Swiftly investigate misconduct and assault, review urges?

Prison Officers at state juvenile detention [prison] centres should swiftly investigate allegations of misconduct and assault at detention [prison] centres the report urges.

It says about 70 accusations against staff were pending in December, and some are taking more than a year to complete.

Government consultant, John Newbery, also recommended that prison officers at state juvenile detention centres should also wear uniforms and be subject to compulsory drug and alcohol testing, a review of work practices at the centres recommends.

The review was ordered last year after revelations that staff at the Kariong centre had lost control of it and its inmates. A lack of discipline had led to reports of riots, industrial action, drug use and an incident in which a convicted juvenile was fondled by his girlfriend in the only place they could,in the visiting section of the centre in view of other visitors, but not particularly.

In other words they didn't do it on purpose they were driven senseless by passion, no doubt!

In November the Minister for Juvenile injustice, diane beamer, handed control of Kariong to the Department of Corruptive Services and ordered a review of her department's work practices.

The review, submitted by beamer to a parliamentary inquiry on juvenile offenders, says staff at the centres would support legislation to allow the department to enforce drug and alcohol testing.

"No Juvenile Justice staff or stockholders' representatives interviewed during this review opposed drug and alcohol testing of staff," it says.

"Virtually all agreed that reasonable suspicion-based testing should be the minimum, and many supported random testing as well... A number supported the use of sniffer dogs."

The review also says the department should consider introducing a uniform or dress code. Unlike prison officers, staff at juvenile centres wear casual clothes to encourage less formal relationships with inmates, although staff at two centres have voluntarily begun wearing black collared T-shirts with their centre's logo on them.

What about pink uniforms?

The review also recommends changes to reduce the time taken by the department's complaint handling unit to investigate accusations of misconduct. Juvenile centres deal with a large number of complaints because staff have wide powers to use physical force against violent inmates even though that lesson only gets short term results and in the long term opposed to dialogue only teaches them a very bad lesson, 'that violence wins'.

Then they want to send them back to the community to teach you that violence wins?

"This issue causing most concern for staff and key stakeholders is the amount of time taken to undertake investigations," the report says.

"The professional conduct unit is overworked... Improving disciplinary processes would need to go beyond re-assessing the [unit's] role."

The department's director-general, David Sherlock, said yesterday that he supported many of the review's recommendations, including drug testing.

"Sometimes staff are put under pressure by kids to bring in drugs, and we have to ensure that that is minimised," Mr Sherlock said.

The Government is expected to introduce drug testing within 12 months, including searches of staff and visitors on entry and random and targeted testing.

Mr Sherlock said he supported standardised dress codes for staff, but not strict uniforms.

"Working with juveniles we try to create an environment that doesn't set up a very cold, conflictual situation between staff and kids who are in the centre."

Mr Sherlock said the department was consulting with the union to speed up the complaints-handling process.

By Jonathan Pearlman and Just Us 29 June 05

REPORT: NSW Department of Corrective Services 2004

The Hon Charlie Lynn: How many complaints were there by inmates or staff assaulting or abusing inmates?

The Hon John Hatzistergos: I do not know. Do you want me to ask every inmate who was in every correctional centre how many people?

The Hon Charlie Lynn: No how many complaints were there. Do you have a complaints system or registration of complaints system?

Related:

The transition from juvenile to adult criminal careers
NSW: More than 68 per cent of the juvenile offenders who appeared for the first time in the NSW Children's Court in 1995 reappeared in a NSW criminal court within the next eight years. More than one in 10 (i.e. 13 per cent) ended up in an adult prison within this period.

MISTREATED IN CUSTODY - NO ACCOUNTABILTY
NSW: Frank Crook's article (Violence an desperate outlet for caged fury: Daily Telegraph Tuesday May 10, 2005) draws attention to abuse and degrading treatment of inmates in NSW reported twenty and thirty years ago, and a lack of accountability of management practices within the NSW Department of Corrective Services.

PRISON ACTION & REFORM INC: Tas Prison Complaints
TASMANIA: Prison Action & Reform was formed in response to the five deaths in custody that occurred between August 1999 and January 2000. Chris Wever, Vickie Douglas, Rose Macaulay, Judith Santos and others came to together to fight for reform in an outdated, increasingly cash-strapped and uncaring system. Of the original members, three lost loved ones to the Tasmanian prison system.

Department of Corrective Services fails to rehabilitate offenders NSW: Unpopular people will be forced to wear tracking devices at a cost of $5,000 dollars per unit because the NSW Department of Corrective Services failed to rehabilitate those offenders at a cost of $65,000 a year while they were held in custody for many years.

Corrected or Corrupted
A psychiatrist from the prison Mental Health Team attached to Queensland Health made the comment that 25 per cent of inmates suffer from a diagnosed mental illness.

ICOPA XI International Conference on Penal Abolition
We are excited to announce that ICOPA X1, the eleventh International Conference on Penal Abolition will happen in Tasmania, Australia from February 9 - 11,2006. Please pass this onto all networks.

Ex-Prisoner Locked Out of Prison
The NSW Department of Corrective Services (DCS) has revealed a policy which bans ex-prisoners from entering prisons.

Justice Action: Access to our community
NSW: Justice Action went to the NSW Supreme Court before the last Federal election on the constitutional right for prisoners to receive information for their vote. The government avoided the hearing by bringing prisoners' mobile polling booths forward. We pursued it after the election. This is the report.

Why We Oppose Home Detention
NSW: Justice Action opposes the use of Home Detention (HD). It damages the family and the home for others without any consideration of the effects, or acknowledgement of the costs. It discriminates by disproportionately effecting women. Families become prison guards to their loved ones, and the home becomes an extension of the State.

MORE PRISONERS LOCKDOWNS HAVE OFFICERS ON EDGE
NSW POLICE Commissioner Ken Moroney has issued an ultimatum as well, to the lawless youths holding Sydney's streets to ransom?: Learn some respect or face jail?

Tough line on crime fills jails
The tough law-and-order policies of governments around the nation are behind an explosion in the prison population by almost 80 per cent in the past two decades.

LEGAL VISITS AT PARKLEA PRISON
I am a prisoner in NSW and I am currently held in Parklea Prison. I am concerned about what is going on in NSW prisons and this is my story.

Parklea Prison: No calls for six days
The last calls that were made out of Parklea Correctional Complex by my partner, an inmate in remand at Parklea, was on Wednesday 2 February. The phone lines for the inmates have been out of service to this date.

Prison visits in crisis in NSW
The reason I am writing today is to address a difficult situation that my husband and my family are going through. My husband is currently serving a sentence at Lithgow Correctional Centre in NSW.

Prison boom will prove a social bust
Hardened criminals are not filling NSW's prisons - the mentally ill and socially disadvantaged are, writes Eileen Baldry.

The prison system requires assiduous oversight
As NSW Attorney General Bob Debus noted in 1996: "The kinds of complaints which occur in the system may seem trivial to outsiders but in the superheated world of the prison, such issues can produce explosive results."

Crime and Punishment
Mark Findlay argues that the present psychological approach to prison programs is increasing the likelihood of re-offending and the threat to community safety.

Justice Denied In NSW Corrective Services
There used to be a (VJ) or Visiting Justice who would go into the prison and judge any claim or accusation that was made by any prisoner or prison guard. If it were found that a prisoner had offended then punishment was metered out.

Prison guards test positive for drugs
NSW prison visitors banned from using the toilet The visit is only for about one hour and any thing less than that is an insult. If it's proved that a visitor has broken the rules the punishment should apply to them. But collective punishment on all visitors should not be made general when others haven't broken the rules especially if it restricts all visitors from normal human needs like using a toilet.

