Build communities, not prisons

Deborah H. Drake and David Scott, The Open University

Image source: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fq2W0bJAAKE/UEBDMMO_jyl/AAAAAAAADIk/EQx2Nm74aaw/s1600/buildcommunities.JPG

 

The prison industrial complex is large and growing. Prison building and expansion projects generate trade exhibitions, mail-order/Internet catalogues, and direct advertising campaigns that seek to engage architects, construction firms, investors, food, landscaping and plumbing supply companies, and other firms that specialise in fixtures and fittings for large industrial building. There is no doubt that the building of prisons creates a market of both temporary and permanent employment opportunities and can appear to increase the economic potential of the lucky local community that agrees to house a prison in their area.

If we look more carefully, however, at what the prison industry is, does and costs, prison building programmes become less attractive.

Economic benefits?

In 2003, researchers King, Mauer and Huling carried out the first study to use statistical controls to measure the effect of a prison on the local community, including its impact on the local economy and on employment and per capita income trends.  The study examined 25 years of economic data for rural counties in New York and looked at 38 prisons located in upstate counties.  The full report can be found here: Big Prisons, Small Towns: Prison Economics in Rural America, but some of their key findings indicated that:

• In 25 years, there was no significant difference or discernible pattern of economic trends between the seven rural counties that hosted a prison and the seven rural counties that did not;
• Residents of rural counties with one or more prisons did not gain significant employment advantages compared to rural counties without prisons;
• Unemployment rates moved in the same direction for both groups of counties and were consistent with the overall employment rates for the state as a whole;
• During the period from 1982 to 2001, these findings are consistent for the three distinct economic periods in the United States, and in fact, the non-prison counties performed marginally better in two of the timeframes;
• Counties that hosted new prisons received no economic advantage as measured by per capita income;
• From the inception of the prison building boom in 1982 until 2000, per capita income rose 141% in counties without a prison and 132% in counties that hosted a prison.

When comparing new prison towns across the USA with other towns of a similar size, Besser and Hanson also found that there was no discernable differences between unemployment rates between 1990 and 2000 between the towns.  Like King et al., they concluded that building a new prison did not create jobs for local unemployed people.

At a similar time to the above studies there was a further comprehensive analysis of prison towns in the USA which explored the impact of prison building and job growth in the USA from 1976-1994.  In a follow up study, expanding the period to 2004, the evidence shows that rather than promoting economic prosperity and creating new jobs, in both urban and struggling rural communities, prisons may actually impede employment growth.  Hooks et al. (2010) conclude that ‘our research into employment growth suggests that prisons are doing more harm than good among vulnerable counties’.  The reasons why prisons failed to provide economic stimulus to the local economy included:

• There were not necessarily new jobs as prison officers moved from other prisons to fill the new jobs;
• There was the possibility of adverse local impacts of prison labour through prison industries and low cost prisoner labour;
• There may be a paucity of local skills and direct connections to the services required by the new prison.

Despite the initial promises of economic prosperity that it is assumed can be made from opening a prison, these promises are not borne out in practice.  Moreover, no prison can generate income or be ‘cost efficient’. Prisons cost a lot to run and they drain resources from other areas of social life, such as hospitals, schools, housing or social services.  Investing, instead, in local services, programmes, health and education sectors or other community-focused initiatives would be a far better use of resources and, incidentally, are more effective than prisons at PREVENTING crime, as opposed to responding to it after the fact, as prisons do.  That is, the idea that increased funding for police and a larger prison estate will solve and economic problems is a myth.

Human costs

Setting the obvious economic shortcomings to prison building aside, let’s think for a minute about the human and social costs of prisons.  Firstly, there is no evidence that prisons effectively do very many of the things they claim to do.  This has been repeatedly demonstrated through society’s years of experimentation with the prison and in numerous academic considerations (see Mathiesen, 2000 for example).  Prisons do not deter crime, they do not ‘rehabilitate’ prisoners, they do not prepare people well for law-abiding lives in the community.  The only functions that prisons serve well relate to pain and suffering: they deliver punishment and incapacitation and, symbolically: they are a demonstration that ‘justice’ is being done and that the ‘system works’.

Prisons are places that cast out, ostracize and de-socialise members of our communities and society.  They are places that take things away from people: they take a persons’ time, relationships, opportunities, and sometimes their life.  Prisons constrain the human identity and foster feelings of fear, anger, alienation and social and emotional isolation. For many prisoners, prisons offer only a lonely, isolating and brutalising experience.  At best, prison environments are dull and monotonous living and working routines depriving prisoners of basic human needs. At worst, they are places of violence, suffering and physical and psychological pain.  Combined with saturation in time consciousness/awareness, these situational contexts can lead to a disintegration of the self and death (Scott, 2016).

For prison officers and other prison staff prisons are toxic environments.  Stress, illness and sometimes also death are perils of prison work.  Prisons do not encourage health, education, renewal, care, compassion, decency or any of the other values that most societies and individuals cherish.  Instead, they stimulate humiliation, illness, anger, hatred and punishment.  They are places that encourage moral indifference between staff and prisoners, where the shared humanity of prisoners and staff is neutralised and where the pain and suffering of one another is ignored.

Rather than investing in criminal justice and building more prisons in a time of economic austerity, we should be demanding investment in our communities, in our social lives and in programmes that centralise the importance of social justice – for everyone.

 

This article first appeared on the Reclaim Justice Network site, at: https://reclaimjusticenetwork.org.uk/2017/06/29/build-communities-not-prisons/

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Steve Tombs, Professor of Criminology, The Open University

 

Introduction

What follows is my response to the consultation by The Chair of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, into its terms of reference, which will set out what the Inquiry will cover. The text that follows is an un-edited version of that submission, save for adding hyperlinks as references to this version. The submission aimed not to reproduce the details that would have been forwarded by other organisations with whom I have close working relationships, such as INQUEST and Hazards.

 

Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Terms of Reference

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry is designed to ascertain the causes of the tragedy, and to ensure that the appropriate lessons are learnt.  With this in mind, and as a leading academic commentator on regulation and enforcement in the context of social regulation, not least with respect to occupational and public health and safety, it is my considered view that it is crucial that the Terms of Reference of the Public Inquiry take cognisance of three broad sets of issues within which many of the specific concerns that it will no doubt address must be contextualised. These are crucial not simply for understanding why the fire occurred, but also in preventing other multi-fatality incidents, since each of these contextual features continue to be in existence whilst some, notably cuts in Local Authority funding, are likely to become even more significant.

 

1. Anti-Regulation Rhetoric

The rhetorical undermining of the very idea of regulation and its enforcement, and thus of those men and women who undertake this work as a form of public service, which have contributed significantly to an anti-regulatory culture in the UK. This rhetorical under-mining has long been espoused through formal politics, and has seeped into popular consciousness, not least via repetition across all forms of broadcast and print media. It can be traced back some forty years but my specific concern is with the ways in which it has circulated through and seeped into political and popular consciousness in the past twenty years. Based on apocryphal tales, half-truths and sheer falsehoods, it undermines regulation and regulators, and thus makes social and public protection less likely with publics offered a very distorted view of what ‘health and safety’ means in practice with regard to protecting them, their families and their communities.

This Term of Reference might be captured thus:
The nature and effects of the long term pejorative rhetoric around regulation and its enforcement as ‘red tape’ as part of a broader anti-regulatory culture.

 

Source: Hazards magazine, http://www.hazards.org/votetodie/bluemurder.htm

 

2. The ‘Better Regulation’ Initiative

The broad policy direction in terms of regulation and enforcement which spans some fifteen years at least in the UK and which can be subsumed under the rubric of the ‘Better Regulation’ initiative, which since 2004 has formally impacted upon all national and local regulators in the UK. This trajectory has drawn upon, and then contributed to, the anti-regulatory culture highlighted above (1.). Officially launched by a Labour Government, then maintained and developed both by the subsequent Coalition then Conservative Governments, this cross-party initiative contains a series of assumptions and constituent policy dynamics which are crucial to understanding the combination of policy decisions which produced a context within which the Grenfell Tower fire could occur.

This Term of Reference might be captured thus:
The nature and effects of Better Regulation in producing a policy context within which the fire at Grenfell Tower could occur.

 

3. The Absence of Credible Enforcement Capacity

The particular effects of funding reductions since 2008/09 both for national regulators and also for Local Authorities, not least in a context of the ‘Better Regulation’ policy initiative ( see 2., above), which has claimed that ‘less’ can and should be done with ‘more’. The specific dynamics of how funding reductions have, at both national and local levels, impacted upon regulation and enforcement is a crucial issue for the inquiry to consider, undermining as it does the idea of public protection and safety. Specifically, the Inquiry must address the extent to which, on the part of those regulatory services and bodies which have a statutory requirement to enforce laws for public and social protection against public bodies and private organisations, there remains any form of credible enforcement capacity.

This Term of Reference might be captured thus:
The nature and effects of the funding of national and local regulatory bodies and services upon public protection.

 

Further, Specific Considerations

These broader issues will provide some of the key context within which some of the more focussed considerations of the Inquiry will proceed, these including, but not exhausted by, the following:

The triggering event for the fire.

The history of the tower block, from inception and planning as a local authority housing development, to its commission, design, transfers of ownership, subsequent modifications, so on.

A consideration, since at least 2004, of the oversight of fire and health and safety regulations at Grenfell Tower and other tower blocks.

Complaints by and demands of residents of Grenfell Tower in relation to safety of the block in particular and its general maintenance and housekeeping issues in general, as well as responses to and actions following these by TMO and RBKC.

A review of all previous Coroner’s recommendations on fires in high rise residences, and an audit of actual responses to these recommendations.

Relevant, related governmental and / or parliamentary knowledge, response and oversight of recommendations and actions in response to those cases and relevant surrounding issues.

A consideration, since at least 2004, of the oversight of fire and health and safety regulations at Grenfell tower and other tower blocks.

The nature of the response to the fire and subsequent crisis by a variety of state bodies.

When Justice is (not) blind…

Evgenia Iliadou, The Open University

 

(…) And now, I am finding myself in Eleona’s prison trying to hold on. And I am thinking: Everything is allowed in their “conscience”. They say that their irrational purposes are more important than a life. They are not crazy. Craziness is an alibi. It is arbitrariness, by taking advantage of their anonymity and their hierarchical position.

(Irianna B.L, 09/06/2017, freely translated)

The aforementioned excerpt is from a recent statement from Irianna, a 29 year old PhD student at the University of Athens, whose life course dramatically changed and interrupted when she was confronted with the Greek (in)justice.

Irianna’s ongoing court adventure began in 2011, when her partner was accused of being related to anarchism and, also, to a terrorist group. Irianna was initially prosecuted and released, but was afterwards (in 2013) accused for “possession of illegal firearms with intent to distribute them for criminal activities and for being part of the same terrorist group as her boyfriend had been accused and acquitted”. This accusation was firstly based on the fact that her partner faced charges of being a member of the terrorist group Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire. However, in 2013 Irianna’s partner was found innocent of all charges against him. The accusation was secondly based on a DNA sample, which, according to the medical forensic expert, was “extremely insufficient in the degree that in no case whatsoever, could a definite outcome be the result.” On 17 July 2017, the court rejected her appeal and, thus, Justice was dispensed: 13 years in prison without any mitigating circumstances being acknowledged, and no right to bail. 

It must be denoted that Irianna’s case is not the only recent case concerning the unfair treatment in the Greek justice system. Along with Irianna, Perikles who is Irianna’s partner’s housemate has also being accused of being a member of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire. He also had an unfair trial and been charged with 13 years imprisonment, similarly to Irianna, although he is facing serious health problems. Furthermore, from 2012 onwards, Tasos Theofilou was also facing charges for being a member of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, as well as numerous other accusations. Theofilou was brutally stigmatised by the mass media, which released his personal information and photo to the public and also represented him as a terrorist. After spending five years in prison, in 7 July 2017 he was found innocent for all the accusations against him. During the court rehearsal Theofilou stated, “I have not committed any of the crimes I have been accused of. I have only committed one crime, which includes all crimes; I am an anarchist”.

Practises of stigmatisation, criminalisation and targeting of people associated with the anarchist movement are not something new. Justice’s strict and severe treatment as far as anarchists concern is overwhelming. It is an undoubtable fact that in Greece, although a European democratic state, ideologies and political beliefs (i.e. anarchism) are, in a sense, put on trial. What is even more overwhelming, however, is how justice treats people who are indirectly related and linked via their acquaintances, social relationships and life, with anarchism.

Image available at: http://sekp.gr/irianna-v-l-sekp/

There are four lessons the State desires to teach us through Irianna’s and Theofilou’s cases. Lesson one: social relationships are “put on trial”. That fact has been wisely emphasised by Irianna’s partner as follows: “if you are a friend with someone, who is friend with someone who…”, you are in danger to find yourself being accused of being a criminal and a member of the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire, because you socialise with people. Lesson two: our life itself is an eventuality; one day, one could possibly find one’s self in Irianna’s and Theofilou’s place. Irianna and Theofilou could be me, but they could also be you in the reasoning, as stated above, “if you have a friend who has a friend…”. Lesson three: What we learn from the above two lessons, is that we must live in a constant fear and terror that one day somehow, somewhere we will experience the same situations with Irianna and Theofilou, unless we remain silent, with limited social life and politically inactive. Also, that we should feel fear and terror of Justice and the State itself.

It is more than astounding and devastating when one realises the extent of the unbearable injustice, stigmatisation, discrimination, violence and suffering that people are exposed to in a so-called democratic state, like Greece. It is almost seven years since Greece was in a severe financial crisis, followed by multiple austerity measures, which are causing a lot of suffering and social harm to people (i.e destitution, homelessness, unemployment, suicides, collective depression etc). However, why have no actions have been taken in order accountability to be given for Greece’s bankrupt and deptocracy, misuse of power, misery and suffering? Why has justice not been dispensed in this case, whilst for cases like Irianna’s, Perikles’s and Theofilou’s it has been dispensed with the most severe way?

Justice should be objectively and neutrally dispensed. This condition is often poignantly illustrated via the expression; “Justice is blind”. Justice should be blind. Though, what reality demonstrates is that justice is not blind, but on the contrary it turns a blind eye, particularly, when crimes are committed by the powerful. This is the fourth lesson the state desires to teach us: justice has a class structure. What is justice for the powerful is injustice for people in the lower social strata.

These are not just lessons, but also an indirect warning for all citizens to show obedience, to keep quiet and live in apathy and ignorance, by being detached from any political movement, which dares to criticise and doubt the powerful State. It is also a frightening reminder of our positionality in the society and of who rules our lives. It is horrific to realise that we do not rule our own lives.

These kinds of practises challenge the foundations of democracy. Although, in Greece we celebrate the Restoration of Democracy Day each year, in a country where political beliefs are penalised, we cannot talk about democracy. On the contrary, we should talk about a Junta covered with a democratic veil. 

For more information concerning Irianna’s case and petition see here (English) and here (Greek)