Prisons chief hits at 'gross' overcrowding

Mentally ill and record number of children locked up

UK: The departing head of the prison and probation service has launched a scathing attack on Britain's penal system, expressing his deep concern that a record number of prisoners are behind bars when the crime rate is falling.

Martin Narey, a civil servant who has served every Home Secretary since 1989, highlights statistics showing that thousands of mentally ill inmates and a record number of children now constitute a significant part of the prison population.

'As I leave, I cannot pretend to be other than dismayed at a prison population now heading towards 78,000,' writes Narey, who quit this month as permanent secretary at the National Offender Management Service, the combined prison and probation service.

'With such pressures on prisons, and even after the investment they have received, the numbers locked up often overwhelm regimes. Overcrowding condemns about 16,000 prisoners every day to conditions - sharing a toilet in a cell in which they also eat their food - which are simply gross,' Narey says in an article to be published in December. 'And the problem is not only numbers or the consequent overcrowding. Within the 77,500 we are locking up right now are about 5,000 people who are profoundly mentally ill.'

The damning comments - written for the December issue of HLM, the magazine of the Howard League for Penal Reform - come at a critical time for the prison service. Reformers claim that Britain's jails have only around 400 spaces left before they are full to capacity and express fears about the consequences for prisoners.

The problem has prompted the Home Office to consider radical options to relieve congestion, including recommissioning the floating prison ship, HMP Weare, which was closed after extensive criticism. Other proposals being considered by the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, could include early release of up to 700 offenders, greater use of electronic tagging and converting women's jails - which still have some capacity - to house men. In addition, a building programme is predicted to boost the total number of prison places to 80,400 by 2007. Since 1995 the UK prison population has increased by 51 per cent, and the numbers have risen by 17,160 since Labour gained power.

Narey, who is the new head of the children's charity Barnardo's, says the rise is impossible to justify: 'Crime has been falling for some years. Some crime, burglary for instance, has fallen very significantly indeed.

'So there is simply no need for us to incarcerate the numbers we do. And in particular, there is no need for us to lock away 3,000 children... and because there are so many we have not been able to make children's custody the safe and constructive environment which it could be.'

Narey's concerns about the children were echoed in the House of Lords last week by the Bishop of Leicester, the Right Reverend Timothy Stevens. 'The vulnerability of the young people in prison service custody has been well documented,' he said. 'Some 60 per cent have previously been looked after by a local authority; 85 per cent exhibit signs of personality disorder; and 25 per cent of males have suffered violence at home.'

The Howard League says the most overcrowded prisons are also those with most suicides. A quarter of jails account for more than half of all suicides. 'Overcrowding is the canker at the heart of the system,' said Frances Crook, its director. 'This government has been sleepwalking to a crisis. There are signs Charles Clarke is beginning to wake up to the seriousness of it, but the government has to develop alternatives to prison.'

A Home Office spokesman said it was spreading innovative sentencing strategies to ease the pressures and keeping the prison population under continuous review.

By Jamie Doward posted 24 October 05

Related:

Clarke faces a fight over probation overhaul
UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, yesterday confirmed his plans to abolish 42 local probation boards and instead create "a vibrant mixed economy" in the management of 200,000 offenders in the community.

The devilish advocate
UK: The devilish advocate John Hirst taught himself law in jail, and has never lost a case against the prison service. Erwin James meets up again with the former 'lifer' who won inmates the right to vote.

Racism still rife in jails, five years after the murder of Zahid Mubarek UK: The prison service will be strongly criticised for continued racial discrimination against ethnic minority inmates by the official report from the Zahid Mubarek inquiry.

UK prisoners should get vote, European court rules
UK: Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote.

Prison plan 'will cut reoffending'
UK: A network of community prisons to help cut the number of criminals who re-offend has been outlined by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Clarke to scrap plan to peg prison numbers
UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has said he is to abandon his predecessor's aspiration of pegging the prison population in England and Wales at 80,000. He will also drop plans to put a legal obligation on the judges' sentencing guidelines council to take the size of the prison population - currently 77,000 and rising - into account when laying down the "going rate" for major crimes.

Crowded jails 'boosting suicides'
UK: The chief inspector of prisons warned that an overcrowding crisis in Britain's jails was leading to an increase in prisoner suicides.

Chief justice calls for new approach to law and order
UK: The retiring [ruling class] lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, made a passionate plea for a new approach to law and order which would see a major shift away from punishment towards the solution of problems which generate crime.

Britain's only prison ship ends up on the beach
UK: The last inmates have departed and a skeleton staff is left guarding Britain's only prison ship - in case anyone is minded to break in rather than out.

Throw away the key
The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisons.

Judges' misdeeds will remain secret
UK: Judges who are disciplined for bad behaviour will not have the findings against them made public under a complaints regime to be launched next year.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

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.

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.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

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

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

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.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.

Time to get mentally ill out of jails

"The process had gone too far" Professor Paul Mullen

LEADING psychiatrists have admitted that a 20-year policy of treating mental patients in the community has failed.

The psychiatrists are demanding a radical review of mental healthcare, claiming prisons have replaced asylums as holding centres for the mentally ill.

Those calling for a new approach include many of the architects of the current policy of deinstitutionalisation, which led to the closure of psychiatric wards and institutions around the country.

High on their list of priorities is the reopening of secure psychiatric wards and an increase in the number of medium and long-term beds for the mentally ill to take the pressure off prisons, which are ill-equipped to deal with the number of mentally ill inmates.

In the two decades since the influential Richmond Report recommended deinstitutionalising mental healthcare, the number of patients in psychiatric institutions has more than halved, from about 15,000 to 6000. The prison population more than doubled between 1986 and 2001 to more than 24,000 and now includes a high proportion of mentally ill prisoners.

A recent study by Corrections Health Service found that 74per cent of prisoners in NSW suffered from a psychiatric disorder, with almost 10 per cent suffering symptoms of psychosis.

Former NSW corrective services commissioner Tony Vinson said, "The consistent testimony of frontline workers in corrections is that, increasingly, court proceedings and jail cells have replaced the longer-term mental healthcare of 30 years ago."

David Richmond, the author of the 1983 Richmond Report said, "that a new model" was needed.

"Fundamentally the planning and precepts of the 1980s were for a different kind of community," Professor Richmond said.

