NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS

This Section reports on the emergence of prisoner control as a privatised industry, whilst state prisons face increasing pressure to substitute technology for staff in cost cutting exercises. It expresses concern about the social and political implications of replacing policies of rehabilitation with strategies of human warehousing and recommends common criteria for licensing all public and private prisons within the EU. At minimum this should cover operators responsibilities and prisoners rights in regard to rehabilitation requirements; UN Minimum Treatment of Prisoners rules banning the use of leg irons; the regulation and use of psychotropic drugs to control prisoners; the use of riot control, prisoner transport, restraint and extraction technologies. The report recommends a ban on (i) all automatic, mass. indiscriminate prisoner punishment technologies using less lethal instruments such as chemical

irritant or baton rounds; (ii) kill fencing and lethal area denial systems; and (iii) all use of electro-shock, stun and electric restraint technology until and unless independent medical evidence can prove that it safe and will not contribute to either deaths in custody or inhumane treatment, torture or other cruel and unusual punishments.

6. NEW PRISON CONTROL SYSTEMS

Some of the equipment described above, such as the surveillance, area denial, surveillance and crowd control technologies, also finds a ready use inside permanent prisons and houses of correction. Other devices such as the area denial, perimeter fencing systems such as portable coils of razor wire, prison transport vehicles with mini cage cells, and tagging equipment are used to create temporary holding centres.

Permanent prisons are however, literally custom built control environments, where every act and thing, including the architecture, the behaviour of the prison officers and daily routines, are functionally organised with that purpose in mind. Therefore many of the technologies discussed above are built in to the prison structure and integral to policing systems used to contain their inmates. For example, area denial technology, intruder detection equipment and surveillance devices are instrumental in hermetically sealing high security prisons. Everything from electronically operated prison gates and cell doors, to razor wire and video surveillance on the perimeter walls, serve this end.

If disturbances develop within a prison, the riot technologies and tactics outlined above, are also available for use by prison officers. The trend has been to train specialized MUFTI (Minimum Force Tactical Intervention ) squads for this purpose. Outside Europe, irritant gas has been used not only to crush revolt but also to punish political detainees,⁸⁵ or to eject reticent prisoners from their cells before execution.⁸⁶ Anyone deemed to be a trouble maker may become the potential target for further containment, the type and variety of which, depend to a large extent on the prevailing norms and political climate. Thus physical restraint equipment covers a range from straitjackets and body-belts at one end of the spectrum to thumbcuffs and leg shackles at the other. Recently, the International Observatory on Prisons criticized Spain's so called Register of Special Treatment Prisoners held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods and said this could be infringing the European Convention against Torture.⁸⁷

Other approaches include special stripped and padded cells, segregated units which have been used Inverness in Scotland to form a cage within a cage;⁸⁸ isolation units like the now abandoned system used at Wakefied Jail;⁸⁹ the Tote Trakt cells used to imprison the Bader Meinhof gang in Germany, which were designed to mimic sensory deprivation; or entire blocks of segregated isolation cells like the 750 Security Housing Units and 3,000 maximum security cells run by the California House of Corrections department at the punitive warehousing prison at Pelican Bay.⁹⁰ The Pelican Bay complex is a good example of where a lack of proper accountability can bring widespread systematic abuse, even if the prison is one of the most modern. In 1995, Judge Thelton E. Henderson said the prison was one of the most abusive and that prison officers not only ignored the abuses but "also followed a management strategy that permitted the use of excessive force for the purpose of management and deterrence." The Judge informed the Federal District Court of guards who assaulted prisoners in cells with batons, high voltage taser guns, chained them up for hours in "fetal restraints" with their wrists bound to their ankles for 22 hours a day.⁹¹

Apart from mechanical restraint, prison authorities also have access to pharmacological approaches for immobilising inmates, colloquially known as 'the liquid cosh.' These vary from psychotropic drugs such as anti-depressants, sedatives and tranquilliser to powerful hypnotics. Drugs like largactil or Seranace offer the chemical equivalent of a strait jacket and their usage is becoming increasingly controversial as prison populations rise and larger numbers on inmates are 'treated'. In the United States, the trend for punishment to become therapy reaches its apotheosis with 'behaviour modification' which uses Pavlovian reward and
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punishment routines to recondition behaviour. Drugs like anectine, (a curare derivative), which produce either fear or pain, are used in aversion therapy. In prisons, the possibilities of testing new social control drugs are extensive, whilst actual controls are few. Houses of correction form the new laboratories for developing the next generation of drugs for social reprogramming, whilst the pharmacology laboratories of both the universities and the military provide scores of new psychoactive drugs each year.⁹²

