Prison bosses incessantly argue for harsher conditions—then cry over the lack of safe systems of work
~ Kevan Thakrar ~
On Saturday, 12 April 2025, an incident allegedly occurred at HMP Frankland. Corrupt prison officers, likely in return for a bung, rushed to leak unsubstantiated claims to the media they were attacked, unprovoked, with hot cooking oil. Incidents happen every day within prisons in England since conditions have deteriorated beyond what is imaginable, making the population highly combustible following any further provocation. Yet rarely do any of these incidents make the news, let alone national headlines.
What made this particular alleged event newsworthy was not the severity of it—nobody died and certainly nobody was murdered (although there are hundreds of deaths in custody each year, with usually around five of these being classified as homicides)—but that one of the alleged participants is in prison for a so-called terrorist offence. Bizarrely, beyond accepting the corrupt prison officers’ narrative without question, not a single media outlet performed any real journalism to substantiate the story, nor did they bother to find out what had been going on within HMP Frankland prior to this happening. The media simply parroted what they received in a sensationalised frenzy.
This alleged incident occurred within what is known as the Separation Centre (SC), a discriminatory unit designed to enable the arbitrary and indefinite unofficial punishment of exclusively Muslim men to whom the prison service management takes a dislike. An almost identical system used to operate for the IRA, known as Special Security Units, which Amnesty International condemned as being ‘inhumane and degrading’ as long ago as the 1990s, but clearly no lessons have been learned. To have placed one of these SCs within HMP Frankland, a prison notorious for racism and Islamophobia, can best be described as idiotic.
Within SCs, the staffing ratios are wildly disproportionate, resulting in more than one officer per prisoner throughout the daytime until the prison goes into full nighttime lockdown. Having this excessive number of officers leads to boredom amongst them, with some not satisfied to take their £35,000 wage from the public purse for being idle, and so they begin to antagonise, provoke, and abuse those supposedly under their care. So, an inevitable incident allegedly occurred; but rather than seeking to manage this professionally, or at least equally to how other and often more extreme events are managed, instead some fool decided to shamefully run to the papers.
Having now seen this supercharged story, the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) sent their spokesmen sprinting to cry to anyone who would listen to how bad these overpaid and undereducated prison officers have it. Apparently, the hostile conditions which they have engendered have left them unsafe and it is just not fair. So the prison service are pressured to close the HMP Frankland SC, with the media failing to pick up on the mistreatment inflicted upon all of those who had been detained there by the gangs of prison officers tasked to relocate them.
At some point it must have dawned upon the employees of HMP Frankland that having had their union vehemently campaign against this cash cow was not a sensible decision, as suddenly opportunities for higher paid overtime vanished as the dozens of prison officers ordinarily allocated to work within the SC plugged all the gaps. They quietly requested the unit, which they had previously said to be unsafe to work within, be re-opened, which it now has, clearly evidencing the dishonestly in their initial crusade.
If only their disgraceful drive could have been reversed before wider-reaching impacts occurred. Because the alleged incident was said to have involved cooking materials, the ignorant POA spokesmen demanded such means be removed from access to all prisoners held under Prison Rule 46. Those detained within the SC fall under Prison Rule 46A, not 46, which is a totally separate system (the Close Supervision Centre or CSC system) although is in fact even more oppressive. And to allow for even more ridiculously disproportionate staffing ratios, the POA insisted it was essential that all Rule 46 prisoners be unlocked in complete isolation from all other prisoners, effectively permanently subjecting them to solitary confinement. The cowardly government quickly agreed, announcing suspension of normal activities pending some unspecified review, which appears to have been nothing more than an angle to deflect challenges to such fascism. In addition , local POA campaigns against Rule 46 prisoners throughout each of the high security prisons have lead to extra arbitrary and oppressive measures being implemented relentlessly for months.
The POA seem to have a very short memory as regimes within CSCs used to be even more inhumane. CSC prisoners were forced to increase their resistance against this cruel and oppressive environment to the extent that the prison officers walked out. This strike, led by the POA, took place at HMP Woodhill as those designated to work within the CSC had become unable to cope with the stress of inflicting such an abusive environment on the prisoners detained within the multiple CSC units there. Home Office Research Study 219 detailed the stupidity of operating such a system, and the harms suffered by both sides—yet a return to what the POA could not withstand and led to their strike is now what their demands have achieved.
Officially, neither Prison Rule 46 or 46A are supposed to be punishments, and each man detained under these rules are purportedly subject to so-called individual risk assessments to determine our regime, access to facilities, and deselection from these systems. If it was not already clear that reality does not reflect policy, there can be no doubt what the POA believe these systems are for. As they incessantly argue for harsher conditions for prisoners which inevitably destabilise environments endangering themselves, then contradict their own arguments by crying over the lack of safe systems of work which they cause, it is clear that the POA will never be satisfied with whatever government and prison service management capitulate into giving them until they have completely talked themselves out of any need for their own employment. Forgotten about under all this noise is the harm being inflicted by all of this on us, the 100 or so men having to suffer life imprisoned within these inhumane and discriminatory systems.
Kevan Thakrar is one of the UK prisoners under ongoing solitary confinement under the Close Supervision Centre (CSC) system. He can be written to at: Kevan Thakrar A4907AE, HMP Whitemoor, Longhill Road, March PE15 0PR —- or via emailaprisoner.com