NSW prison visitors banned from using the toilet
The New South Wales Government has introduced several initiatives to stop contraband getting into prisons they said last Friday. But under the guise of "stricter rules" the department had also introduced banning all visitors including children from using the toilet unless they terminate their visit at any NSW prison after using the toilet.

NSW Legislative Council's Inquiry on Home Detention
Justice Action's submissions Justice Action opposes the use of home detention, whether front-end or back-end, as a sentencing option in our criminal justice system.

Watchdogs slaughtered in NSW
On Tuesday the Carr Government reduced transparency and accountability yet again and New South Wales is in danger of becoming entrenched with cronyism and intimidations with the Carr Labor Government that continues to slaughter the watchdogs.

Winning goals: Rethinking Crime and Punishment

Extracts in this feature are adapted from I Would Rethink Crime and Punishment By...published today by the thinktank Rethinking Crime and Punishment.

I would reallocate resources within the prison service budget to give a higher priority to rehabilitation, retraining for future employment, and an improvement in literacy standards. During my own prison journey I was struck by the astoundingly high levels of illiteracy among prisoners. Tests show that about a third of all prisoners read and write at skill levels below those of 11-year-old schoolchildren.

I would pursue the idea of prisoners being able to earn extra remission as a result of achieving NVQ qualifications, computer skills and higher literacy standards.

Lord Adebowale: Chief executive of homelessness charity Turning Point

I would rethink social care and regeneration. This is not a moral argument but an economic one. By tackling poverty and social exclusion effectively we can prevent a great deal of crime. One-third of prisoners have a severe alcohol dependency, two-thirds have mental health problems, and one-third say they were in local authority care as a child. For many, prison merely serves as an example of how little value current welfare services add to their lives.

None of this is meant to excuse the crimes they have committed, but it should spur us to action. Providing the right interventions, earlier in life, will be far more cost-effective than prison, and will do far more for the victims of crime. A US study found that every dollar spent on tackling poverty saved $7 in other costs, such as criminal justice.

In the long term, providing effective social care that meets people's whole needs, including education and employment, will be more effective than any criminal justice programme.

Sir Charles Pollard: Former chief constable of Thames Valley Police, and a member of the Youth Justice Board

Let's integrate restorative justice fully into our criminal justice system. Ninety per cent of crime victims find restorative justice helps them get over what happened. Many offenders stop or reduce their criminal activity after being confronted directly with the impact of their crimes on others. And citizens who have participated become more engaged themselves with upholding standards in their local communities. The facts speak for themselves. Restorative justice is an idea whose time has come.

Eric Allison: Prisons correspondent

Imagine that you are ill. You see your GP, who tells you that you have, say, a stomach disorder and prescribes tablet X. A month later, your condition has worsened and you return to the surgery. The doctor tells you to give the medicine time, increases the dose and sends you on your way. A further month goes by, and now you are in agony. Another appointment. You are in the waiting room talking to another patient, who says he has gout and that the tablets the doctor gave him do not appear to be working. To your astonishment, you find that he too is on tablet X. You take a spot survey of those in the waiting room; they are all on the same medicine and not a soul feels better for it.

Surely, it's a case for the General Medical Council to consider striking this clearly dangerous doctor from the register.

An unlikely scenario? Yes, of course. Except that it's a script that is written hundreds of thousands of times a year within the penal area of our criminal justice system. Everybody who gets sent to prison - man, woman or child - receives basically the same treatment... a treatment that has proved time and time again not to work. There are 75,000 people in prison and 75,000 different reasons why they are there. Yet they are all on tablet X.

Is there a doctor in the house?

Nick Ross: Broadcaster

Let justice be done and revenge be had, but let us stop kidding ourselves that punishment axiomatically cuts crime. Given the vast investment in prisons and other punishments, it is extraordinary how little scientifically credible research has been done on its effectiveness in reducing wrongdoing.

Perhaps - from a purely crime reduction perspective - some people should be locked up longer and others should be told to go home. I want to find out, and this is too important for us to go on relying on convention, gut feeling or political inclination.

