Prison numbers in England and Wales hit fresh record

From the BBC:

The prison population in England and Wales has increased by almost 200 in a week, taking it to a new all-time high of 87,945.

Governors have 1,310 places available across jails to deal with further rises.

The rise in the population has been put down to the numbers being jailed or remanded following England’s riots.

The Ministry of Justice said it had contingency plans in place and capacity would soon increase further.

The Prison Service said that as of Friday the maximum operational capacity was 89,255 – the level judged to be the safest after taking into account the need to segregate some prisoners.

A spokesman said: “We have seen a significant rise in the prison population as a result of the public disorder in August.

“Managing the increase in the population is challenging but we have been continually developing contingencies to manage the additional population.

“We currently have enough prison places for those being remanded and sentenced to custody.”

The spokesman said capacity would rise in 2012 with the opening of two new prisons. HMP Thameside, in South-East London, will hold up to 900 inmates. HMP Featherstone 2, near Wolverhampton, will hold 1,600.

“We will continue to explore contingencies arrangements should further pressure be placed on the prison estate.”

The Ministry of Justice said that no inmates had been placed in police cells under the long-standing Operation Safeguard emergency plans. These plans were last activated in 2007 when spare capacity dropped to around 100 places.

Figures released last month suggested that the riots would contribute to the prison population growing by about 1,000 over the next year.

Europe – France:  Police Brutalize Immigrants During Eviction

Sarkozy’s racist scapegoating

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=22045

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is using vicious scapegoating to try to distract attention from a government expenses scandal and a revolt against his pensions attacks.

He is part of a trend across Europe to spread hatred and division in an effort to blunt opposition to our rulers’ plans to make us pay for the crisis. Such manoeuvres can pave the way for open racists and fascists to prosper.

Over the last week Sarkozy called for a new “war on crime”. He said that foreign-born individuals would be stripped of their French nationality if they attacked police or public officials, cynically meshed ideas of “immigrant” and “criminal”, and lashed out at Roma people and travellers.

“We are suffering the consequences of 50 years of insufficiently regulated immigration which has led to a failure of integration,” he said.

Sarkozy is no stranger to virulent and racist scaremongering. He has repeatedly used the idea of a feral and alien “racaille” (scum) to scare voters into backing him.

He divides France into those who work hard and respect the law and those who are criminal and worthless. But his latest comments went further than ever before.

Several of the measures he called for ape the policies of Jean Marie Le Pen’s fascist National Front party. Several French commentators criticised the plan as similar to measures used against the Jews by the pro-Nazi Vichy regime in the 1940s.

Sarkozy hopes to scoop up far right voters, but is more likely to strengthen and legitimise the National Front.

His tough rhetoric was followed by the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux, who warned that citizenship could also be revoked for those found guilty of other offences such as polygamy or other “serious criminal acts”.

Actions

Words lead to actions. When the president gives a lead, the state’s attack dogs know what’s required.

Police drove about 50 Roma from a squat in Montreuil, east of Paris, on Friday of last week.

Even before the “get tough” campaign, police broke up a demonstration by 150 people, mostly African immigrant women, protesting against their eviction from squats in a council tower block in a suburb of Paris.

Almost all were completely legal and had lived in France for a decade or more.

A video of the eviction (available at www.socialistworker.co.uk) shows police assaulting women, children and men. One particularly vile episode shows officers dragging off a woman with a baby on her back.

The onslaught was on the same estate where Sarkozy threatened to use an industrial hose to clean out drug gangs. The local police authority rejected charges of brutality—a spokesman said that the woman with a baby on her back had “thrown herself on the ground which meant the officers could not at first see her baby”.

The opposition Socialist Party criticised Sarkozy’s most extreme phrases. But its own representatives have demanded more spending on the police and said that Sarkozy was not doing enough to tackle criminality.

And Sarkozy would have been encouraged by the 335 to one vote in the French parliament to ban the wearing of the Islamic full-face veil.

France shows the danger of the right coming up with divisive measures to break resistance to the cuts.

Some of those victimised are already hitting back. In the small town of Saint-Aignan, in central France, a group of around 50 Roma armed with axes attacked a police station after police shot and killed a 22-year old.

There has to be clear resistance to racism and Islamophobia, and a class alternative to the idea that workers must pay for the crisis.

Millions of French workers are set to take part in strikes and protests on 7 September against pension “reform”. That unity, combined with political arguments against racism and the cuts, can defeat Sarkozy’s strategy.

