The spirit of the Stasi lives on in Britain

Last night Gordon Brown joined other world leaders in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall. But while he and others waxed lyrical about the joys of freedom, his government was forcing a sinister Bill through parliament which reinforces state secrecy in Britain.

Throughout its 12 year-rule, New Labour – with Jack Straw leading the charge – has tirelessly provided the police and the secret state with more and more powers. New Labour’s latest effort in this direction will reduce still further the power of the public and the media to find out why someone has died violently or from unknown causes.

The legislation was forced through the Commons with a majority of eight. This now means that those who have lost loved ones as well as the public, can be barred from attending hearings into controversial deaths. As Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews noted, “the government is handing a massive new power to the executive”.

The ancient right to a public inquest can now be overruled by government ministers and replaced with a secret inquiry simply by order under the new law, which was smuggled in via the Coroners and Justice Bill. Earlier this year, justice secretary Straw tried unsuccessfully to introduce secret inquests. Yesterday he claimed the secret inquiry measure was necessary to keep secret the snooping activities – also known as “intercepts” – by the police and intelligence agencies.

The measure went through only days after it emerged that Scotland Yard’s Territorial Support Group (TSG) – responsible for the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 City of London protests – has received 5,241 complaint allegations in the last four years. The figures also show that only nine – yes, you read that correctly, that’s nine, or 0.18 per cent – were “substantiated” after being investigated by the police’s own complaints department.

The results are so suspicious that even the normally pro-police Daily Mail has published allegations by a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority that the TSG “enjoys some form of immunity as far as the actions of its members are concerned”.

Scotland Yard has, naturally enough, denied this, saying complaints about the conduct of its officers are taken “extremely seriously”. Does this include the case of TSG officer, former Royal Marine PC Mark Jones, who has just returned to duty? Jones was one of the police officers present when a Muslim computer expert Babar Ahmad was arrested in his South London home. His accusations of police brutality were rejected by the Police Complaints Commission, but he was nonetheless awarded £60,000 after police admitted he had been subject to “gratuitous violence”. No less than 31 complaints have been made against Jones since 1993, 26 of them being allegations of assault, including one of racially aggravated assault. Many of those complaining have been black or Asian men.

The so-called independence of those who are supposed to monitor and investigate the activities of Scotland Yard’s finest is clear in the appointment last month of Commander Moir Stewart to the leadership of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and to its management board. Stewart, a top Scotland Yard officer, was personally criticised for failings in the bungled police anti-terror operation that lead to execution of the innocent Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in July 2005 in Stockwell.

Back to Brown and the fall of Berlin Wall. The power of the hated East German Stasi secret police collapsed at the same time. But while Brown was in Berlin, his Home Office was announcing that it would push ahead with plans to compel communications firms to monitor all internet use in a measure that the Stalinists would have been proud of.

The Home Office says it wants to change the law to require communication service providers to collect and retain records of communications from a wider range of internet sources, from social networks through to chat rooms and unorthodox methods, such as within online games.

Christopher Graham, the Information Commissioner, commented tersely: “The proposal represents a step change in the relationship between the citizen and the state." Need we say more?

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Crime and punishment

Perhaps it could be a two-part question set for those taking a “citizenship test” to prove that they know about British values before getting a passport (or an ID card). How big is the prison population and what distinguishes the country’s record in jailing people? Answer: the prison population in England and Wales has risen to a record high of 82,006 - 21 places short of capacity; nowhere in Western Europe jails more of its population than England and Wales, where about 147 people per 100,000 are in prison.

New Labour has presided over a rise of more than one third in prison numbers since 1997. When it first came into government, the prison population was 60,131. The increase is not surprising since during the same period, the state has created more than 3,000 new criminal offences and ministers have ratcheted up the rhetoric on crime to appease the middle-class law-and-order brigade. More than half of prisoners serve less than six months and about one in five prisoners is being held on remand.

While new social house building has slumped under New Labour, some 17,000 extra prison spaces have been created. A further 8,000 are planned. It is clear where the government’s priorities lie. But like most of this government’s policies, they are simply not working. So after years of urging courts to jail anyone and everyone, justice secretary Jack Straw today calls on magistrates to send fewer people to prison – presumably until the prison building programme can catch up.

The causes of crime are complex but in a period of comparative prosperity it is clear that significant numbers of people remain excluded and alienated from mainstream consumer society. So in 2006, the second biggest group sentenced to prison were convicted of drugs offences and about 8,500 of burglary. Almost half of prisoners ran away as a child - compared to 11% of the general population. About one in three female and half of male prisoners were excluded from school and a majority have no qualifications. Less than 5% of the general population have two or more mental disorders, compared to 72% of male and 70% of female sentenced prisoners.

Locking up people in overcrowded prisons as a punishment and a supposed deterrent simply doesn’t work. Re-offending rates among offenders are high - about two thirds are reconvicted within two years of release. Among men aged 18-21 the rate is about three quarters. Over half of offenders receive no training. And only one in five of prisoners exceed the standards expected of an 11 year old in writing. Nearly one in three will not have somewhere to live upon release. A majority of prisoners will have no job to go to and six out of 10 employers automatically exclude those with a criminal record.

The prison system reflects the class divided and unequal society we live in, where the political elites play to the gallery with their crude divisions of people into “good” and “evil”. Prison is viewed, in a simple, medieval way, as a means of inflicting punishment, of retribution rather than a possible route to rehabilitation and integration.

Globalised capitalist society has destroyed meaningful, well-paid jobs in many areas of the country, especially for men, adding to the sense of social exclusion. Those numbers will increase as economic recession bites, adding to the tendency to offend. In framing alternatives to New Labour’s über-competitive society, we must rethink the whole approach to offending and prison to create a system that reflects the society we would like to have, and not the one that Straw presides over.


Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor