The publication of The Violence of Incarceration, a collection of essays on imprisonment and state violence in the US, UK and Australia, edited by Phil Scraton and Jude McCulloch, provides an opportunity to reflect on the steady convergence of mainland Europe s penal policies with those of the US. This convergence undermines any notion of a European moral high ground in relation to incarceration and reflects a general trend among western states of increasing acceptability of violence, war and even torture as solutions to social and political problems. From this perspective, the cruelties at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib are not isolated examples of excess but, rather, have much in common with everyday practices in domestic US and European prisons; the focus of this article is this wider structural shift in incarceration practices, linked to, but going far beyond, the‘war on terror’.
Phil Scraton and Jude McCulloch , eds, The Violence of Incarceration ( London, Routledge, 2008).
2.
See Luk Vervaet, ed., ‘Condamnés a la prison? Ecrits sur un monde caché , Contradictions (1er et 2e trimesters, 2008).
3.
Het Volk (21 November 2006).
4.
Belga/Le Soir (17 November 2009).
5.
Stephane Detaille, Le Soir (17 November 2009).
6.
Guardian (11 June 2009).
7.
Secret papers describing counter-insurgency techniques in Northern Ireland during the 1970s feature as evidence in the public inquiry into the death of the Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel receptionist who sustained ninety-three injuries while in the custody of British troops in 2003. The inquiry is considering why five‘conditioning techniques- hooding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, food and water deprivation, and white noise - inflicted on IRA suspects and banned in 1972 by the then prime minister Edward Heath, were used on Iraqi detainees.
8.
Nisha de Silva , Paul Cowell, Terence Chow, Paul Worthington,‘Prison population projections 2006-2013, England and Wales , Home Office Statistical Bulletin (July 2006), p. 1.
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According to the League of Human Rights in Toulon, by 2017, the number of people incarcerated in France will have reached 80,000. Currently, France has the ‘highest rate of suicide in detention in the whole of Europe . See Observatoire Internationale des Prisons, <http://www. oip.org>. The prison population of Belgium has increased by more than 50 per cent since 1980 and it is growing at an estimated rate of 2.02 per cent a year. (This statistic does not include the 600 rejected asylum seekers and undocumented migrants detained each year; nor does it include 2,500 youngsters who are held in Belgian s eight young offenders institutions.) Disturbances in Belgian prisons are routine and in the last few months Belgian television channels have drawn attention to the medieval conditions and overcrowding in some of these prisons. Prisoners are ‘warehoused with three or four accommodated in cells built for two persons and a single bucket serving as a toilet. In Greece, on average one detainee dies each week, according to the Eleutherotypia newspaper. In November 2008, 600 prisoners in twenty-one prisons began a national hunger strike, which lasted for eighteen days. In Italy, according to the Department of Prison Administration, 38 per cent of the prison population are foreign nationals, despite making up 8 per cent of the population. According to the EveryOne group, 45.5 per cent of the female prison population (both Italian and foreign nationals) are Roma. ‘If we consider that Roma women in Italy make up just 0.09 per cent of the population, it is easy to see the level racist justice has reached states EveryOne, which estimates that at least 14,000 of the foreign prison population are victims of judicial abuse. See <http://www.everyonegroup.com>.
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Miranda Boone and Martin Moerings, eds, Dutch Prison: still front runner in penal policy? (The Hague, Boom Juridische Uitgevers, 2007).
11.
Sekkaki s initial arrest at sixteen was followed by a conviction for six bank robberies. On passing his sixteenth birthday while serving his sentence, he was transferred to an adult prison. In September 2003, he escaped from the prison in Turnhout and, during his five months outside, he committed a further ten bank robberies. Although Sekkaki has indeed participated in robberies, he has never been convicted of violence against persons, as no person has ever been injured or died as a result of his actions. He was committed to the AIBV after new evidence emerged that he was attempting a prison escape and due to threats he made against the national head of the prison service and his family.
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Sekkaki s letters provoked a series of articles in a variety of international papers, most notably Le Monde, questioning the treatment of prisoners in such special units. But in November 2008, the Ministry of Justice issued a press release denying that anything was wrong at Bruges. In April 2009, detainees held in the AIVB rioted, destroying nearly the whole of the AIVB in the process. Sekkaki was eventually removed from the AIBV and placed in the normal prison system. He openly announced that, if there were no end in sight to his imprisonment, he would escape from prison again. On 23 July 2009, two of his friends from the outside hijacked a helicopter, succeeded in landing on the grounds of Bruges prison and took off with three prisoners on board. Among them was Ashraf Sekkaki. All of them were re-arrested a few weeks later: Sekkaki was re-arrested in Morocco where he remains in prison. Belgium did not ask for his extradition.
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As cited in ‘Dark nights: about prison struggle in Belgium (February 2009).
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In April 2007, the seven men accused of membership of the Revolutionary People s Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C) had their convictions quashed in the Supreme Court. But the Belgian anti-terror prosecutor Delmulle lodged an appeal and demanded a retrial. On 23 December 2009, the Brussels appeal court pronounced the final verdict on the six remaining accused. Three of the six were acquitted (among them Bahar Kimyongür) and three others received a suspended sentence. The case had originally started in 1999.
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In fact, in 2008, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment expressed its concern about the placement of terrorist suspects (both those convicted and on remand) in the special high-security ‘terrorist departments at Vught and De Schie prison. In the Committee s view, placement in such special sections should be subject to a comprehensive individual risk assessment reviewed at regular intervals, rather than more or less automatic for ‘terrorist prisoners.
16.
The defendants connected to the so-called Hofstad group (not the name of a real organisation but a nickname created by the Dutch intelligence services) achieved notoriety in the Netherlands following the conviction of Mohammed Bouyeri for the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004. In a landmark ruling in January 2008, which tested Article 140a (membership of a criminal organisation with terrorist intent) of the Crimes of Terrorism Act 2004, the seven men were acquitted by the Hague appeals court of being members of a terrorist organisation, on the grounds that the group they belonged to operated more as a network for young Muslims with militant beliefs rather than as an organisation with a common ideology. Convictions remain against most of the seven men for a variety of other terrorism-related offences, including a plot to kill several parliamentarians.
See William Fisher, ‘The children of Guantánamo , Inter Press Service (6 February 2009). Amongst other things, Mohamed el-Gharani was reportedly hanged from his wrists on numerous occasions. He was subjected to a regime of ‘enhanced techniques to prepare him for interrogation, including prolonged sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation and the use of painful stress positions, which clearly constitute torture.
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Thirteen of these forty-four states permit life sentences without parole for a child of any age.One sets the bar at eight years old. See Henry Weinstein,‘Sentencing children to die in prison , University of San Francisco Centre for Law & Global Justice (20 November 2007).
20.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quoted in the Irish Times (3 February 2009).
21.
The key essay in this respect is Phil Scraton, ‘Protests and "riots in the violent institution’.