Prison numbers in England and Wales hits record high

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8697456.stm

The prison population in England and Wales has reached a record high of 85,201, it has emerged.

Ministry of Justice figures show this figure was 192 more than last Friday.

Campaigners have called for Justice Secretary Ken Clarke to freeze the building of new prisons and stop the number of inmates rising further.

In February Jack Straw, the then justice secretary, announced the end of an early release scheme which saw more than 80,000 offenders let out.

No prisoners were eligible for the End of Custody Licence (ECL) scheme after 12 March and the last remaining ECL prisoners were out on 9 April.

This is crazy, this racist stabbed a pregnant woman!!!  You might not run into racism of this rabbid variety, but will you speak up if someone says a racist comment in front of you, or will you be silent?!

Outrage over Muslim woman killed in court

Funeral of a Martyr: Thousands of Egyptians mourned the victim of German hate crime who was a pregnant Egyptian woman, during her funeral in Alexandria.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/07/muslim-woman-shot-germany-court

This xenophobia is on the rise all across Europe and the world (remember the anti-immigrant riots in South Africa not too long ago) as a result of the decline of capitalism and its profits.  As people search for someone to blame for their problems they grasp onto other victims of capitalism, instead of pointing the finger where it should be pointed:  at their own ruling class.  This has lead to viscious attacks but it is only the beginning.  If capitalism doesn’t stabilize it will get much worse. 

Italy targets illegal immigrants

Modern-day fascists in Italy oppose all "non-Italians" living in their country. The decline of capitalism causes this xenophobia to rear its ugly head.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/07/2009767145577693.html

A restaurant called White sits on a small side street in the centre of Rome. 

While people on the ground floor order their pastas and salad, a meeting is being held upstairs. 

Amid shouts of “victory” and straight-armed salutes, the Movimento Sociale Italiano party (MSI), which believes Italy would be a better country if it stopped immigration and cracked down on those who sneak in illegally, is celebrating the fact that new legislation passed by the Italian senate has met many of their wishes.

The law makes illegal immigration a crime punishable with a maximum fine of $14,000 and raises to six months the amount of time that illegal migrants can be detained in holding centres before being kicked out of the country.

Gaetano Saya, a MSI member, has been investigated by police for posting racist material on a website. He once said “immigration is the biggest threat to our race”. 

In charge of today’s gathering, as we sit in the cool of the café he tells me: “We think the immigrants are very dangerous. When we come to power we will stop all immigration and begin to send back those who arrived here after a certain date.

“We have a new phrase. These people are not immigrants, they are non-Italians and we don’t want any more non-Italians on Italian territory.”

Worry and fear

There may be as many as 600,000 illegal immigrants in Italy; they don’t exactly announce their presence. Many live unnoticed, unremarkable lives. 

But under the new legislation, Italians must turn them over to the authorities if they try to register their children for school, or look for medical treatment. 

Abdul says he fears Italians will feel they have to turn him in if he goes to hospital

Bari Abdul arrived in Rome three years ago from Guinea and lives on the streets. We met near a soup kitchen where hot meals are handed out to others like him. 

He doesn’t speak much but is very worried about the new law.

“I can’t even go to get treatment at hospital now – the Italians there will feel they have to turn me in,” he says, ignoring the fact that he is in the country illegally.

Esquilinho is a rough neighbourhood in central Rome that is home to many immigrants.

Alphousseyn Sonko was born here. He has Senegalese parents but an Italian passport. 

Sonko believes the new law will make life tougher for people like him: “This so-called security law is more about those with papers and how they live rather than how you stop those coming across the Mediterranean Sea.”

‘Really bad law’

Mario Marazziti works for the Sant Edidio charity which offers help to those who need it – wherever they come from. For many it provides the only hot meal of the day.

In the pretty courtyard, Italians and immigrants mingle, and for a few short minutes, their lives mesh, backgrounds forgotten, their needs exactly the same.  

Mario can barely disguise his contempt for politicians.

“The so-called security law that has been just passed by the Italian parliament is a really bad law. It’s a big signal to the population; it says immigrants are a potential risk, potential criminals. The crime this law is targeting is the crime of hope and the desire for a better life,” he says.

Immigrants and immigration are not on the agenda for this week’s G8 summit in Italy.

But a number of charities and aid agencies believe that with the financial crisis and the rise of support for right-wing parties across Europe, it is one factor that will influence many of the decisions that will be made here.

Girl hurt in racist attack

The victim of the racist attack, pictured with the pendant still embedded in her face.

http://www.theasiannews.co.uk/news/s/1122131_girl_hurt_in_racist_attack

A TEENAGE girl has spoken about the moment she was racially abused before being punched in the face by another girl in Springfield Park.

