Damn, crazy. Automatically transferring psychiatric patients to prison, staff cuts, prisoners sometimes not allowed to do classes, jobs or activities due to cuts.
One story there of a recovered drug addict, helped by a worker.
“In one case at Nottingham, the drug was sprayed on to a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was then torn up and sold for about £50 a strip.”
“Nottingham’s staff faced violence, but some abused their power. In April 2016, an officer assaulted a Black prisoner in his cell. In a WhatsApp group, the officer and two colleagues shared racist messages and agreed to lie to the prison investigation”
““My biggest regret in my life is going to work in the Prison Service,” says Mark, describing the toll taken by decades in the job. “It lives with you. I don’t know how many dead bodies I’ve seen in prison.”
This is one of those horrible issues that is always going to be really hard to get the British public to care about. Prisoners will never be high up on the list of human beings who people think are deserving of better care, improved facilities and more resources.
And yet it’s 100% in the public interest for us to improve the prison service. It’s not just about convicted people in prisons, it’s about the staff who work there and the friends and family members of the prisoners who’ve done nothing wrong.
On a slightly related note I watched a documentary about prisoners on death row in Texas. Apparently the only people allowed in the room when the lethal injection is administered are the staff doing the procedure, the family of the victims, a lawyer, and a journalist. The family members of the people being executed aren’t allowed inside the prison. There was a mother whose son was being executed that day and she had to stand outside the prison walls and wait to hear a bell to ring that signalled the process was over.
Like sure, some of the people on death row have done some of the most evil and horrific crimes imaginable. But to deprive his mother of being there to see her son in his final moments? How is that fair on her? She’s done nothing wrong. She was heartbroken both in terms of being powerless to do anything to stop it, but also not being able to just see him in that moment.
Now you can argue that the victims family didn’t get to be there with their loved one in their final moments and that’s a fair argument. But to me it’s less about the person being executed and more about extending some compassion to that person’s parents / loved ones who go through that torturous experience while being innocent or any wrongdoing. I think of her often and can’t imagine how it must have felt to just wait for the sound of a bell.
As a society we need to do better.
Sadly, many people will think prisoners deserve nothing but punishment and should be locked up 23 hours a day with nothing to do but sit in their cells,bored shitless. If prisoners had a chance to get mental health treatment, drug rehabilitation and a chance to learn skills then you would find that this sort of chaos would be far easier to prevent.
Prison staff are in scope for the 91k civil service jobs cut. 91k represents around one in five posts.
There should be nobody in prison for any non-violent offences. That would free up a lot of space in prisons.
6 comments
Utterly depressing
Damn, crazy. Automatically transferring psychiatric patients to prison, staff cuts, prisoners sometimes not allowed to do classes, jobs or activities due to cuts.
One story there of a recovered drug addict, helped by a worker.
“In one case at Nottingham, the drug was sprayed on to a copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was then torn up and sold for about £50 a strip.”
“Nottingham’s staff faced violence, but some abused their power. In April 2016, an officer assaulted a Black prisoner in his cell. In a WhatsApp group, the officer and two colleagues shared racist messages and agreed to lie to the prison investigation”
““My biggest regret in my life is going to work in the Prison Service,” says Mark, describing the toll taken by decades in the job. “It lives with you. I don’t know how many dead bodies I’ve seen in prison.”
This is one of those horrible issues that is always going to be really hard to get the British public to care about. Prisoners will never be high up on the list of human beings who people think are deserving of better care, improved facilities and more resources.
And yet it’s 100% in the public interest for us to improve the prison service. It’s not just about convicted people in prisons, it’s about the staff who work there and the friends and family members of the prisoners who’ve done nothing wrong.
On a slightly related note I watched a documentary about prisoners on death row in Texas. Apparently the only people allowed in the room when the lethal injection is administered are the staff doing the procedure, the family of the victims, a lawyer, and a journalist. The family members of the people being executed aren’t allowed inside the prison. There was a mother whose son was being executed that day and she had to stand outside the prison walls and wait to hear a bell to ring that signalled the process was over.
Like sure, some of the people on death row have done some of the most evil and horrific crimes imaginable. But to deprive his mother of being there to see her son in his final moments? How is that fair on her? She’s done nothing wrong. She was heartbroken both in terms of being powerless to do anything to stop it, but also not being able to just see him in that moment.
Now you can argue that the victims family didn’t get to be there with their loved one in their final moments and that’s a fair argument. But to me it’s less about the person being executed and more about extending some compassion to that person’s parents / loved ones who go through that torturous experience while being innocent or any wrongdoing. I think of her often and can’t imagine how it must have felt to just wait for the sound of a bell.
As a society we need to do better.
Sadly, many people will think prisoners deserve nothing but punishment and should be locked up 23 hours a day with nothing to do but sit in their cells,bored shitless. If prisoners had a chance to get mental health treatment, drug rehabilitation and a chance to learn skills then you would find that this sort of chaos would be far easier to prevent.
Prison staff are in scope for the 91k civil service jobs cut. 91k represents around one in five posts.
There should be nobody in prison for any non-violent offences. That would free up a lot of space in prisons.