Way back in the 1970's, J.A. Meyer of the US Defence Department suggested a countrywide network of transceivers for monitoring all prisoners on parole, via an irremovable transponder.⁹³ The idea was that parolees movements could be continuously checked and the system would facilitate certain areas or hours to be out of bounds, whilst having the economic advantage of cutting down on the costs of clothing and feeding the prisoner. If prisoners go missing, the police can automatically home in on their last position. The system came into operation use in America in the mid 1980's when some private prisons started to operate a transponder based parole system.⁹⁴ The system has now spread into Canada and Europe where it is known as electronic tagging. Whilst the logic of tagging is difficult to resist, critics have argued that whilst tagging carries the promise of being an effective alternative to prison, a look at the criminological literature, this assertion is questionable.(MacMahon, 1996). The clientele appears not to be offenders who would have been imprisoned but rather low risk offenders who are most likely to be released into the community anyway. Because of this, the system is not cheaper since the authorities gain the added expense of supplying monitoring devices to offenders who would have been released anyway. Electronic tagging is however beneficial to the companies who sell such systems. Tagging also has a profitable role inside prisons in the U.S. and in some prisons, notably, DeKalb County Jail near Atlanta, all prisoners are bar coded. (Christie, 1993, p. 96)

Critics such as Lilly & Knepper (1992, 186-7) argue that in examining the international aspects of crime control as industry, more attention is needed to the changing activities of the companies which used to provide supplies to the military. At the end of the cold war, "with defence contractors reporting declines in sales, the search for new markets is pushing corporate decision making, it should be no surprise to see increased corporate activity in criminal justice." Where such companies previously profited from wars with foreign enemies, they are increasingly turning their energy to the new opportunities afforded by crime control as industry.(Christie, 1994). Increasingly in the U.S, we witness the trend toward private prisons and the critical issue here is can the privatisation of prison control create a rehabilitation process if its dominant raison d'etre is profit from control systems and hence cost cutting.

Many European countries are now experiencing a rapid process of privatisation of prisons by corporate conglomerations, predominantly from the USA. Many of the prisons run by these organisations in the US have cultures and control techniques which are alien to European traditions. Such a process of privatisation can lead to a bridgehead for importing U.S. corrections mentality, methods and technologies into Europe and there is a pressing need to ensure a consensus on what constitutes acceptable practice. There is a further danger that such privatisation will lead to cost cutting practices of human warehousing, rather than the more long term beneficial practice of prisoner rehabilitation.

In some European countries, particularly Britain, where changes in penal policy are leading to a rapid rise in prison population without additional resources being applied to the sector, the imperative is to cut costs either through using technology or by privatising prisons.⁹⁵ Already, the UK Prison Service has compiled a shopping list of computer based options with existing CCTV surveillance systems being complemented by geophones, identity
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recognition technology and forward looking infra-red systems which can spot weapons and drugs.⁹⁶ Alongside such proactive technologies, UK prisons will face increasing pressure to tool up for trouble. Much this weaponry including the contract for between £950,000 and £2,500,000 of side handled batons, kubotans, riot shields etc. made by the Prison Service in March 1995, are likely to be originally manufactured in the United States.⁹⁷

The U.S.A adopts a far more militarised prison regime than anywhere in Europe outside of Northern Ireland. A massive prison industrial complex has mushroomed to maintain the strict control regimes that typify American Houses of Correction. The future prospect is of that alien technology coming here, with very little in the way of public or parliamentary debate. A few examples of US prison technologies and proliferation illustrate the dangers.

Many US prisons now use peppergas. The Department of Justice and every Federal Court that has looked at its use in correctional facilities has found abuses. For example at the privately run West Tennessee Detention Facility, prison guards pumped peppergas into two dormitories seized by inmates.⁹⁸ In late 1994, the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, investigated a County Jail in Syracuse, New York, and reported "an unacceptably high and improper use of pepperspray . . . Nearly every inmate told of excessive and improper use . . . particularly when inmates are not resistant and after the inmate has been restrained and presents no danger." One suicidal inmate in Syracuse was restrained with three cans of pepperspray and died shortly afterwards of positional asphyxia.⁹⁹ In the US, Federal Laboratories are already marketing a remote control systems (TG Guard), which can automatically dispense peppergas through specific zones in a prison complex from a remote firing location.¹⁰⁰ (See Fig. 37).

