breeding grounds in Scandinavia, nesting in colonies of up to 40 to 50 pairs they are noisy and aggressive and it is said that tourists cannot fail to notice them around Trohdhjem Cathedral, Norway. James Crosby is currently resident at HMP Stocken
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SOLICITORS Criminal defence and mental health solicitors specialising in fraud, motoring offences and serious crime Appeals against sentence/conviction • CCRC • Murder General Criminal Offences • Drug Offences • Theft Money Laundering • Sex Offences • Assault • Burglary Contact Kevin Light at Bishop and Light Solicitors Ltd Cambridge House Cambridge Grove, Hove BN3 3ED
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20
Planets
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org the Sun, the Moon and the planets followed regular patterns of movement, which appeared to circle the earth. This provided the basis for the concept of the Solar System – the group or family of planets that includes our own home planet, the Earth. For thousands of years people’s knowledge of the sky remained basically the same. This was their truth – after all, it was what their own eyes told them.
Cycles of the Planets A monthly column devised by astrologer Polly Wallace exclusively for readers of Inside Time
Polly Wallace
The Story of the Solar System
I
n this series of articles we’ve been finding out about the Solar System. One by one each planet has taken its turn in the spotlight. We’ve seen how astronomical facts provide a core of information – followed by glimpses into the way different cultures surrounded the planets with stories and myths. For each planet I’ve included a psychological spin from ideas drawn from astrology. So what about the Solar System itself – or more exactly, our perception of it? Where did this begin? What is going on now? And where is it heading? Since earliest times our ancestors recognised the sky as powerful, mysterious – and vital to survival on earth. Their need to understand motivated them to watch the sky night after night. Before long they were aware of how
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In the 15th century Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, upset the apple-cart by suggesting that the Sun, not the Earth, was centre of the Solar System. This idea was considered totally outrageous – people were burned at the stake for promoting it! A century later Galileo, a brilliant scientist and also an astrologer, used an astronomical telescope to prove that Copernicus had been right all along. When Galileo’s telescope revealed four tiny moons circling around planet Jupiter, it suddenly dawned on people that there was more to the sky than we could ever see with our own eyes. The idea that the visible sky did not, after all, form a ceiling above the earth was like letting the cat out of the bag. It opened the way to a flood of developments. Once telescopes were used, discoveries came thick and fast. During each of the next three centuries, a new planet was discovered – Uranus in 1781, Neptune in 1845 and Pluto in 1930. The boundary of the solar system suddenly seemed elastic, stretching towards infinity... Advances in technology bring telescopes that are increasingly powerful. Not only can they penetrate the sky further and further away, but also they detect smaller & smaller objects. The result is the exciting discovery that many of the gaps between planets, formerly thought to be voids, are teeming with objects. A good example is the asteroid belt – a mass of objects that together orbit the Sun from the space between Mars and Jupiter. Early in the 1800s, astronomers, many of them amateurs, began to find strange objects beyond Mars. Originally four were found – a number now swollen to 280,000. Asteroids reflect no light – they are black as coal and come in all shapes and sizes. Imagine them swirling through space like those huge flocks of starlings that sometimes fill the autumn twilight! By now about 12,000 asteroids have been named – after mythological goddesses, celebrities, Mr Spock and even the discoverer’s cat! Further out a band of objects, now called Centaurs, move along in the space between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Named after mythological creatures that are half-man
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and half-horse, these space objects are also hybrids, combining characteristics of comets and asteroids. For astrologers, the most significant of the centaurs is Chiron. Chiron’s discovery in 1977 gave rise to a problem that has since increased for astronomers – how to classify so many discoveries. Just what is this stranger? It orbits the Sun – but does it count as a planet or not? And if it isn’t a planet, what is it? In 2006 the International Astronomical Union set up official new classifications – including dwarf planets. Pluto is no longer a planet – it is a dwarf planet. As for Ceres, well the jury is still out and so for now she’s classed as both an asteroid and a dwarf planet... The Kuiper belt is a doughnut-shaped ring far out in the Solar System. This belt contains thousands of rocky objects, the largest of which are minor planets or dwarf planets. Beyond the orbit of planet Neptune, the Kuiper belt extends outwards an additional 3 billion kilometres away from the Sun - and from space it looks like a swarm of bees. Even further away is the Oort Cloud, a huge halo made up
of millions of comets. Little is known of this area in space, indicating that our knowledge of the Solar System is still a work in progress. It’s interesting to realise that the sky we actually see appears much the same as it did to our ancestors. The same Sun, Moon and planets are visible - and in spite of all our scientific knowledge, it still looks as if they’re all moving around the earth. For all our advances in scientific knowledge, the mystery is no less - in fact it seems that fresh discoveries often bring more questions than answers. And so forever and a day the sky above provides scope for exploration – and also endless space for our imagination, our stories our hopes and our dreams.
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Astrology
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Aries The Ram
Virgo The Virgin
21st March to 20th April
24th August to 23rd September
There’s a strong desire for action this month directing your energy into some kind of group activity would be a good way to go, should the opportunity arise. Towards the end of the month, however, it might be better to step back a bit as your energies hit a low point - try not to get despondent.
A healthy mind and body are never far from a Virgo’s thoughts, but with Mercury homing in on your relationships zone with feisty Mars and dreamy Neptune as February draws to a close, you’re either going to be swept off your feet or led astray. Going with the flow doesn’t always come naturally, but this month I think you’re going to have to.
Taurus The Bull 21st April to 21st May
Libra The Scales 24th September to 23rd October
Steering by the stars Contrary to popular belief, most astrologers do not believe the planets predict our fate - they’re simply reflections in the sky of the forces and cycles at work on the earth below. Just like the seasons, there is a time to reap and a time to sow; a time to be active and a time to be still. The ancients believed the movements of planets in the night sky were a guide to when these times were. The word ‘Zodiac’ comes from the Greek word for ‘animal’, and the signs that are so familiar to us are based on the (mainly) animal shapes the ancients saw in the clusters of stars, each representing an archetype of the human experience
Rod Harper Rod Harper works as a consultant, writer, and teacher of astrology. His interest in astrology began at an early age when his mother would read out the sun sign column in the daily newspaper. However it was during a particularly troubled patch in life that he discovered a more in depth form of astrology and a way of using it to navigate through difficult times. He now helps others to steer their lives using the wisdom of the stars.
This month’s New Moon brings a reflective mood - it’s time to think about long-term plans and your place in the world. There may be a few challenges ahead but your ruling planet Venus in resourceful Capricorn will guide you in the right direction. Remember the story of the Hare and the Tortoise? Hang in there, Taurus, there are better around the corner. Gemini The Twins 22nd May to 21st June
Scorpio The Scorpion The planets gathering together in your 9th House could be stirring up a desire to broaden your horizons. If you’ve been thinking of learning something new, now could be an ideal time. The full Moon on the 18th brings family issues to the fore - do you need to cut your ties with your past in some way? Cancer The Crab 22nd June to 23rd July
Deep-seated feelings of jealously surface as the month begins, but it’s important to keep things in perspective and not keep your worries to yourself. It’s time to talk, and a good moment might be the weekend of the 12th and 13th with the planets in sympathy with your ruler, the Moon. Leo The Lion 24th July to 23rd August
It’s a good time for making contacts with people who may prove to be a big support in the months ahead. If one particular relationship has been feeling a bit lifeless recently, then the new Moon on the 4th could help put the spark back in. On the other hand, it could just be a tinder box waiting to ignite... Handle relationships with care. 4th Floor, South Central 11 Peter Street Manchester M2 5QR
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One of Libra’s blessings is the ability to see the true and beautiful within life - the challenge is not to waste this opportunity with all talk and no action. With a new Moon in the creative quarter of your chart, this could be just the opportunity you’ve been waiting for to harness your natural creativity and actually do something with it.
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Your attention may turn to events of the past as you try to come to terms with where you are now. Trust your instincts around the weekend of the 5th and 6th when you may tune into some advice from an unexpected source. By the Full Moon of the 18th, things are looking clearer as Mars surges forward into your Fifth House of creativity and romance.
Sagittarius The Archer 23rd November to 21st December
With Jupiter in your fun-loving Fifth House, open your mind to the possibility of new ways to express yourself - you may find yourself
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pleasantly surprised. With the new Moon on the 3rd, why not try putting pen to paper and sharing your thoughts? The 5th looks like a particularly good day for communication - it could even signify good news coming your way. Capricorn The Goat 22nd December to 20th January
This February’s New Moon brings your finances into focus and you’ll feel a new impetus to get things straight before the year gets properly underway. If there’s an important decision to be made, apply your mind to it around the 14th when your thinking skills are at their sharpest. Aquarius The Water Carrier 21st January to 19th February
On one level, the Water Carrier doesn’t really like being the centre of attention, yet somehow you seem to draw attention to yourself, whether you mean to or not. The time has come to recognise your very individual role in the game of life, and as the month moves on, the attention shifts to your finances. It could be time to reassess your values. Pisces The Fish 20th February to 20th March It’s been a quiet few months, but as February gets underway, things really start looking up. With the Sun, Mars and Mercury in your sign towards the end of the month there’s a feeling of energy and a sense of finally being back in your element. Just one word of caution: watch out for an overbearing friend during the last week of February.
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Comment
Staffing levels Following the riot at Ford, the National Offender Management Service claimed that the staffing levels were ‘considered appropriate and normal for an open establishment such as Ford’.
FORD New Years’ Eve riot
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read Gerald Ronson’s book ‘Leading from the Front’. On Ford he writes: ‘I could get cigars, champagne, smoked salmon, caviar, anything.’ That was 20 years’ ago. Absolutely nothing has changed according to another A-lister, Lord Brocket, who was at Ford in the late 1990’s. He commented that smuggling alcohol was ‘rife’, when he was there. And David Shayler, the former M15 agent said: ‘One guy would go off to the supermarket with our money and come back with bags full of spirits.’ A 2009 Report by the Prisons Inspectorate described Ford as being ‘awash with alcohol’ and warned that lax security has resulted in some prisoners becoming ‘violently drunk’.
Only two prison officers were on duty on the night of December 31st. There can hardly be anyone in their right mind who would think that two prison officers and four support staff for nearly 500 prisoners was ‘appropriate’. Any school or college with a similar staffing ratio would be closed immediately. A prison officer from HMP Ford told those at the House of Commons briefing that security staff had been moved to other jobs in the weeks leading up to Christmas, despite the fact that alcohol smuggling was becoming ’endemic’. Just two officers are on duty at Ford when 50 or more prisoners (outworkers) return to the prison after a day’s work in the community, usually when the day staff had gone home. Consequently, searching is limited and ‘full searches’ impossible because often at least one of the officers is a female and the four OSGs (support staff) on duty are not permitted to carry out discipline procedures.
Sending inappropriate people to open prisons Two Inquiries have been started into the rioting by prisoners at Ford Open Prison, in West Sussex, which broke out at around midnight on New Year’s Eve. Damage to the prison is estimated to have cost £3 million.
Was Ford awash with alcohol? Crispin Blunt, the Prisons Minister, expressed concern that alcohol had been smuggled into the prison.
Inside Time’s Editorial Assistant Paul Sullivan was invited to attend a Prison Officers’ Association briefing on Ford and the open estate at the House of Commons. MPs, pre-occupied with preventing prisoners’ voting rights, seemed disinterested in the serious day-to-day business of running prisons; only three MPs turned up and only one actually sat down and asked questions.
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‘There are criteria for acceptance at Ford which exclude prisoners who do not meet the assessment criteria for open prisons. All prisoners have been assessed as suitable to be there’ a spokesman from the Ministry of Justice said. The Prison Officers’ Association’s briefing confirmed that it was the young immature prisoners on short sentences who were drunk at Ford. At Thorn Cross it was pointed out that 184 prisoners are assessed as MAPPA 1 and 36 assessed as ‘High Risk’. Paul, a resident at North Sea Camp, told Erwin
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Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org James, writing for The Guardian newspaper: ‘Open jails have a mixed clientele. You’ve got long-termers, who know what is at stake, and you’ve got a lot of young kids, short-termers doing six months, nine months and they just don’t care. Open jails should be just for people who need to be resettled ...’ Paul’s view on the subject of inappropriate people being sent to open prisons is identical to two Conservative Shadow Ministers, Edward Gardner QC and Nick Herbert, who in March and April 2007 visited Ford and said: ‘We are now seeing short-term prisoners being sent to Ford because there is no room in the secure estate! This is a problem that is only going to get worse’. Nick Herbert prophetically added: ‘It is clear to both of us that the Government’s mismanagement of the criminal justice system has resulted in unsuitable offenders being transferred to open prisons, causing disruptions’.
Things people say ... ‘Although damage has been sustained to the prison, there has only been a minimal loss of accommodation’
Police investigating the New Year’s Day riot at Ford Prison, near Arundel, say they have made “several arrests”. Detective Chief Inspector Nigel Smith, who is leading the Sussex Police Major Crime Branch Inquiry, said: “Several people have been arrested and interviewed following the disturbance at HMP Ford during New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. “The investigation is progressing and we have a large amount of potential suspects and of course witnesses to events to interview.” The Ministry of Justice has provoked criticism with a decision not to publish the results of the Prison Service’s internal inquiry into the mutiny.
Meanwhile, no charges will be brought in connection with the 20 hour riot in April 2009 at Ashwell in Rutland, the Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed. The CPS said there was insufficient evidence to bring a charge of prison mutiny after 75% of the prison was made uninhabitable.
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PRISON REFORM TRUST
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‘There are eight staff working in open conditions at night. That is normal for an open prison, nothing has changed in the last number of months’. Crispin Blunt, Prison’s Minister, speaking on TV after the riot On the night of the riot at Ford there were six staff working. At Thorn Cross with 280 prisoners aged 18-25 there is just one senior officer and 1 officer on duty with 7 OSGs each night. At North Sea Camp with 320 adult male prisoners there is 1 officer and 4 OSGs working at night. At Hewell the open section has just one officer on nights. Staff from the other two sections refuse to go and help if there is a problem. There are 7 open prisons and each night just 17 officers and 26 support staff are on duty for 3,000 prisoners. POA assistant Secretary Joe Simpson described staffing levels as; “totally inadequate”.
he coalition government has lots of plans to change how prisons work. It is widely agreed that prisons should be places where people have opportunities to work, study or train and learn skills that will help them (and the communities they return to) on release. In fact, this is probably the only area of prison reform that liberal and conservative people agree on! The government is planning to completely change the way prison regimes run so that many more prisoners have access to work. The government also wants community organisations, charities and businesses to be more involved in running work schemes in prisons. Education will also become more focused on teaching work related skills with the aim of making prisoners employable on release. Currently, around 9,000 prisoners are employed in workshops and less than half of these are with outside businesses. More prisoners work in the kitchens, laundries and in other jobs inside the prison. Altogether, there are around 24,000 work places available, including people who go out to work in the community. This means that under a third of prisoners (24,000 out of 85,000) are engaged in employed work at any time. It will be a massive challenge to the prison service to achieve most prisoners having a 40 hour working week.
One factor that prison managers will have to
think about is how access to work can be fair for everyone. The prison service has a duty under the Equality Act to make sure people from different groups have equal
access to wages and opportunities. How can this be achieved in prisons? Prisons currently have difficulties making all services available to people with disabilities. Also, having a disability is more common amongst people in prisons than those in the community and some people need support to be able to work. A few prisoners who have a disability will be unable to work. However, most will be able to work but may need adjustments and flexibility in working hours. For outside companies wanting to use prison labour, having a stable work force will be important. However, anyone running schemes in prison knows that it is likely that not all prisoners can attend all the time. People in prison often need to attend health appointments, sentence related interviews or visits during their work day and this will mean they are taking time away from their work place. This is all challenging enough without the added difficulty of unexpected transfers to other prisons. Most prisons lack the infrastructure and space to support full time industrial workshops. It will also be difficult to attract businesses into prison while the economy is recovering. One way to increase activity in prisons would be to support the voluntary sector in working with prisoners. Prison managers should explore these chances and develop prisoners volunteering much more. Voluntary work can be especially well suited for prisoners. One reason is that charities can be flexible and prisoners can work at their own pace or part time. They are more likely to able to engage a person with mental health difficulties, a learning disability or a lack of work skills. Another reason is that prisoners who have skills and work experiences already can be used to mentor and support other prisoners who are new to work or volunteering. There is considerable scope for developing volunteering, peer support, representation work and prisoner councils. This sort of massive change in prison will only happen if prisoners are allowed to take on more responsibility. However, this can be achieved if prison managers and officers support the schemes fully.
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Francesca Cooney, Advice & Information Manager at the Prison Reform Trust, wants to see equality of employment amongst prisoners
Six accommodation blocks were burnt out. A gym, mail room, snooker room and pool room were destroyed at an estimated cost of £3 million.
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Ben’s Blog Lifer Ben Gunn’s Prison Blog … the only blog by a serving British prisoner which ‘looks stupidity and ignorance in the eye whilst attempting to inject some neurons into the criminological debate’. The Unanswerable Letter January 7, 2011 I’m a lousy correspondent. Just ask any of the people waiting for me to reply to their letters. One of the envelopes sitting on the pile has been there for months and much as I want to reply, it twinges my conscience. It is from a fellow prisoner. I bumped into him many years ago when he was serving a 6 year sentence. Now he has received a Life sentence with a tariff (minimum term) of 25 years. He wants my advice on how to “do” his sentence. I began to write my reply and then it hit me. My man is in his thirties. He will be about 60 on release, if all goes well. What could I possibly say that could fill that void of time with meaning? What?
..................................................... Innocent Eddie January 9, 2011 My rather meagre Christmas was thoroughly spoilt by the news that Innocent Eddie Gilfoyle has finally been released. Not sad news, you might properly think. In itself, no. But... Anyone remotely informed about the case against Eddie Gilfoyle will know that it is baseless. The evidence presented at his trial was both manipulated and manufactured. It was sparse then and as the years have passed that evidence has become nonexistent. Eddie is as innocent as I am guilty. Having shared his company, I can also tell you that he is a thoroughly decent bloke. Eighteen years on, and still resolutely insisting his innocence, Eddie was released for Xmas. A bittersweet event as his release came not by order of the Court of Appeal, but by the Parole Board. His appeal continues.
What made me so angry about his release (along with The Times, who have campaigned on Eddie’s behalf) was one of the conditions that the Parole Board placed on his Life Licence. Eddie is not allowed to talk to the media about his case, even through third parties.
But scratch away at it, as I do in a pondering mood, and I honestly can’t see why the prison service should expend such effort trying to gag me. It’s not as if I’m propagating an ideology of rioting and mayhem. I’m not even lambasting and mocking my keepers with a particularly sharp edge.
This is absolutely unprecedented, a condition never before placed upon a released Lifer. Should he breach this condition, he is liable to be recalled back to prison to continue his Life sentence.
If they look silly now and then, either as individuals or as a collective, it’s only because they do silly things. Shining a light on those should could - improve matters overall.
This is shocking. It is also, unquestionably, illegal. Imagine the depths of depraved justification that the Parole Board sank to in order to impose this restriction. This is a man in a liberal democratic country. A man who claims he is innocent of his crime. A man who has persistently campaigned for his innocence in the media for the whole of his sentence. And now, on his conditional release, he is gagged from speaking in public, prevented under threat of imprisonment from simply stating the words, “I am innocent”.
So why the fuss and palaver? What are they so afraid of?
If anyone doubts the need for people such as myself to be allowed to speak, to campaign, then the situation of Eddie Gilfoyle alone provides a justification. These are the depths that our masters will sink to in order to hide their embarrassment. And I -amongst many - hope I won’t ever let them get away with it. Will you?
..................................................... Pondering January 10, 2011 I know that sections of management are annoyed by this blog, which I take to be a sign that I’m doing something right. And there is now a lot of effort being expended to ensure that the media cannot get near me. This can be dismissed as just another manifestation of the Great Game played behind these walls, the eternal struggle between Us and Them.
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..................................................... A Governor in a Panic January 11, 2011 The effect of The Times article has been interesting, especially coupled with a governor’s fear for her position. The No.1 Governor has buggered off for a week, leaving us in the care of the Deputy, Cruella de Ville. Cruella discovered that a certain man had booked to visit me - and took exception. An emissary was sent to deliver the news that I wouldn’t be allowed to see him as he ‘may be connected to the media’. I explained that he’d been visiting me for several months, was a mainstream political activist and a businessman. Nothing to do with the media. I pointed out that this turn of events was highly illegal. Prisons can’t go around banning people “just in case” they are journalists; they have to know so before they act. And I threatened to inflict the full weight of legal and media embarrassment upon them if they continued this game. Nothing more was heard that day. Next day, another emissary arrived from Cruella, one of the Matalan Army of Governors in Training (GiTs). As he entered, I asked if the piece of paper he was waving was either a compensation
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cheque or a big fat apology? Alas, neither. It was a disclaimer they insisted I sign, saying that nothing discussed on the visit would end up in the media. Again, very, very illegal and possibly unprecedented in British prison history. I flatly refused. I will sign a disclaimer, as per the rules, if the visitor is a journalist visiting in a personal capacity, but never otherwise. This may seem like a minor admin matter, but never underestimate the deviousness and maliciousness of the prison service. If one signs these disclaimers and then stuff ends up in the media, one sanction is to refuse to allow that visitor into the prison in future. Imagine the scenario. If I was having a hard time of it - e.g. a governor had lost the plot and was acting illegally - and told a visitor to pass the word on, and it ended up on the blog. As the visitor had signed the disclaimer, they would be perpetually banned from visiting ever again. As the blog Editor is my most frequent visitor, this would be a clever way to sever our contact, would it not? This type of activity by prison managers is repulsive, just the sort of legitimate manoeuvring I’ve been challenging all my life. It still makes me as angry today as it ever did, and it is just as repugnant. My reading of the situation is this. Having given Damian Whitworth of the Times permission to visit, this governor then turned him away at the gate. Damian had enough material from letters and speaking to others to write his article anyway, as he did. Along the way, he wrote that it is easier to visit a man on Death Row in Texas than it is to visit little me in a low security nick in the sticks. Was that embarrassing to someone in the prison service? Hopefully. And now, with Cruella being in sole charge this week, I think she is extremely paranoid that a journo may sneak in to see me under her nose. In a fit of mindless panic, she then acts way outside of the rulebook and tries to ban anyone who visits me from speaking to the media. Either way, I’m actually happy that this has happened. It’s a fight the prison will inevitably lose, given its blatant illegality. And it affords me the opportunity to reveal to you the shenanigans that happen behind these walls. It reinforces my belief that prisoners blogging, shedding light into this gloomy corner, are vital.
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Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
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Going bananas over security! Ex-prisoner Noel Smith looks at things that make you go ‘Hmmmm’ on whether you’ve been smoking banana skins. FM radios were also banned from prisons up until the early 1990s. Some people will tell you it was because they might have interfered with the staff personal radio system, but security also had another reason. Apparently, if you have a degree in electronic engineering and a state-of-the-art toolkit (both of which are about as rare as rocking horse shit behind the high walls of HMP), you can easily convert an FM radio into a walkie-talkie! Security worried that if a FM radio were converted in this way then prisoners might be able to send and receive messages to the outside world. Of course, once they started putting phones in prisons this argument became academic.
