Her Majesty’s Profit
“We are currently seeing the growing exploitation of prisoners’ labour by private companies and by the state… compulsory work is nothing less than slavery.” – Prisoners Mark Barnsley and John Bowden.
Continue reading John Bowden (texts-2001/2008/2009/2010/2011/2012)
To the Parole Board for England and Wales, and the Scottish Prison Service: Release John Bowden!
From a comrade of Brighton ABC:
Before Christmas the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman publicly criticised the prison system for failing to reform and rehabilitate repeat offenders.
Continue reading ‘The Myth Of Rehabilitation’ by John Bowden, long-term radical prisoner (UK)
The statutory role and duty of the Parole Board in relation to reviewing the continued imprisonment of those prisoners serving indeterminate or life sentences and who remain in jail far beyond the length of time originally recommended by the courts in “the interest of retribution” is critically important if an abuse of executive power in the form of unlawful detention is to be prevented.
Continue reading ‘Victimisation Continues’ by John Bowden, long-term radical prisoner (UK)
On November 6th 2013 the Parole Board for England and Wales carried out its statutory obligation to review my continued detention after more than three decades in prison and many years beyond what the judiciary originally recommended I should serve in jail. Following an earlier parole hearing in May 2011 the board had recommended my transfer to an open prison in preparation for my release 12 months hence.
Continue reading John Bowden Refused Parole Again. Statement from John about recent Parole Board.
via a comrade of Brighton ABC:
http://www.brightonabc.org.uk/
On November 6th the Parole Board for England and Wales carried out it’s statutory obligation to review my continued detention after more than three decades in prison and many years beyond what the judiciary originally recommended I should serve in jail. Following an earlier parole hearing in May 2011 the board had recommended my transfer to an open prison in preparation for my release 12 months hence. Almost three years later I remain in a maximum-security prison because of what the prison system and a criminal justice system social worker claim is my politicised anti-authoritarian attitude and “rigid belief system” that is antipathetic to my being properly supervised outside a custodial setting. No one who gave evidence at the parole hearing, even representatives of the prison system, claimed that I represented any sort of threat or risk to the community, the usual reason or criterion for the continued detention of a life sentence prisoner beyond what the judiciary had originally recommended as the appropriate length of time they should serve in jail.
Continue reading Long-term political prisoner John Bowden’s Recent Parole Hearing (UK)
via a comrade of Brighton ABC:
Neo-liberalism, an ideology and concept usually associated with a particularly ruthless brand of free-market economics, has now reached into the very core services of the state and institutions that were once considered strictly off limits to financial speculators and entrepreneurs: the NHS, the prison system and the criminal justice system. Neo-liberalism doesn’t just involve a massive shift of economic power and wealth to an already extremely powerful and wealthy social group, but also a fundamental shift in the philosophy and policy of organisations like the welfare and criminal justice systems, both of whose ‘clients’ are now increasingly lumped together as an undifferentiated mass of the ‘undeserving poor’ or an always potentially criminal ‘underclass’ requiring an equal degree of punitive supervision, surveillance and ‘management’. For the poor the welfare state is becoming increasingly like a carceral state.
Continue reading ‘Neo-Liberalism And Prisons’ by John Bowden (UK) 2013
John Bowden (2011)
On the 9th July, 31 years after I was sentenced to life imprisonment, the Parole Board delivered it’s judgement on my continued imprisonment in clear and explicit terms recommending my transfer to an open prison in preparation for my probable release in 12 months time. The Ministry of Justice and prison system decided to ignore and effectively sabotage the recommendation, raising the question of exactly what real legal authority the Parole Board has over the prison system in determining how life sentenced prisoners are progressed towards release, and maybe more critically what real motives underlay senior prison management’s attempts on occasion to subvert the recommendations of the Parole Board?
Continue reading Prison Authorities Subvert Decision of Parole Board
Prison doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists are currently complicit in the abuse and psychological torture of mentally ill prisoners held in a brutal jail control-unit at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes.
Continue reading The Abuse Of Mentally Ill Prisoners Held In Close Supervision Centres (2011)
The Prison system’s treatment of Kevan Thakrar, who has been kept in almost total solitary confinement for more than 5 years, has now become a straight forward and systematic attempt to destroy him completely, and in a social and political climate increasingly intolerant of and hostile to prisoners’ human rights the implications of his treatment for the imprisoned generally are deeply disturbing. The fragrant and open contempt expressed by the Tory Home Secretary Teresa May and Justice Minister Chris Grayling for the Human Rights Act and the ability of Prisoners to gain access to the courts to defend their human rights finds brutal expression in the treatment of Prisoners like Kevan Thakrar who are pushed to the very edge of existence because of their determination to question and legitimately challenge the worst excesses of the prison system. In the totalitarian world of prison those who fight back are subjected to the most de-humanising and murderous treatment imaginable.
Continue reading CSC AND SIU: MARGINALISED AND DEMONISED CIVIL DEATH by John Bowden