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Title: Close Supervision Centres
Author: Sean Dunohoe
Language: en
Topics: Return Fire, Closed Supervision Centres, UK, anti-prison, torture, transphobia, Kevan Thakrar, racism, self-harm
Notes: from Return Fire vol.3 chap.1 (winter 2015–2016) — PDFs of Return Fire and related publications can be read, downloaded and printed by visiting returnfire.noblogs.org or emailing returnfire@riseup.net

Sean Dunohoe

Close Supervision Centres

[ed. – Posted to U.K. Indymedia by Sean Dunohoe, reprinted here with

very minor edits for spelling and grammar. It’s not hard to imagine the

conceptual discrepancies between ourselves and the author (on rights,

law, criminality etc.), so without further annotation we’ll let the rest

of the text speak for itself about these black-holes of modern democracy

and their overseer’s colonial-style divide-and-rule tactics.

Close Supervision Centres (C.S.C.s), based on the American “Special

Management Units”, started in 1998 at Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes

to hold prisoners who fought back, encouraged others to so too,

embarrassed the prison service, or were otherwise the most “disruptive

and dangerous”. Inmates who subsequently conformed had the possibility

at first to rejoin the main prison population; not so with the C.S.C.

above the “Exceptional Risk Unit” in Wakefield prison, where convicts

are left entombed in their cells and allowed no human interaction. One

subject to that regime, Kevan Thakrar (a regular correspondent to the

‘outside’ world and vocal opponent of the prison regime), reports that

many are “unable to succeed in escaping this hell without first being

driven insane, and only then do they manage to elude the fire by being

sectioned under the Mental Health Act 1983 to a high security hospital

in order to attempt to treat them for the damage the extreme

environmental stress has caused. If these patients are successful in

recovering [they] are then returned to the CSC to be broken again and

again. [Death] is contemplated daily by the CSC prisoners, and attempted

routinely by those who realise it is the only way left for them to be

able to leave...”

November 2015, another inmate, Eddie Brown, hung himself inside the

C.S.C.; reportedly at the encouragement of all the screws. Additionally,

a function of the regime is violent normalisation of ‘othered’

subjectivities, such as the terrorisation of Muslim prisoners (including

the latter-mentioned Douglas Vinter) by guards and other inmates until

they feel compelled to adopt Christianity. From a November 2015 letter

by Kevan: “Following each capitulation were celebrations and

congratulations for another job well done by those running the unit and

their puppets, then the transfer in of the next target in what is a

systematic attack on Islamic prisoners. [...] None of this is new, HMP

Wakefield has always been known to operate a racist regime enforced by

an all white workforce, [with] the techniques learned through

Psychological training which is mandatory for all CSC officers[...]

Benefits and bonuses are given to racist prisoners, whilst others are

kept in total isolation from each other and there is little action which

can be taken against the culprits. [...] Publicity following the recent

death of a prisoner at HMP Woodhill’s Close Supervision Centre (CSC)

[has] focused almost exclusively on the issue of transgender. Edward

(Eddie) Latham had changed his name to Eddie Brown whilst serving time

in Rampton secure hospital, and I am told very recently may have changed

it again to Joanne Latham. [...] For almost two years, Latham had been

confined within solitary confinement conditions which are well known to

cause suicidal behavior as well as mental deterioration. Added to this

was the common brutality and sadistic behaviors of both the local

Woodhill CSC personnel, and the national CSC Management Committee who

ordered Latham to be kept there. This experience left little to live for

resulting in repeated suicide attempts in numerous different ways, all

causing great amusement amongst those working there. [...] Self-harm and

self-mutilation are and always have been at the highest levels of

anywhere within the entire prison system at the CSC. Suicide attempts

are routine with nothing but further unofficial punishment given to the

victims by the CSC staff. It was not that long ago that CSC prisoner Lee

Foye struggled so much with the extreme environmental stress that he

began hearing voices & severed his ear off, then six weeks later was

encouraged to cut off [the other] which like the first was done with

razors supplied by officers.”

We want the C.S.C.s not only “closed” but in ashes, though for us the

struggle against one prison must comprise a single part of the struggle

against all prisons, at all times, and everywhere.]