He called for more acute beds and supported accommodation, because his report had not taken into account radical changes in population growth, housing and employment structures in Australia, or the impact of illicit drugs.

A damning report from the Mental Health Council of Australia and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, to be released in coming months, will expose "serious problems" and "failures of care" in facilities around the country.

In the past six years there have been at least 30 murders committed by mentally ill people and between 1999 and 2002 at least 20 people charged with murder were found not guilty in the Supreme Court on the grounds of mental illness.

In a Senate inquiry submission that pre-empts the report, the council says underfunding "undermined the (deinstitutionalisation) strategy from the beginning".

"(There are) serious concerns that, while the (psychiatric) institutions themselves have closed, institutionalisation of people with a mental illness has in fact been transferred to prison and detention systems or replaced with isolation within the community, for example through homelessness," the council says.

According to one NSW Health report, 12 per cent of prisoners are psychotic, 30 times the rate in the general community.

University of NSW head of psychiatry Philip Mitchell is planning NSW's response to the call for reform. He said a new secure hospital being built alongside Long Bay jail would take some seriously ill psychiatric patients out of the prison system.

"In NSW there is a process to open up more acute beds and sub-acute beds," he said.

"We're now recognising we've created some new problems with deinstitutionalisation."

One of Australia's foremost defenders of deinstitutionalisation, Monash University psychiatry professor Paul Mullen, said the process had gone too far.

"It was a well-meaning enthusiasm, an overenthusiasm, which shoved the whole thing to an extreme point," Professor Mullen said. "It's not a good thing that there are no locks and bolts now."

The push for reform of mental healthcare in Australia has been given added weight by the findings of the Palmer Inquiry into the wrongful detention of mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau, which was released on Thursday. The report found the prisons system, the South Australian Health system and immigration detention centres failed to deal properly with psychiatric patients such as Ms Rau.

The calls for reform follow recent moves in the US to open new mental facilities after decades of deinstitutionalisation.

NSW chairwoman of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists Louise Newman said there was consensus among mental health experts there needed to be a limited reopening of new psychiatric institutions, but not a return to traditional asylums.

"We're seeing more drug-affected and mentally ill people presenting at hospitals. There's a real need for a place to keep them secure and safe and protect the community," she said.

Both Dr Newman and Professor Mullen said bed shortages for psychiatric patients were chronic.

Australian Bureau of Statistics census data shows a rapid drop in institutionalisation from the mid-1980s. On census night in 1986 there were 14,855 patients in psychiatric hospitals or institutions, by 1996 this had dropped to 11,745 and by 2001 to 6092.

"Some people simply need long-term stable and supportive living arrangements if they are to keep out of harm's way and avoid being pushed, for want of other options, into lock-ups and jails."

The NSW Justice Health Service's latest figures on prison admissions show that more than one-third (38 per cent) of inmates sentenced suffer a mental disorder.

An Australian-first study by Professor Mullen, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry last year, found sufferers of schizophrenia were more than twice as likely to be convicted of violent crime than the general population.

The Mental Health Council's unpublished report found 1000 NSW prisoners had a serious mental illness.

"We have all the indications of a serious crisis in this area," council chief executive John Mendoza said. "There is a case for clinical care in long-term residential settings for those with a chronic mental illness."

States such as Victoria and Western Australia are leading the way by building residential care facilities.

By Simon Kearney and Adam Cresswell 16 July 05

Related:

The New Asylums
US: Fewer than 55,000 Americans currently receive treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Meanwhile, almost 10 times that number -- nearly 500,000 -- mentally ill men and women are serving time in U.S. jails and prisons.

JAILS AND PRISONS - THE NEW ASYLUMS:
Nearly 500,000 mentally ill men and women are now locked up in America's jails and prisons. That's 10 times the number who remain in its psychiatric hospitals.

Submission to Senate: Inquiry into Mental Health 2005
We appreciate that the urgent issues of Human Rights and other abuses including institutionalisation and the use of force, and the lack of progress on Burdekin are being examined by the Committee.

Mental Treatment and Pharmacy Profit $$$$$
Mentally ill patients are being kept in solitary confinement within maximum security NSW prisons as punishment, against the most basic principles of human rights law.

'Killing Rational' and Prisoner Control in NSW
Dear Justice Action, I'm writing to you regarding xxxx, he has rung me a few times in the past weeks and has been drugged to the max, he rang today twice and could hardly speak to me, he said he was going to ring you and talk to you about it but he couldn't so I told him I would get in contact with you and see what you could do! He has told them he doesn't want the sedatives but they hold him down and give it to him anyway, they have drugged him 4 times in the last 2 days he said.

Mental Health Tribunal recommendations on forensic inmates
Below is the answer we have received from the Minister for Health regarding prisoners recommended for parole or release by the Mental Health Tribunal FYI

Death in custody: In memory of Scott Simpson
Scott Simpson 34 died in custody on 7 June 2004 leaving behind a child. It is alleged that he hanged himself in a segregation yard at Long Bay Prison Complex. Justice Action has reasons to believe that Scott had been mistreated from the time he was taken into custody and the subsequent events that ensued that led to his sad death. We think that his treatment may well have caused his death.

Doctor Ron Woodham I presume?
"Corrections Health staff provide medical care. However, its staff's authority is essentially limited to making recommendations to corrective services on treatment. Corrective services staff can then decide what treatment can be given."

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.

Call for royal commission into NSW prison health system
Mr Tony Ross a social justice activist said yesterday that a royal commission into the health system in NSW should be wide reaching to ensure that the Corrections Health Service is also exposed because of reported widespread cover ups in the prisons health 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.

Escape proof but not so the prisoners mind
Fewer prisoners escape from prison these days because they're "cemented in" by materials that do not break and by legislation that can keep prisoners in jail until they die.

Carr's Castle the real story H.R.M.U.The High Risk Management Unit Goulburn Correctional Centre. A prisoner writes, " I was unsuccessful in my letters to Dr Matthews CEO of the Corrections Health Service on my problem regarding air - claustrophobic effect the cells have on me. Just recently the management decided my injuries are not seriously affecting me so no further discussions are necessary.

Risdon prisoners' seize prison to protest mistreatment
Apparently one prisoner had been mistreated and held in isolation in an SHU (Segregation Housing Unit) [Solitary Confinement] because, he'd had and altercation with a screw. SHUs cause severe mental harm - regarded as torture - and are a cruel, inhumane and degrading way to keep prisoners.

No Safe Place
In a brief four month span from August 1999, five men died in Tasmania's Risdon prison. Their deaths have put the state's corrections system in the dock and led to the planned demolition of a jail which even the State's Attorney-General now calls an "appalling facility".

Association for the Prevention of Torture
The Optional Protocol requires 20 ratifications to enter into force. All States Parties to the UN Convention against Torture should seriously consider ratifying the OPCAT as soon as possible. National Institutions and others promoting the human rights of people deprived of their liberty need to be informed of their potential role as national preventive mechanisms under the OPCAT.

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.

Overhaul Department of Justice: Reform Group
WA: The Prison Reform Group of WA is calling for a complete overhaul of the Department of Justice following recent events which have compromised its integrity, placing prison staff, prisoners, their families and the community, at risk. We call for the Minister to publicly apologise for last week's debacle which has seen the public badly let down by the Department of Justice yet again.

Detention Centres, Solitary Confinement
On Friday night the NSW Council for Civil Liberties awarded Sydney solicitor John Marsden honorary life membership. Julian Burnside was invited to make the speech in Marsden's honour. In the course of his speech, Burnside referred to the unregulated use of solitary confinement in Australia's immigration detention centres, criticising it as inhumane and also as unlawful.

2nd Renaissance - Beyond Industrial Capitalism and Nation States Some Practicalities Of Emptying The Prisons [287] Given the importance that prisons and punishment have in maintaining control of increasingly restless populations, the task of achieving the release of the people in the jails and the closure of those institutions, seems daunting. But it is so vital to the 2nd Renaissance that we must find ways to do it.

Control order flaws exposed

UK: First interview with ex-detainee reveals a regime that leaves him in despair : Ex-detainee exposes flaws in terror control orders

The bizarre world of the government's controversial anti-terrorist control orders [scapegoats for resource wars in the Middle East] was revealed when one of the 10 men who had been detained in high-security institutions for more than three years walked into the Guardian offices without any security escort.

Highlighting the stark contradictions in the control orders, Mahmoud Abu Rideh, who had been detained without charge and trial in Belmarsh prison and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, is kept under house arrest at night, but is able to roam freely under tagging during the day.

The Palestinian refugee, who was held for three-and-a-half years, says he cannot understand the double standards of the order, and said it was further exacerbating his psychiatric difficulties. He has been diagnosed as mentally ill.

In the first interview from any of the 10 detainees placed under control orders, he said: "I go everywhere now - on the underground, buses, the mosque. But I must be home by 7pm. People think I am dangerous, but I am not dangerous. The government is playing games. If I am a risk to security, why are they letting me out to be with people? I wouldn't do anything silly. I am not a dangerous man."

Mr Abu Rideh's control order says he is a key UK-based contact and provider of financial and logistical support to extreme Islamists with connections to al-Qaida. It says: "You belonged to and have provided support for a network of north African extremists directly involved in terrorist planning in the UK, including the use of toxic chemicals."

Mr Abu Rideh denies this is the case.

The control orders were rushed through parliament earlier this month in the face of widespread opposition. The contradictions inherent in them are clear from Mr Abu Rideh's experiences since being released on bail almost two weeks ago:

- He is not allowed to make arrangements to meet anybody, but he can drop in to see anyone if he does so unannounced;

- He cannot attend any pre-arranged meetings or gatherings, but was present at the anti-war demonstration at Hyde Park last Saturday. He says he stumbled across it while playing football in the park with his children;

- He is banned from having visitors to his home unless they are vetted in advance, but he is allowed to arrange to attend group prayers at a mosque;

- He thinks he is being followed on the tube, but if he calls a taxi, no one tails him.

Mr Abu Rideh told the Guardian that his confusion over how the control orders work, and his lack of support, led him to take a drug overdose last week. He was taken to Charing Cross hospital after he swallowed 35 tablets and was not released until the Monday evening. He says he cannot bear to live under the conditions imposed by the home secretary.

He said: "I only want to kill myself. I don't want to kill anybody else. I am not a danger to anybody else, but this government has made me a danger to myself. It is just as bad to be free with a control order as it is in Belmarsh prison or Broadmoor hospital."

The control orders authorised by the home secretary, Charles Clarke, caused a parliamentary crisis two weeks ago and were only shunted through after 30 hours of ferocious tussling between the two houses and a compromise on the part of the government.

The 10 men include Abu Qatada, the Islamist preacher who has been described by a judge as a truly dangerous individual who was "at the centre of UK terrorist activities associated with al-Qaida".

At the time of the parliamentary debate, the Home Office said that the 10 released men were still a risk to national security. Lawyers for Mr Abu Rideh and the other men began a legal challenge to the control orders. They told a high court judge that the orders were confused and difficult to work with, saying: "It has been continuous crisis management for the past 10 days."

Mr Abu Rideh explained some of these problems. "The conditions are too complicated and they don't work. The Home Office emergency number doesn't work. I phoned Fulham police station and they said it's not their problem," he said.

He claims that the voice recognition system operated by the tagging company, Premier Monitoring Services, does not work and the Guardian found that the Home Office control order hotline was an answering machine.

Mr Abu Rideh is so frustrated that he has threatened to take direct action similar to Fathers4Justice. He said: "I will go to Big Ben and make a demonstration, I will chain myself to the railings of the high court or the House of Commons. My lawyer has told me not to, but if I don't get justice I will."

The transition from being in Belmarsh and then in a hospital with the criminal mentally ill to being at home with his wife and five children is prov-ing to be fraught. "I think they will arrest me again. My kids worry that when they get back from school I will be gone and they might not find me again. My wife can't sleep. She is asking me not to go out."

Surprise searches by Scotland Yard officers leave his family on edge, he said, and his wife sleeps fully clothed in case of any eventuality. He complained that officers rifled through his wife's underwear drawer. "That's wrong in anybody's culture," he said. "I asked them, What are you searching there, do you think I have a bomb in my house, do you think I would kill my kids?"

But the most frustrating thing of all is that, despite being called an international terrorist by the government, he has never been told where he crossed the line.

He said: "I want to talk to whoever locked me up. Talk to me. Tell me, why? See my face, see my body. But I can't find anybody to talk to me."

A spokesperson for Premier said the company could not discuss individual cases.

By Audrey Gillan and Faisal al Yafai posted 29 March 05

Related:

Student Arrested For Terroristic Threatening
US: CLARK COUNTY: A George Rogers Clark High School junior arrested last Tuesday for making terrorist threats said Thursday that the "writings" that got him arrested are being taken out of context.

Threat of terrorism overblown, says Kirby
The High Court judge Michael Kirby has urged Australia's security chiefs and judges not to exaggerate the risk of terrorism, saying that more people die of AIDS every day than were killed in the World Trade Centre in the September 11 [US false flag] attacks.

Guantanamo guards blinded prisoner: lawyer
UK/CUBA: British permanent resident detained at the US camp for terrorism suspects [scapegoats] in Guantanamo Bay was blinded in one eye following an assault by guards, his lawyer says.

Amnesty slams Govt position on US trial system
Amnesty International has described as "absurd", the Federal Government's continued support for the United States military commission that will try Australian detainee [scapegoat] David Hicks on terrorism allegations.

US judge orders CIA release Guantanamo records
A US federal judge has ordered the CIA to release records regarding the treatment of prisoners detained in Guantanamo Bay and other facilities in the "war on terror" to a civil rights groups.

Hicks lawyer welcomes Guantanamo ruling
Stephen Kenny, the lawyer representing the family of Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, has welcomed a US court ruling that military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are unconstitutional.

Australia: a presumption of guilt......
KAREN PERCY: Two of Australia's leading barristers have seized on the return of Guantanamo Bay detainee, Mamdouh Habib, to launch an unprecedented attack on the Federal Attorney General, Philip Ruddock.

Aust Community criticises Govt for 'crimes'!
Australia: The Law Council of Australia is warning that the Federal Government must learn from its mistakes over Guantanamo Bay? Now that's a mistake!

Australian Govt Guilty of Crimes: Community
Australia: The community says federal fascists who allowed the torture of its citizenry including Mamdouh Habib may be arrested when the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal address the War Crimes Indictment set out by the community.

US judge dismisses? Guantanamo legal challenge
A US federal judge has dismissed the cases of seven Guantanamo Bay prisoners who sought to challenge the lawfulness of their continued detention?

US 'landlord' slams! Guantanamo 'law violations'
Cuba has demanded that the United States cease its "criminal conduct" in abusing prisoners held at the base it illegally occupies on Cuba's south-eastern tip, saying procedures at Guantanamo violate international law.

Concern over ramifications of Hicks FOI failure
There are claims that a decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal will give some countries the opportunity to refuse diplomatic aid to detained Australians.

FBI emails reveal Guantanamo abuse
In memos over a two year period FBI agents said they witnessed the use of torture techniques, which included the use of dogs, prisoners being shackled to the floor in foetal positions for up to 24 hours, left without food and water, left to defecate upon themselves.

Hicks alleges Guantanamo abuse: report
Guantanamo Bay prisoner David Hicks has reportedly claimed that prisoners at the US run prison camp have been beaten while blindfolded and handcuffed, terrorised by attack dogs, and forced to take drugs.

US lawyer wants inquiry into Hicks trial process
The lawyer defending Australian terror suspect [scapegoat for resource wars] David Hicks has called for an inquiry into whether the military commission hearing the case meets legal standards.

Australia Sells Its Citizens Short
Australian citizens, Mamdouth Habib and David Hicks have been illegally incarcerated in the Guantanamo Bay facility established by the US military as part of the War on Terror.

Downer won't press US for 'torture' report?
The Australian Government says it has tried and failed so far to get a copy of a report by the International Red Cross which claims psychological and physical coercion of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba?

UK minister criticises US over Guantanamo!
UK: Washington's policy on the legal status of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba is unacceptable, a senior British minister said.

Lawyers hail 'unlawful' ruling in Guantanamo trial
Human rights groups and lawyers for Guantanamo detainees have welcomed a US federal judge's ruling which halted as unlawful the military tribunal trial of a Guantanamo prisoner accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver.

Hicks's lawyers seek panel decision
Lawyers for Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks will make another attempt to dismiss charges against their client in a series of motions hearings starting in Cuba today.

Torture, the British way
Great to be British, isn't it? Time was, we were really uptight, but now we can talk about anything - sex, religion, politics. No matter how personal and complex the subject, we'll discuss it with Richard and Judy, or slap our private Polaroids of it on our websites. Which leaves me puzzled about our silence, even shyness, over this whole torture thing.

US secretly moved prisoners out of Iraq for questioning: report
The CIA has secretly transferred detainees out of Iraq for interrogation after asking the US Justice Department to write a memo justifying the practice, which violates the Geneva Conventions.

Pentagon dumps Guantanamo tribunal officers
The Pentagon has dumped three members of a military tribunal that will hear the trials of Guantanamo prisoners, including Australian David Hicks, but kept the presiding officer despite challenges to his impartiality.

Guantanamo detainees win right for private meetings
In a defeat for the US Government, a federal judge has ruled that three prisoners held at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba can meet with their attorneys in private. In a defeat.

Lawyers complain about Guantanamo trials
US: Lawyers for 63 detainees at the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have complained before a US federal court at the slow pace their cases are being handled by authorities.

Judge orders US to release Guantanamo records
The United States Government must release documents within 30 days relating to the treatment of prisoners held at American overseas detention centres, including Guantanamo Bay and Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, a US federal judge ordered.

Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantanamo
Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantanamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation.

Hicks, Habib denied a fair go: Amnesty
The secretary-general of Amnesty International has criticised the Federal Government's treatment of the two Australians detained at Guantanamo Bay.

Govt's Hicks concerns an 'election stunt', says Brown
Greens Senator Bob Brown has accused the Federal Government of an election stunt with its questions to the United States authorities about the trial of "Australian Citizen" David Hicks.

Abu Ghraib inquiry slams Aust Government
A US inquiry into the Iraqi prison abuse scandal has been highly critical of Australian, Major George O'Kane, for glossing over early warnings about the treatment of detainees.

Australian Federal Government complicity in war crimes
Complaint to Australian law officers about Australian Federal Government complicity in war crimes.

Hicks family arrives at Kangaroo Caught
Terry Hicks says he feels very emotional about seeing his son for the first time in five years.

Hicks defence team likely to gain more time
The head of the military trials planned for two Australians held at Guantanamo Bay says he believes their defence teams will be given whatever additional time they need to prepare for trial.

Hicks, Habib denied natural justice: Liberal MP
A federal Liberal MP has accused the Government of not doing enough to secure a fair trial for Guantanamo Bay detainees, David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Guantanamo abuse claims prompt new inquiry calls
New claims of abuse at Guantanamo Bay Cuba have prompted fresh calls for an Australian inquiry into the treatment of detainees David Hicks and Mamdouh Habib.

Hicks movie to premiere in Adelaide
A movie about Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks, President versus David Hicks, by award winning filmmaker Curtis Levy will be screened in Adelaide tomorrow.

There is no justification for torture
In the weeks since the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were revealed, evidence continues to seep out of similar mistreatment of prisoners in other US military detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

Guantanamo prisoners may be moved to US soil
The US authorities may move hundreds of prisoners from their controversial Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba to the United States following new Supreme Court rulings, the Los Angeles Times has reported.

Pentagon names tribunal for Hicks trial
The Pentagon has named the officers who will decide the fate of David Hicks and two other Guantanamo prisoners charged by the United States in the first US military tribunals since World War II.

US terror suspects can challenge detention
The US Supreme Court has ruled that US courts have jurisdiction to hear appeals from foreign detainees held as enemy combatants in the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Hicks lawyer praises Guantanamo decision
The lawyer for an Australian man detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has welcomed a US Supreme Court ruling permitting judicial appeals from foreign detainees held as enemy combatants.

Hicks and Habib in the Melting Pot
Australia: The United States has brought three criminal charges against Australian David Hicks, accusing him of conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder and aiding the enemy, the Pentagon has said.

Rumsfeld had approved abuse
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorised hoods, the stripping of prisoners and the use of dogs to terrify inmates at Guantanamo Bay almost two years ago, documents released yesterday revealed.

How much is that doggy in the prison? Woof woof!
Did the Iraqi prisoner's get their rations while they were treated like chums?

Failure to condemn prison abuse risks lives: Kenny
The Prime Minister is morally bankrupt stay "alert and alarmed"

Prisoner's identity concealed to prevent Red Cross access
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, acting at the request of the CIA, ordered that a suspected Iraqi insurgent leader be detained off the books to conceal his identity from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Pentagon has confirmed.

US has secret prisons: rights group
The United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centres worldwide, about half of which operate in total secrecy, according to a new human rights report.

This won't hurt much
For some time now, I've been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it's no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it's a free country.

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.

He goes on: "They have been punished before by the system, often for good reason, but failed to change their behaviour, occasionally becoming worse." They include drug users, the mentally ill and the homeless. Davies spent a week in a magistrates' court in London's East End talking to these petty offenders, prosecutors, police and probation officers.

His conclusion is bleak: "With its best efforts at rehabilitation struggling, this government now presides over a system which is overwhelmingly devoted to punishment." This is a harsh conclusion but one that has been supported by the lord chief justice, the chief inspector of prisons and the director general of the prison system, all of whom have spoken out against the excessive use of prisons by our courts. They all want prison to be reserved for dangerous, serious sexual or violent offenders. Yet as Martin Narey, head of the new national offender management service told our home affairs editor last month, the imprisonment of minor criminals has multiplied.

Last month, the prison population exceeded the 75,000 mark for the first time. This is 8,000 higher than the official capacity of the 138 prisons in England and Wales. Prison governors have described the current state of prisons as at "bursting point". It took four decades for the prison population to increase by 11,000 between 1951 and 1991, but it has climbed by 25,000 in the last decade. Despite a one-third reduction in each of the two biggest categories of crime - burglary and car crime - the annual numbers sent to prison has doubled in the last decade. The reasons are twofold: a disproportionate use of prisons by the courts; and a disproportionate increase in length of sentences.

Who are these petty offenders? They were well documented by the government's social exclusion unit in a report in July 2002, which showed the important bonds that are broken by prison: one third lose their home, two-fifths contact with their families, and two-thirds their jobs. Some 50% of prisoners have a lower level of reading skills than an 11-year-old, 65% lower numeracy skills and 80% lower writing skills. Poor mental health generates further problems with 70% suffering at least two disorders. In his forward to the report, Tony Blair emphasised the need to "redouble efforts to rehabilitate prisoners back into society".

Change is promised. The Carter review, a joint Downing Street, Treasury and Home Office review of the prison crisis, reported at the beginning of the year. Like the Halliday report in 2001, it punctured Michael Howard's false promise that "prison works".

The new aim is to provide more community programmes that could address the educational, drug addiction and mental health needs of minor offenders. A new sentencing guidelines council, headed by the lord chief justice, has been set up to reverse the penal approach of the courts. A new cap on maximum prison numbers - 80,000 - has been announced. Yet serious doubts remain.

The first involves funding; the second the restructuring of the prison and probation agencies into a "seamless service", which will absorb huge amounts of management time that could be spent on raising standards; the third is the readiness of the home secretary to take on the tabloid press and change public and judicial attitudes. A decade ago a Tory home secretary, Douglas Hurd, cut prison numbers by 5,000 by proactively campaigning for such a reduction. Leadership works. But is David Blunkett ready to give it?

By The Guardian posted 20 April 2004

Related:

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.]

Russian Prisoner's lose locks

Moscow Centre for Prison Reform deputy director Lyudmila Alpern said: "If you go into a detention centre with long, beautiful hair, there's very little chance you'll come out with it intact.

"They say to the women they have to cut hair for hygiene, because of lice, but that's not true. Wardens cut the hair because they want to have a bit of business on the side."

However, Simon Forbes, the celebrity hairdresser who invented the extension technique, said women were left in the dark about the origin of their extensions and would be horrified if they understood "the gravity of the situation in terms of supply of the product".

He said he used only artificial monofibres for his extensions. They can transform crop-haired tomboys into Botticelli Venuses in a matter of minutes.

But the growing number of women with extensions made from human hair may unwittingly be carrying a dark secret.

The trend, popularised by the likes of Victoria Beckham, Kylie Minogue and Elle Macpherson, means salons are struggling to meet demand from women who are delighted to pay for longer and thicker hair without having to wait for it to grow.

But Beckham's hairdresser, Feleny Georghiou said: "Although the hair is from Russia, it's not actually from prisoners."

An investigation has found the trend may originate in Russia's notorious prisons. To meet the demand in the West for the extensions, convicts in Russia are having their heads illegally shaved. Hair is also taken from children and mental patients.

The freshly shorn locks may then be then sent to salons, where they are glued onto the existing hair of their wealthy clients. Beckham has admitted: "My extensions come from Russian prisoners, so I've got Russian cell-block H on my head."

By Chop Chop 13 Feb 04

The psychiatric protection order for the "battered mental patient"

Psychiatric patients are routinely treated against their will. Legally enforceable psychiatric protection orders would protect patients from coercive psychiatric interventions...

The avowed desires of patients and doctors conflict more often in psychiatry than in any other branch of medicine. People known as "mental patients" are routinely subjected to "diagnostic" and "therapeutic" interventions against their will. Many such people see being committed (sectioned) and treated against their will as a personal violation a "psychiatric abuse" and want to protect themselves from future involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation and treatment. At present former psychiatric patients, even when legally competent, have no means to defend themselves from such a contingency.

Mental health laws reflecting the point of view of psychiatrists and society protect (or are said to protect) mentally ill patients from the dangers they pose, because of their illness, to themselves and others. Many mental patients view and have always viewed psychiatrists as posing a danger to them. Respect for the self defined interests of such patients requires that the law protect them from further unwanted psychiatric interventions.

The psychiatric protection order

Courts recognise the validity of "psychiatric wills" (psychiatric advance directives) only when they prospectively authorise treatment; courts do not recognise them when the "psychiatric testator" rejects psychiatric "help."1 To remedy this defect, especially when patients are released into the community after a period of involuntary treatment for mental illness, I propose a new legal safeguard: the psychiatric protection order. Such an order, similar to the protection order used in domestic conflicts, would make it a criminal offence to impose involuntary psychiatric interventions on people protected by the order.

In free societies only psychiatric patients are routinely treated against their will. (Public health laws explicitly serve the interests of the public, not the therapeutic needs of particular persons.) Competent patients with uraemia are not treated against their will and can use a "medical will" to protect themselves from undergoing dialysis. If psychiatry were like any other medical specialty competent patients with schizophrenia would not be treated against their will and could protect themselves with a psychiatric will from being treated.2 But they cannot: neither psychiatrists nor the courts recognise the validity of the psychiatric will. Mental health laws trump psychiatric advance directives.

Not by coincidence the history of psychiatric interventions forcibly imposed on patients is long and depressing. In a letter he wrote to me in 1988 Karl Menninger summarised the history of psychiatry with these sad words: "Added to the beatings and chainings and baths and massages came treatments that were even more ferocious: gouging out parts of the brain, producing convulsions with electric shocks, starving, surgical removal of teeth, tonsils, uteri, etc."3 To this list Menninger might have added the use of straitjackets, tranquillising chairs, confining chairs, cold baths, emetics, purgatives, Metrazol shock, inhalations of carbon dioxide, and neuroleptic drugs.

Freedom from enforced psychiatry

From the beginnings of the specialty, psychiatric patients have had no opportunity to free themselves from their protective-oppressive relationship with psychiatrists. In this brief paper I focus on a single issue: the desire of some psychiatric patients to free themselves, once and for all, from what they regard as an abusive relationship with the psychiatric profession. The Anglo-American legal system has always denied this option to these patients. This denial resembles the denial of slaves' opportunity, in a slave society, to leave their master; of the wife's opportunity, in traditional marriage, to leave her husband; and of citizens' opportunity, in the modern totalitarian state, to leave their country and its rulers. These people may enjoy all manner of benefits and privileges, but they cannot, without the permission of the repressive authority, leave the system for good.

The English and American legal systems maintain the fiction that the relationship between a family member responsible for committing a "loved one" and the incarcerated individual as well as that between psychiatrists and involuntarily detained patients is always one of "care" and "treatment." It can be otherwise only in "unfree," "totalitarian" countries; such was the case in the Soviet Union and is now the case in China. That self serving rationalisation is at the core of the problem facing us.

Anglo-American law assumes, as a matter of fact, that the relationship between a person and a legal agent of the state is adversarial. Justice Potter Stewart of the US Supreme Court famously remarked: "To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him."4 The law student is taught the duties and roles of both prosecuting attorney and defence attorney. Both jobs are legitimate and proper.

In contrast Anglo-American psychiatry assumes, as a matter of law and psychiatry, that the relationship between a person and a psychiatric agent of the state is therapeutic. Forcing psychiatrists on mental patients is routine practice, and the patient who protests is likely to be given a diagnosis of paranoia. The medical student is taught only the duties and roles of the psychiatrist making diagnoses and providing treatment. The psychiatrist has no other legitimate duties or roles; only the job of the coercive psychiatrist is legitimate and proper. The psychiatrist who tries to help the coerced "patient" to reject the patient role is ostracised, or worse.

The gatekeepers: the family

We are hypocrites if we ignore who the parties are that support the enactment of mental health laws and deny patients the option of rejecting psychiatric services. Everywhere the supporters of mental health laws are psychiatrists and the relatives of so called mental patients. In the United States the relatives are now also in control of a powerful lobby, the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill, that legitimises the abuse of family members (mainly adult children) as the care of "loved ones." Organisations of former psychiatric patients who call themselves "victims of psychiatric abuse" are not among the parties clamouring for more psychiatric coercions or "services."

People subjected to involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation and treatment often feel victimised in much the same way as do wives (less often husbands) who are abused by their spouses. Until recent times women had no effective protection from their abusers, whom the law defined as their protectors. In many parts of the world women are still in that situation. Similarly, in the days of Dickens children were not protected from abuse by their parents.

Specific treatments may have changed since this 1818 drawing, but psychiatric patients are still forced to undergo unwanted interventions

We in the West now recognise that the family is not just the primary locus of affection, care, and security for its members: it is all too often also the source of the most insidious danger to their physical and spiritual wellbeing. We acknowledge this unhappy fact and accordingly speak of "battered" children, spouses, parents, and grandparents. In the conflicts that often arise between adults living together as married couples or lovers, legal separation, divorce, and the so called protection order exemplify the legal system's acknowledgment of the problem and the need for legally sanctioned and enforceable mechanisms to remedy it. A protection order mandates physical separation between the parties and makes it a criminal offence for the denominated threatener to impose their mere presence on the threatened person. I suggest that we similarly acknowledge the unhappy fact of "battered mental patients" and the need to protect them from their batterers. In the absence of a protection order the power relations between psychiatrist and involuntary patient will continue to generate "psychiatric abuse," rationalised as protection and treatment. Indeed, it is precisely because psychiatrists reject advance psychiatric directives authorising abstinence from further treatment (a request that non-psychiatric doctors accept) that makes a legal mechanism such as the psychiatric protection order necessary.

Legalise "divorce" between psychiatrists and patients

Psychiatrists object to efforts to treat patients as responsible moral agents and cite the prevention of harm as a basic social mandate of psychiatry. Typically, they argue that people who would have committed suicide but for their involuntary detention would thereby have been deprived of the option of changing their minds once they had recovered from depression. A similar argument could be made against last wills or, indeed, any decision that profoundly affects one's future, such as marriage or having children. The standard psychiatric justification for "therapeutic" coercion either ignores the familiar conflict between liberty and security or, more often, equates (involuntary) psychiatric treatment with ("true") freedom.5 Elsewhere I have examined and discussed this and related problems in great detail and proposed reconciling psychiatry with liberty.6 7

Human memory is notoriously short and selective. We have forgotten that until recently even in the United Kingdom and the United States people could not divorce. In some countries women still cannot divorce their husbands. For a long time the law, supported by religion, ranked the sanctity of marriage more highly than the need to protect the wife from her abusive husband and so prohibited divorce. To make matters worse, the law deprived her of her voice.

The history of the "marriage" between mad people and their doctors shows a similar pattern. Since the beginning of mad doctoring in the 18th century, the law, supported by medicine (psychiatry), has ranked the "health" of mad people more highly than the need to protect them from the abusive psychiatrist and prohibited them from divorcing their psychiatrist. This is still the case. (The psychiatrist is free to leave the patient, typically by forcibly "marrying" the patient to another psychiatrist.) And again the law deprived, and still deprives, the victim of his or her voice. Only writers were, and are, willing to face the realities of psychiatry, illustrated for example by James Thurber's miniature masterpiece, The Unicorn in the Garden.8

Summary points

Many psychiatric patients are denied the right to refuse treatment they don't want

"Psychiatric wills" are recognised by courts only when patients use them to authorise treatment, not when they use them to reject the possibility of treatment

Like protection orders that protect wives from abusive husbands, "psychiatric protection orders" would protect patients from coercive psychiatric interventions

Doctors, politicians, and journalists assert that mental illnesses are real diseases and that psychiatrists are regular doctors. If that were true there would be no need for psychiatric protective orders.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Competing interests: None declared.

By Thomas Szasz, emeritus professor of psychiatry' posted 6 January 2004

Department of Psychiatry, Upstate Medical University, State University of New York, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA

Correspondence to: 4739 Limberlost Lane, Manlius, New York, NY 13104, USA tszasz@aol.com

References
1. Szasz T. Liberation by oppression: a comparative study of slavery and psychiatry. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002.

2. Szasz T. The psychiatric will: a new mechanism for protecting persons against "psychosis" and psychiatry. Amer Psychol 1982;37: 762-70.[ISI]

3. Menninger, K. Reading notes. Bull Menninger Clin 1989;53: 350-1.

4. Stewart, P Faretta v California, 422 US 806 ( 1975), p 834.

5. Satel S. For addicts, force is the best medicine. Wall Street Journal, 1998 January 7: 6.

6. Szasz T. Insanity: the idea and its consequences. New York: Wiley, 1987.

7. Szasz T. Pharmacracy: medicine and politics in America. Westport, CT: Praeger/Greenwood, 2001.

8. Thurber J. The unicorn in the garden [1940]. In: Fables for our time. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

US: Mentally Ill Mistreated in Prison More Mentally Ill in Prison Than in Hospitals

(New York, October 22, 2003) Mentally ill offenders face mistreatment and neglect in many U.S. prisons, Human Rights Watch.

"Prisons have become the nation's primary mental health facilities. But for those with serious illnesses, prison can be the worst place to be."

Jamie Fellner Director, U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch

One in six U.S. prisoners is mentally ill. Many of them suffer from serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

There are three times as many men and women with mental illness in U.S. prisons as in mental health hospitals.

The rate of mental illness in the prison population is three times higher than in the general population.

According to the 215-page report, Ill-Equipped: U.S. Prisons and Offenders with Mental Illness, prisons are dangerous and damaging places for mentally ill people. Other prisoners victimize and exploit them. Prison staff often punish mentally ill offenders for symptoms of their illness such as being noisy or refusing orders, or even self-mutilation and attempted suicide. Mentally ill prisoners are more likely than others to end up housed in especially harsh conditions, such as isolation, that can push them over the edge into acute psychosis.

Woefully deficient mental health services in many prisons leave prisoners undertreated or not treated at all. Across the country, prisoners cannot get appropriate care because of a shortage of qualified staff, lack of facilities, and prison rules that interfere with treatment.

According to Human Rights Watch, the high rate of incarceration of the mentally ill is a consequence of underfunded, disorganized, and fragmented community mental health services.

State and local governments have shut down mental health hospitals across the United States, but failed to provide adequate alternatives. Many people with mental illness particularly those who are poor, homeless, or struggling with substance abuse problems cannot get mental health treatment. If they commit a crime, even low-level nonviolent offenses, punitive sentencing laws mandate imprisonment.

"Unless you are wealthy, it can be next to impossible to receive mental health services in the community," said Fellner. "Many prisoners might never have ended up behind bars if publicly funded treatment had been available."

The Human Rights Watch report is based on more than two years of research and hundreds of interviews with prisoners, corrections officials, mental health experts and attorneys.

It describes prisoners who, because of their illness, rant and rave, babble incoherently, or huddle silently in their cells. They talk to invisible companions, living in worlds constructed of hallucinations. They lash out without provocation, beat their heads against cell walls, cover themselves with feces, mutilate themselves until their bodies are riddled with scars, and attempt suicide.

