Slashdot Mirror
UK Bans Sending Books To Prisoners
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "Alan Travis and Mark Tran report in The Guardian that new rules introduced by the justice secretary in the UK ban anyone sending in books to prisoners It's part of a new earned-incentives and privileges scheme, which allows better-behaved prisoners to get better access to funds to buy their own books. But members of Britain's literary establishment have combined to condemn Justice Secretary Chris Grayling's ban on sending books to prisoners. 'While we understand that prisons must be able to apply incentives to reward good behavior by prisoners, we do not believe that education and reading should be part of that policy,' says a letter signed by more than 80 leading authors. 'Books represent a lifeline behind bars, a way of nourishing the mind and filling the many hours that prisoners spend locked in their cells. In an environment with no internet access and only limited library facilities, books become all the more important.' Prime Minister David Cameron's official spokesman says the prime minister backs the ban on receiving books and entirely supports Grayling, whose department imposed the ban to preserve a rigid system of rewards and punishments for prisoners and said there was no need for prisoners to be sent books as prisoners could borrow from prison libraries and keep some reading material in their cells. However a former prisoner told the Guardian that although libraries existed, access could be severely restricted, particularly in closed prisons. 'I've been in places where prisoners only get 20 minutes a week to visit the library and change books.'"
I guess it's more important to keep the slaves in check, and the ministers looking good to the far right, than it is to rehabilitate the prisoners.
No, there is nothing reasonable about it. And, in the UK, as access to legal aid becomes severely reduced and private enterprises are being given contracts to cover all stages of the judicial process (from cop shop through prison management to probation), it's simply turning into a profit-making industry where everyone who lacks the money is milked.
The only useful purpose of prison is to protect society from dangerous individuals while they are being rehabilitated. Denying access to books does not help with this.
I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot. England & Wales does not equal the UK. This ban does not apply to Scotland where the prison service is a devolved body. Sending books to prisoners is only banned in PART of the UK.
Who put you there? Why are you and all these other people in there? Are you going to end up coming back here again? Why didn't we just shoot you the moment the judge struck the gavel? Is a prison supposed to have more functions than appeasing Daily Mail readers with petty acts of vindictiveness?
May the Maths Be with you!
Withholding access to the television, perhaps (gasp!) forcing some prisoners to read, might be a better behavior modification tool.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
and at a time when they're going on about
"they" always go on about "massive amounts of drugs".
And it's not "dead easy" to hide drugs in books if the books are searched and tested for residue, which they will be anyway.
And, no, you can't send prisoners arbitrary amounts of money to buy anything they want. Clearly. Then a rich prisoner could have whatever they wanted.
And prisoners do not need to be grateful for anything - especially not in a society which only provides access to justice to the rich, and which imprisons people for things like TV licence evasion.
And punishing people for the sake of punishing them is pure, ineffective sadism.
And digital copy? For the WiFi and laptops you think they get to use from their beds? Are you high?
Finally, it's way more important for prisoners to be able to occupy their minds to their fullest extent than it is to stop them taking drugs. Although you might want to take a little less of what you are taking.
The UK has a problem with Islamic extremist gangs in prisons. Printed material from external well-wishers and visitors is a huge contributory factor. This problem is far, far worse than any right-ring white gangs in US jails.
For example at the high security prison near Evesham, there is a large gang who slash the faces of anyone who refuses to convert to their brand of Islam. This isn't widely acknowledged by the prisons service, but it leaks out through staff such as prison nurses, who have to deal with the end results.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
You have just described the current state of affairs in the USA.
The war on drugs produces the raw materials (IE, people to put through the system).
The harvesters (the police) get paid for spotting, cutting down and initial rough processing of the raw materials.
The courts (attorneys and judges) do the separating and grading of the rough cut materials.
City and County lockup (jails) do the fine detailing to turn graded rough cut materials into finished products (real, full fledged prisoners)
They then and sell them to businesses (State and Federal prisons) that need the finished products (slave labor prisoners). Call it a business to business transaction.
State and Federal prisons then use their purchased products (slave labor prisoners) in their various industries (manufacturing of electronics, weapons components for the defense industry, you name it).
After the finished product is used up (released from prison), they are recycled and put back through the process.