---

There has for some time been serious concerns about the treatment of

prisoners held in the so called ‘Close Supervision Centre’ (CSC) at

Woodhill prison in Milton Keynes, and once again the segregation and

isolation of what the prison system labels as “difficult” prisoners in a

control unit environment has lead to serious abuses of human rights and

unlawful behaviour on the part of those “supervising” the CSC. That

unlawful behaviour now threatens the physical safety and even lives of

prisoners held in the CSC. An incident recently engineered by staff

operating the Woodhill prison CSC where a mentally ill prisoner was

encouraged to attack another prisoner in what is a supposedly “closely

supervised” environment indicates that a “divide and rule” strategy is

now being officially applied in the CSC that threatens the lives of

these prisoners considered especially “difficult” and “challenging” by

the CSC staff.

Douglas Gary Vinter is a prisoner serving a natural life sentence, which

means he is unlikely to ever be released. His “difficult” behaviour,

which usually took the form of smashing up his cell in impotent rage and

despair, led to his being “selected” for the Woodhill CSC, despite a

judicial review ruling that his prolonged segregation was unlawful

because it was contributing to his deteriorating mental condition.

Lee Newell, also serving a natural life sentence, was “selected” for the

Woodhill CSC because of his constant complaints about the behaviour of

prison staff, who, he claimed, had targeted him for bullying and

intimidation. Both prisoners after experiencing a CSC regime of solitary

confinement, psychological abuse and the ever present threat of

organised staff violence, repeatedly requested transfers on the grounds

that their mental health was seriously deteriorating; their requests

were denied by the “multi disciplinary management team” operating the

Woodhill CSC.

The “multi disciplinary management team” at the Woodhill CSC are

responsible for carrying out “risk assessments” on the prisoners held in

the CSC and deciding what level or intensity of “supervision” they

require, I.E. the number of staff, often in full riot gear, required to

“supervise” the prisoners movement outside of his cell, and whether the

“settled behaviour” of a prisoner can be rewarded by allowing him to

share his one hour exercise period in a small outdoor cage with another

CSC prisoner.

Claire Hodson, the “population strategist and specialist units manager”

of the CSC and a member of the CSC’s “multi disciplinary management

team” had recently confirmed that a significant proportion of the

prisoners in the CSC suffered with serious mental illness either prior

to being selected for the CSC or whilst confined there and subject to

it’s extremely psychologically punishing regime. Joanne King, a

psychologist employed in the Woodhill CSC, apparently is content to

oversee the mental destruction of prisoners held in the CSC and was

fully aware of the pleas of Douglas Vinter and Lee Newell to be

transferred out of the CSC because of their inability to mentally cope

with the brutal “behaviour modification” regime operating there.

Clearly, the so called “multi disciplinary management team” exist simply

to legitimise a regime in the CSC that is intrinsically cruel and

intended to completely disempower and dehumanise prisoners perceived as

“troublemakers”. The psychological consequences to those prisoners is

obviously of no concern to those managing the CSC. For the uniformed

staff actually enforcing the CSC regime, who operate with little or no

real accountability in a hidden environment, an occupational culture has

developed that prioritizes control and obedience of prisoners by any

means necessary, and this has began to take the from of encouraging the

most “difficult” and mentally disturbed prisoners in the CSC to vent

their anger and rage upon each other.

After suffering the cruelty of the CSC regime for 3 months Douglas

Vinter could endure no more and told the staff enforcing the regime that

unless he was transferred soon he would express his despair in violence.

A senior prison officer called Bowen is then reported to have said to

him “Don’t hurt one of us. If you’re determined to use violence why not

hurt Lee Newell”. He was assured that the consequences to him of

physically attacking another prisoner would be far less serious than

were he to attack a member of staff. Fomenting violence amongst the most

mentally disturbed CSC prisoners had become a tactic employed by “front

line” staff in the CSC to deflect and manipulate the rage generated by

the regime they imposed. The senior prison officer Bowen assured Douglas

Vinter that both his and Lee Newell’s supervision level would be reduced

in order to allow them to share an exercise period in the outdoor cage,

and in an unprecedented swiftness of time the “multi disciplinary

management team” carried out a “dynamic risk assessment” on both

prisoners and reduced their supervision level, thereby allowing staff to

place them in the exercise cage together. Officers were then heard to be

taking bets amongst themselves on who would prevail in the inevitable

fight between Vinter and Newell; following the murder of a young Asian

prisoner by his racist cell mate in Feltham Young Offenders Institute a

number of years ago evidence [came out] that officers at the jail had

organised and provoked fights amongst inmates [ed. – regular ‘gladiator’

fights] and then taken bets on the outcome.

