Nelson Mandela once said: “It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.” This quote is particularly pertinent in modern Britain, as the real story of our PIC (Prison Industrial Complex) has flown under the radar, partially from lack of reporting and partially from the complacency of our opposition governments over the last twenty years.

In the United Kingdom there tends to be a general assumption that our prison system works. People are in prison because they deserve to be – the system isn’t perfect, but our prisons simply need better funding and upkeep because they are nearing capacity – a natural development and not something created by our government. In actuality in the last twenty years the prison population in England and Wales has doubled as private companies swept in to buy up large portions of the Prison Industrial Complex. What impact has letting private interests into our justice system had on the concept of justice in modern Britain? And perhaps more importantly: is our justice system really just at all?

The United Kingdom has the most privatised Prison system in Europe with 11.6% of prisoners imprisoned in private prisons out of a total prison population of 85,690. The roots of this trend can be traced back to John Major’s government when in 1992 HMP Wolds was opened; our first private prison. Since then the trend has stayed the same and the prison system has silently been undergoing a massive transformation. At the time the Conservatives cheered it as a success, however by 2008 it was revealed that 10 of the 11 private prisons were in the bottom quarter of the Ministry of Justice’s prison assessment league table, their plan had failed and the neo-liberal agenda was wallowing in its disillusionment about its various failures .

Despite this, the Tory government is pushing ahead with the plans to build five new super-prisons across the UK as of this november. Designed like large battery-farms and housing thousands of prisoners each, these mega-prisons are grim, brutalist warehouses designed to use prisoners as super-cheap workforce for private companies. The recent Blairite Labour and authoritarian free-marketeer Conservative governments therefore have an incentive to put people in prison – and have created 3,200 more offences that people can be locked away for in the last 15 years. The barbaric nature of this system was shown in 2012 when it was revealed that prisoners in Prescoed Prison in Monmouthshire were being paid 40p an hour by a local call centre and made up 15% of their workforce.

In the UK’s largest private prison it was reported that drugs were easier to obtain than soap.

It is a convenient answer for the Conservative party: they govern a nation staring an imminent economic downturn in the face following the vote to leave the EU. They have been planning large scale private prisons for years and now have a desperate need to mask unemployment figures by shunting sectors of the Working Class into jails to be used as cheap labour. In fact, the people being locked up are not hardened criminals who pose a threat to society but the most vulnerable among us who face serious problems: 27% of adult prisoners were in care as children, rising to 40% among those under 21. . It has been proven time and time again that for these people, rehabilitation is the way forwards and the prison system brutalises these people and turns them into repeat offenders, however now the Capitalists have found a way to turn this to their advantage. These people are not separated from society to protect us, they are economic prisoners of the government, exploited by state and company in their time of need, their lives irrevocably ruined as the search for jobs on the outside world is often fruitless and they are forced into the cycle of criminality.

The issue of how Women are treated by the Prison system also highlights how appalling it has become in the UK. In the last ten years the female prison population has jumped by a third of what it was, to 3,936. While this figure looks low, the people being imprisoned are being harmed by the system: Over half have been victims of domestic violence and one in three has experienced sexual abuse. In addition two thirds of these women have children under eighteen on the outside. The vast majority of female prisoners are in prison for non-violent offences (80%), yet are committed to into an organisation that perpetuates crime and teaches violence. These shocking statistics hammer home the abusive nature of Britain’s modern prisons.

The government has never really conducted serious study into the number of prisoners who have learning difficulties, but they have guessed various times and it is believed to be a sizeable chunk near to 30% (according to Criminal Justice Joint Inspection). The imprisonment of the mentally ill and other high-risk groups inevitably leads to self harm and suicide. In fact 2016 was the highest year for prisoner suicides since records began. Prisons have been getting worse in these metrics since the system has become more privatised, and similarly to how schools have been transformed into near-despotic academies, prison Governors will have excessive power within their prisons, turning each one into a profitable mini-brand. As justice secretary Liz Truss put it in her White Paper in November: “We want governors to have the power and budget to determine how their prisons are run, including how to prioritise and deliver services within their prisons.” It is made abundantly clear here that the prison system is now little more than a front for “delivering services“. The actual security of the prisons is of little importance in comparison, as was proven in 2013 at Oakwood, Britain’s largest private prison, where prisoners reported it was easier to obtain drugs than soap.

Special lobbyist groups pressure for pro-company imprisonment laws such as the IPP (imprisonment for public protection). This was an indeterminate sentence for prisoners who did not warrant a life sentence. In short, the prisoner completes their minimum sentence and is then bounced around the prison complex and stuck on long lists to be reviewed – during this time they make lots of money for private security companies and money as cheap labour too. They were abolished in 2012 because the laws were so ridiculously corporate that everyone noticed. However, 4,600 prisoners remain unfairly imprisoned on these now-illegal sentences. Three quarters of these people have completed their minimum sentence while 400 have completed five times their minimum sentence and are still in prison.

Crime has fallen in the last decade, but prison sentences have risen by 24%

From these statistics it is clear: the prison system is unjust and has been for some time, but worse than this it is now being used as a political weapon to push unemployment figures down, and then while companies use the cheap labour the blame is shifted onto “jobstealing immigrants” by tabloid newspapers and reactionary politicians. According to the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (an independent analysis group) while crime has fallen in the last decade prison sentences have not only risen exponentially but risen in length. This article barely scratches the surface and the best place to learn about the failings of Britain’s criminal justice system is the Empty Cages Collective, an anti-prison campaign advocating alternatives some of which are similar to the Scandinavian system.

We need to oppose this corrupt system and work towards building a system which rehabilitates and heals those who contend with the toughest issues in our society. A healthy and fair criminal justice system is not a pipedream, it simply requires a willingness to reform this broken and inexcusable structure, yet another challenge which our political leaders will shirk from and shift onto the next government creating a generational problem which becomes normalised such as the US prison system. We need to stand up now to prevent that from happening. We must see an end to this exploitation.

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