Noel Smith
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any years ago I was serving time in a dispersal prison on the Isle of Wight when, unfortunately, one of the inmates was found dead in his cell on the morning unlock. He had died during the night, of a heart attack as we later found out, and had lain on the cold floor of the cell for almost 8 hours. He was dead, and nobody who saw his slack, grey face was in any doubt whatsoever about this fact. Except the Security PO. There was no doctor in attendance so it was decided that the best thing to do was to phone an ambulance from the adjacent hospital and get the poor chap pronounced dead at the hospital. The body was loaded into the back of the ambulance but, before it could pull out of the prison the Security PO insisted that a member of staff be handcuffed to the body. ‘Just in case it was a clever escape attempt’, he later told us! He didn’t actually say ‘more than my job’s worth’, but he may as well have done. This incident served to illustrate to me, if it were needed, that security staff are a completely different breed. They think differently to ordinary prison staff, as though they spend all their time thinking that everyone is trying to have one over on them. They can see plots and schemes in the most innocent of actions. Not so many years ago I was in HMP Belmarsh, on an education course, and the class tutor – a civilian – decided to treat us by bringing in a DVD for the class to watch on the afternoon before the Christmas break. Unfortunately for her the DVD was ‘The X Files’. A security
officer, who was on reception that day, saw the DVD and immediately confiscated it. When the teacher asked why, she was told, without even the hint of a chuckle, that as the DVDs subject matter concerned teleportation and telekinesis, it could be a breach of security. ‘How would you feel if these prisoners got tips from this DVD in how to dismantle locks with their minds? Or managed to teleport themselves out of the prison? Can you imagine this dangerous lot loose and running all over the place with that sort of power?’ She assured us that he was deadly serious. Think about some of the things that have been banned in prison over the years, and the reasons given for their banning by prison security departments. For many years bananas were banned in British prisons. The reason for this (or so we were told) was because ‘security information’ said that the skins could be ‘dried
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out and smoked’, and apparently prisoners might be getting ‘high’ by toking on a cocktail of tobacco and banana skins. Which seems odd, seeing as how, since the early 1980s at least, our prisons have been awash with heroin. In some jails it’s easier to get a bag of heroin than it is to get a pillow! I once asked a security screw to justify the ban on bananas, considering the heroin problem, and questioned him on the last time he’d heard of someone committing a crime whilst high on banana skins? I asked him when he’d last witnessed clucking banana skin junkies coming through reception suffering withdrawal symptoms from that dried yellow gold? Obviously he had no answer. But since they brought in Mandatory Drug Testing, bananas have come off the banned list. Even though, as far as I’m aware, there is no test available to check
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There are many more examples of this kind of paranoid madness in the prison system, and I’m sure we’ve all come across them at one time or another. Most of them are so outlandish that they can leave you scratching your head. Welcome to the strange world of prison security. Have you ever come across a rule, order or regulation in prison that seems to make no sense whatsoever? Maybe it was a nonsensical reply to an application or complaint form? If so, then send your experience in to Inside Time and, if it’s outrageous enough, we’ll publish it. Contributions should be no longer than 300 words.
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Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org Loops, with 60% of the population wearing them. Arches, with 5% of fingerprint patterns, and Whorls, accounting for the remaining 35%. Loops are subdivided into two subtypes, the Radial Loop and the Ulnar Loop. Arches also have two subtypes, the Plain Arch and Tented Arch. Whorls are more complicated, mainly due to differing methods of classification, but four subtypes are usually recognised. These are the Plain Whorl, the Central Pocket Whorl, the Double Loop Whorl and Accidental Whorl. Clear? Let’s get murky.
Printing error? Keith Rose delves into the murky world of fingerprinting
S
ynopsis of an everyday trial. Prosecuting Counsel; ‘My’ lud, one of the defendant’s fingerprints was found at the scene’. Trial Judge’s Summation; ‘Members of the jury, I put it to you the defendant is obviously guilty as his fingerprint was found at the scene … (but I leave it up to you) … Guilty? Thank you. Take the miscreant down.’ Another triumph for English justice? If you have ever watched the delightfully kooky, resident forensic scientist Abby Sciuto (Paulie Perrette), undertake a computerised fingerprint search on the Channel 5 TV programme, NCIS, you have just been conned. Abby’s computer always gives a positive match with numerous points of similarity. Sadly, that is fiction. Reality is far murkier.
No two fingerprints are identical! So stated Sir Francis Galton in 1892, in his landmark publication, ‘Finger Prints’. He claimed that the odds of two fingerprints being the same were 64 billion to 1. That’s 64,000,000,000 to 1 against. You could ask, in 1892, how could he know? In humans, the surface of the palms of the hands, fingers and toes are covered with a thickened type of skin known as ‘Friction Ridge Skin’. It provides a gripping surface and through the greater concentration of nerve endings, an enhanced sense of touch. Fingerprints remain unchanged throughout an individual’s life, so the benefits of fingerprints for identification purposes are obvious, aren’t they? Fingerprints fall into three main categories.
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Traditionally, fingerprint records were held on card indexes and searched by specially trained experts. However, in 1992 an Automated Fingerprint Recognition system was first introduced. In 2001, the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System (NAFIS) became fully operational and is claimed to be the only definitive database that allows the identification of individuals. Following the implementation of the Criminal Justice and Police Acts 2001, fingerprints from any arrested person, whether or not subsequently prosecuted, were retained within the computer. You may also recall the controversy about the system retaining elimination fingerprints from witnesses and the victims of crime. There are two main search types carried out by NAFIS. The most frequently used is positive identification of a person by comparing their 10 fingerprints against the 10 prints held in NAFIS. In November 2006, Operation Lantern saw the initial introduction of hand-held devices, connected to NAFIS, which enabled kerbside identification checks to be carried out. The second most popular search facility on NAFIS is comparison of crime scene fingerprints to records held in NAFIS. Unlike Abby’s fictional search results, the NAFIS computer actually generates 15 probable matches, providing a fingerprint expert with 15 possible suspects. One vital point to remember is the final decision on a positive fingerprint match is the ‘expert opinion’ of a fingerprint expert usually employed by the soon to be defunct Forensic Science Service.
The fingerprint expert will look at the type of fingerprint (Loop, Arch, or Whorl), the finger type (left or right hand, thumb, etc), the ridge characteristics, ridge endings and bifurcations, (where a ridge divides into two). If there are enough ridge characteristics, in the same positions, on both the scene print and file copy, the expert could make identification. So far, so good.
“Fingerprints fall into three main categories. Loops, with 60% of the population wearing them. Arches, with 5% of fingerprint patterns, and Whorls, accounting for the remaining 35%” Until recently, a fingerprint had to have 16 matching characteristics to ensure a positive identification. Unfortunately, under a succession of less than honest Home Secretaries this benchmark has been abolished in favour of a fingerprint expert’s opinion, supported by two of his colleagues. In recent times people have been convicted of major crimes, including murder, with as little as 5 matching characteristics on a single partial fingerprint. There have been some, rarely fully-reported,
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Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org high profile cases where ‘experts’ have erred spectacularly in the mis-identification of crime scene fingerprints. For example, in Scotland, in 1997, a Detective Constable Shirley McKie was assigned to the Kilmarnock murder case of Marion Ross. An unidentified fingerprint was found on a bathroom door frame. After examination, the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) claimed a positive match with DC McKie. However, in spite of being assigned to the case, DC McKie stated that she had never entered the house. In the subsequent trial of the Marion Ross murder suspect, David Astbury, DC McKie testified on oath that she had never entered the murder house. In March 1998, Strathclyde Police mounted a dawn raid on her house and charged her with perjury. In May 1999, McKie was unanimously found not guilty of perjury in the Scottish High Court of Judiciary. In a report to the Scottish Parliament, the former Chief Inspector of Constabulary in Scotland, William Taylor, reported that the SCROs fingerprint bureau was neither effective nor efficient, and ‘experts’ were not as good as they were claimed to be. David Astbury, convicted of the Marion Ross murder, was freed in August 2003 as a direct result of the McKie fingerprint mis-identification. In February 2006, McKie was awarded £750,000 compensation, but the SCRO still refuse to admit their mistake, and calls for a judicial enquiry continue to be ignored. Needless to say, this case got very little media coverage. There are people who argue that fingerprint matching, when carried out by an expert, is not an example of scientific method as it is reliant on opinion and is based on a claim that prints are unique, and is not subject to scientific standards of falsifiability. For example, it is a simple trick to lift a fingerprint from an item like a glass, and then reapply it to another surface. Try it; you only need a piece of tape and a little care. In 2006, researching the context and possible errors in fingerprint analysis, researchers in the School of Psychology at the University of
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Southampton presented sets of fingerprints to experts and asked them to confirm that they did not match a set of reference fingerprints. What the experts were not told is that the prints they had been given had previously been positively identified as a match with the reference prints, by the experts themselves. Four out of five contradicted their earlier decisions. The researchers, headed by Dr Itiel Dror, concluded that context has a considerable influence on identification. If the experts were told these prints belong to a suspect; they unconsciously lean towards a positive identification. Context is when the expert forms an opinion of the result before examination of a suspect print. For example, what do you see here? A I3 C. If you looked at it quickly you probably thought you saw A B C. Your brain would expect to see a B between A & C. The B would be in context. While fingerprints may be a reliable form of forensic evidence, removing a vital scientific yardstick, like that of 16 matching characteristics, in court cases can only lead to further miscarriages of justice. An expert can make a mistake quite honestly. An expert can be negligent, not paying attention, or simply dishonest. It becomes fraudulent to claim scientific evidence of the uniqueness of a fingerprint without a scientific test. In allowing the abolishment of a scientific benchmark, fingerprint identification should be challenged by defence counsel on most occasions. However, every trial judge should hang his head in shame for permitting such opportunities for errors, dishonesty, and wrongful convictions. There is one final point. A mismatch of a single characteristic in a fingerprint indicates there cannot be a positive match. The courts seem to ignore this. Another example of why judges should wear sackcloth and ashes. Fingerprint identification. Murky enough for you? Keith Rose BA is currently resident at HMP Long Lartin
Jonathan King writes ... We are in the Awards season again. The new year always starts with very little going on in the entertainment world, so there are numerous silly Awards Shows, all of which look the same, sound the same and are forgotten within seconds. I won some awards in my youth. In 1975 I was proclaimed the performer of the Record of the Year by the Ivor Novello Society for Una Paloma Blanca. In 1997 I was The Man of the Year in the music world and Tony Blair sent a message saying I was one of Britain’s greatest living human beings. I suspect he later changed his mind. I certainly did about him. And in 1987 I hosted and wrote The Brits Awards Show. It was a great success; so much so that the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) dropped me (I was expensive) and hired Noel Edmonds to present it; this ended in disaster as the show over ran, so next year they booked Sam Fox and Mick Fleetwood, thinking that a “little and large” contrast would be highly amusing visually. It wasn’t; the programme became a legendary cockup of mistakes and blunders and the BPI returned, cap in hand, to beg me to take it over again, which I did. I named it The Brits (for British Industry Trusts Show).
Tinie Tempah nominated for four Brit Awards This year’s show – on Feb 15th – has all the indications of another dreary night. They have redesigned the statue – always a mistake; branding is everything; they have never remodelled the Oscar because it has acquired legendary status over the years. Losers do things like change the name, change the award – because they are unable to deal with the main purpose – make it a great entertaining show which sells loads of music. So they tinker with things that make no difference to the viewer at all. And they have announced that they are emphasising albums. I hate albums. Single hits are what matter and there has been a sad decline in great, commercial, crossover single hits over the past few years. Most albums (there are exceptions) are predominantly second rate tracks which self indulgent artistes are allowed to release because they are “album tracks”. They should be binned unheard. Record labels realised back in the 50s that a single hit made some money but album sales had huge profits. It was entirely a financial decision; nothing to do with quality of music.
I loved the first couple of years when the industry bigwigs, terrified of any association with it, left me to my own devices and I produced good shows, but by the third year, with enormous ratings returned and huge critical acclaim, they started trying to nibble back control, so I quit and left them to it.
I’m not saying The Brits should throw out commercial, catchy crap; if the punters like it, include it. I think ALL Awards Shows need a hefty shakeup. The format is stale, old and dull. The pleasure music has given almost all of us is enormous. Why can’t we make TV coverage of it equally entertaining?
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
The case of Eddie Gilfoyle and free speech Charles Hanson ponders the climb-down of the Parole Board over their outrageous gagging condition on the licence of Eddie Gilfoyle
L
ifer Eddie Gilfoyle was released on life licence in January 2011, after spending 18 years in prison for a murder he has always claimed he did not commit. It might have been thought by himself and his campaign team that they now had the opportunity to bring the issues surrounding his conviction into the wider public arena. After all, he was no longer a prisoner shackled by petty prison rules that often curtail a prisoner’s contact with the outside world, and where a flagrant disregard for prisoner’s rights are often the norm. For example, the opening of a prisoner’s legal correspondence, a clear breach of the rules and an issue which has already been ventilated at the European Court of Human Rights (where the UK Government was found to be in breach). A prisoner’s right to correspond freely with people outside prison has been protected robustly both under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and under domestic law. The European Court has accepted that a prisoner has a general right of correspondence and that any interference with that right must be in accordance with law and necessary in a democratic society for the protection of one or more legitimate aims, such as public safety and the prevention of crime [Silver v. United Kingdom (1983) 5 EHRR 347]. The court has given specific and enhanced protection to a prisoner’s right to correspond with his or her legal advisers, holding that unjustified interference with such a right constitutes a violation of the right to correspondence and the right to a fair trial under Art.6 [Golder v United Kingdom (1975) 1 EHRR 524]. In addition, the domestic courts have accepted
conditions of that licence. And with an additional condition that prohibits him from contacting the media, either directly or indirectly, whether this is regarding his release or his appeal. This was a condition imposed on him by the Parole Board on the basis that; “It is sometimes the case that one of the licence conditions is that the prisoner being released doesn’t get involved with the media. If that is the case, the only reason for that condition would be to prevent further offending. For instance, it might be the case that if a high-profile prisoner talks to the media after he has been released, there would be issues concerning the feelings of the victims. There might also be concerns about the reaction of the general public to someone who has been released from a life sentence.” It is unclear how speaking to the press can, in any way, be linked to the possibility of reoffending and the two examples given by the Parole Board fall far short of anything convincing.
Protest outside Wakefield Prison and protected these rights, guaranteeing the prisoner the right to correspond with his/her lawyer [Raymond v. Honey [1980] AC 1; [1994] QB 198] and to conduct oral interviews with journalists [R. v. Home Secretary ex parte O’Brien and Simms [1999] 3 All ER 400]. But moving on to the rights of prisoners to be able to correspond with, and be visited by, journalists, was an issue which was addressed by the House of Lords in the case of R v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex Parte Ian Simms : R V Same, Ex Parte Michael O’Brien (1999) LTL 8/7/99 : (2000) 2 AC 115 : (1999) 3 WLR 328 : (1999) 3 All ER 400 : (1999) EMLR 689 : (1999) COD 520 :
Times, July 9, 1999. The House of Lords ruled that; A convicted prisoner has a fundamental and basic right to communicate orally with the media through a journalist, in order to challenge the safety of his conviction, and the policy of the Secretary of State for the Home Department made under paragraph 37 and paragraph 37A of Section A of Prison Service Standing Order 5 was unlawful to the event that it interfered with that right.
Of course, victims of crime and their families are hardly likely to engender good will to those convicted of offences against them. And when I hear the words ‘feelings’ it seems to me that the Probation Service have had a hand in stipulating the prohibition on Mr Gilfoyle talking to journalists. This kind of terminology and speculation is very much at the fore of their thinking in their often misguided quest to protect the public. And the Parole Board is all too often guided by the Probation Service.
Well that should settle that. After all, the House of Lords Judicial Committee was the highest court in the UK (now replaced by the Supreme Court). But not for Eddie Gilfoyle, for having been released on life licence he has to comply with the
It is ironic that a prisoner’s right to communicate with journalists is taken away when he or she is released on licence, as in the case of Mr Gilfoyle, so that as a relatively free man he has less
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org rights in this area than if he were still a prisoner. Notwithstanding the prohibition on Mr Gilfoyle speaking to the media, this seems to me to be a very selective decision given that there are freed lifers who not only have their own websites, but also campaign quite actively and publicly in order to try and clear their names. Including holding public meetings where the press are invited. By this reasoning the Parole Board’s gagging order in Mr Gilfoyle’s case seems to be both illogical and irrational. Indeed, it is not only freed lifers and other offenders who are active in promoting their causes, but there exists a situation where those still serving their sentences have campaigning websites and regularly blog on the internet through third parties. The case of O’Brien (one of the Cardiff Three) and Simms started in1995, and found its way to the House of Lords in 1999. The case centred on the 1964 Prison Rules, and in particular, paragraphs 37 and 37a, which stipulated that journalists should be allowed to visit prisoners only on condition that they sign an undertaking not to disclose or publish any information obtained during the visit. Then there were wider considerations. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (now incorporated into British law) lays down: ‘Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority.’ This should not exclude prisoners. The House of Lords ruled, in 1983, that “prisoners retained all basic rights, except those necessarily taken away as a consequence of their imprisonment. A prisoner may wish to
make representations about his own or other inmates’ cases or observations about judicial processes, or to pass on information about life inside. All would be valid concerns.”
This kind of terminology and speculation is very much at the fore of their thinking in their often misguided quest to protect the public. And the Parole Board is all too often guided by the Probation Service. The Home Office originally argued that the enforcement of paragraphs 37 and 37a was essential to protect ‘the legitimate interests of the public, including the victims of crime’ and ‘to prevent gratuitous details of a prisoner’s offence entering the public domain’. It added: ‘There would be serious risk of distress to victims and their families and general public outrage at the sight of prisoners and [journalists] collaborating to publish details of a prisoner’s case.’ Lawyers for Jack Straw, then Home Secretary, had also argued that allowing visits would harm prison discipline. Well, that to me is at the hub of wanting to maintain a ban on journalists visiting prisons or prisoners communicating with them. Nothing is so sacred as that which goes on behind prison walls. What is clear is that the Parole Board have not
kept up with the law as it stands and seem to have interpreted it as if the case of O’Brien and Simms had never existed. By what stretch of the imagination could speaking to the media cause public outrage, unless one was Osama Bin Laden? Furthermore, the notion that it would prevent gratuitous details of a prisoner’s offence is less valid these days in the age of the internet and other avenues of information. Certainly, one can understand the distress of victims and their families at the loss of a loved one, but if there existed some disquiet about the conviction of the alleged perpetrator would they not want to arrive at the truth too? In the House of Lord’s judgement the judges said that prisoners who protested their innocence often had no other means of searching out the fresh evidence needed to have their cases looked at again. Lord Steyn said: “In recent years a substantial number of miscarriages of justice have only been identified and corrected [through] painstaking investigation by journalists.” The Law Lords, who were given details of 60 cases, unanimously overturned an appeal court ruling that the ban was justified. Lord Steyn added: “The criminal justice system has been shown to be fallible. Yet the effect of the judgment of the Court of Appeal is to outlaw the safety valve of effective, investigative journalism.” Lords Browne-Wilkinson, Steyn, Hoffmann, Hobhouse and Millett declared unlawful the Home Secretary’s policy of banning media visits. They also said the prison governors’ refusal to allow journalists interviews with inmates, unless they agreed not to write about cases, was unlawful. Lord Steyn went on to say that, “interviews with prisoners had served to identify and undo a substantial number of miscarriages of justice”. He said: “The evidence
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establishes clearly that without oral interviews it is now virtually impossible, under the ban, for a journalist to take up the case of a prisoner who alleges a miscarriage of justice - a means of correcting errors in the functioning of the criminal justice system has been lost.” In any event, the Parole Board had to climb down when it decided to remove the unlawful gagging conditions from Mr Gilfoyle’s life licence following threats of litigation by his solicitors. It was clear that the Parole Board had an unarguable case because when the case was returned to the panel that had ordered his release they were simply asked ‘Would they have insisted on him staying in prison if the conditions had not been imposed’? The panel accepted that they would have released him anyway. So much for the reasons which were originally given for including the condition, which was, of course, that speaking to the media could lead to further offending. That now seems to have been an unimaginative reason, and one that was totally without merit. In any case it certainly does not, in any sense, reach the threshold of risk which is at the heart of any decision to release or not. The Parole Board were clearly in the wrong in attempting to stifle Mr Gilfoyle’s right to freedom of expression, and his democratic right to meet with and talk to the media. In a democracy it is the media that all too often scrutinise abuses of power, and what the Parole Board were attempting to do was to silence that which liberty and democracy is so very much a part of. Charles Hanson is an ex resident of HMP Blantyre House
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Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Continued from front page
‘Something of a Time Bomb’
Are prison psychologists always legal?
More than 1000 ‘Psychological Assistants’ recruited in the last five years
Commenting on the Ministry of Justice figures, independent psychologist Kerry Manning writes: The table below shows a sudden decline of chartered psychologists between 2009 and 2010. Conversely, the number of trainee psychologists seems to be growing. There is a real concern that as the number of chartered psychologists decline, there will be insufficient supervision and training for the trainee psychologists who will, subsequently, have difficulty in demonstrating competence for Chartership with the British Psychological Society’s Division of Forensic Psychology. This may mean fewer treatment places for prisoners and less prison-based psychological risk assessments. There may also be less consultation
from psychologists in relation to prisoner management on issues such as institutional violence and self-harm risk. It is of note that the Secretary of State includes non-psychologist programme workers in the figures. If the aim is to assess the current situation regarding the psychology profession within HMPS, the figures are confounded and rendered less reliable by the inclusion of nonpsychologist personnel. Kerry Manning is Director of Psychological Services UK Ltd
Number of psychologists in post in the public sector Prison Service in the last five years Grade
31.03.10
31.03.09
31.03.08
31.03.07
31.03.06
Chartered Psychologist Trainee Psychologist Psychologist Assistant
253 352 371
314 312 373
325 336 401
320 328 397
314 271 364
Total
976
999
1045
949
1062
A Parliamentary Answer given by the Secretary of State for Justice to Ronnie Campbell MP (Blyth Valley) on December 15 2010.
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Dr Bob Johnson
D
o you have a human soul? No, this is not a religious quiz. It goes back to the Ancient Greeks – ‘psyche’ for them, meant soul. So, strictly speaking a psychologist is one who studies your soul, while a psychiatrist is meant to mend it for you. I don’t really expect you to believe that today. In practice, it would be more accurate to say that the bulk of these formerly noble professions have lost their souls! In fact not many would recognise one if it walked in the door. What a sorry state for such important professions to fall into. But let us be brutally frank. Any medical student who wrote a clinical report without even talking to the patient would never darken medical schools again. The very idea that you can conclude diddly-squat merely from reading what other clinicians have written, while positively eschewing all direct contact with the patient, is so far fetched as to be automatically ruled out of court, which it should be.
Talking of courts, one of the better legal rules is ‘hearsay’ - which means you can’t accept anything just because others have told you it’s true. And yet every day in prisons, the law breaks its own rules, like a docile whippet - any Parole Board or other court of law which tolerates for a minute a psychology report written by someone who has never even talked to the prisoner, is actually betraying its own principles by acting outside laws of its own making. How many psychology, and indeed psychiatric reports are written proclaiming the fact that their author has had no direct personal contact with the prisoner - just peered at them through the hatch? And how many legal authorities accept such illegal garbage as gospel, despite this? This really is hearsay. It approaches ‘toxic gossip’. And it actively besmirches all three professions - psychology, psychiatry and the law. Where’s justice when you need it? Shouldn’t the Supreme Court be doing something? © Dr Bob Johnson 2011
Dr Bob Johnson is a consultant psychiatrist, author and Co-founder of the James Nayler Foundation. Formerly Head of Therapy at Ashworth Maximum Security Hospital, he was also Consultant Psychiatrist, Special Unit, C-Wing, Parkhurst Prison 1991-1996.
