Pain and Retribution by David Wilson

Author:David Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Exterior wall and tower of Strangeways Prison, Manchester, in 1990, and gatehouse, 1960.

Prisoners on the roof of the prison during the riot of 1990, watched by staff in C&R uniforms.

Prisoners had shown that even one of the most brutal gaols in England, a true bastion of screw power and authority, could be reduced to a burning wreck if and when prisoners decided that enough was enough.61

This much more critical analysis was not pursued by Woolf, who in his twelve recommendations concentrated on more pragmatic issues related to closer cooperation between different parts of the criminal justice system; more visible leadership within the prison service by a director general who was to be in charge on a day-to-day basis; and improved standards of justice within prisons, which would involve new grievance procedures for prisoners, relieving the lay Boards of Visitors of their adjudicatory role and providing final access to an independent ombudsman. He also recommended that politicians – at the time of his report, the home secretary was Kenneth Baker – should make a public recommendation that ‘slopping out’ should end by early 1996. Woolf seemed to create a much more optimistic view about prisons and he – or at least the riots – also helped to contribute towards significantly reducing the willingness of magistrates and judges to send people to prison at this time. As a result the prison population fell.62 In the end Baker was replaced in April 1992 by Kenneth Clarke, who remained in the post for a year until he himself was replaced in May 1993 by Michael Howard. Nonetheless, for a few brief months, there seemed to be more general and public acceptance that prisons could not continue to be run as they had been and that things had to change. That acceptance was to be short-lived.

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