John Bowden – Yesterday’s Day of Action (UK)

June 12, 2012 325 Magazine

FREEDOM FOR JOHN BOWDEN AFTER 32 YEARS OF PRISON – SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON AGAINST THE LIES OF SOCIAL WORKER BRENDAN BARNETT

From LEEDS ABC:

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Day of Action in support of John Bowden yesterday. It has undoubtedly had an impact on those who are used to being able to get away with anything completely challenged. The situation with the lying social worker Brendan Barnett is still unresolved however, and the Parole Board seem apathetic at best. John is still in a high security prison 32 years after he went to jail, he needs our continuing support. Please do whatever you can.

Brendan ‘Pinocchio’ Barnett, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628 brendan.barnett@edinburgh.gov.uk)
Michelle Miller, Chief Social Worker, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628 michelle.miller@edinburgh.gov.uk) NB Michelle Miller also works out of Waverly Court, see details for Peter Gabbitas below.
Peter Gabbitas, Director, Health and Social Care Department, Waverly Court, Level 1/8, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8DG. (Telephone 0131 553 8201 Fax 0131 529 6218 peter.gabbitas@edinburgh.gov.uk).

Social Work Advice and Complaints Service, Waverley Court, Level 1/7, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BG. (Telephone 0131 529 6217 Email socialwork.complaints@edinburgh.gov.uk).
Letters and cards of support to John at: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Shotts, Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7 4LE.
You can also send e-mails to John (or any other prisoner) via: http://www.emailaprisoner.com
You can download John Bowden’s pamphlet ‘Tear Down The Walls!’ free of charge from the PDF section of the Leeds ABC website at www.leedsabc.org
Other articles by John can be read on the Leeds ABC website, as well on the websites of our sister ABC groups in Bristol, Brighton, and London.

Leeds Anarchist Black Cross

‘Criminalising Children In The Care System’ by John Bowden (UK)

 June 9, 2012 325 Magazine

June 11th Day of Solidarity with long-term prisoner John Bowden called by ABC Leeds.

Criminalising the behaviour of working class children and feeding them into the Criminal Justice System is a practice that has existed for generations and is now responsible for Britain having the unenviable reputation of Europe’s worst jailer of children in terms of the numbers imprisoned.

“State raised convicts” form a substantial part of the adult prison population and all share a common genealogy of Children’s Homes, Approved Schools, Borstals and Young Offenders Institutions, and finally the long-term prison system. Many children who through no fault of their own enter the so-called Care System are percentage-wise seriously at risk of graduating into the Criminal Justice System and a life disfigured by institutionalisation and social exclusion.

There are currently 10,000 children in local authority care, their number doubling in the past four years, and the government’s current “Austerity” agenda with its attack on state benefit and services will so deeply impoverish an already desperately poor section of the population that the number of children from this group entering the Care System is bound to increase significantly.

A leading magistrate and member of the Magistrates’ Association Youth Courts Committee, Janis Cauthery, has openly condemned the care system for operating as a doorway into the penal system by regularly prosecuting children for behaviour such as pushing, shoving, and breaking crockery. Behaviour that in normal circumstances would simply be punished by parents is frequently being referred to the police by Children’s Homes and children are being charged with criminal offences and placed before the criminal courts. Ms Cauthery has warned that children in care who receive criminal records for what is in reality normal adolescent behaviour are being drawn into a “vicious cycle” of crime, joblessness and imprisonment, that would go on to seriously affect the lives of their own children. Ms Cauthery said: “Many of the young people we see coming to court have never been in trouble before going into care. These young people are often charged with offences that have occurred within the care home, including damage (e.g. to a door, window, or crockery) and assault (often to one of the care home staff involving pushing and shoving). This behaviour is mostly at the lower end of offending, and in a reasonable family environment would never be dealt with by the police or courts. We worry about these children being criminalised”. She added: “Surely the home has a duty to try to help the young people and find other solutions rather than resorting to the courts for minor offences which, in a normal family environment, would not be thought of as offending behaviour”. She went on to warn that the maltreatment of children in care might be the reason for the “anti-social behaviour” in the first place, which is what classically happens in total institutions when inmates resist and challenge brutal regimes.

Recent high-profile cases when neglect by social workers has seriously contributed to the deaths of children already at serious risk from abusive or drug-addicted parents has created a public mood and climate favourable to the placing into care of even more poor and disadvantaged children, and for many of them an entry route into the penal system. The massive empowerment of social workers in the wake of tragedies like the Baby P case to remove more children into care, often for contentious and contested reasons, makes it reasonable to ask the question if many of these children actually face even greater abuse and the risk of destroyed lives by being placed INTO care.

There is clearly a greater propensity on the part of staff supervising the behaviour of children in care to view any non-conformist or disruptive behaviour on the part of such children as potentially criminal and therefore requiring intervention by the police and courts at the earliest opportunity, which also absolves such staff of the responsibility of working closely and consistently with young people in dealing with such behaviour in an emotionally supportive setting. How much easier to just offload such “difficult” children onto the courts and Young Offender System, where an awful self-fulfilling prophecy then takes place along with the process of criminalisation and institutionalisation. Ultimately, the wider society reaps the cost and consequences of this abandonment of vulnerable children to the Criminal Justice System.

John Bowden
HMP Shotts
June 2012

Day of Action in Support of John Bowden Monday 11th June

Imprisoned since 1980, (and in fact for most of his life before that),
John Bowden has been a thorn in the side of the English and Scottish
prison systems for three decades. John has paid a heavy price for being a
staunch defender of prisoners’ rights and a committed opponent of
injustice, spending years in the most brutal conditions, and suffering
numerous physical assaults and treatment that has frequently amounted to
torture.

Over the past decade though, John’s captors have been using a new tactic
to keep him behind bars – the lies of prison social workers and quack
‘psychologists’.

First, a few years ago, Matthew Stillman alleged that the Anarchist Black
Cross were a ‘terrorist organisation’ and that John was therefore a
‘terrorist’ by implication. Brendan Barnett has now made even more
ludicrous allegations against John, but such is the corruption within
Edinburgh ‘Criminal Justice Services’ that John’s complaints have led to
his victimisation, rather than the disciplining of Brendan ‘Pinocchio’
Barnett.

You can read about the affair in these previous articles:
http://leedsabc.org/another-attempt-to-sabotage-john-bowdens-parole-by-prison-hired-social-worker/
,
http://leedsabc.org/update-from-john-bowden-about-lies-written-by-prison-hired-social
-worker-2/ , http://leedsabc.org/support-for-john-bowden/ ,
http://leedsabc.org/corrupt-social-workers-attempt-to-rid-themselves-of-prisoner-john-bowden/
,
http://leedsabc.org/end-lies-and-corruption-in-edinburgh-criminal-justice-
services/ , and
http://leedsabc.org/lying-prison-social-worker-invited-to-audition-for-pinocchio/

As John says in his most recent article
(http://leedsabc.org/corrupt-social-workers-attempt-to-rid-themselves-of-prisoner-john-bowden/):

“Edinburgh Criminal Justice Services, or what used to be known as the
plain Social Work Department, have seriously compromised their
professional integrity by defending a member of staff who deliberately
told lies in a report to the Parole Boards in an attempt to sabotage my
chances of release from prison. Behaving like corrupt policemen instead of
traditional social workers seems now to be acceptable practice at
Edinburgh Social Services.”

To rid themselves of John Bowden, so as to avoid having to deal with his
complaints, Edinburgh ‘Criminal Justice Services’ are now trying to
instigate John’s removal from the Scottish prison system back into the
English one. Two years ago, the Parole Board recommended that John be
moved to an open prison, something the Scottish Prison Service have
stubbornly ignored, and it is inevitable that if John is moved into a
different prison system any ‘progression’ to open conditions will be
delayed even further, if indeed it ever happens at all. John has been a
tireless critic of the human rights abuses frequently perpetrated by the
English Prison Service, and we believe that they would like him to die in
jail.

Once again, as with the Matthew Stillman campaign a few years ago, it is
time for supporters of John Bowden, and opponents of injustice everywhere,
to step up to defend John, and to send a message to the prison
authorities, that whether they are in jail or out of jail, no comrade of
ours is ever alone. Furthermore, these corrupt social workers need to know
that their lies and machinations will not go unchallenged.

We are therefore calling for a Day of Action in support of John Bowden on
MONDAY 11th JUNE. Please organise what you can – banner drops, demos,
phone-ins, letter writing, etc – and please help spread word of this call
as widely as possible.

Some useful contacts:

Brendan ‘Pinnochio’ Barnett, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre, Criminal
Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR. (Telephone: 0131
469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628)

Michelle Miller, Chief Social Worker, Grindlay Court Social Work Centre,
Criminal Justice Services, 2-4 Grindlay Court, Edinburgh, EH3 9AR.
(Telephone: 0131 469 3408 Fax 0131 229 8628) NB Michelle Miller also works
out of Waverly Court, see details for Peter Gabbitas below.

Peter Gabbitas, Director, Health and Social Care Department, Waverly
Court, Level 1/8, 4 East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8DG. (Telephone
0131 553 8201 Fax 0131 529 6218).

Social Work Advice and Complaints Service, Waverley Court, Level 1/7, 4
East Market Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BG. (Telephone 0131 529 6217 Email
socialwork.complaints@edinburgh.gov.uk).

Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, 4 Melville Street, Edinburgh, EH3 7NS.
Scottish Prison Service HQ, Communications Branch, Room 338, Calton House,
5 Redheughs Rigg, Edinburgh, EH12 9HW. (Telephone 01259 760 471 Fax 01259
762 003 E-mail gaolinfo@sps.gov.uk

Ian Whitehead (Governor), HMP Shotts, Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7
4LE. (Telephone 01501 824000 Fax 01501 824 001 ).

Letters and cards of support to John at: John Bowden, 6729, HMP Shotts,
Cantrell Road, Shotts, Scotland, ML7 4LE.

You can also send e-mails to John (or any other prisoner) via:
http://www.emailaprisoner.com

You can download John Bowden’s pamphlet ‘Tear Down The Walls!’ free of
charge from the PDF section of the Leeds ABC website at www.leedsabc.org