Thoughts for the Day
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
From over the wall Terry Waite writes his monthly column for Inside Time
Terry Waite CBE
I
have to confess that not for the first time in my life I am not at all clear in my mind about an issue. That issue is the thorny question of the right of prisoners to vote. I am told that the vast majority of prisoners don’t care one way or the other. I don’t know of any statistical evidence that supports such a view but it could be true. As with all such questions there are two sides to the matter so let me share with you what I understand them to be. No doubt readers will be quick to respond and point out where my thinking is faulty. The case against rests on an ancient understanding that goes back at least to the time of the Greeks and rests on the concept of rights and responsibilities in civil society. It is argued that a citizen has the fundamental right to vote for those who make the laws and that right is conditional on the voter abiding by the laws so made. In other words there is a social contract between citizen and society and those who break the laws of the land cannot at the same time be lawmakers. The very fact that an individual, on being convicted by a properly constituted court of law is stripped of their full rights as a citizen, freedom being the most important right that is forfeited, indicates clearly that for a period the convicted individual has lost their full rights in society. All this seems pretty clear to me and I should be interested to hear if and where there are faults in that argument.
The other side of the question as I see it concerns rehabilitation and the restoration of an individual back into a place in society where they enjoy their full civil rights including the right to vote. It is argued that by allowing certain categories of prisoners to vote in a General Election they will be aided and assisted back into mainstream life. The European Court of Human Rights take the position that certain prisoners ought to have the right to vote in contrast to a number of leading British politicians (and I suspect a fair number of the general public) who take the opposing view. It seems that British politicians will be obliged to follow the European ruling otherwise they will lay themselves open to being subject to penalties. So, where do I stand? The case against, relying as it does on rights and responsibilities is strong and I find it difficult to fault logically. The case for is interesting but weaker. Regardless of the possibility that the majority of prisoners may not care one way or the other, will allowing the vote really be an aid to rehabilitation? I wonder. It is highly likely that I have not fully understood the case for and I can only hope that at this point somewhere in one of the prisons of our land someone is reaching for pen and paper about to put me to rights. I really would be interested to hear. Do you Remember page 52 Terry Waite was a successful hostage negotiator before he himself was held captive in Beirut between 1987 and 1991. He was held captive for 1763 days; the first four years of which were spent in solitary confinement.
The Book of Uncommon Prayer Jane Bidder
W
hat gets you through the daily routine of prison? Maybe it’s a heads-down approach – after all, if you follow the rules, you’re more likely to get out on time. Perhaps it’s visits and letters from family and loved ones. New friends in prison can help. And so too, can words... When I was writer in residence of HMP Grendon/Springhill, I found that words were more than plasters. They didn’t just cover up the wounds; they helped to heal them too. Sometimes, my students and I would write what we called ‘Thoughts for the Day’ (Apologies to Radio Four). This was a mixture of down to earth advice to each other and also spiritual sayings from different religions and nationalities. Every month, for the next year, Inside Time is going to be bringing you a page of these sayings to help get you through your own particular sentence. Some of these verbal plasters are prayers but don’t be put off if you don’t have a faith. You might be surprised at how they can help. Each one comes from a book which was written by my creative writing students at Grendon/ Springhill, called The Book of Uncommon Prayer. We called it that because it’s not like any other prayer book you’ll have come across. It’s the voice of men who have committed all kinds of crimes, from murder to fraud.
SCOTTISH PRISONERS
SOLICITORS
We are here to fight for your rights throughout your time in custody Immediate visit, proactive advice and assistance and vigorous representation in all aspects of prison law including: • Licence Revocation and Recall to Custody (prompt intervention & effective review with the Parole Board)
• Adjudications:(MDTs, Unauthorised articles etc) • Tariff Reviews and Minimum term Representation • Parole Applications/Appeals • Oral Hearings with the Parole Board (entire process) • Re-categorisation and Cat A Reviews • Criminal, Magistrate & Crown Court cases and CCRC We also provide specialist immigration services, legal aid and privately funded cases. For immediate assistance please call
Tel: 0208 770 7143
Emergency Mobile 07506 716 379 Fax: 0208 643 9245
Or write to Vallee at: Sam Solicitors 2 8 8 H i g h St r e e t Sutton Surrey SM1 1PQ
Clients accepted throughout the country
Bruce & Company Solicitors For a fast, reliable, efficient Advice & Assistance in all aspects of prison law inc:
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But they all have one thing in common. They believe, as we do, that words can get you through. Try it and see.
I Have No Religion By David
I have no religion, No white haired bearded figure to annunciate to. No desire to revert to archaic language for effect. I feel the sun rise and watch it set, each day, And feel refreshed I keep my prayers deep within myself. One hope I will share, A good man remains a good man, wherever he spends his Sabbath And whatever he calls it. Wherever he happened to enter life on this earth. Whatever language he speaks. His god must not bristle with the human failings of jealousy and Revenge. His god cannot have thrown temptation, retribution and eternal Damnation At us as a divertissement. Otherwise that god has been created by man in his own image And his words count for nothing. David is a non-believer. He has now been released.
This prayer is taken from ‘The Book of Uncommon Prayer‘ edited by Jane Bidder when Writer in Residence at HMP Grendon and Spring Hill. It is published by Bar None Books, sponsored by the Arts Council of England. All profits will go to The Friends of Grendon
Want out?
• Parole Board Representation • Human Rights • Appeals (Including Late Appeals) • Referral to SCCRC (Scottish Criminal Cases
Review Commission)
• Immigration • Repatriation • Categorisation and Transfer
If you are in a prison in Scotland and require a visit regarding any of the above, please contact:
Grant Bruce Bruce & Company 24 West HIgh Street, Forfar DD8 1BA
Legal Aid Prison Law Solicitors in Kent
Specialising in Parole Board & Recall hearings
HMPs Elmley, Maidstone, Standford Hill & Swaleside
* Free immediate telephone legal advice * Fully-qualified Solicitor just a few miles from your prison handling your case * Dedicated telephone line, direct to your Solicitor, between 6:00pm - 7:00pm A new perspective on your parole/recall matters
01307 460666
Serif House, Luton, Bedfordshire LU2 0NT
Solicitors to fight your case!
JSP Law handle Criminal Defence work Nationwide
( 24 hr answering machine )
Office No. 01582 722596 Mobile No. 07931 777502
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Quote of the Month
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org attacked in 2008, when she was 15, after being groomed
Quote of the Month
..................................................
It is a crime Islam forbids, a crime against humanity
They have these girls like puppets on a string
“
Mohammed Shafiq is chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation. Men who groom young teenagers to exploit them sexually are committing a crime against humanity, a crime that Islam totally forbids. We now know that 53 men, mainly of Pakistani background, have been convicted of a series of terrible crimes against young girls. The majority of the victims are white. We need to establish why such men are mainly choosing to groom white teenagers and not Muslim girls. The simple answer is that these people think that white girls have few morals and are less valuable than our girls. They also believe that by grooming white girls there will be no reprisal within their own community. This is a form of racism that is abhorrent and totally unacceptable in a society that prides itself on equality and justice. I would like to see imams and mosques addressing these crimes in their Friday sermons, explaining the Islamic ruling on such evil acts and stressing that an attack on a white girl is as forbidden as an attack on our own daughters and sisters. I know there are some imams who have done this with great bravery. Schools and colleges must also talk with teenagers about the dangers of being involved in such crimes. The police must also help community groups to reach out to young men before they become on-street groomers. They must be taught to value white teenagers as much as an Asian girl, a Muslim girl or a black girl. There is no difference. I feel so sorry for these girls and the suffering that they have gone through. These criminals have destroyed promising young lives. We all need to work together to bring this crime into the open and, by doing so, bring it to an end. The Times January 5th 2011
R E CA L L KENT SOLICITORS Prison Law Specialists
All aspects of Prison Law including:
Licence Recall - Adjudications Parole Applications/Hearings Categorisation & Transfers Contact Costa Cantaris
Kent Solicitors 197 - 205 High Street Ponders End Enfield EN3 4DZ
0208 805 9735
Русский адвокат: Наталия Зимарева Turk avukat Ozlem Cetin
From the promotional video: My Dangerous Loverboy. A fictional story with close parallels to genuine cases identified by The Times newspaper.
One of us had to have sex or we’d get stabbed
“
When you’re young and vulnerable and have troubled backgrounds, you are easy prey for older men who lavish you with attention. Before you know it, you are trapped by drugs and booze and fear of what they will do to you if you don’t submit. One Saturday he got annoyed and suddenly threatened us, said there was a guy in the other room with a knife. He said one of us had to have sex with him and that was the start. We got passed to brothers and uncles. We’d go through the family, being exploited
”
One girl who was 14 when she and a friend were groomed and repeatedly abused by two men in Blackburn last year.
.................................................. The men pass the girls from one to another
Mother of Keighley, girl, aged 13 in 2004 when grooming began, involving a man who hung around the school gates in his car.
.................................................. It has changed my life enormously
“
I never thought of myself as a prostitute
“
”
Girl, 14, who was groomed and used for sex by numerous men, nine of whom were jailed last year for crimes against her in Rochdale and Manchester.
“She used to like rollerskating and had teddies in her room when she
Whenever I see an Asian man I get scared
met those men. She was a little girl. They tell the girls they are their only girlfriend. They buy them jewellery and mobile phones. The girls are mesmerised. Then they started giving her vodka and Bacardi, cannabis, Ecstasy and amphetamines. After that, she would be picked up by car-loads of Asian men and taken to flats in Bradford. The men share the girls, passing them from one to another
It has definitely made me more aware. And more distant. That is one of the things I hate about what happened. Whenever I see an Asian male I get scared. It’s not because I’m racist, but because it reminds me of those men who took away my childhood. It’s awful to think that way and I hate that I do
“
”
They’re very clever. They get the younger ones to talk to you first. They know you’ve been taught if you come from a decent home not to talk to strangers, especially older men, but you will talk to boys just a bit older than yourself. Other girls in my class were hanging out with boys of 14, but I was getting to drive in smart cars with men. I felt my life was more exciting. That’s how they got inside my mind. They teach you to lie and deceive. It becomes normal. I never thought of myself as a prostitute because, in my child’s view of the world, prostitutes walked the streets, wore short skirts and high heels and I wasn’t doing any of that. It is only now that I can see that, much as I wanted to believe he had feelings for me, he didn’t have any at all except to make money out of me
”
Yorkshire girl, still in hiding, who was 13 when the men began grooming her, in a shopping centre.
Manchester girl who was sexually
• Concerned about the length of your sentence? • You believe that your detention is unlawful & you wish to be compensated? • You have protested your innocence for years but nobody believes you? • Your parole application has been repeatedly refused? • Your application for re-categorisation has been ignored? • Recalled to prison? • Are you facing extradition or immigration deportation? • Do you wish be transferred to an immigration detention centre or released on bail?
We regularly travel to distant prisons to attend adjudications and parole hearings at a short notice. Contact Kesar & Co Solicitors and you may receive a substantial amount of compensation
Prison Law Department Burnhill Business Centre Provident House Burrell Row Beckenham Kent BR3 1AT 0208 249 6459
”
Mother of Blackburn girl who was 14 when the men began grooming her in 2007.
..................................................
These young men exploit young girls, introduce them to prostitution, feed them drugs and tell them they love them. I know this because it has happened to me and it has changed my life enormously. I just hope that people will be more aware of this now and will be able to prevent this from happening to other vulnerable young girls
..................................................
”
I tried to explain that they were just using her, but these men are so manipulative. They have these girls like puppets on a string. They genuinely think that these guys are in love with them. She began wearing low-cut tops and horrible, heavy make up. She would come home from school, eyes rolling, pupils dilated. They are committing a crime; it doesn’t matter what colour or religion they are. People are scared that it will start a race riot but it is this perception of racism that is putting up a barrier. It’s so frustrating. Why should it be swept under the carpet? It’s destroying people’s lives. The girls all have the same look on their faces. They are blank, like their souls are lost somewhere
KESAR & CO SOLICITORS Immigration Department Committed to justice Riverside House River Lawn Road Tonbridge Kent TN9 1EP
[email protected] www.kesarandco.com 01732 783538
Source: The Times
A-Z LAW SOLICITORS Specialists in • Prison Law • Criminal Defence • Immigration • Family • Housing
Criminal Defence Service
Community Legal Service
Contact: 0 2 0 8 3 5 5 0 8 3 0 24hr Emergency Service 0778 752 7112
A - Z Law Solicitors
198 - 200 Balham High Road London SW12 9BP
PSI Updates
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
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NATIONAL POPULATION CENSUS 2011 There is a national census on 27th March 2011. The Census is designed to be a complete count of the population (of England and Wales). The census includes all usual residents of communal establishments, including prisons. Most prisoners have a legal requirement to complete a census form. PSI 2011-002 (issued: 4th January 2011) contains full details of how the census must be carried out in prisons. The information, below, is taken from the PSI.
PSI
update In August 2009 the old system of Prison Service Orders (PSOs) was abandoned and all new rules and regulations are issued as PSIs (Prison Service Instructions). The old PSOs remain in force until replaced with a PSI; which has a fixed starting and finishing date. Each month Paul Sullivan reviews some of the latest PSIs and explains their relevance to prisoners and what each contains. Copies of all PSIs are available in prison libraries.
Paul Sullivan
SCOTTISH SOLICIT ORS Par ole Board Repr esentation, Prison Law and Human Rights
• Life Prisoner Tribunals • Licence Recall Hearings • Parole Applications for Long Term Prisoners • Downgrades from the Open Prison Estate • Judicial Review and Human Rights • Foreign National Prisoners - Parole - Access to Open Prisons - Deportation
Contact: Mark Templeton
0141 429 4354
Quinn Martin & Langan 87 Carlton Place Glasgow G5 9TD
Enquiries from Scottish prisoners ONLY please
Convicted Prisoners All convicted prisoners who meet the criteria must be given the opportunity to complete a census questionnaire. All prisoners that are usually resident at a Prison Service establishment at midnight on Sunday 27th March 2011 should be included in the census. The term ‘usually resident’ means any convicted prisoner who is serving a sentence of six months imprisonment or more, or who is convicted but un-sentenced, commencing on or before Census Day. Prisoners who are serving a sentence of less than six months will be included on the questionnaire at their home address and do not need to fill in a census form. Those who do not have a home address will be counted at their prison establishment. Remand Prisoners Un-convicted prisoners are treated as ‘visitors’, irrespective of how long they have been in prison or on remand. They should be included on their home address census form and do not need to fill in a census form. Immigration Detainees Any immigration detainees within prison facilities will form part of the prison census if they meet the following criteria: ‘Anyone from outside the UK who has stayed (or intends to stay) in the UK for at least 3 months’. Prisoners Sectioned Under the Mental Health Act Persons held under the Mental Health Act 1983 in high security psychiatric hospitals are
the responsibility of the hospital manager. Therefore, the Department of Health will be responsible for counting prisoners held in these units and residents do not need to fill in a census form Temporary Absence Where a prisoner is temporarily absent from the prison establishment on 27 March 2011 but would normally be included in the census count under the ‘usually resident’ criteria: the governor must either arrange for a census questionnaire to be completed on the prisoner’s behalf, providing only key information: name; date of birth; gender and marital status’ or the Governor can arrange for the form to be completed in advance of 27th March 2011. Employment details Questions that enquire about prisoners’ current employment details should be completed as far as possible. This applies equally to prisoners who work in the prison or, in the case of prisoners in an open or resettlement prison, for an outside contractor. ONS are aware of the fact that in most cases, work is done within the prison as a requirement of the Prison Rules. If a prisoner is working within the confines of the prison environment in whatever capacity then the business employer will be Prison Administration or similar. Requirement to take part Participation in the census is a legal requirement. The information contained in completed Census questionnaires will be treated in strict confidence and will not be disclosed to anyone outside the census organisation. All personal information is protected by law. Under the terms of the Census Act 1920, each prisoner that is usually resident in the prison at midnight on the 27th March 2011 is required to complete a census form.
THE PRISON PHOENIX TRUST Head doing you in? Stressed out? Can’t sleep? Simple yoga and meditation practice, working with silence and the breath, might just transform your life in more ways than you think...
Governors have a legal duty to issue each eligible prisoner with a census questionnaire and to inform the prisoner of their legal obligation to complete the questionnaire, and warn them of possibility of legal action if they fail to do so.
Refusals If a prisoner refuses to complete the questionnaire, despite being told of the legal requirement to do so and being given every opportunity possible to do so, the Governor should note on a record that the questionnaire has been issued and that the prisoner has refused to complete it. Literacy/language problems Governors must facilitate the completion of the census questionnaires as far as possible and provide assistance to those prisoners who are sight impaired, have literacy or learning difficulties and/or which addresses any special needs a prisoner with a disability may have. For those prisoners who do not understand English, leaflets offering guidance to prisoners in fifty-six languages and translations of the questions on the census questionnaires can be downloaded from the census and provided to prisoners. There is no provision for translators. Questionnaires in both English and Welsh will be issued to prison establishments in Wales. The prisoners have the option of completing the questionnaire in either English or Welsh but they only need to complete one questionnaire. There is also a census in Scotland and Northern Ireland which is not covered by this PSI.
solicitors
Feeling trapped?
Specialist advice on prison law Adjudications Recall Parole oral hearings Recategorisation Home Detention Curfew (HDC) IPP & lifer specialist Extended sentences Parole paper review Judicial review Licence conditions
Interested?
Write to The Prison Phoenix Trust P.O.Box 328, Oxford, OX2 7HF We’d love to hear from you anytime and have several free books, which could help you build and maintain a daily practice.
Every prisoner who is issued with an individual questionnaire will also be given a privacy envelope which can be used to maintain confidentiality. Envelopes should be given to prisoners after completion of the questionnaire and they are required to seal their questionnaire in the envelope. Prison staff must not look at a prisoner’s answers under any circumstances unless the prisoner asks for help to complete the questionnaire. There are penalties for breach of confidentiality. Under no circumstances, except where a request for assistance is received, should a member of the prison authorities inspect a prisoner’s answers. Governors, or other persons in charge, must ensure that information provided is not divulged to any unauthorised person.
Wherever you are, we are only a phone call away
Contact: Rob Welsh, Simon Howland or David Shaw Alexander House, Bethesda Street, Hanley ST1 3DX
Serving the Midlands and North West, including Dovegate - Stafford - Featherstone - Shrewsbury - Liverpool - Birmingham - Manchester
T: 01782 205 000 www.beswicks.com
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Valentines
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org together. I love and miss you so much. Your wifey Donna xx
missing you like mad! I love you more and more everyday. Love Sy xx
Christopher, I love you sooo much darling, you’re my soul mate, one and only, ‘the one’. Your wife for life. Dionne xxxxx
Happy Valentines Claire Maire you are my one and only Valentine and you will always be. Love your Valentine Peter xxx
Craig, AKA donkey, happy Valentine’s day hope you have a great day. I’ll be thinking of you love Puss
Happy Valentines Kerrie, right from the start you stole my heart. I’ll love you for life my darling wife. Love Snug Bug
Danny, I love you so much, always have, always will, gonna be there for you forever. Love Kyles
Heidi, happy birthday and best wishes for Valentine’s day. Love you to bits your loving fella Lez xxx
Ajay, my life, my world, I want nothing if it’s not you. We can be there for each other. M xx
Days are sad very slow. Everyday I love you more. Days will pass you’ll see, I love Sarah baby
Alan baby, we can’t be together on this special day, but you’ll always own my heart. I love you unconditionally xxxx
Dereka, thank you for your love, thank you for your care, princess thank you for always being there. DNA forever, love you more Ash xx
Hiya gorgeous, happy Valentine’s day. I love you millions, miss you loads. Be home soon, always yours Phill xx
Amy baby happy Valentine’s day I love you so much and miss you loads. Your loving husband Jamie xxx
Finding you was a dream come true, you’ve made me smile and gave me hope. So thank you Jude, happy Valentines. X
Hiya sweetheart Chantelle, am really missing you baby and wish I could be with you today. I love you loads. Love Dave xx
Gaynor, you mean everything to me, with you in my heart I’m always free. Love you my wife, forever Antony
Hiya sweetheart Courtney, will you be my Valentine’s girl? I love you from the bottom of my heart. Love Ryan C xxxx
Anji, I would run the marathon with you. Thoughts x Chris Annie girl my sweet Valentine, be my wife as you are my key to happiness and forever ‘n’ always. I love you xxxx Babe I love you with all my heart, always have, always will. Can’t wait until we’re together again Paul xxx
Gemma I’ll see you in my dreams tonight, just like I always do. I’ll hug n squeeze my pillow tight, ‘n make believe it’s you. Love Lee xx
I want to thank you for just being you and making me the happiest girl on the planet Amo-te Muito Bébé xxx
Calum J, happy Valentine’s day babe. A big mwah from me to you. Love your baby girl Julie xx
Joanna, my beautiful wife. Happy Valentine’s day, love you more than words can say. Thinking of you 24.7 love Mark xxx
Cassie, I love you and would do anything for you and your girls. Marry me! I promise I’ll stay true. Antonio xx
Cheryl, happy Valentine’s day. Thanks for always being there it’s been a strength to know you care. My one true friend, lover and partner, you’re wonderfully loved, beautifully made, forever yours Glenn xx Chris, happy Valentines babe, next year we’ll celebrate
Joanne x trouble x see x luv x ya Man G x Trouble kiss kiss smash xx Gracey Bella, happy Valentine’s day, be thinking of you all day, miss you loads, love you millions always Craig xxx Happy Anniversary mum and dad, all my love Shelby-Beany xxx Happy Valentine’s day baby, need you to now I’m
John, for the time that’s past, for the time that’s present, for the time that’s yet to be, the thing that makes time bearable is the knowledge that you love me. Love Dominique xxx Julie you are my world and I love you so much. Love Jolante xx
Need Inside Advice? David Phillips and Partners can help out. We offer legal advice and representation on:· • • • • • • •
CAT A Reviews Independent Adjudications IPP and extended sentences Lifer hearings and Paper Reviews Parole Reviews Recall Reviews Tariff/ Minimum Term Reviews
0151 236 3331 "I would like to thank DPP and most of all Rachel Barrow. I feel no other legal firm could do a better job! Even the Prison Governor commented on David Phillips and Partners by saying he had never known in his time any solicitor to put so much hard work into a case. Thank you once again." Wesley Lafferty Escape the technicalities and let us fight your case - call us now and ask for our Specialist Prison Law team. Established 1982 - Top ten provider of Criminal Defence services 2006 and 2009.
David Phillips and Partners Solicitors and Higher Court Advocates 1st Floor, Oriel Chambers, 14 Castle Street, Liverpool L2 8TD
Nationwide Service
Katie Helliwell I love you. Happy Valentine’s – sorry I’m not there, soon we’ll be together forever. Miss you. love always Chrissy xxx Katie Simmons you are amazing. I love you endlessly can’t wait to be together you’re always in my heart baby xxxx Kaya-Louise, you’re my whole world and more! I love you sooo so much babii girl! Will you be my Valentine? Kim, happy Valentines baby xx All my love ShelbyBeany xxx
Israr my heart’s yours. Love D xx I thank Jah Jah you came into my life. Dunno what I’d do without you, I love you. Love ZAA Bomstick x
Bronwyn you’re my rock, you’re everything I want. I love you so much, happy Valentine’s day, love you lots Danny xxxxx
Charlotte you’re the love of my life, I’m so proud to call you my wife. I’ll love you ALWAYS!! Nick x
Here is a little way to show you I think about you non stop Sarah. Happy Valentine’s babe I love you.