The 17-year-old victim was hit with such force that the pendant from her attacker’s bracelet was left embedded in her face, an inch from her eye.

She sustained a fractured eye socket, a deep cut and severe bruising in the attack, which took place at about 7.20pm last Tuesday.

The victim had taken her three young sisters to play on the swings, together with her sister-in-law, who was with her 12-month-old baby daughter.

The group were confronted by two girls already on the swings and told they could not use them, before being racially abused.

A short time later, a third girl and a boy joined in the abuse, before the victim was punched in the face by one of the girls, the pendant from her bracelet narrowly missing her eye.

She was taken by ambulance to Rochdale Infirmary with it still embedded in her face, where doctors then removed it.

Three girls, two aged 16 and one aged 14, were arrested in connection with the incident and bailed until 16 July pending further inquiries.

A man was arrested and released without charge.

Police are keen to trace a man who was wearing a red T-shirt, possibly a Manchester United top, who intervened during the verbal abuse and before the attack took place.

Speaking exclusively to the Observer, the victim, who has asked to remain anonymous, says the pain of being hit was so severe she thought the pendant had gone into her eye.

She said: “My eye was really swollen. It felt like my eyeball had come out.”

The 17-year-old, who is training to be a hairdresser, says this is the first tine she has ever encountered anything like this, either in the park or elsewhere. She added: “A guy started saying stuff about the BNP. He told me he was more British than I was and that I didn’t belong here.

“I wasn’t happy about the racist comments. At the end of the day, we’re all human beings it doesn’t matter what race we are.”

The victim of the racist attack after medical treatment.

Police Constable Lee Worswick, of the hate crime unit based at Rochdale, said: “This was a particularly savage attack on a young teenage girl who had simply gone out with her three younger sisters to play on the swings. If the pendant had gone into her eyeball, she could have suffered permanent damage and lost her eyesight. If that had happened, this senseless and needless attack would have ended in tragedy.

“Racism in any form is totally abhorren,t and shows a complete lack of education and understanding for other cultures. We are working very hard through the hate crime unit to send out the message that we will not tolerate this sort of behaviour and we will punish racists.

“Extra officers were brought in over the weekend to deal with this job and we understand it will cause concern in the community. This has enabled us to make arrests but we will not be complacent. We are very keen to speak to the man who intervened during the verbal abuse so we can move this investigation forward.”

The victim’s 22-year-old sister-in-law says she believes the full severity of the attack has yet to sink in.

She said: “I think she’s still in shock about what happened and will be for a while.”

The attack has been condemned by the Friends of Springfield Park group, which has pledged to invite a GMP representative to their next meeting to discuss how to prevent any similar incidents happening in future.

Chairman Dave Logan said: “Everyone, regardless of age, creed, religion, colour, race, politics or anything else, has a right to feel and be safe in our parks.

“Perhaps it is time to consider adopting a zero tolerance policy and nipping any sort of racist crime, and all other crimes, in the bud.”

Two men hurt in ‘racist’ attack

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/8111650.stm

Two African men have been assaulted in what police say was a racially-motivated attack in Liverpool.

One of the victims received a suspected broken jaw in the attack on Halsbury Road in Kensington in the early hours of Sunday.

The pair were leaving the Wine Cross off-licence when a number of men got out of a taxi and one of the gang began to racially abuse and assault them.

The second victim was chased by the gang but suffered only minor injuries.

Det Ch Insp Neil Cowdrey said: “Merseyside Police will not tolerate hate crime and I want to reassure the local community that we are doing everything in our power to catch these offenders.

“I would appeal to the driver of the hackney cab to come forward as he may have information that is vital for the investigation.”

A Romanian woman and her child are escorted by police into the Ozone Leisure Centre in Belfast

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6517825.ece

More than 100 Romanians were sheltering in a church hall today after fleeing their homes in Belfast because of racist attacks.

Around 20 families were helped by police to evacuate their homes in the Lisburn Road area of south Belfast and seek safety last night.

Police and community leaders condemned racism in the area which culminated in an attack on a rally in support of the east European migrants on Monday night.

Youths threw bottles and made Nazi salutes at those taking part in the anti-racism rally.

The men, women and children, including a five-day-old baby girl, first sought shelter in a house where they thought they would be safe.

But there were so many trying to cram in they didn’t fit and a local church offered them the use of the church hall for as long as they need.