Meanwhile, our focus on punishment distracts us from the thousands of more immediate, and often cheaper, steps we can take to redesign products, policies and services to make the prospect of detection more certain and, better still, to make crime less tempting and less easy to commit.

Lord Hurd: Former home secretary

I would make a determined effort to stop the rise in prison sentences. Judges and magistrates send more people to prison for longer, not because there is more crime but because they feel that public opinion demands it. So our prisons are overcrowded as never before.

In these conditions, the chances of reforming a prisoner are slim. More than half reoffend within two years of release. Prison has not "worked" for them or for the community. The two keys to progress are: provide those who pass sentences with convincing alternatives to imprisonment, and do everything possible to help prisoners on release to find a job and a home so that they do not immediately drift back into crime.

Dame Anita Roddick: Founder of The Body Shop

Let's put an end to the myth that prison works. Politicians must stop looking to America for tough ways of dealing with crime.

I'd feel safer knowing that crime prevention measures are in place, alienated communities are socially included, and that mentally ill and drug-dependent offenders are treated, not punished. It's a crime too that so many vulnerable women are in jail. We waste so much human potential if we are unimaginative when responding to crime.

Erwin James: Writes a column, Life Outside, for the Guardian

Let's first of all take the responsibility of punishment, including the prison system, away from the main political arena. The only political involvement in my model would be from an all-party home affairs committee that would engage with and oversee what I would ensure was a fully independent body responsible both for sentencing policy and prison conditions.

This body - let's call it the Prisons and Sentencing Council (made up, perhaps, of teachers, social workers, doctors, beat police officers, probation officers and academics) - would base its policy decisions on information gathered by its dedicated teams of specialist researchers. The courts would carry out sentencing according to these policies, and the court appearance would be the time for the person in the dock to be subjected to public opprobrium and private shame.

The arrival at prison for those sentenced to a period of incarceration would mark the beginning of the rebuilding process. Prisons would be establishments that would encourage personal development and responsibility through therapeutic counselling, academic education and the pursuance of creative activities.

The prison journey, however long it might be, would be constructive and geared to lead to the eventual successful reintegration of the imprisoned person back into the community.

Ann Widdecombe: MP for Maidstone and the Weald, and a former prisons minister

If prison is to work it must be purposeful and prisoners must spend their days in education and work. Offending behaviour courses must be properly linked with post-release supervision.

At the moment, we take people who are poorly educated and come from unstructured lifestyles, lock them up in idleness, and then open up the prison gates expecting them to leadindustrious, law-abiding lives. It is cloud cuckoo land.

I would like to see a government plan for introducing full working days into every prison by 2012.

Juliet Lyon: Director of the Prison Reform Trust

Why not reduce the reach and aspirations of the criminal justice system and put prison back where it belongs - as a place of absolute last resort.

A tragic, unintended consequence of improving prison, before reserving it for serious and violent offenders only, has been to turn it into an under-resourced, capacious social service struggling to dispense drug treatment, low-level mental healthcare and basic education.

I would call on other public services to shoulder their shirked responsibilities and invest more in preventive work and support for vulnerable families. Above all, I would look to an authoritative, confident government to reduce fear of crime and create a justice system based on proportionality and fairness, not on vengeance and populism.

Tony Adams: Former Arsenal and England footballer; founder of the Sporting Chance Clinic

I would do more to help people with drink or drug problems. I spent time in prison through a drink-related incident. The long and short of it was that I was completely out of my head - a simple case of a man having problems with alcohol.

I spent three months in prison and, astonishingly, received no education in the areas of alcohol and drug abuse. Inside prison I was with people with similar problems to mine; they'd been out of their heads on mixtures of alcohol, cocaine, crack or whatever - but ultimately they had committed crimes that, in the clear light of day, they would not have done. If you give people education on the drugs they have been using and also introduce them to a high level of physical and calming exercise there is a dramatic fall in the number that reoffend.