Julie you’re so special, you mean the world to me. I just want to tell you forever we will be. Love Darren x Karl you are my everything. I love and miss you so much. Happy Valentine’s day baby. Love you Leanne x
101 Howard Street, North Shields, Tyne and Wear, NE30 1NA
0191 257 1051
We are a new firm based in the North East, specialising in prison law, criminal defence and appeals. PRISON LAW Here at Kyles we are dedicated to representing the interests of prisoners and safeguarding your rights. Some of the areas with which we deal are as follows: • Parole applications • Lifer reviews • Licence recalls • Parole board oral hearings • Judicial review • Re-categorisations • Disciplinary adjudications The prison law dept is headed by John Turner, Solicitor. CRIMINAL DEFENCE Whether you are in need of representation at the police station, Magistrates' Court or Crown Court, Kyles Legal Practice Ltd is here to help you 24 hours a day. The criminal dept is headed by Nick Peacock, Barrister. APPEALS If you seek to appeal to the Court of Appeal or wish to make an application to the CCRC we will consider your case and look to give you clear, professional and honest advice, outlining the prospects of success.
Leslie, from a heart that’s true, from me to you, soul mates xxx Heidi Love you loads Jenny babe, can’t wait until you’re back in my arms again. Love you baby happy Valentine’s day. Ashley Love you loadz Zoe, sorry can’t be there. Always thinking of you. Love from Ellis Darl Crew 2011 Love you Sarah more than words can explain. Thanks for waiting. Hopefully wont be too long. Xxx Lulu, I love you today and every day, always in my heart and in my thoughts. From your Captain Fantastic. Manazir I love you with all my heart and you’re my special Valentine now and forever, with all my love Lisa xxx Manoel, just to remind you what a truly amazing person you are. I love you with all my heart. Graham x
Talking sense With offices at:
Beaconsfield, Bracknell, Cheltenham, Chesham, Gerrards Cross, Oxford Summertown, Swindon and West Drayton
Specialising in CRIMINAL DEFENCE and all aspects of PRISON LAW including:
LICENCE RECALL ADJUDICATIONS PAROLE HEARINGS JUDICIAL REVIEW IPP QUERIES For immediate help and assistance contact
Lisa Gianquitto on 01494 681442 or write to:
The appeals dept is headed by Brian Mark, Barrister. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO US ABOUT ANY ISSUE, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT US.
51 Amersham Road, Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2HB www.hinesolicitors.com
Valentines
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org wait to be with you. I love you always & forever. X J X Natalie I love you, you mean the world to me; Mikey and Natalie against the world. I love you. Neisha, my loved one, I love you and the kids so much, you mean the world to me. love you Dave xxx Nicola (Ticks) I love you more today than I did yesterday, but I’ll love you even more tomorrow. Happy Valentine’s day love always Glen xxx Nights are lonely, days are so sad, so care after love we have Doris, love you forever Cooler xx Marie, just to say truly love and miss you can’t wait ‘till we’re back together, holding each other. Love Danny xxx Marie, you’re so beautiful, you mean the world to me. I’ll never stop loving you princess. Love always DpDS xxx Mia babe, twelve years strong! Who would have thought? Who believed? I love you tonnes, always and forever babe – Scott Michelle, thoughts of you this Valentine’s Day. All my love coming your way. Especially for you, love always from Paul xx Mina, there are no words to describe how much you mean to me. all my love on Valentine’s day Craig x My darling husband Peter, my soul mate, missing you on Valentine’s day and our 10th wedding anniversary too. Wish we were together for this special time. All my love from your wife Jo xxx My darling Wendy, thinking of you and missing you loads. Thanks for being there for me, love always Dave xxxx My dear wife Jo, you’ll always be my valentine. Thinking of you today and always, forever. Lots of love Darren My gorgeous, beautiful, sexy little princess. Love and missing you baby, always will. Love your hubby xxx My love to the Bartley family. Thanks for your love and kindness for looking after Dudie my baby. Love Diane My man Glynn T xxx I’m cold and lonely without you. Can’t
Poppie, love you so much! I need you like Popeye needs spinach! Kus you’re Olive Jeanne Mae x Rebecca, my dark and lovely Valentine. Hope money won’t change you into anything. A true lady to me and our angel Renel. Visit ‘n’ write, book for Valentine’s Day. Love ya hubby Darron xxx Rose, I know I can’t be with you right now but you’ll always be in my heart. No matter where life takes me I’ll always be there for you. Nuff love from Nasim.
Stacey, you are my love, my Valentine. One day I will finally take you out for a date – be my Valentine xxx Sue, I couldn’t imagine, I haven’t a clue, what the future will hold for me in a world without you. Love Kye Tarita, thank you for standing by me all these years. Will you be my Valentine? Love Lee xx Tasha I love you with all my heart. You’re one in a million babe, can’t wait to marry you. Happy Valentine’s, love Martin xxx Thank you for doing me proud, returning my love and being my true Valentine, soul mate & best friend too. Happy Valentines Wifey xx There is a thin line between love and hate. This line brought me behind the penitentiary gate. Love – Freedom – Begins
There’s a love that’s hard to find, it takes over my heart and mind, I love you Babe, my Valentine. Xx
Silky, lovin’ and missin’ you on this Valentine’s Day, always in my thoughts. Love Mossy xxx
To Karla, happy Valentine’s day babe, love you loads and miss you and the kids loads. Love you Nick xxx
Solweig - princess, you’re my strength and I love you with all my heart and soul. Happy Valentines baby, Tom
To my Andy I love you now and always. Can’t wait to be back with you. Loving you always. Katie xxx
Sonia, I love you more than words can say and miss you every single day. Happy Valentine’s day my darling. Love Paul xxxx
To my beautiful girlfriend, missing you with all my heart. Happy Valentine’s day babe. Lots and lots of love Dame xxxx
Had a ‘knock back’ or been nicked? We can assist you in all aspects of Criminal & Prison Law matters incl:
Community Legal Service
Governors & Independent Adjudications
• Discipline Hearing
inc Mobile Phone/ Failed MDT
• Prison Hearing/Parole Reviews • Recalls • Early Release
inc Release on Temporary Licence
• Home Detention Curfew • Sentence Calculation • Categorisation and Reviews • Allocation / Relocation / Moving Prison • IPP and Extended Sentences • Closed Visits Criminal Defence Service
Contact Ken Jokosenumi at 406 Holloway Road London N7 6PZ Freephone 0800 023 2375 or 0 2 0 7 7 0 0 7 8 2 6
sa law chambers
We can help you with • Parole Hearings
• Judicial Reviews & Human Rights Cases We also deal with Housing, Debt & Welfare Benefits. Criminal Defence Service
To my Dawny. Thinking of you on this day. Love you! Always and forever x Paul x To the best boyfriend ever, you mean the world to me. Happy Valentine’s day. Love you loads babe, Rachel xxx
Trina, I love you more than words can say, next Valentine’s will be better I swear, from your Jonathan xx
Shelly Daley my baby, Shelley Daley my lover, Shelley Daley my sweetheart, to me there’s no other. Love Steven xx
Facing serious criminal charges?
To my darling Tarn Tarn will you be my Valentine? I miss you and love you so much. From Sean
Tracey Flippance you mean the world to me, you came into my life so please my darling be my wife!!
Sarah, you are my life and soul. I love you so much. Happy Valentine’s day from your true love Paul L x
• Adjudications
To my darling Buttercup, I love you still and wish you all the happiness possible, brightest blessings from your Brit boy!
To the world’s most amazing boyfriend. Happy Valentine’s day, love you always Elsie and our baby boy Archie xx
Ruth, you are my Swiss angel and best friend, you fill my life with joy. I L U my snow babe xxxx
Criminal & Prison Law Specialists
• Representation in all aspects of Criminal Proceedings • Appeals (conviction or sentence) • Adjudications • Home Detention Curfew • Re-categorisation and Transfers • Parole Board and Licence Issues • Recall • MDT & VDT • Closed Visits • Lifer Reviews
Sorry we ain’t together today Tara, hopefully out for Valentine’s day 2012. Missing you Babe, yours forever Love Matty xxx
Roses are red, violets are blue. My darling wife Lyndsey I will always love and cherish you. Happy Valentines. Xxx
KAJ & Co Solicitors
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Contact: S i d d i k A b o o b a k e r or Robert Cashman at SA Law Chambers Solicitors 1st Floor, Heraldic House 160 -162 Cranbrook Road Ilford Essex IG1 4PE
0208 554 0012
Trackie will you be mine? We’ll wine and dine in time. Always mine my love forever. F.T.K x Wez, take care because I care. Love your girl, Vicky Words can’t express what you mean to me. you’re all I want, now and forever my beautiful, amazing, sexy Samantha. You are my beautiful, elegant wife. You are a great, persistent, loving, one in a million mum. I love you xxxx You’re a star lighting dark corners. In answer love burns for you too. Ill love you forever Monique! Our Unit xx
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Family Welfare
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
The power of one In their regular slot, POPS shine the spotlight on the problems faced by the families of prisoners
by Diane Curry OBE - Director, POPS ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ Margaret Mead. The concept of the ‘Big Society’ is one which has been defined, redefined, discussed and debated, but ultimately the idea of communities taking responsibility for bringing about change, whether it be local or national, begins with the ones and twos. It might be the individual who is fed up with the level of bike crime on their estate who sets up an initiative with the police to engage local young people in restoring stolen bikes, or the neighbour with a passion for gardening who encourages others to put up a few hanging baskets and in doing so transforms his street. It only takes one voice to start the ball rolling. Vast and intimidating as the Criminal Justice System can appear to be, there have been many such individuals who have stood up to tackle issues of injustice or inequality within it over the years. Rooted in personal experiences, these campaigners have
brought about significant changes to the way in which prisoners’ families, in particular, have been perceived and treated. There are many more mountains to climb, but reflecting on the last 30 years brings a host of achievements to mind. There was a time when family days were unheard of, visitor centres virtually non-existent and access during a visit to basic facilities, such as childcare or refreshments, seemingly unattainable. As prisoners’ families began to find their voices, others took heed and out of their passion and perseverance support groups emerged. Often beginning as places of mutual localized support, these groups have grown and many are now established organisations with their collective voice making a difference both locally and nationally. This is the history of POPS and many other charities within the Criminal Justice System. We were established by one individual, perturbed by the lack of support she received, and determined to make a difference. Indeed many of the managers and staff here at POPS know what it is like to have a family member in prison because we have either lived it directly in the past or are still doing so now. We know from our family consultations, from the phone calls we receive and the experiences we have had ourselves, just how rare it is for prisoners’ families to feel valued or heard, and how piecemeal and inadequate the pace of change can be. Since our establishment POPS, alongside other agencies, has constantly campaigned for, and delivered, services for families of offenders. In doing so we have helped pave the way for improved visiting conditions and acknowledgement by the ‘system’ that families do matter. On a local level we argued after the ‘Strangeways’ riots that families should no longer be seen as part of the problem, but more often be viewed as part of the solution. As a result POPS are now involved in numerous strategic forums to lay the issues identified by local families directly before those who have the power and influence to CCRC Advert Portrait
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At POPS we got together to make a difference to our own lives and those of our children too. Whilst the days of meetings held in our own kitchens have passed, our central driving force remains the needs and issues facing the families with whom we work. ‘Empowerment’ is a long overused buzzword but it succinctly sums up what we are all about. Families empowering other families and encouraging others to join the cause to create a collective voice which has, over the years, opened many doors for change. Because if we cannot engage and galvanise those who haven’t experienced what we have, what hope do we have of making a difference? If you would like to get involved and make a difference, contact us directly on 0161 702 1000. Offenders’ Families Helpline 0808 808 2003 Mon-Fri 9am-8pm, 10am-3pm Sat and Sun Partners of Prisoners 0161 702 1000 www.partnersofprisoners.co.uk Prison Chat UK on-line support service run by and for prisoners’s families www.prisonchatuk
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We can look again
Cr
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It is for anyone who wants to learn how to read whilst in prison. Toe by Toe Mentors help others learn to read. Train to be a Toe by Toe mentor and develop skills in supporting others.
And we are not alone. This year brings with it the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Prison Reform Trust (PRT). Over the years, PRT has campaigned tirelessly to reduce unnecessary imprisonment and improve the treatment and conditions for prisoners and their families. This year phone calls from prison will be significantly cheaper as a result of the successful action undertaken by PRT and Action for Prisoners Families (APF) to challenge the cost of prison phone calls. This was no minor task, it has taken 6 years to reach this point and there is still work to be done. APF, Clinks, PACT and PRT are also working together on an ‘Agenda for Action’, supported by POPS and other offenders’ families agencies. This ‘Agenda for Action’ is requesting that the government work on addressing the needs of children and families with a parent or close relative in prison (www.prisonersfamilies.org.uk/InfluencingPolicy). It is the commitment and perseverance of organisations like POPS and others that help to secure lasting change, reform attitudes and hopefully ensure future generations of families experience a quality of service and support far beyond our own.
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Can you read this? Toe by Toe enables learners to learn to read from the beginning with one to one support.
instigate change. We have established family forums, provided opportunities for families to meet governors, developed family support networks and produced and delivered training to a variety of professionals.
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
by Prison Widow
T
hank goodness the festive season is done and dusted. I reckon my other half will be pleased as well. At least he knows he’ll get his tenner postal orders for phone credit now. I had to split the weekly £10.00 between him and the Go Go Hamsters. He didn’t manage too well off £2.00, but that’s Christmas for you! There’s been a lot of talk recently from prisoners’ families about missing property that they’ve sent in for their loved ones. Touch wood, the items I bought my other half for Christmas got to him no problem. I’m glad really because it would have been embarrassing for my fella if he had to put in an APP. Imagine what the screws would have said when they read it – 1 large Ann Summers Elephant thong, £14.99. The lads on the wing would have been calling him Dumbo for the rest of his sentence! Poor mite. I do think that prisoners’ families get a rough ride though. I remember last year when my other half’s father passed away. He arrived at his funeral handcuffed to two screws. It was a depressing day, and after it, I wrote a letter of complaint to the prison asking for a refund for my damaged contact lenses. What happened was, during the interment, the priest offered my hubby some blessed soil. Because he was cuffed though, he tried to throw it onto the coffin but it flew over his head and landed in my eyes. He just couldn’t get the coordination right at all. It was a sad day.
This is what families have to put up with when they have a loved one inside. I have warned my sons that if they ever mess up and land in prison when I snuff it, they mustn’t come to my funeral. The last thing I need is a couple of screws present at my service. I want to go to Heaven and rest in peace. Not to reach the pearly gates and get tagged off Saint Christopher because he saw two prison officers lay a wreath at the crematorium. I’ve been a prisoners family member all my life and the last thing I need is for God to put me on parole which would mean another twenty bloody years before I see my loved ones on the other side! Pardon the pun; I’d rather have a low KEY ceremony thank you very much! On a much brighter note, this month is the season for lovers - Valentine’s Day! It is so hard to find a meaningful card for someone in prison. I usually buy my other half a funny one, something to cheer him up. I did read one the other day in a card shop that read – ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, I’ve got Herpes, and so have you.’ Thanks to the Conjugal visits ban in the UK, it’s been some time for me and the other half, so I decided to put it back on the shelf. Not only that, it would save hassle for my hubby having to put in an APP to book an appointment for Healthcare - Exactly! He isn’t the brightest bulb on the landing that’s for sure! Actually, he rang me the other night. The conversation could have easily made it onto The Royle Family. His cousin is expecting a baby. He asked me how she was, as he knows I keep in touch with his family. I said, ‘she’s fine, but the baby isn’t engaged yet.’ He replied, ‘Well that’s damn typical of her trying to marry her kid off before it’s born.’ He told me he only had 58p left on his phone credit so I didn’t even contemplate explaining it. God only knows what content will be in his cousin’s letter though next time he writes to her. I’m not getting involved, but there is one thing for sure, my story telling hasn’t finished quite just yet! Happy Valentine’s Day to all your readers! Best Wishes - Prison Widow at Prisoners’ Families Voices.
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Prisoners’ Families Voices prisonersfamiliesvoices. blogspot.com/ My daughter is in prison Worried Mum, 16 January
My daughter was sent to prison in August 2010. She will be released in 2012. I am a worried Mum and living off my nerves. Whilst she is in prison, I have guardianship of my Grandson, her son. He is 14 years of age and does not want to visit her in prison. He speaks to her on the phone but will go nowhere near the prison. The whole prison issue has drained me and I feel very alone. My daughter started getting into trouble after her father passed away. I know this is no excuse at all, but she went off the rails. I have always looked down on those who commit crime and never thought this would happen to me. It just goes to show that this can happen to anyone. My life has changed since my Grandson came to live with me. As well as my daughter adjusting to prison life, I have had to adjust too. I have tried to talk to him about his Mum, but he won’t talk about it. He won’t talk about anything.
..................................................... Twenty questions about prison Stressed Mum, 17 January
I am a stressed Mum and finding it hard to explain things to my 6 year-old daughter. Her Dad has been in prison since she was 4 and she is now at the age where she has started to ask 20 questions. He is in prison for armed robbery and I am finding her questions hard to deal with. She knows her Dad is in prison because he has done something wrong, but she wants to know what he’s done wrong. She also asks lots of questions about prison and what’s what and who’s who. Sometimes I feel like blasting my partner down the phone when he rings for leaving me and her in this situation. Right now I am just stuck for words.
© prisonimage.org
Teenagers and bullying Tricia, 17 January
My partner was jailed for fraud not long ago. When I read the stories about The Bolton News, I could only sympathise with the child. My partner was mentioned in our local newspaper (which is not in the North West area may I add) and she has been a subject of bullying ever since. After a brilliant relationship with her Dad, she now refuses to go and visit him because she blames him for the bullying at school. She is 13, nearly 14 and I am so scared this will send her off the rails. I have a meeting with her teacher next week and hopefully this can be resolved. I wouldn’t wish prison on my worst enemy because it destroys families.
....................................................... Written by daughter of a prisoner 20 January
The reason I don’t like seeing my Dad in prison is because I feel like I can’t talk to him properly because there are too many prison officers looking and too many people around next to our table. My young sister goes off to play with the other children, doing some colouring and all that. I am just sat at the table with my Mum being bored and feeling upset because my Dad is in prison. I don’t like going to see him on visits because it is too upsetting.
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38
News from the House
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Parliamentary Questions Highlights from the House of Commons Remand in Custody: Prison Sentences Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) men and (b) women were remanded in custody in each of the last three years; and how many were given a custodial sentence in each such year.
Reparation by Offenders
Mr Blunt: The estimated number of males and females remanded in custody who went on to receive a custodial sentence at magistrates courts and the Crown Court in England and Wales 2007 to 2009 (latest currently available) is shown in the table.
Persons remanded in custody(1) who subsequently received a custodial sentence(2) at magistrates courts(3) and the Crown Court (4) , by sex, England and Wales 2007-09 Persons (thousand) Males Remanded in custody Of which immediate custody Females Remanded in custody Of which immediate custody
2007(5)
2008(6,7)
2009(7)
68.3 36.1
78.2 40.8
67.6 40.6
6.2 2.7
5.1 2.3
5.2 2.8
(1) Includes those remanded in custody at any stage of proceedings at magistrates and the Crown court who may also have been given bail at some stage of those proceedings. (2) Includes detention in a young offender institution, detention and training orders and unsuspended imprisonment. (3) Magistrates courts figures exclude those committed for trial or sentence at the Crown court. (4) Crown court cases are not necessarily concluded in the same year as the committal therefore the figures presented may include cases where defendants were remanded in custody during earlier years than under which they are presented in this table. (5) Includes estimates for those offences omitted from data supplied. (6) Excludes data for Cardiff magistrates court for April, July and August 2008. (7) Data for 2008 and 2009 are estimated.
CLB CRIMINAL 040111 05/01/2011 09:08 Page 1
Inside? We’re on your side. As specialists in Criminal Defence and Prison Law we provide straightforward advice and professional representation for: • • • • • • • • • •
Adjudication Licence Recall Parole Hearings Re-categorisation All Prison Law issues Court of Appeal cases Confiscations and proceeds of crime act hearings Lifer reviews IPP and EPP hearings and reviews HDC / ROTL
Hazel Blears: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many staff of the probation service are engaged in delivering the community payback scheme. Mr Blunt: The latest available figures on the number of staff in the probation service working in community payback roles are shown in the following table, broken down into job group. It shows that on 31 July 2010 there were a total of 1,646.71 FTE permanent staff in post and an additional 688 casual staff (headcount) in these roles. Permanent and casual staff in community payback roles, 31 July 2010 Job group Staff Casual in post staff (FTE) (Head- count) Area/district manager 3.00 0 Assistant chief officer 2.00 0 Middle manager 92.46 0 Other operational staff 365.27 326 Other staff 79.64 21 Probation officer 40.61 16 Probation services officer 628.22 297 Senior practitioner 11.00 0 Support staff Administration 403.28 1 Support staff-other 16.23 27 Treatment manager 5.00 0 Total 1,646.71 688
Mr Blunt: The Restraint Accreditation Board is currently considering whether to accredit a new approach to restraint for introduction into secure training centres and young offender institutions. We await their expert advice on whether the needs of young people in each secure estate sector require different approaches.
Local Probation Trusts
Richard Fuller: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether the future commissioning of community punishment will include a central role for local probation trusts. Mr Blunt: We are following the policy announced by the previous Government in April 2009 and are preparing a detailed commissioning strategy, which will involve putting all community payback services out to tender in a series of mini-competitions, phased over a period of time. Probation trusts will be able to compete to provide those services.
Former Prisoners: Support
Caroline Lucas: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether the Restraint Accreditation Board has sought human rights legal advice in its consideration of new restraint techniques for use in children’s custody.
Dr Huppert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on measures to support former prisoners after their release.
Mr Blunt: The requirements of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the UN convention on rights of the child together with all other requirements of international and domestic law are taken into account by the Government in determining their policy and practice on the use of restraint in the under-18 secure estate.
Mr Blunt: The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) is in discussions with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) on a range of issues relating to resettlement support for former
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Caroline Lucas: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he expects identical accredited restraint techniques to be used in (a) young offender institutions, (b) secure training centres and (c) local authority secure children’s homes; and if he will make a statement.
Restraint Techniques: Children
We cover all prisons and institutions and will respond quickly and efficiently to any legal issue raised whilst you are in prison.
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News from the House
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org prisoners. In particular, we are jointly taking forward plans to incentivise DWP Work programme providers to give employment support to unemployed offenders, with the providers paid for their success in getting people into work.
Burglary Offences: Custodial Sentences
voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations. This information is not stored centrally, and would require very large scale data retrieval from NOMS headquarters, prisons and probation trusts.
2010-11. In addition funding of £65,000 is expected from other Departments.
Prisons and Probation Ombudsman: Operating Costs
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 20 December 2010, Official Report, column 1115W, on the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, how many of the complaints to the ombudsman were upheld.
Mr Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what proportion of people convicted of burglary offences were given custodial sentences in the latest period for which figures are available.
Philip Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 20 December 2010, Official Report, columns 1115-6W, on the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman, what estimate he has made of the likely cost of that office in 2010-11.
Mr Blunt: In 2009, 54% of offenders sentenced for burglary were given an immediate or suspended custodial sentence.
Mr Blunt: The Ministry of Justice has delegated a budget of £5.98 million for the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman in
Educational Opportunities: Prisoners
Tony Baldry: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps his Department is taking to increase educational opportunities for prisoners. Mr Blunt: Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills the Ministry of Justice have undertaken a review of offender learning. We expect this to tell us how best to provide learning opportunities and maximise the number of prisoners taking part. We will report shortly.
New Prisons: CSR
Mr Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many proposals for the construction of new prisons have been withdrawn as a result of the outcome of the comprehensive spending review. Mr Blunt: Plans to build a prison in Maghull, Merseyside will not go ahead, while proposals to build a prison in Runwell, Essex have been deferred for the spending review period.
Offenders: Rehabilitation
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what projects his Department is operating with organisations in the charity sector to provide rehabilitation for offenders and former offenders. Mr Blunt: According to our records, there are over 200 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations engaged with NOMS, in either custody or community, working with prisons and/or probation trusts to meet a range of offender needs. It is not currently possible to list the full range of interventions delivered, either wholly or in part, by these
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Prisoners and probation 1.570 1.773 2.255
Bank Bonuses
Prisons and Probation Ombudsman
Mr Blunt: The information in the following table shows the numbers of complaints upheld by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman in the last three years. Also shown is the number of complaints deemed eligible for investigation.
Number of complaints upheld. Eligible complaints received: Year(1) 2007-08 2008-09(2) 2009-10
39
Immigration detention 49 55 69
Number of complaints upheld 435 436 633
(1) Years are April to March. (2) The system for recording the number of complaints changed in this year.
George Osborne, 4th October 2010
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Prison Sentences: Reoffenders
Tracey Crouch: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many of the prisoners serving a custodial sentence of less than four years for each category of offence are repeat offenders. Mr Blunt: The following table shows figures for the population in prison establishments at 30 June 2009 serving an immediate custodial sentence of less than four years, by offence category and criminal history. These figures are a further breakdown of table 7.32 in ‘Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2009’ which was published on 22 July 2010. Population in prison establishments serving an immediate custodial sentence of less than four years at 30 June 2009, by offence category and criminal history-England and Wales Offence category All offenders First time offenders Violence against the person 6,668 406 Sexual offences 1,439 447 Burglary 5,181 38 Robbery 3,039 134 Theft and handling 2,793 167 Fraud and Forgery 1,440 675 Drug offences 4,109 607 Motoring offences 999 36 Other offences 4,360 346 Offence not recorded 758 57 Total 30,786 2,913
“We will not allow money to flow unimpeded out of those banks into huge bonuses, if that means money is not flowing out in credit to the small businesses who did nothing to cause this crash and suffered most in it”
One or more previous convictions/cautions 6,262 992 5,143 2,905 2,626 765 3,502 963 4,014 701 27,873
“It is wholly untenable to have millions of people making sacrifices in their living standards only to see the banks getting away scot-free – the banks should not be under any illusion: this Government cannot stand idly by” Nick Clegg, 17th November 2010
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
“Every decision the banks make like that (paying large bonuses) makes it more difficult to keep a tax regime that they might favour” David Cameron, 17th December 2010
These criminal history figures have been drawn from the police’s administrative IT system, the police national computer, which, as with any large scale recording system, is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the police.
This year the banks’ bonus pool of £7 billion, described by one MP as ‘obscene’, could more than cover the combined expenditure of all health, environmental and communities charities in the UK.
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If you are facing confiscation proceedings then we can help you get the best advice and support available to protect your interests. As POCA specialists we can quickly assemble one of the strongest teams available from leading barristers to financial experts that can instantly get to work on your case. We offer a totally dedicated and responsive service committed to achieving the best results. We specialise in Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) proceedings and in particular:
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Legal Comment
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Legal Mail: your rights and what to do if the rules are not followed Barrister Philip Rule explains the procedure for Rule 39 legal mail
A
s the House of Lords has said, one of the most important constitutional rights that all prisoners retain despite being sentenced to custody is the right of freedom of access to the Courts and to lawyers for that purpose. Most prisoners are aware of this important right and it is regularly exercised. Even those prisoners who are subject to special rules retain the right that any interference must be proportionate and necessary. However some prisoners do experience problems and the following is a practical guide offering some guidance to those who do face difficulties in communicating in private with their lawyers. The most common problem is perhaps the mail being opened, but there are also reported instances of outgoing mail being read or checked and only accepted in unsealed form. There may also be wholly unacceptable delays, and that itself has been recognised as a potential violation of Art. 8 ECHR rights by the Courts. The basic rules Prison Rule 39 (or Rule 17 for young offenders) provides that: (1) A prisoner’s correspondence with his legal adviser and any court may only be opened, read or stopped by the governor in accordance with the provisions of this rule. (2) It may be opened if the governor has reasonable cause to believe that it contains an illicit (unauthorised) enclosure; and it may be opened, read and stopped if the governor has reasonable cause to believe its contents endanger prison security or the safety of others or are of a criminal nature. (3) A prisoner shall be given the opportunity to be present when any correspondence to which this rule applies is opened and shall be informed if it or any enclosure
is to be read or stopped. Detailed guidance on the operation of Rule 39 in practice is provided for in Prison Service Order 4411 “Prisoner Communications - Correspondence”. That order provides that the examination and reading of prisoners’ correspondence should be undertaken only to the extent that it is strictly necessary for security or good order of establishments and to detect and prevent offences against prison discipline or the criminal law; and to satisfy reasonable requirements of prison administration (for example, the need to record the receipt of money and other articles enclosed with incoming letters). The order addresses the treatment of legal and confidential correspondence. It explains that Rule 39 “means that such correspondence must not be opened, read or stopped, except in special circumstances. In such circumstances, mail may only be opened for examination on the instruction of an Operational Manager and in the presence of the prisoner concerned (unless he or she declines the opportunity)”. The correspondence between legal advisers and prisoners must be marked “Rule 39”, or “legal correspondence”. PSO 4411 re-iterates the restrictions on opening privileged legal correspondence, and repeats that where special circumstances exist the correspondence is only to be opened in the presence of the prisoner. Governors are warned there must be strict compliance with the rules and must ensure the attention of all staff is brought to the guidance designed to ensure privileged mail remains confidential. The prisoner must be informed that their correspondence is being read. Even if a letter does not comply fully with the rules there is a need for the prison staff to be alert to such mistakes. PSO 4411 provides that “If by oversight an outgoing letter does not bear the correct marking but is clearly addressed to an individual or
organisation covered by [the rule] it must continue to be treated as privileged and handled accordingly. Alternatively, if incoming correspondence does not carry the proper marking which identifies it as originating from one of the bodies listed [as covered by the rule], then the letter should be stopped by staff but opened in the prisoner’s presence, with the stipulation that if there is clear evidence of, or an attempt to abuse this privilege, alternative arrangements will be made for the prisoner’s correspondence with these bodies”. Even if not properly marked “Rule 39”, where identifiable as being such, legal correspondence should be treated the same way. As well as Rule 39, prisoners are entitled to confidential correspondence with the Criminal Cases Review Commission and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman. The same procedures apply but the mail should be marked “Confidential Access”. Prisoners with very serious medical conditions they prefer to keep private may also be able to assert confidentiality if the condition is regarded as sufficiently engaging of Article 8 ECHR and the prisoner’s private life. Practical matters Good practice is to ensure outgoing mail is clearly marked as “Rule 39” mail. This can be written on both sides of the envelope. This can be handed in sealed to the prison staff for sending. When incoming mail has been opened it is important that this is recorded on the envelope by requesting an officer on the wing to certify it has been received in an opened state. It is important any such evidence is retained in case of repetition. If the prisoner feels sufficiently aggrieved by the violation of Rule 39 then a complaint can be issued by COMP form and a response should be given by an appropriate officer. If the complaint is not satisfactorily dealt with the complaint can be pursued to a higher level, and ultimately
to the Ombudsman. When it appears either that the violation is deliberate or the same practice continues to occur despite the complaint being made the prisoner may consider legal action and can seek advice as to whether a civil action or judicial review has become appropriate. A recent judicial review application was dismissed in October where the Governor had required any incoming Rule 39 mail which raised the suspicions of staff to be opened by the prisoner in the presence of an officer, although it was not to be read by the officer. In the context specifically of misuse of the Rule 39 privilege by prisoners at HMP Wakefield it was proportionate to apply that requirement to a prisoner despite the fact there had been no specific misuse by that individual prisoner of Rule 39. Nonetheless the Court said such a policy must be kept under continuing review in light of the circumstances and intelligence the prison held. HMP Highpoint and HMP North Sea Camp HMP Highpoint presently faces ongoing judicial review proceedings concerning its treatment of Rule 39 mail. If you have suffered any failures in relation to your Rule 39 mail in particular at this establishment, or at HMP North Sea Camp, please contact Will Heyward at Lawrence’s Solicitors, 32A Sheep Street, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, NN8 1BS. Telephone: 01933 442 324. It is important that the court can be made aware of the extent of any difficulties experienced by prisoners at these establishments to ensure that proper changes can be made to the internal processes and a proper assessment be made of the need to compensate those affected prisoners. Philip Rule is a barrister practising from Castle Chambers, and specialises in prison law and criminal trials and appeals.
The ASSOCIATION OF PRISON LAWYERS (APL) The Association of Prison Lawyers (APL) was formed by a group of specialist prison lawyers in 2008 to represent the interests and views of practitioners in prison law. The initial momentum for the organisation was to provide a forum for lawyers working in this field to exchange information against the backdrop of Government proposals to significantly restrict the availability of legal aid to prisoners. 2010 was a particularly tough time for all representatives of Prisoners with the lead up to and eventual implementation of the new Prison Law Contract on 14th July 2010. The Association of Prison Lawyers are continuing to talk with the Legal Services Commission to try to resolve a number of inconsistencies in the contract and the guidance they have issued. We are also representing the interests of our Members in discussions with the Parole Board and the Ministry of Justice at a senior level. We are continuing to develop and improve the APL ‘Members Only’ website which is providing an excellent forum for discussion and exchange of information. Our popular, significant and valuable courses are continuing throughout 2011 with support and input from noted professionals and experts.
Members are entitled to significant reductions in the cost of training events, attracting compulsory CPD points. Membership starts from as little as £50 per Individuals and £80 per firm (£120 over 5 Memberships) P l e a s e v i s i t h t t p : / / w w w. a s s o c i a t i o n o f p r i s o n l a w y e r s . c o . u k f o r f u l l d e t a i l s
Next Event and Course 4th February APL Annual Conference and Training Event “The Prison Discipline System: Adjudication Appeals” For details of upcoming courses please contact:
[email protected] or visit www.associationofprisonlawyers.co.uk
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
IPP update Emmersons Solicitors want your view on IPP sentences and the Green Paper
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he Green Paper has finally been published and we now have three months to submit our responses, writes Lorna Elliott, Barrister. Emmersons Solicitors, as most of you will already know, have been campaigning for the abolition of the IPP sentence for a while now. Although the proposals don’t go that far, the Government is seeking to reserve the IPP sentence for the most serious crimes (which warrant a 5 or more year tariff). The Tory’s pre-election idea of the ‘mini-max’ sentence has not made it into the Green Paper. That is not to say that the Government has totally scrapped the idea, but that it hasn’t formed part of the immediate ideas for reform. The proposed changes to the IPP sentence, if they become law, will not be retrospective. This means that, in the same way that the pre-2008 IPPs were not affected by the changes to the law, those currently serving IPP will not be affected. Although this is obviously very disappointing to those with loved ones currently serving short-tariff IPP sentences, their predicament is not forgotten by the Green Paper. Significantly, there is a proposal to change the way that the Parole Board decides whether or not to release current IPP prisoners back into the community. At the moment, the Parole Board is extremely risk-averse. This has been widely recognised by the Prison Governors’ Association, the Prison Reform Trust, and others and now - at last - the Government. Currently, if the Parole Board are worried that there is a risk that the offender might pose anything more than a minimal ‘risk’ in the community, they will not direct the prisoner’s release. The proposals in the Green Paper seek to address this, and if they become law, will mean that IPPs stand a much better chance of being released. The Green Paper says that the Government is ‘exploring’ whether a new test for post-tariff IPPs so that more of them are released by the Parole Board.
All that has been said at the moment is very generally phrased - that a new test could be applied that focuses on keeping those who ‘clearly pose a very serious risk of future harm’ in prison and releasing those who do not.
The one question that the Government asks of us is this: “How best can we increase understanding of prison sentences?” While we would suggest that the most obvious answer to this is the abolishment of the IPP sentence in favour of ‘mini-max’ sentences, this is clearly not on the Government’s most immediate agenda. It appears, from the Green Paper, that the Government has no plans currently to speed up risk assessments by, for example, getting rid of the requirement for an oral hearing in front of the Parole Board. This still means that there are likely to be delays, which we will specifically seek to address in our written submissions to the Government. At the moment, the Parole Board lists oral hearings according to priority, but there is still often a substantial amount of waiting time before the prisoner actually gets their oral hearing. A case in the Administrative Court last year confirmed that the Secretary of State has the power to direct a prisoner’s move to open conditions without an oral hearing in only ‘exceptional circumstances’, but we think the Government should at least give consideration to using this more widely. If you have had a chance to read through the Green Paper, you’ll see that there are questions that the Government asks at the end of each section. The one question that
relates specifically to the IPP sentence does not really have very much to do with whether the IPP sentence works or not, whether it’s fair on offenders and their families and avoids the obvious issue – its overwhelming uncertainty and injustice. The one specific IPP question asked of the public relates to the fact that the IPP sentence can be very confusing for prisoners, the public and for victims. This includes the way that IPP sentences are announced by the judge in court (e.g. a notional determinate term of six years imprisonment warrants a minimum term of three years minus time spent on remand); the uncertainty as to how long a prisoner will spend in prison, and the lack of availability of courses for offenders to demonstrate their reduction in risk. The Government appears at last to acknowledge the effect that the IPP sentence has had on those sentenced to IPP as well as their families. They state, at paragraph 187, that “the widespread use of IPPs…can undermine public confidence since the court, the victim and the public have little or no means of knowing how long an individual spell in custody is likely to last or whether it will ever end.” At the very least the Government seems to have taken some notice of the utter injustice of this inhumane sentence. The one question that the Government asks of us is this: “How best can we increase understanding of prison sentences?” While we would suggest that the most obvious answer to this is the abolishment of the IPP sentence in favour of ‘mini-max’ sentences, this is clearly not on the Government’s most immediate agenda. So, in order to help us to compile our contribution to the public consultation we ask prisoners, and their loved ones, for their views on the following questions: Do you think that the way the IPP sentence is announced in court, i.e. the length of the tariff, is confusing?
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Was the effect of the ‘dangerousness’ label and the requirement to ‘reduce your risk’ explained to you at the start of the IPP sentence? What is your experience of the availability of offending behaviour courses? We would particularly like to hear from people who had to wait a very long time for courses, or were told that they had to undertake more (and sometimes lengthy) courses at a late stage of their tariff, or post-tariff. Do you feel that the structure of the IPP sentence is adequately explained to offenders, their families, victims and the public in general? For those who maintain their innocence, has the effect of this on your ‘risk’ been explained to you? If so, what have you been told and who by? We can’t promise that we will be able to use all of your responses, but we will publish our consultation response on our Facebook page and will also send it to Inside Time for publication. We look forward to hearing from you. Please ensure that we receive your views by Monday 21st February so as to ensure that we are able to include them in our response. Of course you can also respond personally to the Green Paper, and sending us your views does not prevent you from doing so in your own right. This equally applies to prisoners, who can also write directly to the Ministry of Justice at: Breaking the Cycle, Ministry of Justice, 10.08, 10th Floor, 102 Petty France, London, SW1H 9AJ. The deadline for replies is 4th March 2011.
Lorna Elliott LLB (Hons) Barrister Emmersons Solicitors, ACER House, 52 John Street, Sunderland SR1 1QN. T: 01915676667 F: 01915670808 www.emmersons-solicitors.co.uk
carringtons solicitors
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
The ghost in the machine: abuse trials and profile evidence Margaret Jervis and Chris Saltrese highlight hidden assumptions that may blight fairness in sex offence trials
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sychological profile evidence is a controversial issue in criminal courts. Developed as a tool of investigation, its aim was to help solve crimes based on offender typology.
Such methods can go spectacularly awry – as in the targeting of Colin Stagg where the investigation centred on manipulating him into confessing to the murder of Rachel Nickell. Despite this abject failure the CPS still brought profile-based charges against him. While the trial collapsed, the police remained convinced of his guilt until the true culprit was identified through advanced DNA techniques. The Court of Appeal has proscribed psychological profile opinion as evidence. Yet pressure persists to introduce it – not in relation to suspects, but to the behaviour of victims of rape and sexual abuse. Sexual offence victim profiles were an offshoot of offender profiling. Controversially they became both an explanatory and diagnostic tool explaining and predicting the behaviour of alleged victims whose testimony was contradictory and inconsistent. At base is the commonplace observation that victims of sexual crimes, for all sorts of reasons, do not necessarily immediately report the offences. Sometimes disclosure can be delayed for years or decades without anyone else having an inkling as to what might have happened. This led psychologists to formulate theories of hidden victimhood. An entire therapeutic industry became grounded on theories positing current life problems as symptoms of hidden trauma memories repressed or ‘accommodated’ in the mind beneath a normal exterior. The ‘rape trauma syndrome’ and its relative, the ‘child sexual abuse accommodation
syndrome’ (CSAAS) have become the focus of contention in criminal evidence. Advocates say it is a valid aid to conviction. Critics riposte that it is an unscientific method of buttressing an otherwise weak and unconvincing case. The CSAAS gained notoriety when it was employed to construct bizarre evidence of ‘ritual abuse’ in nurseries in cases in the US such as McMartin. Once suspicion of abuse was raised, children were subjected to suggestive play therapy creating never-ending fantastical narratives in total contrast to the mundane day to day occurrences that had been thought to exist. Yet the CSAAS has limited admissibility in some US jurisdictions to counter claims of inconsistency. The Michael Jackson trial in California was one such case. However, in these cases it is subject to a judicial caution to the jury that it is not evidence supporting the case, but only to arguably demonstrate that a complainant’s reactions are not inconsistent with being abused. It states: ‘Child sexual abuse accommodation syndrome research is based upon an approach that is completely different from that which you must take to this case. The syndrome research begins with the assumption that molestation has occurred, and seeks to describe and explain common reactions of children to that experience. As distinguished from that research approach, you are to presume the defendant innocent. The People have the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’ This stern warning blunts the force of the CSAAS and may be thought to help the jury discount its prejudicial effect. Paradoxically it is in English criminal trials
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where the CSAAS may be misapplied. Prosecution arguments may be peppered with assumptions as to how sex abuse victims ‘typically’ react not merely to explain away delayed, inconsistent, progressive and contradictory evidence, but as being indicative of victimhood. And far from issuing a caution, the judge may echo these sentiments in directions. Indeed the rules of evidence have themselves been adapted over the years to accommodate such thinking. In sexual abuse trials it is now permissible to convict on inconsistent and retracted testimony whereas it used to be held that it was unsafe to do so as a matter of course. The upshot is that in some cases the weaker the evidence, the greater likelihood there is of conviction. What is worse, the Court of Appeal is minded to uphold these controversial convictions dismissing objections as ‘tired and outdated’ arguments about children’s evidence. (R v Barker [2010] EWCA Crim 4). As the CSAAS is not introduced as expert evidence, there is no means of scientific rebuttal by the defence. But the fact is that
the CSAAS is not merely at odds with scientific research on genuine victim behaviour, but is also compatible with - and a recognised form of generating - confabulated and fictitious claims. While members of the judiciary occasionally voice disquiet about the licence to convict in this way there appears to be no appetite for reform in the higher courts. Yet the current rules of evidence and backdoor admissibility of the CSAAS have arguably rubber-stamped a significant number of wrongful convictions. With the higher courts unwilling to act, it is time the scientific and legal community raised the alarm - not with the courts, but the legislature. Because ultimately this is a political problem demanding policy reform. Margaret Jervis is a legal researcher and consultant and Chris Saltrese a solicitor in Southport specialising in contested sexual abuse allegations.
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Restraint & Receivers Your Money or Theirs? Aziz Rahman, Solicitor and Jonathan Lennon, Barrister
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n this article we give a brief overview on the law relating to Restraint Orders – that is an order made by the Crown Court which effectively freezes the assets of someone who is either being prosecuted or investigated for alleged criminal offences. The orders themselves can be very restrictive and we consider here how such orders are made and what steps should be taken if you find yourself on the wrong end of a Restraint Order.
Proceeds Of Crime Act 2002
The purpose of a Restraint Order is to freeze property that may subsequently be confiscated. Confiscation of course is the power the Crown Court has to make orders depriving convicted offenders of their assets if the offender has benefited from his criminal conduct. A Restraint Order made under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (“POCA”) does what it says – the Order will specify what you cannot do; i.e. you cannot ‘deal’ with the property cited on the Order. If the Order mentions your car for example it will mean that you cannot sell the car or transfer it or dispose of it, or in any way ‘realise’ it – i.e. turn it into cash.
Disclosure and Contempt
The Order will invariably include a disclosure provision so that the defendant has to declare all he owns to the prosecutor. Sometimes defendants will take a risk. They will withhold information hoping the prosecutors are not aware of it. That is a risk because should the investigators discover the bank account or whatever it is then they can haul the defendant back to Court on an application for committal for contempt of Court. Such allegations are hard to defend – they are civil proceedings in the Crown Court, there is no jury and the civil standard of proof applies. Contempt will usually result in a prison sentence, although unlike criminal sentences the defendant can get out of jail by ‘purging’ his contempt. That is to finally tell all in a new witness statement detailing all accounts etc – if accepted as truthful the defendant can return to Court and have either all or part of his sentence quashed. Another issue with restraint and contempt proceedings is there are good grounds for excluding material obtained from a defendant under a Restraint Order because that information was obtained under compulsion. In other words the right to silence is lost in restraint proceedings. The right to silence is however an integral part of the right to a fair trial as guaranteed under Article 6 of the European Convention. Thus explanations etc given under the compulsion of a Court Order may be excluded from any later trial; see Re C (Restraint Order: Disclosure) 4/9/00.
When and How can a Restraint Order be Made?
Section 40 of POCA creates a number of circumstances in which the Crown Court may issue a Restraint Order. Usually the Crown will apply for an Order after a suspect has been charged with an offence, but the authorities can seek such an order even before there is an arrest – as long as an ‘investigation’ has started, s40(2)(a). The Crown have to establish that there is a reasonable cause to believe that the alleged offender has benefited from his criminal conduct (s40 (2) (b)). The Crown do not have to convince the Judge that any named property was purchased directly with ill
gotten gains. All they have to do is persuade the Judge, to the civil standard, – i.e. on the balance of probabilities, that there is reasonable cause to believe that the suspect has benefited from ‘criminal conduct’ – this ‘criminal conduct’ is widely defined as any conduct which would constitute an offence (s76) and the Crown may rely on hearsay evidence to persuade the Judge. The Crown’s application for a Restraint Order is likely to be made ex parte, that is the prosecution seeing the Judge privately in Chambers without notice to the suspect; s42(1)(b). The first a suspect will know about it is when he or she is served with the Order, or even finds that his or her cash-card for some reason no longer works at the bank’s ATM.
Receivers
If a suspect’s finances are complex the Court may appoint a Management Receiver (s48) to receive and manage the property. This will be a sizeable accountancy firm who could have the legal authority to take possession and control of any or all of the suspect’s property and sell any assets. This is a major step which has significant implications for those on the receiving end. Management Receivers do not come cheap. They are officially appointed by the Court but they charge for their services and the first port of call for their fees is the restrained or confiscated assets, see s49 (2) (d). One area that is of concern is the Receiver’s costs – which are rarely insignificant. This can lead to a gross injustice where the restrained assets have been used to pay the Management Receiver’s large bills only for the suspect to then go onto trial and be acquitted – in that scenario the innocent suspect may have to bear the cost; see House of Lords ruling in Capewell v Commissioners of Custom & anor [2005] 1 ALL ER 900. That possibility of manifest unfairness should be taken into account at the time the Order is made – or challenged. Defenders can ask for the Court to consider to satisfy itself that the expense of appointing a Management Receiver is proportionate and should remind the Court of the duty of proportionality and the risk of injustice – tailored of course to the individual facts of the case.
