Barbaritannia - the inhumanity of Chris Grayling's prison reform

Federico Campagna — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:44:06 +0000

When the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling recently announced his intention to reform the British prison system, I couldn’t have agreed more. British prisons are badly in need of reform. Since their ‘privatisation’ – that is, the wholesale of buildings and inmates to G4S, – prisons on the island have become even more overcrowded, insulting of the dignity of the inmates, and completely oblivious of any rehabilitating function that they might be supposed to have. Much like in Britain’s motherland, the US, the prison system seems to have reverted to the gruesome pantomime of a Medieval vision of hell on earth. While the British government keeps waving the supposed superiority of Western culture uber alles, its prison system has completely lost touch with those Enlightenment ideas of human dignity, that have contributed so much to the most decent aspects of our Western civilisation.

One would have expected Grayling to meditate cautiously on his role, possibly to read a book or two by people like Beccaria or Voltaire – Foucault might be too much for a Tory MP, – and finally to burst out in a beautiful announcement on the priority of human dignity over everything, even over the stiff rigour of the law. One would have expected Grayling to comment on the despicable regression of British prisons towards a Victorian model of workhouses, or on the highly dangerous passage of the most controversial of all State powers – the power to kidnap and enslave civilians, legally defined as ‘imprisonment’ – from the hands of the State to those of a private commercial company. In short, one would have expected Grayling to follow the claim of the Latin poet Terence that ‘I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me’ – and to act consequently.

Triage Unit, Lewisham Hospital Psychiatric Observation Ward/ Schadenfreude

Nathan Witt — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:30:07 +0000

We present a text that has been brought to us by Nathan Witt, as part of an on-going conversation on psychopathology, nature and suicide. Others authors included in the conversation so far have been Franco Berardi Bifo, Federico Campagna, Paolo Mossetti and Oana Parvan.

Notes:

7 days is the standard monitoring duration before they determine the course of treatment for the patient.

Description of the unit.

Lift> Hallway> Reception> Decompression/ Containment/ Screening> Main eating area and table tennis table> Kitchen to left> Laundry room to the right> Shared toilet> TV room to the right, off the main eating area> Quiet room on left> Followed by art room>Medication room on right> Followed by assessment room> Shower on same side> At end of hallway of all the rooms is the reception that faces you as you walk through these rooms. To the left of the reception are the female rooms and to the right is a sofa, waiting area followed by the mens rooms. On the right of the hallway is a unisex shower/ toilet and then the dorm rooms start, at the end of the corridor of the mens ward is the staff room. Most of the shouting comes from the women’s side.

through europe - prison

Barbaritannia - the inhumanity of Chris Grayling's prison reform

Triage Unit, Lewisham Hospital Psychiatric Observation Ward/ Schadenfreude