The Human Rights Watch report documents how prisoners with mental illness are likely to be picked on, physically or sexually abused, and manipulated by other inmates [prisoners], who call them "bugs." For example, a prisoner in Georgia, who is both mentally ill and mildly retarded, has been raped repeatedly and exchanges sex for commissary items such as cigarettes and coffee.

Mentally ill prisoners can find it difficult if not impossible to comply with prison rules, and end up with higher than average rates of disciplinary infractions. Security staff who usually lack training in mental illness do not distinguish between the prisoner who is disruptive or fails to obey an order because of illness and a prisoner who causes problems for other reasons.

Mentally ill prisoners have been punished for self-mutilating ("destroying state property"); attempting suicide with a torn sheet ("destroying state property"); for yelling and kicking cell doors because of hearing voices ("creating a disturbance"); for throwing papers at a guard while delusional ("battery"); and for smearing feces on the cell door ("being untidy").

Untrained staff escalate confrontations with mentally ill prisoners, sometimes using excessive force. Several mentally ill prisoners have died from asphyxiation after struggling with guards who used improper methods to control them.

Over the past two decades, prison mental health services in the United States have improved usually because of prisoner litigation. But the surging number of mentally ill men and women entering prison has outrun the availability of services. Public officials have been unwilling to provide the funds necessary to ensure adequate treatment for all the mentally ill offenders who need it.

"Prison officials are being asked to do something they aren't equipped to do," said Fellner. "Prisons are designed for punishment, not as places to provide comprehensive mental health treatment. If people with mental illness must be incarcerated, they should be housed in facilities designed and funded to meet their mental health needs."

Human Rights Watch urged the U.S. Congress to enact legislation proposed by Senator Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) and Congressman Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) that would provide federal grants to divert mentally ill offenders into treatment programs rather than jail or prison, and to improve the quality of mental health services provided to jail and prison inmates.

Human Rights Watch also recommended the use of independent mental health experts to assess mental health services in each prison system, urged elected officials and the heads of correctional agencies to ensure that mentally ill prisoners receive mental health services consistent with community standards of care, and called for rules to prevent housing prisoners with mental illness in isolated confinement or super maximum security prisons.

Related:

Shut down the Security Torture Units
San Francisco: October 18 In solidarity with other prison activist organizations, MIM, RAIL, the Barrio Defense Committee (BDC) and the Prison Reform Unity Project held a four hour rally in San Francisco demanding the Security Housing Units (SHUs) in California prisons be shut down.

Solitary Confinement: Mental illness in prisons
As noted earlier, inmates [prisoners] with mental illness are over represented in our toughest prison settings. Symptoms of mental illness (i.e., delays in response time, paranoia, difficulty interpreting the actions of others, command hallucinations, and so on) can make complying with prison rules difficult.

Post-Incarceration Sentences
Pat: "The 1990s brought a new front in the war on drugs, featuring a new layer of the Prison Industrial Complex, which has the effect of ensuring that people coming in contact with the criminal punishment system remain within the grasp of the Prison Industrial Complex even beyond prison walls."

Inside Prison, Outside the Law
Every year, tens of thousands of prisoners in state and federal custody are attacked. The exact number who die is difficult to determine: According to the nonprofit Criminal Justice Institute, in 2000, the most recent year for which figures have been compiled, 55 prisoners were murdered, 39 died "accidentally," and 118 died for unknown reasons.

Day Seven of the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health:
PASADENA, CALIF: On the seventh day of a hunger strike by six psychiatric survivors to oppose human rights violations in the mental health system, the American Psychiatric Association faces a direct and unprecedented challenge from a Scientific Panel of 14 academics and clinicians.

Supreme Court Justice Criticises Sentencing Guidelines
San Francisco, August 9, 2003, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said today that prison terms are too long and that he favours scrapping the practice of setting mandatory minimum sentences for some federal crimes.

US prison population 2.1 million
The US prison population grew more than twice as fast last year as in 2001, bringing the total number of people held behind bars in the United States to more than 2.1 million, a record, according to a government report.

McKean Federal Prison: An Alleged Model
McKean, a federal correctional institution [? prison], does everything that "make 'em bust rocks" politicians decry--imagine, educating inmates [prisoners]! And it works. [Allegedly works.]

Prisoners Justice Day Press Release (Montreal)
On August 10th, 1974, Eddie Nalon bled to death in a solitary confinement unit at Millhaven Maximum Security Prison near Kingston,Ontario when the emergency call button in his cell failed to work. An inquest later found that the call buttons in that unit had been deactivated by the guards.

Notebook of a Prison Abolitionist
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recalls how as a slave he would occasionally hear of the "abolitionists." He did not know the full meaning of the word at first, but he heard it used in ways that he found appealing.

Study Warns of Rising Tide of Released Prisoners
Washington: More than 625,000 former prisoners will be coming back into U.S. society this year, part of a record flow of prisoners who will face crushing obstacles in finding work and housing and repairing long-fractured family ties, according to a newly released study.

Incite Statement Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex
We call social justice movements to develop strategies and analysis that address both state AND interpersonal violence, particularly violence against women.

Second International Conference on Human Rights & Prison Reform
**This second gathering will be much smaller and more in depth in participation. A report on the human rights violation of discrimination in regard to prisoners will be produced. This report will be given to the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights which will be having its annual meeting near our conference and is the"think tank" for the human rights agenda of the United Nations.

Judged Forever- The Orange County Register
US: California's largest job-placement program for parolees will be shut down May 31 after an Orange County Register investigation found that ex-convicts were sent to questionable jobs [?] and that the state was charged for placements that did not occur. [? According to the ruling-class]

California Family Visiting Case
US: CALIFORNIA: Today (5/03/08) in Superior Court around twenty friends and family members of inmates from CSP Solano showed up to show their support in the Gordon vs. CA Department of Corrections (Case #322862) which deals with the subject of bringing back Family Visits to all inmates.

Prison Rates Among Blacks Reach a Peak, Report Finds
An estimated 12 percent of African-American men ages 20 to 34 are in jail or prison, according to a report released yesterday by the Justice Department.

Justices question prison visitation policies
WASHINGTON: In a case that could affect the visitation rights of millions of prisoners, Supreme Court justices on Wednesday struggled with the question of whether inmates have a constitutional right to visits with friends and family.