Property Held Jointly
Third parties holding an interest in property can be affected by a Restraint Order. The most obvious example is the spouse of someone who is facing criminal charges, for example the wife of someone facing serious fraud charges where the wife has a joint bank account and holds the matrimonial home in joint names. In law where any person has been, or may be, affected by the actions of a Management Receiver, an application can be made to the Court under s62 (3) for directions as to the exercise of the Receiver’s powers. The Receiver potentially has the power to sell property to satisfy his bill even before the matter has come to trial – though such a serious step should not be taken without seeking a direction from the Court first; Re P [2000] 1 WLR, 473. The case of Gibson v RCPO [2008] Times Law Reports, 14/7/08 is instructive in this scenario. In that case a Confiscation Order was made against a convicted drug trafficker. The assets identified had been the 50% equity in the matrimonial home and joint bank account, held by the offender’s wife – the home had been purchased in joint names. The Crown Court took the view that the wife must have realised that the mortgage was being paid by the husband’s ill-gotten gains and was thus an asset which could be sold to satisfy the Confiscation Order. The Court of Appeal took a different view; it found that there was no legal principle under which a spouse could be deprived of the benefit of illegally obtained property on the grounds of public policy. The wife kept her half of the house and bank account. Applying that
principle to start of proceedings, i.e. the Restraint Order stage there is solid argument for limiting the scope of any such Order where there are assets which are held in joint names with a spouse.
Living & Legal Expenses
This is another area which often rankles with those on the wrong end of a Restraint Order – the amount allowed by the Order for ordinary living expenses. Variation applications made after the initial ex parte Order will often challenge the amount allowed. What is required is a careful analysis of expenses together with as much proof as possible – these steps need to be considered at the very earliest opportunity. An exception cannot be made for legal expenses in relation to the actual offence in respect of which the Restraint Order is made (s41(4)(a)). The State therefore must pay for the defence through Legal Aid.
Application for Variation or Discharge
Once a suspect has been served with a Restraint Order and he has decided he wants to fight it then the first step must be to sit down with the legal advisors and figure out what the challenges are, how much money is needed for reasonable living expenses, what is said about the charges/ proposed charges, the ‘reasonable belief’ test, and how much of the defence it is tactically wise to give away at that early stage.
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The Restraint Order will have been made with no opportunity for the suspect to say anything. By s42 (3) he has to power to apply to the Court to discharge or vary the Order. The Judge will hear the arguments which, may, if appropriate also include human rights arguments about the proportionality of the Order. Either party, prosecution or defence, may appeal to the Court of Appeal, s43.
The Future
The Home Office has published guidance on how money gathered in from Confiscation Orders is divided up. It is split 3 ways between the Court Service, the prosecution and investigators (i.e. police, customs, SFO, SOCA etc). The split used to be one-third each of 50% of the confiscated assets (i.e. 16.6% each of the total recovered). The shares are now investigators 18.75%, prosecutors 18.75% and courts 12.5%. It will therefore be readily understood why we believe that the Crown will now use their confiscation powers (and thus their restraint powers) more and more in the future. Having your assets restrained is a serious step. There is not only the worry of impending or actual criminal charges but a protracted period of time when you are having to battle with the authorities over your own assets. Anyone affected by such a Restraint Order needs to get to grips with their own finances as soon as possible, consider the case against them and the terms of the Order and develop a strategy with their lawyers as soon as possible. Jonathan Lennon is a Barrister specialising in serious and complex criminal defence cases at 23 Essex Street Chambers in London. He is a contributing author to Covert Human Intelligence Sources, (2008 Waterside Press) and has extensive experience in all aspects of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Aziz Rahman is a Solicitor- Advocate and Partner at the leading Criminal Defence firm Rahman Ravelli Solicitors, specialising in Human Rights, Financial Crime and Large Scale Conspiracies/Serious crime. Rahman Ravelli are members of the Specialist Fraud Panel.
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Legal Q&A
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org I am not in denial for lies and accusations that have never happened and to be held to blackmail; ie ‘If you don’t confess you will not get a good report and will not be released from prison’. One would expect this kind of treatment in the former Communist east and there must be a legal way of challenging this, please can you advise.
Inside Time Legal Forum Answers to readers’ legal queries are given on a strictly without liability basis. If you propose acting upon any of the opinions that appear, you must first take legal advice. Replies for the Legal Forum kindly provided by: ABM Solicitors; Chivers Solicitors; de Maids; Frank Brazell & Partners; Henry Hyams; Hine & Associates; Levys Solicitors; Morgans; Oliver & Co; Parlby Calder; Petherbridge Bassara Solicitors; Stephensons Solicitors LLP; Stevens Solicitors; Switalskis Solicitors and WBW Solicitors - see individual advertisements for full details. Send your legal queries (concise and clearly marked ‘legal’) to our editorial assistant Lucy Forde at Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. For a prompt response, readers are reminded to send their queries on white paper using black ink or typed if possible. Use a first or second class stamp.
DV - HMP Erlestoke Q
I was charged and convicted of wounding with intent and given a 3 year IPP. Prior to conviction I protested my innocence to various accusations made in my former partner’s statement and still do. The judge, in his sentencing remarks, stated that these accusations have not been tried or tested and therefore will pay no heed to them. This being the case can you please tell me why my former partner’s untried accusations are clearly present on my OASys report and are also being used against me by the psychology department here at Erlestoke.
A This gentleman’s issue is an OASys Complaint matter. An OASys stands for the Offender Assessment System report; a tool used by the Prison and Probation Services to identify the risk to the public posed by prisoners and to identify relevant programmes to address those risks. It enables staff to make sound decisions when considering a prisoner’s application for HDC and re-categorisation and is one of the key tools used to assess the risk. An OASys assessment can only be carried out by a trained OASys Assessor and must be countersigned by an OASys Supervisor. All report writers are under an obligation to consider the prisoner to be a rightfully convicted person and therefore may take into account any information surrounding the circumstances of the offence and any previous convictions that may affect the risk posed. All availble information including previous OASys assessments, information about previous convictions, pre- and post-sentence reports and information from the police or court is obtained and collated. Information from specialists and departments within the prison establishment are also collated. It is down to the professional judgement of the report writer as to what information is included in the OASys and whilst there are formal guidelines on how an OASys report should be collated, there are very few guidelines addressing the specific information that should and should not be disclosed. The report writer cannot assume that all the information is correct but should indicate from where the information has been sourced so that the reader can assess the validity of the information. However, in the case of this gentleman, if it can be evidenced by way of Sentencing Remarks that these accusations have not been afforded any weight by the Judge, a Prison Law Advisor may assist with the complaint through submitting reasons to the author of the report as to why amendments should be made to the OASys. It is important to ensure that the gentleman has exhausted the Prison’s internal complaints procedure via the Form Comp 1 before the matter may be progressed with legal assistance.
Banks on Sentence Answers by Robert Banks, a barrister who writes Banks on Sentence, the book the Judges use for sentencing more than any other.
www.banksr.com Q I am on licence recall for breach of drug conditions. The licence was for a dwelling burglary when I got 2 years. While inside I was interviewed about an attempted burglary. I also have convictions for a burglary and an attempted dwelling burglary. My solicitor is not sure whether this is a three strike case. Can you clarify? A It is a pity there was no address on your letter so I could not send you an answer by post. You are not the only person who can’t be sent a reply because of no address on the letter. For the others, if the letter is not published there never will be a reply. If your latest burglary case remains an attempted burglary the three strikes rule does not apply. This is because attempted burglaries don’t count. However the prosecution might change the charge. I would expect the judge will take into account your significant previous and significantly raise the sentence that would otherwise be appropriate. Q I am doing a 5-year sentence for selling crack on the street. Last week a student was remanded for selling cocaine at a University. He was granted bail shortly after. Will he receive less because he’s privileged and not jobless and trying to find enough to live on like me? A What a simple question! The answer is far from simple. It is necessary to divide up the principles. Firstly, the fact that someone is granted bail does not indicate he or she will be dealt with more leniently. It only indicates that the judge was not satisfied the exceptions to bail were made out. There could have been significant sureties and securities or weak evidence. As to sentence there is no reduction because of someone’s background, except I noticed when dealing with youths many years ago that those in care were treated more leniently than those
from so called ‘good homes’. This may or may not be still the case. I expect it depends on who the judge or magistrate is. Many years ago, a circuit judge was caught on a boat with contraband cigarettes and drink with a used car dealer who had been to prison. The judge relied on his loss of job, reputation and that he was an alcoholic. Both were sentenced to exactly the same sentence. Most think that strikes exactly the right note. More recently, a judge’s son was sentenced for some serious football violence. His defence counsel suggested he should receive a discount because of who he was and the difficult time he might face in prison. The sentencing judge tore into defence counsel for suggesting that. The Court of Appeal was of a similar view. As to sentences for University students, I doubt most students would consider themselves privileged as they struggle to live on their loans. Earlier this year a student had his sentence suspended because immediate prison would interrupt his studies and there was unlikely to be any repetition. In another case the sentence was altered so he would be able to start his studies in the following year. No doubt this took into account the desirability of people being educated and the public money that had been spent on his education which would have been significant. In other cases, selling drugs to students has been considered an aggravating factor because it was corrupting those who had just left home. Courts do not give any greater sentence to the jobless but do sometimes reduce a sentence because of a good work record. This is less common in supply cases because the view is if there are to be deterrent sentences they should apply the same to everyone. But suppose your student is from a rich
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Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org background, my experience indicates it might make a difference. When I started representing defendants, rich and poor received the same service. Sometimes you would be in a case and no-one could tell the difference in representation and the rates of pay were roughly the same. That is no longer the case. The rates of pay for publicly funded work is so low, standards have fallen. The ability to ask for reports to be drafted by experts is curtained. This means now someone who is properly funded will have everything than can be done for him or her done. The same is not so for those who rely on legal aid. Notwithstanding this, judges, particularly in drugs cases, make sure that there is no distinction between rich and poor and those well represented and those not well represented. Like most cases, the student’s result will depend critically on its own facts.
Q I was found guilty of attempted trespass with intent. It was on a petrol station. The judge considered a sledgehammer was used. The Judge put me in the top bracket of the crime and gave me 4 years. I would like to hear your views. A As I don’t have access to your papers I know very little about the offence or your previous convictions. I assume the offence was a commercial burglary so I include the guidelines for non-dwelling burglaries which I hope will assist you and be of interest to others. Sentencing Guidelines Council Guidelines 2009
Theft and Burglary in a building other than a dwelling Guideline 2009, see www.banksr.com Guidelines tab. Factors to take into consideration At the lower end are cases of opportunistic offending by a single offender where there was no forced entry, no damage caused and nothing stolen. Towards the other end of the spectrum are cases involving significant
planning and professionalism, multiple offenders going equipped with implements to facilitate the commission of the offence, targeting of particular premises and the theft of property or cash or damage and consequential losses of a significant value. The guideline indicates that, in these circumstances, a sentence in excess of 7 years’ imprisonment may be appropriate. In relation to harm, the greater the loss, the more serious the offence. However, the monetary value of the loss may not reflect the full extent of the harm caused by the offence. The court should also take into account the impact of the offence on the victim (which may be significantly greater than the monetary value of the loss; this may be particularly important where the value of the loss is high in proportion to the victim’s financial circumstances even though relatively low in absolute terms), any harm to persons other than the direct victim, and any harm in the form of public concern or erosion of public confidence. When assessing the seriousness of an offence, the courts must always have regard to the full list of aggravating and mitigating factors in the Council Guideline Overarching Principles: Seriousness. The following factors from the general list may be particularly relevant, deliberate and gratuitous violence or damage to property, over and above what is needed to carry out the offence; abuse of a position of trust. Additional aggravating factors are: i) Targeting premises Some offenders deliberately target premises because high value, often easily disposable, property is likely to be found there. This is an aggravating factor as it indicates a degree of professionalism and organisation in the offending, as well as an intention to derive a high level of gain. Community premises, including schools, clubrooms, places of worship and doctors’ surgeries, may be particular targets. Burglaries of such premises may result in a higher than usual degree of harm in terms of, for example, the inconvenience caused by the theft of the property and this should
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be regarded as an aggravating factor. Premises which have been burgled on a prior occasion are also sometimes targeted, often on the assumption that security is weak or that goods stolen in the earlier burglary will have been replaced. This indicates planning, organisation and professionalism and, therefore, should be regarded as increasing the offender’s culpability. Repeat victimisation may also increase the harm caused by the offence in terms of distress, inconvenience and expense to the victim. ii) Possession of a weapon In cases where it
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is not clear whether the offender was in possession of a weapon at the time of entry into the building (which may fulfil the requirements for a more serious charge of aggravated burglary), an additional charge of possession of an offensive weapon may be before the court. If, however, an offender found with a weapon is charged solely with burglary, possession of that weapon may be regarded as an aggravating factor, subject to the overriding principle that an offender can be sentenced only for the offence of which he or she has been convicted.
First-time offender aged 18 or over who pleaded not guilty. Type/nature of activity
Starting point
Range
Burglary involving goods valued at £20,000 or more
2 years custody
12 months - 7 years custody
Involving goods valued at £2,000 or more but less than £20,000
18 weeks custody
Community order (High) - 12 months custody
Burglary involving goods valued at less than £2,000
Community order (Medium)
Fine - 26 weeks custody
Where the effect on the victim is particularly severe, the goods are of particularly high value, the cost of damage or consequential losses is significant, or there is evidence of a professional burglary and/or significant planning, a sentence of more than 7 years’ custody may be appropriate Additional aggravating factors: 1. Targeting premises containing property of high value. 2. Targeting vulnerable community premises. 3. Targeting premises which have been burgled on prior occasion(s) 4 Possession of a weapon (where this is not charged separately). If prisoners leave out key matters such as relevant and serious previous convictions or that the Court of Appeal has already rejected an appeal, the answers given may be incomplete or wrong. Please make sure questions concern sentences and not conviction or release. Unless you say you don’t want your question and answer published it will be assumed you don’t have an objection to publication. No-one will have their identity revealed. Facts which indicate who you are will not be printed. Letters without an address cannot be answered. It is usually not possible to determine whether a particular defendant has grounds of appeal without seeing all the paperwork. Going through all the paperwork is not possible. The column is designed for simple questions and answers. Please address your questions to Inside Time, Botley Mill, Botley, SO30 2GB (and mark the letter for Robert Banks). Letters sent direct cannot be answered as all correspondence has to go through a solicitor.
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Health
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org this be to do with my injury? I’d really appreciate your help.
Inside Health ...
A It sounds that the injury you sustained after
being attacked by a glass bottle may have caused some nerve damage, which is why you could be experiencing numbness and headaches around the scarred area. You mentioned that ibuprofen did not help. When nerves are damaged this can result in a number of symptoms such as numbness and pain. There is medication to help people with nerve pain, the most common include Amitriptyline, Gabapentin and Pregabalin. These will need to be prescribed by a doctor after assessing you.
Providing this valuable service are Dr Jonathon Tomlinson and Dr Shabana Rauf, both GPs practising in East London. Dr Rauf is particularly interested in women’s health.
Q I read in a recent copy of Inside Time that Tramadol is an opiate analgesic. I believe that this is wrong and that it is in fact an opioid – a synthetic pain killer designed to work on the same receptors in the brain that opiates do. There is no opiate in Tramadol, it is a synthetic analgesic – if I’m wrong I apologise but I’m quite sure. I have been on Tramadol for a number of years at a dose of 400mg. I am undoubtedly dependent on them now and would like to know if there is any known long term side effects apart form dependency. I have been told there is another painkiller called Temgesic that is a good alternative and that periodically changing from one to the other could reduce dependency, is that correct?
A You are correct in that Tramadol is an opioid medication however whether it is an opiate (natural) or an opioid (synthetic), the drugs act on the same receptors and therefore effectively do the same job. Because you have been on Tramadol for so long there is undoubtedly a degree of dependency which you acknowledge. You ask about other long lasting damage as a result of Tramadol. These can include constipation, nausea, hypertension, wheezing. Even more rarely blood disorders and seizures have been reported. You ask whether Temgesic would be useful in helping you come off Tramadol. The active component of Temgesic is called
buprenorphine. Confusingly this drug not only acts on the opioid receptor it also blocks it. It may also precipitate withdrawal symptoms, including pain, in patients dependent on other opioids. It has abuse potential and may itself cause dependency. I would recommend gradually reducing your dose of Tramadol to help come off it. If this proves difficult then asking to be referred to the Substance Misuse Team for further support would be useful.
Q I was recently taken to hospital for a MRI scan due to severe pain in my lower back causing numbness in my left leg and pins and needles in my toes. When the ambulance went over a bump in the road it eased the pressure by stopping the stabbing pain. To add to my misery I had no control of my bladder and wouldn’t realise that I needed to go. The MRI was clear and the problem was diagnosed as a muscle problem in my back.
Q
During the incident which resulted in my imprisonment I has hit with a glass bottle and have been left with two scars above my right eye, both are roughly two inches in length. This incident happened two years ago and I am still experiencing numbness around the scarred area. I get stabbing pains in that area as well as my right eye, mainly behind it. I also get migrane type head pains and usually it is only on the right side of my forehead, though this only happens now and again.
Recently the stabbing pain has come back causing numbness, pins and needles in foot, painful on walking and I can’t bend to get dressed. When I press into my lumber to try and relieve pressure the pain shoots down my left leg causing the symptoms I’ve listed. Why does the MRI show clear when there is obviously a problem? This seems to be getting worse and I wondered if you knew what it was and what treatment or medication was available? I am currently taking Codeine but it is not really working.
I was hoping that you could tell me why this area is still numb and why I’m getting these pains after so long. Can the doctor do anything about it? At my previous prison all the doctor there gave me was ibuprofen and that didn’t do much good at all. I haven’t approached the doctor here yet as I wanted more information. Finally, I have had to wear glasses since last January as I’m short sighted. I’ve noticed that INSIDE TIME_ad3.pdf 1 the right lens is stronger than the left, could
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A Pain that originates from a nerve is called sciatica, nerve root pain or sometimes radicular pain. It’s commonly described as tingling, hot and cold, numb or shooting, unlike the aching or stabbing character of most back pain. The pain may radiate down one leg due to sciatica as a result of irritation of or pressure against a 22/10/2010 20:59 nerve that originates in your spine and exits
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from the lower back. The irritation may come from areas away from the spine or more commonly from structures associated with the spine. The MRI of your back will show if the problem is due to a problem associated with the spine including a bulging disc or in very rare cases a tumour or infection in the spine. It’s important to remember that not all pain that shoots down one leg is due to sciatica. The most important assessment is a careful test of the nerves in your leg to check whether the symptoms correspond with a particular nerve. This can be done by a doctor without any special investigations. If this doesn’t demonstrate pain associated with the anatomical distribution of a nerve root then the pain, even if it feels like sciatica is not likely to be due to nerve root irritation, in which case an MRI won’t be useful. Other causes of pain shooting down your leg include myofascial (muscle fibre) pain, irritation of the nerve within muscles, arthritis in the hip or knee and other rarer causes. If your MRI scan has come back normal then you should be reassessed for any clues that the pain may be originating somewhere else. A very small proportion of MRI scans will miss lesions, though it’s more common for them to show lesions that are not causing symptoms. Up to three-quarters of people with sciatica recover without treatment in 4 weeks and in cases where a bulging disc is the cause the majority improve within 6 months. I would recommend that you are reassessed to see where the pain seems to be originating from. In the majority of cases physical treatments such as physiotherapy or osteopathy are helpful. If you have a question relating to your own health, write a brief letter to Inside Time (Health) Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. Everyone will receive a reply, however only a selection will be published each month and no names will be disclosed.
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Health
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What are cataracts? ....................................................................... A cataract is a loss of transparency in the internal lens of the eye that adversely affects vision. The lens, a lentil-shaped organ behind the iris, the coloured part of the eye, helps focus light rays onto the retina, which lines the back of the eye and relays images to the brain. Changes in the delicate protein fibres within the lens cause it to become progressively more cloudy with a resultant deterioration in vision. Cataracts usually occur in both eyes, but in most cases one eye is more severely affected than the other.
Cataracts
Steroid drugs such as cortisone can, over time, contribute to the development of cataracts, as can exposure to X-rays, microwaves, and infra-red light. Strong doses of ultraviolet light, such as those delivered by commercial sunbeds and solaria, may also contribute to the formation of cataracts. Other, rarer, causes include poisoning by ergot, a fungus found in badly stored grain, or naphthalene poisoning, a substance found in mothballs. A cataract that is present from birth, known as a congenital cataract, may be due to the mother having been infected with German measles (rubella) early in pregnancy, or because of the toxic effects of certain drugs taken in pregnancy. Congenital cataracts may also occur in some babies with Down’s Syndrome.
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If you do have surgery, the doctor may remove the lens entirely, or take only the core, leaving the lens capsule. An intraocular implant (artificial lens) may then be inserted, which will serve the same function as your own lens.
After cataract surgery, several weeks must pass before improvements in vision are fully realized.
When is surgery recommended? .......................................................................
The normal ageing of the eye is responsible for most cataracts. With age, dense, cloudy patches called opacities develop in the lens. These are referred to as degenerative cataracts.
Cataracts may also be caused by injuries in which the eye is damaged, and are almost inevitable if the lens is punctured. Diabetes increases the risk of cataract formation, particularly in young people whose blood sugar levels are poorly controlled.
surgery may not be the best course.
However, intraocular implants are not usually recommended for younger people with cataracts because their long-term effects are not known. Alternatives to an implant include special glasses or contact lenses.
What causes cataracts? .......................................................................
Almost everyone over the age of 65 has some minor degree of cataract formation but, because the opacities often form first around the edges of the lens, they usually do not interfere with normal vision. However, this opacification progresses with age so that most 75 year-olds have some visual impairment due to cataracts.
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Cataracts grow worse over time, but the rate of deterioration varies from person to person. After surgery almost all patients experience major improvement. Surgery is recommended when the cataracts reach a point where they significantly impair vision.
When should I see my doctor? ....................................................................... After the age of 40, you should have regular vision tests as part of your routine health care. See your doctor at once if you develop changes in vision.
How are cataracts diagnosed and treated? ....................................................................... A doctor can detect a cataract using a viewing instrument called an ophthalmoscope. To determine which part of the lens is affected or to detect less severe cataracts, the eye must be examined through a slit lamp, which emits a ray of intense light through a narrow aperture. The doctor may administer eye drops to dilate the pupils before the slit lamp examination.
The precise stage at which this occurs depends a good deal on how you use your eyes. For example, a photographer or artist may elect to have surgery earlier than someone who is not as dependent on having really sharp vision. Age is not a drawback to this type of surgery, people in their 90s safely undergo cataract operations.
What can I do myself? ....................................................................... Take note of any change in vision and see your doctor. If you have diabetes or any other condition that promotes cataract development, have your eyes checked regularly and follow your doctor’s advice for treating the underlying condition.
If the cataract is not advanced, the doctor may just prescribe new glasses and schedule regular follow-up visits to monitor any changes. More advanced cataracts may be surgically removed.
Avoid exposing your eyes to bright sunlight or ultraviolet rays and wear good sun-glasses on very sunny days. Wear goggles if you do welding, or any type of work that exposes your eyes to flying debris.
What will the doctor do? .......................................................................
Are cataracts dangerous? .......................................................................
Your doctor will determine the severity of the cataracts and, on the basis of your overall health, help you decide whether surgery is advisable. If other eye problems are present, cataract
Although a cataract will not usually cause complete blindness, a serious deterioration in vision may increase the risk of injury due to falls.
