Dear BF,
I was reading BF 214 and noticed several well written letters from prisoners on page 29 and 30. However the focus of this letter is the letter that Mark Barnsley wrote regarding the conditions he and other prisoners are undergoing. I was amazed to read that prisons in Britain have become more like and have adopted the American prison system, i.e. the three strikes law, the re-opening of "control units" etc. This is important information because most of us in the united states are not aware and had not been aware of the conditions prisoners face there. British prison officials, like those in the American Prison system, have begun to punish prisoners for proclaiming their innocence and for working to prove their innocence. Like America, the British prison system have begun to lock up those whom they feel are "subversive" and the only reason why ones are labelled this is because the prison authorities want to silence the voice of the prisoner. They want to make sure that the injustices done to the prisoner are not known and that the prisoner receives no outside support.
We find this to be the case in America with their maddening prison build up. America leads the world in incarceration of its people. Why ? Because the government have found a way to make huge profits off the backs of prisoners. They have found out how to incarcerate and how to make those they incarcerate work and generate millions of dollars for them under the conditions of slave labour. They have discovered that it is profitable to have prisoners making products for pennies a day and resell those products for dollars.
Mark was right to say that the "so-called 3 strikes law is going to lead to an increase in both the murder rate and the number of miscarriages of justice". This is evident by what is happening here in the American prison system. More and more people are being denied anything close to adequate representation in the judicial system and the courts. The quality of adequate and impartial representation from lawyers have gone down. Mainly this is so because it is a vast conspiracy [in my opinion] to ensure an overload of prisoners to fill the high priced prisons America has. With the influx of more people being incarcerated we also find the quality of life for many people on the streets has gone down. The working class I am speaking of . The police and the legal system have the working class hostage and in fear of taking proactive measures to demand an end to state-terrorism by law enforcement who run wild over the rights of the people. It doesn't change much for anyone to be trumped-up on a charge and held for years in prison before the truth of their innocence is discovered.
However, there's still hope and there is still time to stop this madness. What we need to do is make our voices known in such a way that the authorities understand , without a doubt that we are not going to stand for their abuses any more. However this will take a strong networking commitment of prisoners in the UK and here in the US. It will also take a lot of networking between the anti-racist and anti-prison groups in the UK and in the US.
I believe that we can make sure that the prisons aren't filled and that those in the prisons are [not] tortured, denied human rights and dignity if we all stand together and fight this evil. This is not merely a war being declared, by the governments, on so-called crime. It is a war on the working class and the masses of unemployed, Blacks, the poor, the homeless, and those who are economically disadvantaged.
In the trenches....
Ali Khalid Abdullah
FOr more information about Mark Barnsley's case and his fight for justice, click here