In April this year, the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising, Lord Justice Woolf, who led the inquiry into the uprising, claimed that conditions in most British jails were now even worse than they had been before Strangeways erupted in 1990.
Continue reading ‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison (UK)
In April this year, the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising, Lord Justice Woolf, who led the inquiry into the uprising, claimed that conditions in most British jails were now even worse than they had been before Strangeways erupted in 1990.
The treatment of those prisoners confined to usually overcrowded local remand and post-sentence jails (of which Strangeways was and is one), where the great bulk of the prison population are held, has always been significantly worse than the treatment of prisoners in more long-term establishments where the potential for collective unrest has always been traditionally greater.
Continue reading ‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison
In April this year, the 25th anniversary of the Strangeways prison uprising, Lord Justice Woolf, who led the inquiry into the uprising, claimed that conditions in most British jails were now even worse than they had been before Strangeways erupted in 1990.
The treatment of those prisoners confined to usually overcrowded local remand and post-sentence jails (of which Strangeways was and is one), where the great bulk of the prison population are held, has always been significantly worse than the treatment of prisoners in more long-term establishments where the potential for collective unrest has always been traditionally greater.
Continue reading ‘Woolf Report: 25 Years On & Nothing Has Changed’ – An article by John Bowden about the prison system’s latest attempt to obstruct his move to an open prison (UK)
The growth of what some have described as the “prison industrial complex” and the unleashing of economic free market forces upon the prison system by a government ideologically-driven to sell off or “out source” virtually every state function has created the spectre of a prison population utilised as essentially a source of cheap, forced labour for an increasingly avaricious neo-liberal capitalism. There is no starker example of organised modern slavery.
Continue reading ‘Germany and the Prison Industrial Complex’ by long-term prisoner, John Bowden (UK)
The abuse of psychiatry in pathologizing and punishing “difficult” prisoners has a long and disturbing history in the British prison system and is probably the worst example of human rights abuse suffered by some prisoners labelled “challenging” and “unmanageable”.
Continue reading Campaign In Support Of Kevan Thakrar – Letter by John Bowden
For the past 30 years John Bowden has been at the forefront of the British prison struggle, and is by far our most prolific prisoner writer. Time and again, John’s articles have shone a searchlight into the State’s murky dungeons, exposing brutality and repression, and challenging the very nature of prison. For many years now, John has been held in jail because of his political views and his willingness to challenge injustice. That has never been clearer than now, as the State attempts to use ‘secret evidence’ to keep him behind bars. Leeds ABC
John Bowden was imprisoned for murder in 1980 with a life sentence. He was now served 34 years, in prison across England and Scootland. In that time he escaped for 18 months in 1992 and again in 2008 for a few months before recapture; he has held an assistant governor hostage for two days; and received countless beatings, solitary confinements and many other tactics of HMPs to quell dissent and resistance. Throughout, he has maintained fierce resistance, never backing down and for this- despite parole boards admission that he should now be in open jail, if not released – the Prison Service still keep him inside.
Continue reading HISTORIES OF RESISTNCE
“In the prison authorities are determinated to detain me, even unlawfully, unless i compromise my basic human integrity by never questioning or challenging their abuses of power, then i am prefered to die in here”
John Bowden
The collected writings of the long-term prison resister John Bowden, who has regularly been victimised and denied parole by the British prison system for his links with ABC groups, have recently been made available by ABC Hurricane, and can be downloaded from their blog:
PDF: Screen Version
PDF: Print Version A4
Interview With Militant Prisoner John Bowden
John Bowden was arrested for murder in 1980 and sentenced to life imprisonment. After twelve years of institutionalised brutality and repression, he managed to escape in 1992 and was on the run from the police for a year and a half. He was recaptured in 1994 and has since been moved from prison to prison for constantly speaking out and acting against the prison industrial complex.
Continue reading Interview With Militant Prisoner John Bowden (2012)