Jonathan Myerson: Writes a Society Guardian column about his experiences as a Labour councillor in Lambeth, south London

What's the problem with youth justice? Young offenders never have to say sorry. Yes, referral panels are a step in the right direction. But after his first offence, the average teenage-on-teenage mugger sits and listens to his brief make tortuous, often legalistic excuses on his behalf, but never has to face up to it and say: "I did it. I'm sorry. It was wrong."

Meanwhile, months pass between crime and trial, and by the time sentence is announced the new offender has usually already reoffended and is lost to any hope of rehabilitation.

So my proposal is simple. Henceforth, the mugging victim will have a choice: he can make a statement and proceed through the courts, or the offender can be brought before him, in a controlled setting, and the offender has to look him in the eye and say sorry. Genuinely. And if he does, that's the end of it. No further action.

Mary Riddell: Columnist

Take children of 14 and under out of a criminal justice process designed for adults. Child courts would address welfare issues and place those found guilty of grave offences, such as killing, in local authority custody, close to home.

Older children, up to 18, would also be removed from the care of the prison service and the young offender institutions that produce a grievous toll of unhappiness and suicide.

Treating children more humanely would send a powerful message to a system inclined, across the board, to focus too much on punishment and too little on rehabilitating the vulnerable of all ages.

· Extracts in this feature are adapted from I Would Rethink Crime and Punishment By... published today by the thinktank Rethinking Crime and Punishment. Copies are available free. Details:

By Johnathan Aitken posted 20 January 2004

Rethinking Crime & Punishment

Related:

England and Wales

London police may moor prison ship on Thames
UK: The London police are holding discussions about possibly mooring a prison ship on the River Thames in a bid to ease pressure on the spiralling prisoner population.

Prisons accused of ignoring age trend
UK: A 70-year-old prisoner who uses a wheelchair has to pay "unofficial helpers" six chocolate bars a week to help him get around and to collect his meals, according to an investigation by the chief inspector of prisons into the growing number of elderly inmates.

Scandal of society's misfits dumped in jail
Up to 70% of inmates in Britain's jails have mental health disorders. In the first of a three-part series, Nick Davies hears their shocking stories.

Australia

Prison boom will prove a social bust
Hardened criminals are not filling NSW's prisons - the mentally ill and socially disadvantaged are, writes Eileen Baldry.

Isolation, psychiatric treatment and prisoner' control
The 2003 NSW Corrections Health Service (now Justice Health) Report on Mental Illness Among NSW Prisoners states that the 12 month prevalence of any psychiatric disorder in prison is 74%, compared to 22% in the general community, and while this includes substance disorder the high rate cannot be attributed to that alone.

Where the Norm is Not the Norm: HARM-U
In the absence of public policy, this paper is an attempt to shine a light through the rhetoric and test for coherency in the policy and function of NSW’s only supermax prison, the High Risk Management Unit. Its present use will be compared with the ‘vision’ flogged by the Premier and the Department of Corrective Services (the Department) at its inception in 2001.

Crime and Punishment
Mark Findlay argues that the present psychological approach to prison programs is increasing the likelihood of re-offending and the threat to community safety.

Government justice not personal justice
Mr Brett Collins of Justice Action said, "Victims should be looked after properly by implementing restorative justice measures and victims should be compensated for their pain and suffering. " However prisoners are entitled to serve their sentences in peace and privacy as well."

Sentencing: Violent crime and practical outcomes
In addition introducing restorative justice programs giving the offender a chance to interact with the offended person if they wish and visa-versa. People are not "dogmatic" therefore should be given a second chance opposed to Life means Life!

Carr Govt dramatic increases in the NSW prisoner pop...
Following the opening of the 500 bed Kempsey prison, and a new 200-bed prison for women at Windsor the Council of Social Service of NSW (NCOSS) and community organisations specialising in the rehabilitation of prisoners, have expressed concern....

New Zealand

More jails will create more crime says expert
NZ: Once a world leader in restorative justice, New Zealand is regressing by locking more people up for longer, visiting expert Sir Charles Pollard says.

