Prison system’s intention to use secret intelligence against John Bowden at next parole hearing – January 2013
It is relatively rare that prisoners, originally sentenced for non-political offences, become so politicized whilst in jail, that their release is opposed by prison authorities for exactly that reason.
In the case of life sentence prisoners who have served their “tariff” part of their sentence (or the length of time the judiciary stipulates they should remain in jail), the legal criteria determining their release, or not, are clear and straightforward: Has the prisoner served the sufficient period of time to satisfy the interests of punishment and retribution? Does the prisoner remain a risk to the community? Can the prisoner be safely and effectively supervised in the community post-release?
Of course the prison authorities would never openly admit that apart from the above criteria, there is another “risk-factor” that would prevent a life sentence prisoner’s release: Their identification with a progressive o radical political cause. Opposing a life sentence prisoner’s release, purely on the basis of their having exposed and organized against human rights abuses in the prison system, would of course make a complete mockery of the claim that, apart from its punishment function, prison also exists as a place of reform and rehabilitation, a place where supposedly brutal and anti-social criminals are made better people by a system administered by humane and just-minded individuals. The entire legitimacy of the prison system is based on the premise that, essentially it exists to protect the public from individuals who represent a threat, so denying that some life sentence prisoners are kept locked-up solely because they embrace an ideology that actually believes in a society and world free from violence, exploitation, and inequality, is imperative if the myths and fallacy used to justify the existence of prisons is to remain intact.
The prison system actually employs a whole legion of compliant ‘Criminal Justice’ system “professionals”, like social workers, probation officers, and psychologists to provide, if necessary, the politically neutral lexicon of “risk-factors” and “Personality Disorder” to legitimize the continued imprisonment of life sentence prisoners, who in reality are viewed as politically motivated and likely to become politically involved on the outside if released. The narrative of my own life and experience from brutalized and violent young criminal to politically conscious prisoner activist, and how the prison system continues to respond t that, is illustrative of how that system actually considers politicized life sentence prisoners far, far more worthy of continued detention than those who might genuinely pose a risk to the community.
In 1982, I was sentenced, alongside two other men, to life in prison for the killing of a fourth man during a drunken party on a South London council estate. At the time, I was 25 years old, and a state-raised product of the care and “youth justice” system. The prison system that I entered in the early 1980s was a barbaric de-humanising place, where in terms of treatment of prisoners, the rule of law stopped dead at the prison gate. My almost immediate response to prison repression was one of total defiance and resistance, that was met with physical and psychological brutality in the form of regular beatings, (in 1991 a civil court in Birmingham found that prison guards in the notorious Winson Green jail had subjected me to a sustained and gratuitous beating-up within minutes of my arrival at the jail), and many years held in almost clinical solitary confinement. Far from breaking my defiance, such inhuman treatment only deepened my determination to fight that system, and to use the only method truly effective in that regard – solidarity with other prisoners. As the years passed, I began to politically contextualize the struggle I was involved in against the prison system, and understand it as a part of a much wider struggle that transcended prison walls and essentially characterizes all societies and places where the powerful brutalised and de-humanised the powerless.
The length of time that my original trial judge recommended I should remain in jail has now long passed, and yet I remain in a maximum security prison, and what can best be described as a campaign by the prison system to keep me here intensifies with the approach of my second parole hearing in over 30 years.
It is essentially my contact with prisoner support groups on the outside, or “subversive” and even “terrorist” groups, as the prison authorities have defined and described them, that is now claimed in some prison reports, as the main “Risk-Factor” preventing my release. Of course, if necessary, for the purpose of officially legitimizing my continued imprisonment, for the convenience of the Parole Board, the usual array of morally compromised and corrupt social workers and prison-hired psychologists will attest to the fact that my enduring “anti-authoritarianism” is just a symptom of my psychopathy and continuing risk to the public. But if there are any doubts that I remain in prison, first and foremost, because of my efforts to expose the prison system for what it truly is, then a document sent to the Parole Board by the Scottish Prison Service on 2nd December last year, lays them firmly to rest.
The document, an “intelligence report” compiled by the Security Department at Shotts Prison in Lanrkshire, was comprised of two parts, one that I was allowed to read, and another part described as “Non-Disclosure”, which means secret information that I would not be allowed to access to. It is rare for “Non-Disclosure” intelligence reports to be submitted to the Parole Board, and it represents a total negation of any pretense of open and natural justice, very much like the secrecy employed to imprison “terrorist suspects” without legal due process. Obliged as it is to officially inform prisoners if “Non-Disclosure” evidence is to be used against them at parole hearings, I received a letter from an “Intelligence Manager” at Shotts Prison in late December of last year, informing me that a portion of “intelligence” on me was so detrimental to “public interest” if it was revealed that it had to be kept secret. I was, however, informed that the “intelligence” related to articles written by me that were critical of the prison system and then placed on political websites. One seriously wonders how the posting of articles and information on the Internet exposes abuses of power by the prison system, would so endanger “public interest”, unless of course we replace “public interest” with the more precise “state interest”. The purpose behind the “Non-Disclosure” evidence in my case is obvious – To convey to the Parole Board the clear message that my current “risk” is not so much about a danger to the public, but much more about my willingness to publicly expose the brutal nature of the prison system, with the assistance of “subversive groups” on the outside. The part of the “Intelligence Report” that I was allowed access to, confirms this.
Virtually every single one of the “entries” in the part of the report I was allowed access to focuses on what it describes as my “internet activity” and links to “subversive groups” on the outside:
“Bowden continues to leak information through a social networking site.”
“Website features articles relating to Bowden asking people to protest and fight for freedom.”
“Bowden continues to be involved in Internet activity and there are plans to have a day of action in support of Bowden.”
“Intelligence provides that Bowden sends correspondence out of prison that is then posted on the Internet.”
There is also a reference to what was described as my attempt to set up a debating society in the prison’s Education Department to “platform his current political views, which are focused on poverty.”
This is evidence that the prison system claims justifies my continued detention after more than three decades in prison. Not a single entry in the “intelligence report” suggests I pose a genuine risk to the community or am likely to re-offend in a criminal way, and yet the Parole Board, a wholly white middle-class body, will inevitably rubber-stamp my continued imprisonment in compliance with the prison system’s wishes.
The two men who were originally imprisoned with me in 1982 were released almost twenty years ago, and I, as a direct result of my struggle to empower and organize prisoners in defence of their basic human rights, remain buried in a maximum-security jail, probably until I die.
I will of course continue to write and distribute articles exposing and criticizing the brutality of prison as a weapon of social control and ruling class violence, and also highlighting my own victimisation as a consequence of that.
John Bowden – 6729
HMP Shotts
Cantrell Road
Shotts
South Lanarkshire
Scotland
ML7 7LE
I currently reside at a halfway house in Brooklyn, serving out the last few months of a seven-year sentence for my role in arsons credited to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) at two lumber companies in Oregon in 2001. My case, and the federal government’s rush to prosecute environmental activism as a 