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 →

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 →