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Book Reviews
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Knifer
The Music Instinct: How music works and why we can’t do without it by Philip Ball
by Ronnie Thompson
Classic Ephemera by Darren Henley & Tim Lihoreau
Book review by ex-prisoner Justin Rollins What do you get when a child has felt no love, no affection and has been passed around because nobody wants him, mixed with being abused sexually, mentally and physically? The answer is you get a young offender named Cain Thomas. Though a fictional character in Knifer, there are hundreds of Cains’, if not thousands, walking Britain’s streets and Her Majesty’s prison landings.
youths behaviour, if only the suited folk from these organizations looked a bit more deeply than notes jotted down on a piece of paper, some of these kids may be saved from a life of crime. Because once the damage is done, and that pattern starts, it is so hard to break and put right.
The way author Ronnie Thompson gets into the mind of a young offender is near genius, a few times I felt a shiver down my spine as the fiction was more like reading a true crime book. It highlights the failings in the system from social services to brutality dished out by prison screws. When all Cain needed was a hug, a shoulder to cry on, or a loving home. But once trapped in the cycle of being moved from foster carer to carer, minor drug taking to hitting the class A with a bang, there was only one road for Cain to take, the wrong one. There is an unhealthy stigma attached to being in care as a child, and that is the child must be bad, the child must be wrong. But that is not the case.
Ronnie Thompson one time prison officer, screw, guv. Now a very talented author, I believe has come a long way from his first book Screwed. Now using his experiences to write books like Knifer, well I say good luck to him, better then patrolling the landings with a baton and key. Whether Ronnie set out to write this book to help these lost youths or just simply to highlight a mixture of the youths he came across on the landings I don’t know. But what I do know is somehow he makes the fiction as real as getting hit over the head with a baton by an officer in the fictional HMP Romwell.
Knifer should be recommended to social services, probation and other organizations involved with kids in care and kids showing signs of destructive behaviour. There are reasons behind the pattern of Cain’s and other
on the internet links which are given in the book. But it is a great book for students of music or people just keen on finding out why the finale of Beethoven’s Symphony Number 9 is similar to a nursery rhyme. But if you don’t know your tritons from your triads, and phrases like ‘equal temperament’ and ‘false relation’ leave you scratching your head, then this is not a book for you.
From damaged child, to young offender, to career criminal.
For that reason I think this book is a must read and believe it will go on to be a classic if not a best seller.
Knifer by Ronnie Thompson is published by Headline Review. Price £12.99
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Books reviewed by RJS Hattersley - serving prisoner
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These books both cover similar ground but in different styles. The Music Instinct is an in depth study of music, covering mathematical theories and neurology, stopping off at African music through to Indonesian gamelan, Bach, Mozart, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. It asks why music is important to all cultures and what purpose does it serve? This book is not really an easy read for nonmusicians, but it attempts to probe into the reason why music affects moods, and what exactly is music? For example, is John Cage’s 4.33 (4 minutes and 33 seconds of complete silence recorded in 1952) really music? Is music cultural or are our brains just ‘wired up’ to accept what is tuneful compared to what is just noise? Though it does tie up a few loose ends, it left me with more questions than answers. The Music Instinct will not appeal to anyone who does not have a passion for music, and the references will not make a lot of sense if you cannot perform them or hear them performed
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Classic Ephemera, on the other hand, is a humorous guide to classical music, covering a lot of ground for a relatively short book (184 pages). This book is ideal for the novice classical music fan and gives some great information on all the major composers, operas and ballets, plots, several quotes, and mini charts. It also tells you about the classical music used in films/TV, and the top 300 greatest works from Classic FMs annual poll, which is handy for seeking out the best works. This book is more to the point. It loses all the off-putting jargon and is written clearly and with much humour. It is ideal for those who are big on trivia, such as finding out that Charles Darwin was the great-uncle of Ralph Vaughan-Williams, who’s ‘Lark Ascending’ tops the Classic FM 300! Though it is by no means a complete guide to the classics, it is still a very handy reference book.
The Music Instinct: How music works and why we can’t do without it - Price £8.99 Classic Ephemera - Price £9.99 From all good bookshops
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DVD Review
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
The Expendables
To mark Holocaust Day, January 27th ...
On a tiny island in the Gulf Of Mexico, a team of grizzled mercenaries, led by Barney Ross (Stallone), take on a rogue CIA agent-turned-ruthless drug lord (Roberts) and his puppet general’s army - with, naturally, a vengeance.
The Promise
By Eva Schloss, stepsister of Ann Frank. As I look back more than sixty years to the early part of my life, the pictures in my memory are crystal clear. Many reveal happy faces: my family gathered around the supper table; my friends in a game of rounders on a summer’s afternoon; my father in the mountains; my brother, Heinz, with a paintbrush in his hands; and grandfather at the piano with me on his lap. I can see flowers in our garden, presents on my birthday and new shoes for my growing feet. I hear laughter, wonderful music and my mother’s comforting words. The past also reveals events that are hard to believe, yet all are true. My family lived during the Second World War, caught in the Nazi march across Europe. While I was a young child, I witnessed terrible destruction and cruelty. Unfortunately, millions of other children and families suffered as well. My mother and I were among the few who survived. My father and only brother were not. This is the story of my family, an account of the events that tore us from our home in Austria and filled the world with terror and suffering. It is also a remembrance of my father’s wisdom and zest for life, my mother’s positive outlook in every circumstance and my brother’s artistic gifts, evidenced in the paintings and poetry he left behind. They have sustained me through the worst of times, even when we were separated. I hope through this book you will be moved to share kindness and tolerance with others; appreciate your parents, brothers, sisters and extended family, realizing that your time together is precious; develop your talents to make the world a better place; appreciate the freedom that was won for you through great sacrifice; and value each day. The Promise by Eva Schloss Publisher: Puffin - Price: £6.99
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n 2030, the indomitable Sly Stallone, along with the surviving members of the eight-strong action ensemble which make up his titular team, will unite with the common goal of wiping out, once and for all, the dreaded Meatloaf Night at their nursing home. Until then, there’s The Expendables, the action movie equivalent of a Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame ‘super group’, or one of those Doctor Who episodes where all the old Doctors turn up in the same show. (With Eric Roberts, late of the unloved Doctor Who movie, as the villain, the illusion is almost complete.) If The Expendables had been made a decade ago - and if Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme had answered Stallone’s casting call, as the likes of Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger did - the film could have been a poignant, life-imitates-art examination of a group of once-great action heroes, finding themselves washed up, out of step with the touchy-feely times - like Space Cowboys, but for meatheads. After all, we live in a world in which the movies’ biggest action heroes are played by pantywaists like Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Bale, proper actors whose biggest muscles are inside their heads. If nothing else, such a film would have given much-needed employment to its dole-drawing stars.
the ’80s action stars. The careers of The Expendables, you might say, have proved anything but. Stallone has gone the distance, largely thanks to Rocky Balboa, a critical and commercial hit; Rourke parlayed an Oscarnominated comeback (The Wrestler) into a meaty villain role in a hit franchise (Iron Man 2); Steven Seagal sent himself up - at least, we think he was in on the ‘joke’ - in an Orange ad; even Jean-Claude Van Damme, the onceproud “Muscles From Brussels” pulled off an exercise in postmodern existentialism in the film that bore his initials, and - Gott im Himmel! - Ah-nuld was elected, and then re-elected, Governor of Kah-lifornia, and is a constitutional amendment away from a tilt at the White House. They are, however, “getting too old for this”. Clive James once described Arnie as looking like “a condom filled with walnuts” now it’s the other way round. Perhaps that’s why Stallone (64) has recruited young upstarts like Jason Statham (38) and Jet Li (47) to accompany fellow fossils-with-muscles Lundgren (52), Bruce Willis (55), Rourke (57) and Arnie (63) to take down the bad guys (and possibly the insurance premiums). If only Sly had spent less time on the phone to his mates, and more on the script.
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That said, The Expendables does what it says on the tin: it delivers a super-size portion of bone-cracking, bullet-spraying, muscle-flexing, head-exploding action, thankfully with the kind of tongue-in-cheek ironic distance which was fatally absent from Stallone’s last directorial outing, the ill-advised, ill-fated Rambo. Although the set-pieces are hardly on a par with the man-fires-tank-falling-out-of-plane antics of the all-new A-Team, the fight scenes prove that the almost-all-old ‘E’-Team can still cut it when push comes literally to shove. If nothing else, it gives the audience a chance to answer the perennial question, who would win a no-holds-barred fight between Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li? Verdict: More The Wild Geese than The Wild Bunch, The Expendables is not a wasted opportunity, but more one not fully exploited. For action fans raised on Commando and Cobra, the ensemble cast and ’80s-style violence will be pure wish-fulfilment - but even they could have wished for something better.
See Jailbreak page 54 for how to order
HENRY HYAMS Categorisation Parole/Recall HDC Progression Adjudications Appeals/CCRC Lifer/IPP issues Judicial Review
Instead it seems that, having assembled his dream cast - and thrown in wrestler ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin and Ultimate Fighting Champion Randy Couture for the ‘kids’ -Stallone clearly felt that such fuddy-duddy film staples as story, characterisation and dialogue that makes sense were, well, expendable. Sure, there’s some direct-to-video-level plotting (see above), and an attempt at creating motivation for Stallone and his fellow cigarchompers to care - in a nutshell, As the film lurches from scene to scene, one becomes increasingly convinced that not only is everyone making it up as they go along (director Stallone shares a screenwriting credit, so it’s entirely plausible), but that Sly could only convince his cast to jump on board if he agreed to very specific, and often very strange, demands: ‘I want a scene where I kick Jet Li’s ass.’ ‘I want to blow up a dock from the open-air gun turret of a giant seaplane.’ ‘I want to meet Charisma Carpenter, can you fix us up?’ (And apparently, in the case of the much-ballyhooed on-screen team-up between Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Willis, ‘I want a scene with all the verbal and visual fireworks of a Planet Hollywood annual general meeting circa 1993.’)
Review by Andrew Cousins, Managing Director of Gema Records, the leading supplier of Music, Games and DVDs to UK prisons.
As it turns out, things haven’t quite worked out that way: although the title of Arnie’s 1993 flop, Last Action Hero, seemed unintentionally prescient, the past decade has been good to
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Inside Poetry
50
H
If you would like to contribute to the Poetry section, please send your poems to ‘Poetry’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Care Home?
Star Poem of the Month
Chris Foley - HMP Whatton
Congratulations to Lee Brewster - HMP Bullingdon - who wins our £25 prize for ‘Star Poem of the Month’.
Sanity
Lee Brewster - HMP Bullingdon Jail don’t work, it just makes them hard Eventually for others, they have very little regard Gamble with their lives, like it’s a roulette wheel As they continue, continue to steal What goes around comes around, where does it end Jail releases victims, so let’s not pretend Locking up humans, don’t send them round the bend Slowly they lose everything and everyone they love That’s when they realise, there is no God above Anger builds slowly, like a push or a shove And once they are free, they are waiting to explode As they go into anti-authority-mode Living instead by a ghetto code You created your own monsters, now they are out to kill It could be your own, and they’ll do it for a thrill You should have given them medication like a sleeping pill Instead they were sober as they lost all the love Learning to live in constant pain Left out cold, in the pouring rain No one cares if they are going insane Now the crime rate has never been so high More prisons built, with walls to the sky People start to question, and they’re asking WHY? Why jail is such a waste of time Because it worsens their behaviour and even their crime So if you still want to pretend Putting humans in a cage, don’t send them round the bend Please don’t complain When half of our youths have gone insane!
In Cell TV
Jason Smith - HMP Birmingham Every day the same basics on TV Mostly boring but occasionally lucky When some strong drama grips the nation I get entertained and have more conversation But a TV’s more like a coal fire to me Writing letters it’s warmness in periphery When on its like someone’s there Changing channels into different worlds I stare Sometimes… like Christmas, it prompts my pain Even simple adverts shout I’m missing out again and again I try leaving the thing turned off It sits there silently, but loudly, until my will is soft The feelings of missing out on life Amplified by a TV for which we pay a tithe Before the telly in prison was allowed The library was regular and attracted more of a crowd The brain more exercised reading books Boys matured to men and more knowledgeable crooks But now the TV is kind of a friend Often when denied prisoners rage will ascend I used to get through five novels a week However now TV seems to provide all I seek
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Don’t Tell
Clara McCarthy - HMP Morton Hall If anything happens Don’t tell, don’t tell If somebody hurts you Don’t tell, don’t tell “No one saw nothing” Don’t tell, don’t tell Everyone denies it Don’t tell, don’t tell These people have more friends than you And they came in with a different view Even if it hurts for the rest of your life Just be thankful it wasn’t a knife Should’ve gone for help last time Don’t tell, don’t tell You were too scared to tell them Don’t tell, don’t tell No-one will believe you Don’t tell, don’t tell It’s a way of life now DON’T TELL, DON’T TELL
Don’t Leave Me
Kay-Marie Hooper - HMP East Sutton Park Please don’t leave And don’t give up This is just a phase I’ll soon grow up Please don’t forget For I am still here It’s only these bars That brings out my fears Please have faith When you look at my face The wounds have healed Yet the scars are still in place Please be there For when I walk out them gates Without you It’s such a lonely place
Snotty nose and crying eyes Family leaving, no goodbyes Front door closing with a bang Jacket off and left to hang Down the hallway, make a right Someone pulling, holding tight “Do as you’re told and listen to me You’re here for a while, not loved you see Sit in this chair, head up straight” Looking for nits is my fate Then in the kitchen, sandwich made Pushed on chair at table laid Children suddenly fill the room None of them smiling, full of gloom Their eyes then notice I’m here My body shaking, full of fear Dirty fingers poking fun No hiding place for me to run A ‘carer’ pulls me by the hair Telling children not to stare Up the stairs I am led Told to strip, it’s time for bed Light turned off, door is shut The heaving starts in my gut Thoughts of mummy as I weep So I rock myself to sleep Hoping that when I wake It’s all been a big mistake But the door opens with a groan And by my bed I hear a moan A man is there, his hands on me I can’t escape, I cannot flee His breathing heavy, his fingers probe He put my hand inside his robe I can’t hold back and piss the bed He smacks my face with nothing said Then he’s gone, I’m free again As I hold in all this pain I pray I die and never wake That someone all this hurt does take And then I pray I was anywhere But this place they all call care
insidepoetry Copies are available at a special discount price of £7.50 for Inside Time readers, family and friends. Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB Tel: 0844 335 6483
Voices from prison
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
If you would like to contribute to the Poetry section, please send your poems to ‘Poetry’, Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB.
Danny Charnock - HMP Albany
Jamie Fletcher - HMP Leyhill I saw a man just last month, small, timid, and frail He looked like he could have been blown over in a gale
I still remember the day when you left me I saw you on that hospital bed sweating I cleaned you face with a tissue but All I could think of, was scoring that dreaded hit I rushed out of the hospital and went home On the doorstep I was told to drop everything by My mother “the hospital has just phoned - your father has passed away”
You looked at peace, no more worries No more pain, I wanted to cry I really did But not because you were gone but because Of the withdrawal symptoms I was still thinking of scoring I decided to take my mum home With a hit on my mind, I phoned my dealer And told him I was coming over Yes, I thought, I have my bag But I can’t smoke it I have to get my mum back to the hospital
I saw that man again today all pumped up looking mad He must have put on 6 stone, all muscles and looking bad His attitude had changed and his mood swung high and low I thought to myself ‘what is it? What made his muscles grow?’ He was an 8 stone wimpling all timid and squeaky clean Now he’s 16 stone all pumped up, pissy and mean
Musicians War
Aaron Hickey - HMP Cookham Wood I’m a musician stuck in the laws war brothers Take your position kill or be killed in the battle Your decision I’m a grime writer call me a sniper I’ll take you out with precision Hates how I’m driven To pain, pains how you enter The game, the games how you enter the pen It’s no longer your game It’s now down to them
All of the relatives were there, we all embrace And cry as the nurse puts us in another room I am waiting for my darling niece, she Comes along fifteen minutes later We meet like it’s the first time in ages I am dying with pain, the withdrawal kind
I can ask for a truce but they want to see me fail that is truth I’m pissed because I can’t get bail I don’t get a lot of mail But now I’m up in the booth spitting bars That are sharp like nails
I run into the toilets to smoke my hit, I inhale One line, then two and so on and the pain Slowly subsides I am almost away from this world Just like you, the only difference is that I have to come back I walk into your room smashed out of my face
I’m achieving in jail now I got space to myself I can breathe in not on the roads where I’m beefing or thieving Yeah they gave me a chance now I’m back Bars my only guide Now are my loved ones lost in the stars
I still can’t cry, the dragon is in me My heart is all of a sudden stone My face as white as a bone I am waiting for the undertaker To come and pick you up Finally he arrives We wheel you down to the elevator And into the waiting hearse I help put you in the back We arrive at the church Your funeral prayer is on Tuesday I leave to go home and see mum And finish off my hit I’m sorry for all the pain I have caused Dad I miss you so much
51
Roider
The Day You Left
I found this hard to believe but scoring a hit Was all I could think about I went to the hospital with my sister and my mum I saw you laying there, all the machines Switched off The room silent
Inside Poetry
It’s my turn to put out the flame before they Mess up and give me all the blame I’m not guilty or ashamed People still shiver at the mention of my name I can’t get out I’m in pain I’m trapped in a life I don’t want But I can’t escape because I’m too deep in the game I’m freaking, drowning, my so called Professional helpers are clowning around I’m trapped underground voiceless trying to Shout and make a sound is, pointless This train of thoughts I got makes me want to Smile, it’s the only thing I can do while I’m Lost in the cycle as my life goes round
But he don’t care about that coz he is looking hench And now he is pushing 240 upon the prison bench He has a big heart though it pumps overtime When mine has pumped 15 his has pumped 59 He might look good right now and girls fall at his feet He walks around the prison like a prime piece of meat But soon the strain will show and the pace will take its toll This man won’t last long and he will end up in a hole 6 foot under, in a coffin made of steel Coz a wooden one wouldn’t hold him, that’s the real deal How tough is he now with his heart blown apart Sitting 6 foot under, rotting flesh, rotting heart So let me tell you something, something to avoid Just say no to the man who offers you the roid!!!
Who am I?
Stephen Frederick - HMP Northallerton Who am I afraid of – no-one Who do I respect – you I’m not afraid to tell you this Despite knowing what you can do You may be more streetwise than me With a lot more brawn than brain But in my eyes we’re both equal As we both feel the same pain I see in your eyes pure hatred A glowing and daring stare A lit-up sign saying ‘leave me alone’ And a growl that warns beware I just feel I don’t know who you are anymore You’ve turned from a saint to sinner And if you don’t recall who I am anymore I’m the man facing you in the mirror We will award a prize of £25 to the entry selected as our ‘Star Poem of the Month’. To qualify for a prize, poems should not have won a prize in any other competition or been published previously. Send entries to: Inside Time, Poetry, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire, SO30 2GB. Please put your name, number and prison on the same sheet of paper as your poem. If you win we can’t send your money if we don’t know who or where you are! By submitting your poems to Inside Time you are agreeing that they can be published in any of our ‘not for profit links’, these include the newspaper, website and any forthcoming books. You are also giving permission for Inside Time to use their discretion in allowing other organisations to reproduce this work if considered appropriate, unless you have clearly stated that you do not want this to happen. Any work reproduced in other publications will be on a ‘not for profit’ basis. WHEN SUBMITTING YOUR WORK PLEASE INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING PERMISSION: THIS IS MY OWN WORK AND I AGREE TO INSIDE TIME PUBLISHING IT IN ALL ASSOCIATE SITES AND OTHER PUBLICATIONS AS APPROPRIATE.
52
Jailbreak
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Do you remember?
Rock &
FEBRUARY 2nd 1987
FEBRUARY 9th
Fifty years since The Beatles made their debut at Liverpool’s legendary Cavern Club. They got £5 between them.
Peace envoy imprisoned in Beirut.
Pop Quiz
Reports from Lebanon say Church of England envoy Terry Waite has been kidnapped by an Islamic militia group.
FEBRUARY 4th 1969
1. In 1962, which British jazz musician had a big hit on both sides of the Atlantic with Stranger on the Shore, a title covered by Andy Williams in the same year?
Kray twins guilty of McVitie murder.
The Kray twins, Ronald and Reginald, face life sentences after being found guilty of murder at the Central Criminal Court. 8. The singer Bjork, who has had less success in America than in the rest of the world, comes originally from which country? 9. Which highly successful US band’s collaboration broke up with a fight after a concert at Long Beach, California in July 1980?
February 14th 1984
10. Who started his music career as ‘The Hillbilly Cat’? 2. Which 2001 album by Robbie Williams was inspired by the songs and style of Frank Sinatra? 3. Which hip-hop/reggae star burnt his fingers when he set fire to his guitar at ‘Woodstock 1999’? 4. Which rock star married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994? 5. What was the stage name of the rock ‘n’ roll and blues singer who was born Ellas Otha Bates? 6. In 2005, who released an album entitled Devils and Dust? 7. In 1967, which Beatles song reached No1 in America but was the first not to reach No 1 in the UK since 1963?
11. What is the better-known name of Tracy Marrow?
Seven Manchester United footballers are among 21 dead after an air crash in Munich.
FEBRUARY 7th
Twenty years ago an IRA mortar exploded in the garden of 10 Downing Street where the Prime Minister John Major was chairing a cabinet meeting.
14. In 1999, which female artist had a No 1 hit single with Genie In A Bottle?
FEBRUARY 7th
15. Which movie actress/singer had a 1999 No 1 hit single with If You Had My Love?
Eighty years since the birth of the original rebel without a cause, the actor James Dean. He died in a car crash just 24 years later.
16. Which American band had hits in the 1960s with songs such as Proud Mary and Bad Moon Rising?
February 8th 1952
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February 20th 1986
Soviets launch space station Mir.
The Soviets open a new phase in space exploration with the launch of the world’s biggest space station, Mir.
February 22nd 1997
Dolly the sheep is cloned.
A sheep named Dolly is cloned by scientists in Edinburgh and is being hailed as one of the most significant breakthroughs of the decade.
February 25th 1964
Cassius Clay crowned world champion.
New Queen proclaimed for UK.
Princess Elizabeth proclaims herself Queen at a ceremony in St James’s Palace, London.
Answers on page 55
Cassius Clay, 22, is crowned heavyweight boxing world champion after a shock win over Sonny Liston.
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United players killed in air disaster.
13. Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock was used in which gritty movie of 1955?
CRIMINAL DEFENCE - Police Station Assistance -
or
British figure skating couple Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean skate off with a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo after dancing to Ravel’s Bolero.
FEBRUARY 6th 1958
12. Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction featured which well-known Dusty Springfield song?
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British ice couple score Olympic gold.
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Jailbreak
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
53
TWENTY QUESTIONS TO TEST YOUR GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
2. The 1987 Steve Martin film Roxanne was inspired by which French play by Edmond Rostand? 3. Which London theatre was the location for a top-rating, Sunday night, TV variety show in the 1950s and 60s? 4. From which Italian theatre tradition is the English character of Mr Punch believed to derive? 5. The borough of Blaenau Gwent is located in which country of the UK? 6. With which sport was Nigel Benn most closely associated? 7. Often used to show when an aircraft is expected to land, what do the initials ETA stand for? 8. Complete the title of the 1971 Disney film starring Angela Lansbury, Bedknobs and …what? 9. In November 2006, which former Baywatch star filed for divorce after only four months of marriage? 10. In 2003, Hu Jintao succeeded Jiang Zemin as president of which country? 11. Which French World Heritage Site is a rocky island
Challenge
off the Normandy coast topped by a medieval abbey?