On the 27^(th) November last year Douglas Vinter and Lee Newell were

taken from their cells and placed in the small outdoor cage, where

Vinter attacked Newell and beat him unconscious. An ambulance was called

but delayed for an hour at the prison gates while the prisons security

governor Angela Curtis insisted that it’s access to the CSC was made

subject to various “security rules”. Lee Newell lay unconscious in the

CSC exercise yard for almost two hours before he was handcuffed and

strapped to a stretcher, and then guarded by six prison officers in the

ambulance; his supervision level was again increased to it’s usual “high

risk” level.

Because of numerous skull fractures, bleeding of the brain and swelling,

he was immediately placed into an induced coma on arrival at the

hospital. He remains in that coma. It’s likely that he will die but if

he does emerge from the coma he will inevitably suffer with severe brain

damage.

The CSC management committee at prison service headquarters, composed of

segregation unit managers from each of the high security prisons from

which most of the CSC prisoners are selected, have decided that despite

Lee Newell’s critical condition his placement in the Woodhill CSC

remains appropriate. They have also attempted to suppress all

information to the media regarding what happened to Lee Newell, and also

refused to inform his family of what happened to him.

Following his attack on Lee Newell, Douglas Vinter told prison officers

who surrounded him in the exercise cage – “This is what happens when you

torment and wind me up. I told you I was going to do this and you didn’t

care or listen. I told you I was deteriorating mentally and needed a

transfer out of here but you ignored me. I am serving a natural life

sentence, so what are you going to do now? Give me another life

sentence?” He then walked of his own volition to a separate unit and was

placed into “special accommodation”, a sensory deprivation cell where he

is now held in clinical isolation. Claire Hodson and Alan Parkins, the

Woodhill CSC governor, say that he will remain in “special

accommodation” indefinitely, which means he will be denied all human

contact, be fed through a small hatch in the cell door, sleep on the

cells concrete floor, and be handcuffed through the hatch in the cell

door before being allowed to leave the cell for a shower, during which

he remains handcuffed, and one hours exercise each day. Each time he

leaves the cell he is surrounded by seven guards all dressed in full

riot gear and holding shields. Alan Parkins has told him that he will

remain in the sensory deprivation cell indefinitely, but reassured him

that if or when he goes completely insane he will be able to plead

diminished responsibility for the attack on Lee Newell when he stands

trial for it. Parkins is determined to create the narrative of an

irrationally violent prisoner who attacked another prisoner without

reason or warning, thereby concealing the role and involvement of CSC

staff in what took place.

Prisoners in the CSC who have voiced concerns about what happened have

had their risk and supervision levels arbitrarily increased in an

attempt to silence them, and the “multi disciplinary management team”,

which includes a member of the supposedly “Independent Monitoring

Board”, Mary-Anne Dixie, have given this their blessing.

The police who attempted to gain access to the CSC in order to interview

prisoners in relation to the matter were prevented from doing so by Alan

Parkins who has insisted that he must personally monitor all interviews

and communication with prisoners.

All CSC staff [were] in some way involved in what took place; basic

grade prison officers, governors, and the entire “multi disciplinary

management team” have personally reviewed the CCTV and camcorder footage

of the incident and held a number of group discussions to decided on a

version and account of their role in what happened, thereby prejudicing

any future legal proceedings.

If he dies Lee Newell will be the second prisoner that died in the CSC

last year [ed. – after weeks chained to a hospital bed, left missing an

eye and with permanent brain damage from the attack, Lee lived].

Following the attack on Lee Newell the regime in the Woodhill CSC has

been significantly hardened and made even more repressive, and the same

officers who encouraged and facilitated Douglass Vinter’s attack on Lee

Newell are now telling the CSC prisoners that they should blame Douglas

Vinter for the total lock down of the CSC regime.

What happened in the Woodhill CSC on the 27^(th) November last year

suggests a descent into plain criminality on the part of those

“supervising” and managing the CSC and an inevitable consequence of the

regime that allows those enforcing it to disempower totally those in

their custody. The effective de-humanisation of any group absolves those

enforcing it of any conscience, and recognition of the humanity of those

over whom they exercise an almost omnipotent degree of power, and the

relationship of power that characterises the treatment of prisoners in

the Woodhill CSC will always be inherently and intrinsically abusive and

render the lives of those prisoners extremely vulnerable.

Close the CSC now!

ed. – The comrades of Bristol Anarchist Black Cross also published a

two-part series on the Close Supervision Centres in particular prior to

this, available to read online.