Pastor Malcolm Morgan claimed the church had been happy to help, saying: “It is a sad indictment of our society, but hopefully we can show them a different side to Northern Ireland and a caring side to Northern Ireland.”

He said he believed a “small group of racist thugs” were behind the attacks.

“When (the Romanians) arrived last night they were very distraught and bewildered,” he added. “We have a five-day-old baby amongst the group and lots of young children.

“They are migrant workers and I don’t think it is anything to do with religion at all.”

Police patrols were stepped up in a bid to stop the racist attacks which have continued for four days after festering for months.

A Police Service of Northern Ireland spokeswoman said: “Police in the south Belfast area assisted several organisations in the temporary relocation of a number of families following consultation with community representatives.

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Racist gang attack family’s home

A gang smashed windows at this house in south Belfast

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/8100501.stm

A Romanian family has been targeted in a series of racist attacks in south Belfast.

A gang smashed windows and terrorised pregnant women and children in attacks on two houses on Belgravia and Wellesley avenues.

Police have said they are investigating racist incidents and criminal damage in both areas over the last four days.

A spokeswoman said a crowd gathered a number of times and windows were broken.

There are no reports of injuries and no arrests have been made.

SDLP councillor Niall Kelly said it was a “sickening” incident.

“It is becoming more and more apparent that these attacks are more than just isolated incidents, but are part of an orchestrated attempt to force people from the area,” he said.

Alliance assembly member Anna Lo said they were contemptible “acts of intimidation and hate”.

“These thugs need to realise that it is people who carry out racist hate crimes who are not welcome in our society,” she said.

“People who can help police catch the perpetrators of these attacks must contact them immediately.”

‘Ignored’

People living in the area are organising a protest against the attacks on the Lisburn Road on Monday evening.

One neighbour told BBC News that the attacks have been ongoing for several nights.

“There are children and pregnant women living in these houses,” he said.

“My partner is Indian and we’ve also been targeted – our house has been bricked.

“The police were here 40 minutes last night before they spoke to the people who were actually attacked and they were only with them for five minutes.

“More needs to be done. The whole thing has been been ignored to date.”

The man said anybody he had spoken to locally had been “appalled by what’s been going on”.

“There are also a lot of people, who aren’t white, who are understandably frightened,” he added.

Combat 18

It has been claimed that up to 20 people gathered outside the properties which were attacked.

It is also alleged that those involved shouted Combat 18 slogans and a letter containing text from Hitler’s Mein Kampf was pushed through the letterbox of one of the properties.

There have been racial tensions in the area since trouble erupted at a World Cup qualifier between Northern Ireland and Poland at Windsor Park in March.

A number of migrant families subsequently decided to leave their homes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8054630.stm

Violence in jails has risen by a third in five years, according to figures obtained by a prison charity.

The Howard League for Penal Reform says there were 40,000 acts of violence in English and Welsh prisons during 2008 – more than 100 incidents a day.

Director Frances Crook said the rise was “far above” what might be expected, blaming overcrowding and the imprisonment of mentally ill people.

But a Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said the figures were “misleading”.

The figures were obtained by Liberal Democrat MP Paul Holmes and Conservative MP James Gray in answers to parliamentary questions .

Their figures claimed that between 2004 and 2008:

• Prisoner-on-prisoner assaults rose by 36% with a total of 56,517 incidents
• Young offenders institutions saw an even more pronounced jump in violence with a 58% rise
• Self-harm rose by a quarter, almost half the incidents involving women – despite females making up just 5% of the prison population

Ms Crook said: “This shocking rise in violence is far above what might be expected.

“We lock up increasing numbers of men, women and children whose mental health problems and addictions will never be properly treated within our flooded jails.

“As these are recorded statistics, it is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg with real levels of assaults, rapes and arson much higher than the Prison Service is admitting.”

The charity says individual prisons saw even higher rises – including a 1,200% jump in cases of arson at Reading young offender’s institution.

Ms Crook continued: “Overcrowded and squalid conditions lead to violence and chaos.

“The answer to rising prison populations is not to build more failing jails, which churn out prisoners more dangerous from having spent time in our colleges of crime.”

She added: “It is time for the government to look at wholesale reform of the penal system.”

But a Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “The use of assault and self harm data by the Howard League is misleading.

“It is not appropriate to add self harm and assault then infer the total is a measure of prison violence.

“Despite an increase in the number of prisoners convicted of violent offences, the percentage of all assaults that are considered serious remains stable at about 10%.

“There are community mental health teams working in 102 prisons and every prison has a violence reduction strategy.”