The Abolitionist No 13 (1983)

Introduction /Commentary by John Moore

No 13 is the first edition to incorporate PROP’s Prison Briefing. As a result, No13 and subsequent editions contain far more content directly related to what is going on inside prisons. This section includes updates on the construction of new high-security dispersal prisons; the experience of prisoners kept in solitary confinement and highlighted how sentences in Britain were the harshest in the EEC. Shorter articles look at the impact of TV documentaries on the privacy of prisoners, prison medicine and the muddle of prison statistics. The briefing is completed by a summary of reviews of the recent book Frightened For My Life (reviewed in No. 12), letters from Martin Wright calling on PROP to support Prisoner/Staff Mediation; a letter from the Catholic Chaplain in Armagh Prison highlighting the degrading and disgusting strip searching of girls and women in the prison; and a brief update on Hollway and the imprisonment of activists from Greenham Common.

The RAP content includes news of its financial troubles and that it is currently homeless. Tony Ward recounts a number of harrowing accounts of recent deaths in custody; a reprint of an editorial from World Medicine titled ‘Perverted medicine’ critiquing both the quality of medical care in British prisons and the complicity of the BMA. A former Assistant Director of the Howard League writes about ‘penal reform in crisis’; the Scottish correspondent gives an update on Matt Lygate; and the response by RAP and PROP to a Commons select committee on prison education is printed in full.   Finally the edition includes a number of book reviews including on the Labour Party’s discussion document Prisons and on the recently released film Scrubbers.