USA

Prison System Fails Women, Study Says
State policies designed for violent men make female offenders' rehabilitation difficult, an oversight panel finds. "If we fail to intervene effectively in the lives of these women and their children now, California will pay the cost for generations to come," said Commissioner Teddie Ray, chairwoman of the subcommittee that produced the report.

Child Offenders on Death Row
Recent Australian studies of alcohol and cannabis use show that girls are increasingly inclined to behave boldly. But boys out number the girls, two to one; and three to one in the juvenile justice system, mortality figures, speeding infringements and car crash statistics.

Restorative Justice and the Law
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe."-- Marilyn vos Savant.

Restorative Justice Practices
Restorative Justice Practices of Native American, First Nation and Other Indigenous People of North America. This is part one in a series of articles about restorative justice practices of Native American, First Nation and other indigenous people of North America. The series is not intended to be all-inclusive, but rather a broad thematic overview. A related eForum article, "The Wet'suwet'en Unlocking Aboriginal Justice Program: Restorative Practices in British Columbia, Canada," can be read at:

The Long Trail to Apology
Native America: All manner of unusual things can happen in Washington in an election year, but few seem so refreshing as a proposed official apology from the federal government to American Indians - the first ever - for the "violence, maltreatment and neglect" inflicted upon the tribes for centuries.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot

UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

The four institutions are to be offered as a job lot to be run by a private prison company in a deal thought to be worth £50m as part of an attempt to boost competition and "choice" in the penal system. It is also thought to be designed to tempt US prison firms into the British market.

The institutions are Huntercombe near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire; Warren Hill, in Woodbridge, Suffolk; Wetherby in West Yorkshire and Werrington in Stoke-on-Trent. Warren Hill has a special unit which holds teenage murderers and others given very long sentences.

They hold 1,000 offenders including some of the most dangerous. They - with Ashfield near Bristol, which is privately run by Premier Prison Services - are the only dedicated prisons for the under 18s. Other publicly-run young offender institutions also hold teenagers but they are mixed with young adults up to the age of 21.

The leak of the plan, which is being proposed by Martin Narey, the chief executive of the new National Offender Management Service, has caused alarm among reformers and prison unions.

Frances Crook, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "We have not seen any proof that private prison companies are any better at running child jails."

Colin Moses, chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, said it would hold an emergency meeting today to consider boycotting the tender process. "They should remain in the public sector, not for ideological reasons, but because those who are responsible for the most vulnerable in our society have a duty not to make a profit from their suffering."

At Ashfield the situation became so bad two years ago that Mr Narey invoked his powers for the first time to replace a private prison director with a state prison governor. But the record of child jails run by the Prison Service is also poor, with 11 suicides of teenagers in the past five years.

The scheme is being considered by Home Office ministers and if, as expected, it goes ahead next year, the four institutions will become the first public sector prisons in Britain to be handed over to the private sector. In the past the government proposed privatising Brixton but no company was interested enough to bid for a single failing inner city south London prison.

The four all have relatively good records and some have undergone recent refurbishment. Earlier this year the merger of Group 4 and Securicor halved the number of private prison companies operating in Britain and Mr Narey has tried to persuade US companies to bid for British contracts.

The two largest private prison operators in the US, the Geo Group and the Corrections Corporation of America, have been involved in running British prisons and immigration detention centres in the last 10 years but have both pulled out in the last few years.

Mr Narey made clear he was going to offer "clusters" of prisons to increase interest and the four juvenile jails are to be the first "themed cluster" to be put out to tender.

It is believed they have been chosen to pioneer this programme - known as "contestability" in the Whitehall jargon - because unlike many state prisons they already have defined contracts as part of their relationship with the Youth Justice Board, which "buys" places at each of the jails.

Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said that "contestability" was another word for privatisation or market testing and was a "cynical attempt to drive down costs".

It is believed that an attempt to put the work of the north-west probation area out to tender will follow next.

By Alan Travis posted 6 October 04

Related:

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

A life inside: Erwin James
This is my last prison column. After 20 years, I'm free. I just didn't expect it to happen with so little ceremony.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
UK: It has housed some of Britain's most notorious women prisoners, including Moors murderer Myra Hindley, serial killer Rose West, Diana Mosley, aristocratic wife of fascist leader Oswald Mosley and, most recently, Maxine Carr, girlfriend of Soham murderer Ian Huntley.

UK Miscarriages: Loss of innocence
Can anyone comprehend what it is like to spend years in prison for a crime you didn't commit? Eric Allison tracked down those still haunted by the experience - the victims of miscarriages of justice, and their families.

Prison service 'on brink of a race crisis'
Britain's jails are plagued by a culture of racism among a hard core of officers and have been rocked by allegations that black prisoners have been made to fight white inmates, [prisoners], for the amusement of warders, according to the union chief in charge of 33,500 officers.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal prison notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Restorative Justice Practices
Restorative Justice Practices of Native American, First Nation and Other Indigenous People of North America: Part One BY LAURA MIRSKY.This is part one in a series of articles about restorative justice practices of Native American, First Nation and other indigenous people of North America.

UK: The injustice of jail
UK: Give or take Alcatraz, few prisons have a grimmer reputation than Holloway. The former chief inspector, David Ramsbotham, once declared it too disgusting to assess. Others have called the jail's cockroach-infested blocks the worst in the country. Holloway, its image pitched somewhere between Dante's Inferno and the penitentiary wing of Fawlty Towers, has never seemed a candidate for a good slammer award.

Belmarsh prisoners consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim prisoners released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism, [scapegoats for the Coalition of the Killing's resource war's in the Middle East], has [said], his fellow prisoners are suffering such 'severe mental problems' that they constantly consider suicide.

Revolving door: Criminal Law System
UK: They are just the opposite of master criminals. Indeed, in the words of Nick Davies in his latest three-part Guardian series on the criminal justice system, [? criminal law system], their criminal careers reflect "the same muddled inadequacy as they handle the rest of their lives". They were nearly all born and raised in chaos.

How the Prison Service Works
1.Abuse and torture inmates at HMP Wormwood Scrubs
2.Take years to admit a regime of violence and torture.
3.Settle 46 claims, paying 1.7 million to prisoners.
5.Carry on as before.
4.Keep 11 of the 14 prison officers responsible in their jobs.

Prisoners must get right to vote, says court
UK: The government will be forced to lift a ban on prisoners voting dating back to 1870 after the European court of human rights ruled yesterday it breached a lifer's human rights.

Cherie calls for women to be kept out of jail
UK: Cherie Booth today launches an impassioned attack on the jailing of women, warning of a 'cycle of poverty and crime' spiralling down the generations unless more female criminals are spared prison.

Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims 'food and lodgings'
UK: WHAT do you give someone who's been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit? An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne?Compensation?

Prison needle cleansing programme
The Department of Health and the Prison Service appeared to be at odds last night over a needle cleansing programme designed to protect prisoners from blood-borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures. The imprisonment rate of 141 per 100,000 makes the countries the prison capital of Europe for the second year running.

Don't put mothers behind bars
If we are to arrest the soaring prison suicide rate among women, we need to look at alternative punishment.

UK Prison Abuse: Guards Holding Nooses
'We will kill you. We will get away with it... we've done it before' Prisoners tell of hanging threats by officers holding nooses.

K K K in the UK
In the documentary it is alleged an officer dressed in a Ku Klux Klan mask at a training centre in north-west England. An undercover reporter from the BBC also claimed to have taped racist comments by some officers.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

My Sarah was smart and talented - Why did she die in jail?
LONDON: Sarah Campbell was just 18 when she killed herself [? committed suicide,] one of seven women to die in jail this year. Our correspondent asks why so many women kill themselves in prison [? commit suicide in prison.]