1. Which letters complete the puzzle?
12. Which world chess champion defeated Nigel Short in 1993 and announced his retirement in 2005?
2.
What letter replaces the question mark?
13. The journalist Alistair Cooke was most famous for his radio series entitled, Letter from…where? 14. Which TV comedy drama features the characters Frank, ‘Lip’ and Debbie Gallagher? 15. In UK company law, what do the initials EGM stand for? 16. Bullitt, the great Escape and the Towering Inferno were hit films for which US actor?
3.
Which of the lower patterns replaces the question mark to continue the sequence?
17. In 1973, which flat cap-wearing singer-songwriter hit the top of the UK singles chart with ‘Get Down’? 18. In 1977, which British pop band had their first UK number one hit with the single ‘So You Win Again’? 19. Which political and spiritual leader is known as the ‘Father of India’? 20. Who starred as a lone horseman dressed as a preacher in the 1985 film Pale Rider? ANSWERS CAN BE FOUND ON page 55
Mind gym
It’s a Con
Answers 1- N Starting with the letters in the top row, subtract the numerical value of the central letter to give the letters on the bottom row. 2- J Starting at the top and moving anti-clockwise letters advance through the alphabet, 8 letters at a time. 3- D Starting on the left, and moving to the right, the dot moves from one segment to the one directly opposite, and back again. The # moves 1 place anti-clockwise each time, as does the shaded segment.
1. In which country was the twentieth-century painter Francis Bacon born?
Submitted by Andrew Weir-Blake - HMP Winchester. Start on the left with the first number and work your way across following the instructions in each cell. See how quickly you can do each puzzle and how your times improve month by month! Answers on page 55. If you would like to submit similar puzzles we will pay £5 for any that are chosen for print. Please send in a minimum of three puzzles together with the answer!
42
4/7 OF THIS / x3 / 2/9 OF THIS / x itself / -88 / ½ / ¾ OF THIS / ÷7 / × 16 = ???
108
5/6 OF THIS / ×2.3 / -38 / √ / ×17 / +64 / 60% OF THIS / ÷ 9 / ×13 = ???
44
×17 / 5/11 OF THIS / 65% OF THIS / +355 / √ / ×14.5 / ÷6 / ×11 / ½ = ???
MW - HMP Stocken
KRISTINA HARRISON
SOLICITORS SPECIALISTS IN PRISON LAW • Recalls • Parole • Adjudications • IPP & Extended Sentences • Lifer Issues • Categorisation • IEP Scheme • HDC • Request/Complaints • Appeals • CCRC • Judicial Review • POCA
Be represented by dedicated Prison Law Solicitors Call
Jo Davidson & Lyndsay Knaggs
0161 222 1061 0161 832 7766
(or Freephone 0800 614654)
or write to
Kristina Harrison Solicitors 448-450 Manchester Road East, Little Hulton, Manchester M38 9NS Vi d e o L i n k F a c i l i t i e s a v a i l a b l e
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Don’t take Chances with Your Freedom !
Here are 5 good reasons to call us FIRST: 1. One of the UK’s biggest specialist defence firms 2. Led by lawyer previously shortlisted for criminal defence lawyer of the year 3. Proven, specialist expertise in Appeal work 4. Our Advocates are always ready to represent you 5. We don’t give up! Appeals • Adjudications • Parole Hearings Recall • Categorisation • Lifer Tariffs Crime • Housing • Family
“The lawyers here are not just going through the motions; as a barrister you have to be at your best at all times to satisfy the high standards set by them” (Chambers & Partners 2009)
gt
s
GT Stewart Solicitors
28 Grove Vale East Dulwich London SE22 8EF
Freephone 0800 999 3399 or 020 8299 6000
Leeds • London • Kent
AGI Criminal Solicitors
Criminal Law • Extradition • Prison Law Indeterminate and Life Sentence Prisoner issues Lifer and Category A Reviews Adjudications (Northwest Regions) Judicial Reviews Proceeds of Crime and Confiscation Orders Appeals - Sentence and/or Conviction Representation at Extradition Hearings For an immediate response call:
Yasmin Aslam Solicitor Advocate
0161 234 0046 24 hours a day 7 days a week Fax : 0161 234 0049
Yasmin Aslam (formerly of Levys) Successful in Prison Law for over 10 years Board member of Partners of Prisoners
AGI Criminal Solicitors 40 Princess Street Manchester M1 6DE
[email protected]
Jailbreak
54
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
CAPTION COMPETITION
Gema Quiz
Come a bit closer Nick, I can’t pull the strings from here
The new Gema Records catalogue is out now! (Winter 2010) For the first time, we have a DVD section with over 20,000 Films, Documentaries, TV Series etc. In addition, we have 12,000 New Releases and over 5,000 Special Offers included in the catalogue.
Last month’s winner
PS2 Bundles now come with 2 free pre-owned games. We are now also offering new Xbox 360 consoles. Each of the following is a line from a movie or song or both! We just need to know the name of the film or song. 1. No-one puts baby in the corner 2. Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn 3. What a glorious feeling, I’m happy again 4. Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack 5. Here’s looking at you kid 6. We’re going to need considerably bigger buns 7. Come on over here and lay by my side 8. And so the feeling grows 9. Ditto 10. Johnny used to work on the docks
For your own personal copy, please send a cheque or PO (payable to Gema Records) for £2 to Gema Records, PO Box 54, Reading RG1 3SD and we will immediately despatch a copy to you along with a £2 voucher to use against your first order. GEMA RECORDS - SUPPLIER OF THE UK’S LARGEST BACK CATALOGUE OF MUSIC
Last month’s winners
Gema sponsors of Jailbreak A Wright - HMP Altcourse Roy Hayes - HMP Whitemoor Phil Rees - HMP Parkhurst
See below for details of how to enter. The first three names to be drawn receive a £15 Gema Record Voucher & free catalogue
insideknowledge The prize quiz where we give you the Questions and the Answers!
All the answers are within this issue of Inside Time - all you have to do is find them!!
?
The first three names to be drawn with all-correct answers (or nearest) will receive a £25 cash prize. There will also be two £5 consolation prizes. The winners’ names will appear in next month’s issue. How many Trainee psychologists were there in the public sector Prison Service in the year 2008? If the United States were to be your home instead of the United Kingdom, you would be three times more likely to have what? Who needed a hug, a shoulder to cry on, or a loving home? How many prisoners were stabbed to death in 1972-75? Who confirmed that it was the young immature prisoners on short sentences who were drunk at HMP Ford? ‘In the Place of Justice’ was written by whom? Who is ‘a bomb waiting to go off’?
8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
Another £25 prize is on offer for the best caption to this month’s picture. What do you think is being thought or said here?
>> To enter
with all correct answers (or nearest) will each
Answers to last months quiz: 1. Christina Aguilera, 2. Matt Cardle, 3. Davie Bowie, 4. Little Drummer Boy, 5. Winter’s Tale, 6. James Stewart, 7. Will Ferrell, 8. Richard Attenborough, 9. Edmund Gwenn, 10. Rage against the machine
Please do not cut out any of these panels. Just send your entry to one or all of these competitions on a separate sheet of paper. Make sure your name, number and prison is on all sheets. Post your entry to:
Inside Time, Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. You can use one envelope to enter more than one competition just mark it ‘jailbreak’. A 1st or 2nd class stamp is required on your envelope. Closing date for all is 23/02/11
What was banned at prisons up until the early 1990’s? In one day, how many people in America are shot in murders, assaults, suicides, accidents or by police intervention? Who was The Man of the Year in the music world in 1997? What percentage of HMP Ford was uninhabitable? Which book would you read if you are keen on finding out why the finale of Beethoven’s symphony Number 9 is similar to a nursery rhyme? Who was released on life license in January 2011 after 18 years in prison? Who stated that ‘no society in history has imprisoned more of its citizens than the USA’? Who is always in Captain Fantastic’s heart?
Answers to Last Month’s Inside Knowledge Prize Quiz 1. £44,000 -£45,000 a year, 2. Kenneth Clarke, 3. 47%, 4. Heels on Wheels, 5. 2, 6. USA, 7. Legal Ombudsman, 8. $74,836,144, 9. 201,800, 10. Conservative Party, 11. 52,671, 12. Netherlands, 13. Pluto, 14. Lord Ramsbotham, 15. HMYOI Ashfield Our three £25 Prize winners are: Jamie Elmer - HMP Maidstone, Jamie Netherton - HMP Hull, Jason Thomas - HMP Forest Bank Plus our £5 Consolation prizes go to: Davie McCraw - HMP Edinburgh, S Thavapalasingham - HMP Long Lartin
CLARKE KIERNAN SOLICITORS
FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS IN THE SOUTH EAST WE ARE A RESPECTED ‘LEGAL 500’ FIRM FRANCHISED BY THE LEGAL SERVICES COMMISSION AND OUR DEDICATED AND EXPERIENCED TEAM IS AVAILABLE TO HELP YOU IN ANY AREA OF LITIGATION
PRISON LAW DEPARTMENT Catherine McCarthy
CIVIL DEPARTMENT Edward Colquhoun
All aspects of prison law, including adjudications,parole, DLP, categorisation, Judicial Review
Housing problems on release.
All aspects of criminal law, including Appeals/CCRC/Confiscation Orders.
£25
prize is in the post
Thousands of price reductions across the board.
Who’s line is it?
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Lee Green HMP Doncaster
Assault and any other civil claims against the Police or Prison Service.
Employment and discrimination claims, especially on behalf of Prison Officers.
FAMILY DEPARTMENT Bridget Barford
All aspects of matrimonial and child care law, including proceedings involving Local Authority or individuals in relation to children, all aspects of domestic work, both for Applicant and Respondent, all aspects of financial proceedings between married or formerly married parties and non-married parties between each other and in relation to children
2-4 Bradford Street Tonbridge Kent TN9 1DU Tel: 01732 360999
›› Registered with EMAP ‹‹
Jailbreak
Insidetime February 2011 www.insidetime.org
Comedy Corner
“Quotes” Match the following quotes to the celebrity pictures, answers below
(B) “ It’s not the best body in the world and it’s not the worst, but it works ”
(C) “ If you appear on the box, people think you know what you are talking about. It’s patently not so.” ”
“ You’re not f*****g royalty, Mr Speaker ” (E) “ A great deceit designed to damage Labour has led to profoundly misguided and dangerous economic decisions that I (D)
fear will cause deep damage to Britain’s future
2.
1. Sir David
3. Jennifer
Ed Miliband
http://www.dailysudoku.com/
Mind Gym 1. 144, 2. 247, 3. 319 6 2 8 9 5 3 7 4 1
1 5 9 2 7 4 6 8 3
3 4 7 8 6 1 9 2 5
8 6 1 7 2 9 5 3 4
4 7 2 3 1 5 8 6 9
hard
5 9 3 4 8 6 2 1 7
7 1 6 5 3 8 4 9 2
9 8 5 1 4 2 3 7 6
2 3 4 6 9 7 1 5 8
Daily Sudoku: Tue 11-Jan-2011
medium
4 5 8 9 1 3 2 6 7 7 1 9 2 5 6 4 8 3
8 3 7 5 2 4 9 1 6 3 2 6 8 4 7 1 9 5 6 9 1 2 5
7 8 4 6 9
3 5 2 4 1
1 4 7 3 6
8 3 6 9 7
9 2 5 1 8
5 6 8 7 3
4 7 3 5 2
2 1 9 8 4
I T SUDOKU
Daily Sudoku: Mon 10-Jan-2011
Rock & Pop Quiz
8. Broomsticks 9. Pamela Anderson 10. China 11. Mont-Saint-Michel 12. Garry Kasparov 13. America 14. Shameless
15. Extraordinary General Meeting 16. Steve McQueen 17. Gilbert O’Sullivan 18. Hot Chocolate 19. Mahatma Gandhi 20. Clint Eastwood
IPP Hearings/Progression
miscarriages of justice parole
transfers human rights issues
adjudication hearings medical issues
We specialise in: OUTSIDE ADJUDICATIONS. Have you committed an offence whilst in custody? We can provide representation for you in front of the adjudicator. PAROLE BOARD HEARINGS. We can supply written representations and attending oral hearings. CATEGORISATION. If you want us to assist by way of written representations – we can help.
PRISON RECALL. Have you been recalled and do you think the decision is justified? We can prepare written submissions and appear on your behalf before the parole board. PRISON COMPLAINTS AND REFERRALS TO THE PRISON OMBUDSMAN. If you feel you are treated badly in prison, you can make a complaint. We can help you through the procedure.
Call us on freephone: 0800 374388 (24 hours). Keith Park Solicitors Claughton House, 39 Barrow Street, St Helens WA 10 1RX E:
[email protected] CRIMINAL DEFENCE LAWYERS
Problems inside? Don’t know where to turn? Need a specialist prison lawyer? Whether you are coming up for parole or require advice about a Judicial Review against the Prison Service, we can help. So, if you need professional, confidential legal advice, call Howells’ prison law specialists on Sheffield 0114 249 6717. 15 -17 Bridge Street Sheffield S3 8NL
www.howells-solicitors.com
›› Registered with EMAP ‹‹
1. Ireland 2. Cyrano de Bergerac 3. London Palladium 4. Commedia dell’Arte 5. Wales 6. Boxing 7. Estimated time of arrival
appeals lifer hearings
Quotes (A)4 (B)3 (C)1 (D)5 (E)2
http://www.dailysudoku.com/
At Keith Park Solicitors we have many years experience representing our clients, not only before sentencing but also once they are in custody. There are many ways we can help you with advice and representation once you are on the ‘inside’. Our team of Legal experts will be your friends on the outside.
judicial review categorisation sentence planning
MP
Across: 1 Flotilla, 5 Island, 9 Treasury, 10 Israel, 12 Moore, 13 Antonioni, 14 Stevie, 15 Pride, 18 Amber, 19 Cherry, 22 Cervantes, 24 Farsi, 25 Twelve, 26 Sullivan, 27 Annals, 28 Agnostic. Down: 1 Fatima, 2 Ocelot, 3 Inspector, 4 Lord Advocate, 6 Susan, 7 Anatolia, 8 Dulcimer, 11 St Petersburg, 15 Portfolio, 16 Calcutta, 17 Aberdeen, 20 Trivet, 21 Bionic, 23 Anvil.
(c) Daily Sudoku Ltd 2011. All rights reserved.
(c) Daily Sudoku Ltd 2011. All rights reserved.
YOU NEED A FRIEND ON THE OUTSIDE...
5. Mark Pritchard
General Knowledge Crossword
General Knowledge
INSIDE?
Justin Bieber
Metcalfe
Attenborough
Jailbreak Answers
Do you have any jokes (printable) that you would like to share with our readers? If so, send them in to: Inside Time (Jokes), Botley Mills, Botley, Southampton, Hampshire SO30 2GB. If you do not want your name or prison to appear please make it clear. You will receive £5 for every one we print so don’t forget to include your details even if you don’t want them printed.
4.
”
10. Elvis Presley 11. Ice T 12. Son of a Preacher Man 13. Blackboard Jungle 14. Christina Aguilera 15. Jennifer Lopez 16. Creedence Clearwater Revival
Ê What do tadpoles watch when their parents are out? Frogs porn! D J Clarke - HMP Littlehey ......................................................... Ê What do you call a Chav in a filing cabinet? Sorted! Mr Woodgate - HMP Maidstone ......................................................... Ê What did Bob Marley say when his wife left him and took the satellite dish? No woman, no Sky! Michael Cardi - HMP Blundeston
(A) “ I’m crazy, I’m nuts. Just the way my brain works. I’m not normal. I think differently - my mind is always racing. I’m just … nuts ”
1. Acker Bilk 2. Swing When You’re Winning 3. Wyclef Jean 4. Michael Jackson 5. Bo Diddley 6. Bruce Springsteen 7. Penny Lane 8. Iceland 9. The Eagles
Send in your jokes, you will receive £5 for every one we print!
Ê A man notices a blonde sucking on the bottom of a coke can. Curious, he asks her what she’s doing, “Duh! It says for the best taste drink by date on the bottom.” Darren Stewart - HMP Wakefield ......................................................... Ê Why is a day at the office like Christmas? ‘Coz you do all the work and some fat guy in a suit gets all the credit S Kelsall - HMP Nottingham ......................................................... Ê How many screws does it take to change a light bulb? None, they’ll just keep telling you they’ll do it later. Robert Bradley - HMP Everthorpe ......................................................... Ê I asked my wife how many men have you slept with? Wife proudly answers “only you my darling…all the others kept me awake all night!” Mark Lewis - HMP Gartree
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the immigration specialists Asylum Deportation Immigration Bail issues If you need advice contact Traci or Kay @ Dicksons Solicitors 32 – 36 Cheapside, Hanley, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire ST1 1HQ
01782 262424
specialists in staffordshire
Angela Jones - Drake Hall
Across 1 A fleet of boats or small ships (8) 5 A land mass that is surrounded by water (6) 9 The department managing the public revenue of a country (8) 10 Zion (6) 12 Henry ______, eminent British sculptor (5) 13 Italian film director whose films include “Zabriskie Point” (9) 14 ______ Wonder, American singer and songwriter (6) 15 A group of lions (5) 18 A translucent fossil resin used for ornaments and jewellery (5) 19 A small fleshy rounded fruit with a hard stone (6) 22 The author of “Don Quixote” (9) 24 The modern Persian language, the official language of Iran (5) 25 Noon or midnight (6) 26 Sir Arthur ______, 19th century British composer (8) 27 “The short and simple ______ of the poor” (Gray: Elegy) (6) 28 One who holds the view that nothing can be known of the existence of God (8)
M E M O R Y S T I C K B C F M K F C M P
O O H F D G M D H S V U L B O S D L C R
N Y T U R G R R G E R K I M H G N A D O
I H E H L H L A O L I N S F H O E O N C
T D D R E A O I P J R F S U Y M I U T E
O N T T G R Q N W H P H N E V Q K Z V S
R O N M A D B S S A I T L N I P E B M S
W A Y H I D M O U S E C L A R N Y R E O
L E S F J R G E A E S B S S U U B O H R
C M E T W I F I I R H W E C S T O M C N
O O G A R V T H B A D X B Z A P A C X H
M O R C Z E R E W M O D E M X R R C N I
P S P E A K E R S P F A O Q V W D N Y T
Down 1 ______ Whitbread, British javelin thrower who was European and World Champion (6) 2 A wild cat with a dark-spotted buff-brown coat (6) 3 British police rank above sergeant (9) 4 Principal law officer of the Crown in Scotland (4,8) 6 “Desperately Seeking ______”, 1985 film starring Madonna and Rosanna Arquette (5) 7 Peninsula in southwestern Asia that forms the Asian part of Turkey (8) 8 A musical instrument with strings that are struck with hammers (8) 11 Capital of Russia from 1712 until 1918 (2,10) 15 A case for loose papers, drawings, etc. (9) 16 India’s largest city (8) 17 Scottish city between the mouths of the Dee and the Don (8) 20 An iron tripod or bracket for a cooking pot or kettle to stand on (6) 21 “The ______ Woman”,TV series starring Lindsay Wagner (6) 23 A heavy block on which metals are shaped by hammering (5)
U S O N S Q L A P T O P T A P V B Y W E
T F L F C R X N R M F V G Z K O D C M M
E L I N T E R N E T B A P O P C F G Z B
R O G V C W E B C A M S G F H B Y A B A
Z C V H X M A C I R B F O N O T O N N O
Q N E F F A V R K M I T N Y F A E E N M
Computer
Monitor
Explorer
Motherboard
L FAN Mouse L Graphics Processor V Card RAM C H Hard-drive Software E Internet Speakers W Keyboard Virus E Laptop Webcam E WiFi X Memory stick Modem P L Check forward, backward and O diagonally, they are all there! R E Thanks to Angela Jones - Drake Hall R for compiling this wordsearch. If you fancy compiling one for us please just T send it in max 20 x 20 grid & comO plete with answers shown on a grid. will send you £5 as a C If we use it we thank you! E
Computer 3 5 4 2 3 4 Explorer 8 1 4 FAN Graphics Card 2 5 9 1 Hard-drive 3 9 2 7 Internet 9 6 8 2 6 2 1 8 Keyboard 2 4 4 6 Laptop Memory stick 3 8 1 7 6 2 Modem 4 6 Monitor 3 9 4 Motherboard 7 1 9 Daily Sudoku: Mon 10-Jan-2011 Daily Sudoku: Tue 11-Jan-2011 medium Mouse Processor RAM Software http://www.dailysudoku.com/ Speakers Virus Webcam WiFi We’re outside fighting for your rights inside Prison Law Specialists in Wales
I T SUDOKU
General Knowledge Crossword
Word Search PCPC Related Related
(c) Daily Sudoku Ltd 2011. All rights reserved.
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Don’t Rot On Recall!
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3
5 4 1 (c) Daily Sudoku Ltd 2011. All rights reserved.
Jailbreak
56
2
9 2 hard
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Dealing With:
Adjudications Parole Reviews Licence Recall Categorisation Transfers Lifer Panels Criminal Defence and Appeals
Start the ball rolling now - call Sarah Grace on:
02920 729 888
Elgin House 106 St Mary Street CARDIFF CF10 1DX
> Next Issue Week commencing 28th February 2011 Nationwide Service Offices in London, Manchester & Birmingham
STOKOE ARTNERSHIP STOKOEPPARTNERSHIP UNDER ARREST? SOLICITORS S O L I C I T O R S
The specialist in Criminal and Prison Law
The Specialist in Criminal Law Serious Crime Adjudications Appeals/CRCC Parole/Disciplinary • SERIOUS CRIME • TERRORISM Prisoner RightsFRAUD Tariff • SERIOUS • DRUG TRAFFICKING Licence/Recall Prison related matters • CASH SEIZURESAll •other MONEY LAUNDERING
Specialists in Serious Crime with a track record of success Criminal Law Serious crime including murder, robbery, conspiracy, drugs cases (supply, production, conspiracy), complex and financial crime, all other Crown Court Offences. We do the work to get the results. We fight for our clients. No excuses. Just proper, professional service. 87 Chorley Road, Manchester M27 4AA 0161 794 0088 or Freephone 0808 155 4870 www.marymonson.co.uk Specjaliści Prawa Karnego Reprezentujemy klientów na terenie Anglii i Walii Oddział Polski Adwokat www.polskiadwokat.co.uk
The Stokoe Partnership is a franchised
0161 237 5755
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y y ɭ We speak: Po-Polsku, ýesky, Slovensky, ɉo-Ɋɭɫɫɤɢ, Guajarati, Urdu, Hindi, Español, Français
Our business is to provide expert, rapid
advice, assistance and representation firm of independent solictors with All languages catered for including Greek, French, in all aspects of criminal investigation. branches in Manchester and London in criminal law. Bengali, Hindi and Chinese. Spanish,specialising Urdu,onlyPanjabi,
AVAILABLE – 24 HOURS
OFFICE: TheMANCHESTER Boatmans, 40 City Road, Deansgate, Manchester, M15 4QF MANCHESTER OFFICE LONDON OFFICE:Manchester, M15 4QF The 4040 City Road, Deansgate, TheBoatmans, Boatmans, City Road East, Manchester M15 4QF MANCHESTER OFFICE:
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LONDON OFFICE LONDON OFFICE:
646-648 High RoadLeytonstone, Leytonstone, London, E11E11 3AA 3AA 646-648 High Road London, This Firm is aThis Member THEofSPECIALIST PANEL Firm is a of Member THE SPECIALIST FRAUD FRAUD PANEL Regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority Regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority
