Pubdate: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 Source: Independent on Sunday (UK) Copyright: Independent Newspapers (UK) Ltd. Contact: 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/sindy/sindy.html Author: Inmate, Brixton Jail 'RETRIBUTION BY STAFF IS SWIFT AND UNCHECKED' An Inmate Writes Of The Daily Hell Of Life In Brixton Jail "Locked up for days on end without exercise, education or even library facilities, it's little wonder that inmates sometimes go off the rails. "Fights routinely break out, especially on A wing where a huge proportion of the inmates are heroin or crack addicts on remand. "This wing is under almost constant 'lock-down', its officers too stretched to be concerned about the filthy condition of cells where cold-turkeying addicts bang and wail through the night and violent prisoners bully and injure weaker cellmates for the pathetic currency of tobacco and spare food. "As one fellow inmate observed: 'If they took all the druggies and head-cases out of Brixton, the place would be empty.' "Urinating and defecating on cell floors, rampaging wild-eyed and bawling nonsensically around the yard on their rare exercise periods, these poor souls provide gloomy entertainment for other inmates. "If they assault other staff, the physical retribution meted out to them by staff is swift and unchecked. "Paul Boateng is now forced to address the problems after the governor warned that Brixton's medical facilities are at crisis point and that if remedial action is not immediately forthcoming the prison will refuse to accept more drug-related or mentally ill offenders. "Home Office statistics show most theft is drug related and most Brixton inmates are in here on theft charges as a direct consequence of feeding their drug habit. "The immediate consequence of Boateng's visit is, ironically, even less exercise and 'free association', as the management brief staff and, as they see it, reduce risk. "If the same politicians who glibly advocate these 'tough' policies as the panacea for allaying public fears about crime in the community were to spend a little more thought and money investigating credible alternatives, crises like this one at Brixton might not be so common. In the meantime there have allegedly been 21 suicide attempts here in the past month." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D