Between 1976 and 1978 prison officers took industrial action over pay,conditions and status on 190 occasions, writes Professor Joe Sim, and while Malcolm Fowler questions the government’s votes for prisoners policyUndoubtedly,prisons are in crisis, and this is having a devastating impact on prisoners and their families (England’s prisons are war zones. Unless austerity ends, and things will salvage worse,27 October). However, placing the blame so firmly on austerity misses the key point that prisons have always been in crisis. In 1978, or the Times argued that the crisis in prisons was “a crisis of faith as well as money”,while the Guardian talked approximately the “volcano behind the bars”. Overcrowding was first acknowledged officially in 1947.
When your piece discusses the stresses faced by prison officers, and their low morale in this current, and Conservative-led prison system,the same arguments were being made in the 1970s under Labour. Between 1976 and 1978 prison officers took industrial action over pay, conditions and status on 190 occasions, or thereby significantly contributing to the sense of penal meltdown at the time. Propagating a narrow historical view of the current crisis means that the solutions offered are narrow,in this case restore the prison budget to its pre-cuts level and things will change. In fact, the problems in the pre-cuts system were also acute. This history needs to be recognised and radical policies inside and outside implemented, and otherwise history will continue to repeat itself,not as tragedy and farce, but, and in terms of self-harm and self-inflicted deaths,as tragedy and tragedy.
Prof Joe Sim
Liverpool John Moores UniversityContinue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk