Fight for Prisoners' Rights and Critically Support Striking Prison Officers!

I have two articles this week with a broadly 'crime and punishment' theme.

"It is a long-held maxim that you can gauge the nature of a society - measure its ‘civilisation quotient’ - by examining its penal system, particularly the way it treats its prisoners. Judged by this criterion, there can be no doubt that the UK stands condemned as a barbarous society, and furthermore as one which is steadily deteriorating to ever lower standards. In danger of becoming a giant island prison camp moored off the more enlightened European continent, the UK seems addicted to an ultimately self-defeating regime of punitive and cruel incarceration - lock ’em up and make ’em suffer". READ MORE:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/rehabilitation.php

"We oppose any demands of the Prison Officers Association that could only come at the expense of prisoners - like yet longer lock-up times or additional refinements to the means of oppression (bigger and harder batons/shields, use of water cannons or tear-gas, etc). But at the same time we will critically support those demands - as we would for rank and file police officers - that act to cohere intra-solidarity against the senior officers/wardens and thus help to undermine and eventually split the state machine. So, yes, we are definitely fully in favour of prison warders and members of the police force having the right to form and join trade unions and the right to go on strike. It is logically analogous to our demand that members of the armed forces also be given such rights". READ MORE:
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/795/criticalsupport.php