Local activists set up prisoner support group
Article published: Thursday, February 16th 2012
Contact from the outside world can mean a great deal to a prisoner. A new group, Manchester Prisoner Support, is meeting regularly to write letters to prisoners incarcerated for acts in relation to political activism.
Carly Lyes, a founding group member, said the causes involved could include environmentalism, antifascist demonstrations, and student fees and animal rights protests. She described the prisoners they contact as “people either from political causes who, in our opinion, might have been the victim of a miscarriage of justice, or have been incarcerated for reasons that we on a political level are uncomfortable with.”
Lyes says they began the “community project” in reaction to the fact that “people we knew started getting sent down, and we wanted to support them.”
However, the group is not only a “supportive network” for activists, and they also aim to write to people they feel “might be alienated” or “isolated”. Members say they feel there are dangers of “playing the whole ‘good prisoner bad prisoner’ game”, and criticise the stigma attached to prisoners. “They don’t get a voice. They’re just labelled and excluded. Even if they’ve committed horrific crimes, they are a necessity for moral consideration”, said co-founder Clifford Cawthon.
Another member, Tim, spoke of his reasons for taking part: “For somebody in isolation, writing that letter, the human contact… it’s really important. It is that human connection isn’t it? You’re doing something that’s good for somebody else.”
Tim also voiced concern about the aftermath of the riots, which resulted in a series of controversial fast-track sentences. “Something that really shocked me was the really harsh sentences that are normally non-custodial. These are all young people with no experience of prison.”
At this stage the group have not contacted people involved in the August riots, although they are considering the idea. “I personally find that some of the sentences that were given out are completely out of context with regard to the action. People were incarcerated to make a political point,” said Lyes.
Underlying their letter writing is a broader scepticism towards the concept of imprisonment, which Lyes calls “an absolute infringement of people’s basic human and political rights” and believes there are more effective methods of rehabilitation than incarceration. In addition, the backdrop to the group’s foundation is the creeping privatisation of the UK prison system, with for-profit companies operating prisons in a way described by Mark Serwotka, head of the civil servants’ union PCS, as “naked profiteering.”
Manchester Prisoner Support share this view: “It’s a cost cutting exercise. It would involve standards going down; it would mean that prisoners and their welfare would be second to costs,” said Lyes. “It’s really a way to make the growth of prisons into a growth of profits, and it’s very scary,” Cawthon added.
Some in the group disavow pessimism however, with Cawthon arguing that the UK prison system “has the potential to be replaced by something much more humane,” saying “what we are doing now is talking to prisoners, we are engaging them, we are not just treating them like cattle.”
Oli Rahman
To get involved email mancprisonersupport@riseup.net
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