Many prisons in the U.S, use Nova electronic 50,000 volt extraction shields, electronic stun prods and most recently the REACT remote controlled stunbelts. In 1994, the US Federal Bureau of Prisons decided to use remote-controlled stunbelts on prisoners considered dangerous to prevent them from escaping during transportation and court appearances. By May 1996, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections said that no longer will inmates be chained together "but will be restrained by the use of stunbelts and individual restraints." Stun Tech of Cleveland Ohio has said that it wants to see its stunbelts introduced into the chain gang programs of Alabama, Florida and Louisiana. In fact by 1996, it was reported that the US Marshals service and over 100 county agencies have obtained such belts as well as 16 state correctional agencies including Alaska, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Ohio and Washington (Amnesty International, 1997).

Stun Tech literature claims that its high pulse stunbelt can be activated from 300 feet. After a warning noise, the Remote Electronically Activated Control Technology (REACT) belt inflicts a 50,000 volt shock for 8 seconds. This high pulsed current enters the prisoners left kidney region then enters the body of the victim along for example blood channels and nerve pathways. Each pulse results in a rapid body shock extending to the whole of the brain and central nervous system. The makers promote the belt "for total psychological supremacy . . . of potentially troublesome prisoners." Stunned prisoners lose control of the bladders and bowels. "After all, if you were wearing the contraption around your waist that by the mere push of a button in someone's hand, could make you defecate or urinate yourself, what would you do from the psychological standpoint?"¹⁰¹ Amnesty International wants Washington to ban the belts because they can be used to torture, and calls them, "cruel, inhuman and degrading." Some officials say the belts can save money because fewer guards would be needed. But human rights activists and some jailers oppose them as the most degrading new measure in an increasingly barbaric field." (Kilborn,1997) Already, some European countries are in the process of evaluating stunbelt systems for use here. (Marks, 1996)
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The U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons is responsible for a prison population of some 101,000 inmates experiencing according to their Chief of Security, Jim Mahan, a 25% overcrowding effect within the 81 feral prisons across the U.S.A. An additional 17 new facilities are under construction and 10 others will be privatised. As a result of rising tensions within US jails and the need to respond, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has become a formal part of the new research programme on less-lethal weapons. Disturbance control squads are specialised units used in US jails to quell riots and Mahan identified future needs in term of (a) aqueous foams; (b) containment nets; (c) anti-traction devices; (d) aesthetic darts/pellets; (e) chemical area dispensers; (f) noise weapons such as acoustic generators; (g) infra-ultrasound; (h) low energy lasers; (i) optical munitions in addition to the kinetic energy, chemical and electrical weapons they now deploy.¹⁰²

Without proper licensing and a clear consensus on what is expected from private prisons in Europe, multinational private prison conglomerations could act as a bridgehead for similar sorts of technology to enter the European crime control industry. Proper limits need to be set when a licence is granted with a comprehensive account taken of that company's past track record in terms of civil liberties, rehabilitation and crisis management rather than just cost per prisoner held.

6. RECOMMENDATIONS

The Committee should ask the Commission to:

(i). Ensure that the UN Minimum treatment of prisoners rules banning the use of leg irons on prisoners are implemented in all EU correctional facilities.

(ii). Implement a ban on the introduction of inbuilt gassing systems inside European gaols on the basis of the manufacturers warnings of the dangers of using chemical riot control agents in enclosed spaces. Restrictions should also be made on the use of chemical irritants from whatever source in correctional facilities wherever research has shown that a concentration of that irritant could either kill or be associated with permanent damage to health.

(iii). Ensure that all private prison operations within the European Union should be subject to a common and consistent licensing regime by the host member. No licence should be granted where proven human rights violations by that contractor have been made elsewhere. Any failure to secure a licence in one European state should debar that private prison contractor from bidding for other European contracts (pending evidence of adequate human rights training and appropriate improvements in standard operating procedures and controls by that corporation or company).

(iv). Seek agreement between all Member States to ensure that:

(a) All riot control, prisoner transport and extraction technology which is in use or proposed for use in all prisons, (whether state or privately run), should be subject to prior approval by the competent member authorities on the basis of independent research;

(b) Automated systems of indiscriminate punishment such as built in baton round firing mechanisms. should be prohibited.

(c). The use of electroshock restraining devices or other remote control punishment devices including shock- shields should be immediately suspended in any private or public prison in the European Union, until and unless independent medical evidence

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can clearly demonstrate that their use will not contribute to deaths in custody, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

(v) The European Parliament should be requested to establish a rigorous independent and impartial inquiry into the use of stun belts, stunguns and shields, and all other types and variants of electroshock weapons in Member States, to assess their medical and other effects in terms of international human rights standards regulating the treatment of prisoners and the use of force; the inquiry should examine all known cases of deaths or injury resulting from the use of these instruments, and the results of the inquiry should be published without delay

(vi). Prohibit the use of kill fencing and lethal area denial systems in any prison whether private or public, within the European Union.