This is all well and good, and for sure it is heartening to see more and more work being done in the anti-prison field. But once again this malarkey about 'rights' pops up its evil head. This concept of human 'rights' only ultimately confuses the issue.

In order for one to have 'rights' in this context, the 'rights' in question have to be asked for before being given or conferred. In other words the very process automatically presumes a heirarchy where those asking/demanding 'rights' accept that those who would confer said 'rights' are in a position to do so, not simply from a position of social or political authority but also from a stance of moral or ethical superiority.

To demand 'rights' from those in power upon the topic of incarceration is to automatically give those in power, those who inflict mental and physical pain and torture upon an increasingly criminalised, an increrasingly controlled, an increasingly disenfranchised and an increasingly disaffected population.

To ask for rights from people such as these not only sends out the message that you regard these people as being morally and ethically superior (in the sense that you would deferentially ask them for your 'rights' believing that they are in a position to grant a 'right' which has some substance) but it also strengthens, underlines and reiterates the basic authoritarian, heirarchical social position of such people. It strengthens the perception of the power which they think that they hold, mainly because of the way thay they are deferentially treated by those who, for whatever reason, consider themselves to be socially inferior to such political brutes.

If one must really talk in the language of 'rights' then surely these 'rights' should be not demanded, but taken. Taken so that along with all other forms of social restraint and control they can be exposed for the orwellian double speak that they are and ultimately redefined or destroyed.

The real topic for discussion should be how the very concept of prison, based upon Bentham's panopticon, has left the confines of the prison and is slowly encroaching upon every aspect of life in modern civil society. Once you have been in prison you can truly see it for what it really is- a perfect microcosm of how the State would love to run the whole of society- everyone in the right place at the right time doing whatever they are told to do- a system of control where most people unquestioningly obey the voice of authority. We can see this model of social control becoming representative of general society in the form of cctv, asbo's, electronic tags, curfews, community police officers(guards), increased loss of social freedoms or 'rights' (ha! there we go again!) fought for and gained over centuries, a huge recent increase in laws with the effect that virtually every form of unwanted (by those in power) or 'anti-social' behaviour is now criminalised, with the corresponding effect that the prison population rises etc, etc.

In effect the whole of the United Kingdom becomes a huge open prison in an ongoing experiment in social control.

Surely this is what should be being discussed- not whether if we go cap in hand to the State (or increasingly- the private sector), begging to be given more 'rights' from their left hand as they take away even more with their right hand we would end up in a better situation than we are now?

This is nothing more than reformist, collaborationist, liberal do-gooding which although it has merit in that it discusses the obvious problem of prison abuse, it does nothing to really address it in a way that would offer any kind of real change other than some piecemeal reform which would undoubtedly be offered by the State as they grudgingly dish out some more 'rights'.

Fire to the Prisons!
Fire to the State!
For a society based on mutual aid and co-operation
not centralised power, heirarchy and deferential nonsense such as 'rights'
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@