The video of Part-Time Prisoner was screened at Hull and Nottingham last week. The next screening is Thursday 19th February in Derby at the Bernards Watch film-night featuring an international line up of video including the 'Indymedia European Newreal 8', and the Circle Line Party by London's anarchitechs 'The Space Hijackers'. My Dads Strip Club will be presenting video anecdotes of in-store antics featuring work supporting the Campaign Against Prison Slavery (againstprisonslavery.org)
8pm 19th February 2004
Bernards Watch film-night at The Courtyard, Friar Lane, Derby.

I'm sure that prisoners would get more support from the public if they were to offer any increase in their wages to their victims. Nearly two-thirds of prisoners are in jail for violence, sexual offences, burglary and robbery (see link below).

However, I doubt if the people running this campaign will support this suggestion as in the past they have suggested that violence doesn't count if it takes place after someone has been to the pub, and that prisons are full of 'good, honest working-class prisoners' (except for sex offenders who, of course, conforming to true prison stereotype, are the scum of the earth).

No doubt when they are not campaigning against Wilko, they're out trying to rid the world of paediatricians.


 http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/prismay03.pdf

Paul Edward’s ignorant and reactionary rubbish would be more at home on the BNP website than on Indymedia. The vast majority of prisoners are not incarcerated for anti-social crimes, most are regarded as ‘petty criminals’ serving relatively short sentences, thousands are unconvicted and will eventually walk free from court, and huge numbers are in for non-payment of fines, driving offences, and shoplifting. While the real violence on this planet is committed by the ruling class, the prisons are filled to overflowing with working-class people, a disproportionate number being from black and Asian backgrounds. Many of them are also children. Not only is the British prison population as a whole rocketing, which gives the lie to the “prison works” argument, but over the past few years we have seen the number of women sent to prison escalate by an even larger degree. Yet I am not aware of a similar rise in female violence.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of imprisonment though, it is hard to imagine how society in any way benefits from reducing prison education budgets, and from tax-payers subsidising the profits of companies like Wilkinson’s. The Nazi’s may have justified slave labour, but no decent society (or person) can.

The evident untruthfulness of Paul Edward’s other comments cannot shore up the sheer fatuousness of his argument.

I specifically added the link so that people could check the latest figures. The figures for 2004 have not yet been produced so it is now slightly out of date. I would suggest you actually click on the link and have a look...

Your response to quote back the figures seems weak. We all know how statistics can be made to back all manner of arguments. The attachment you submitted is a dry home office document. I rather think Mark Barnsleys 10 years in UK prisons gives him a certain experience from which to speak from of what really goes on. I have read his writings at his website and he seems to be well qualified to speak on the matter. In anycase prison doesn't work that's quite clear from the reconviction rate. Read the article below. I can't see how forcing prisoners to pack items for Wilkinsons,works to rehabilitate. Plus all this takes place in a private prison which profits from the enforced labour of a prison workforce. Quite shocking that companies like Wilkinsons want to be associated with this practice. I think its important not to allow this practice to become acceptable within the UK. Wilkinsons like to present themselves as a reputable and caring company. I personally will be writing to the company to express my disatisfaction with their involvement.
Jean Thompson
Cardiff


PRISON: ‘The expensive failure of the revolving door’ by Eric McGraw (reprinted from ‘Inside Time’)


If we only had a 50/50 chance of coming out of hospital better than we went in it is very likely that there would be a national outcry and Michael Howard would be immediately committing the Conservatives to closing the place. Yet there is no such demand to close our prisons, only to build more – despite their appalling record of failure highlighted in a new Report by the All Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group.

Not 50 per cent but 60 per cent of all prisoners and 74 per cent of young adults under 21 are reconvicted within two years of leaving prison – a fact of prison life described as an ‘expensive failure’ by the Parliamentary Group. The Report paints a gloomy picture of a soaring prison population in England and Wales leading to severe overcrowding, with prisons often limited to simply warehousing people and local prisons becoming like transit camps.

The UK has the highest imprisonment rate in Europe and prison numbers have soared by more than 14,000 since Labour came to power and David Blunkett – and Jack Straw before him – moved to introduce longer sentences for repeat, violent, and sex offenders. Yet more than half of all those sent to jail are sentenced to six months or less. A combination of short sentences and high reconviction rates has turned the prison system, according to the report, into ‘the expensive failure of the revolving door’.

Prison is without doubt expensive because it costs £38,750 to keep someone in prison for a year – a sum of money that would be enough to re-train or educate to an advanced level not one but a dozen people in some style.

Governments have usually responded to acute prison overcrowding by building more prisons. Since 1995, some 15,200 additional prison places have been provided at a staggering cost of more than £2 Billion or £131,579 a place. Building new prisons has not, however proved to be a solution to prison overcrowding, for in the last ten years, thirteen new prisons have opened and of these, nine were overcrowded last year.

On top of these incredible numbers add at least £11 Billion a year – the cost to the nation for the re-offending by ex-prisoners. Ex-prisoners are responsible for about one in five of all recorded crimes say the Government. Imagine the headline: ‘Former hospital patients responsible for one in five of all known illnesses’!

Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, told the Parliamentary Group that ‘Prison should be reserved for serious and violent offenders’. Although the Government is, in theory, committed to such a policy, there is little evidence of it in practice – in fact rather the opposite, she said.

The Report identifies chronic overcrowding as a blight on the whole prison system, which is failing the public, prisoners, and those who work in our prisons. Simply arguing for progress here and there is what it must have been like trying to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.



What you could buy for £11bn

Houses – 93,200
Hospitals – 62
Schools – 693

The increase in the number of prisoners in England and Wales in the last 10 years

1993 – 44,566

2003 – 73,987 (up 66%)

The increase in the number of women in prison in the last 10 years

1993 – 1,560

2003 – 4,509 (up 189%)

People sent to prison for 4 years and over in the last 10 years

1993 – 12,325

2003 – 25,557 (up 107%)

The number of prisoners serving 12 months or less

1993 – 22,000

2003 – 49,000 (up 123%)

The number of life sentenced prisoners in recent years in England and Wales

1993 – 4,000

2003 – 5,427 (up 36%)

Projected prison population at the end of the decade

2003 – 73,967

End of decade 100,000 (up 35%)

Everyone should check my original comment. At no point am I arguing that prisoners should be forced to pack products for Wilkinson for slave wages, but that any extra money they receive should not be used for their own benefit, which might help their cause in the eyes of the public. Is it really too much to ask that prisoners should compensate the victims of their crimes, unless of course you think that all victims are in some way 'asking for it'?

Boycotting the Wilkinsons Hardware store is my way of saying that their practice of using prison labour is wrong. Its no different to sweatshop exploitation. Disney, Nike, Gap all these companies deserve to be boycotted. No Sweat is a good site for more information on bad labour practice. Shopping in handcuffs inWilkinsons is funny. I enjoyed it , lets hope Wilkinsons stop soon

I've been following this debate, Im glad to see you arn't arguing that prisoners should be forced to pack products for Wilkinson for slave wages. Im interested in joining the boycott group. Im wondering have people written letters and if Wilkinsons have replied what is the companys angle on this?