Leaves caution behind

Naomi Klein has just written a book called The Shock Doctrine: The Age of Disaster Capitalism. It charts the latest developments in US capitalism, which seems to thrive most furiously on war, fear, suspicion and hatred, as these three eras of military/security spending suggest:

1. WWII
2. The Cold War
3. The ‘War on Terror’

(Just imagine how marvellous it would be if all this energy and ingenuity were turned towards creating an egalitarian and sustainable society …)

Among Naomi’s revelations:

• The new Homeland Security Agency is a ‘hollow shell’ which outsources most of its functions to a rapidly growing army of private contractors.
• The CIA has outsourced the ‘rendition’ of prisoners to Boeing.
• ‘Security’ lobby firms in Washington, which promise to link security companies with politicians, have grown in number from two in 2001 to over 500.
• Interrogations and torture are now outsourced, by the CIA, to private contractors, who of course have to ‘get results’ in order to hold onto their contracts
• The US pays informants huge amounts of money, creating a huge incentive to lie about others: a US flyer handed out in Afghanistan read: “Get wealth and power beyond your dreams. You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces … This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life.”

When information about who is or is not a security threat is a product to be sold as readily as information about who buys Harry Potter books on Amazon or who has taken a Caribbean cruise and might enjoy one in Alaska, it changes the values of a culture. Not only does it create an incentive to spy, torture and generate false information, but it creates a powerful impetus to perpetuate the fear and sense of peril that created the industry in the first place.

There have been and are debates, of course – about the constitutionality of the Patriot Act, about indefinite detention, about torture and extraordinary rendition – but discussion of what it means to have these functions performed as commercial transactions has been almost completely avoided. What passes for debate is restricted to individual cases of war profiteering and corruption scandals, as well as the usual hand-wringing about the failure of government to adequately oversee private contractors – rarely about the much broader and deeper phenomenon of what it means to be engaged in a fully privatised war built to have no end.

Klein, together with director Alfonso Cuarón, has produced a short video promoting the book, available on YOUTube, which you can convert to something downloadable here.

I love the Economist, sometimes. They don’t hesitate to call a thug a thug.

This article suggests that tougher prison conditions may make for higher levels of re-offending, though the research quoted is hardly overwhelming. It also suggests that my fears with respect to private prisons (see earlier posts) may in some instances be unnecessary.

What does surprise me is that there isn’t more research into this subject. Perhaps there is, and it simply isn’t quoted in this article.

Comments on my earlier post justly accused me of having done little research about the private company Serco, which runs four UK prisons, and, it turns out, detention centres for immigrants.

So I’ve done a little research.

Dovegate prison’s 200 bed theraputic community (TC) was “a very safe place” according to a recent report by the chief inspector of prisons for England and Wales. However, the chief inspector also stated that “it was of concern that selection [of prisoners] was apparently being skewed by commercial imperatives. This was neither appropriate nor fair, and it mitigated against the integrity of therapy…”

Not exactly encouraging but, I acknowledge, hardly a resounding condemnation either.

Far more disturbing are the reports on how Serco runs detention centres.

A 2006 Legal Action for Women (LAW) investigation into Yarl’s Wood Removal Centre, before SERCO took over, found that: 70% of women had reported rape, nearly half had been detained for over three months, a staggering 57% had no legal representation, and 20% had lawyers who demanded cash before taking action. Women reported sexual and racial intimidation by guards.”[1] LAW’s Self-Help Guide is now being confiscated by guards depriving women of information about their rights.

Since SERCO took over conditions have deteriorated.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is that I could find no mainstream news reports, besides one article in the New Statesman, even mentioning the May hunger strike by women detainees at Yarl’s Wood. A hunger strike is a pretty desperate course of action to take. Those who are cynical about the motives of those participating would do well to sample the living conditions of the strikers before dismissing them.

Alice O’Keeffe concludes her article in the New Stateman:

I entered thinking I belonged to a civilised and fair society; I left feeling very differently.

A reaction not too far removed from my feelings on that sunny section of Fleet Street where I encountered prisoners being anonymously transported. We should know who we’re locking up.

Further required reading on the subject must be this article in the Guardian describing the work of the Medical Justice network.

Update (5/10/07): The Independent reports that “British guards ‘assault and racially abuse’ deportees”. More details emerged a few days later, as anger built against airlines involved in forcible deportation of refugees.

Yesterday, I had a deeply sinister and disturbing experience. Walking down Fleet Street in central London, on a beautiful, sunny day, I stopped to cross at an intersection. A large, immaculate white van pulled up alongside me. There were loud, repeated banging sounds coming from within the van. But no sign of any face, no sound of any voice. The row of almost aircraft-shaped, vertically rectangular windows were smoked-black and impassive.

On the side of the van was just one name and logo: Serco.

Serco’s website tells us that it is an “international service company which combines commercial know-how with a deep public service ethos”. Explicit reference to the fact that it runs four UK prisons is only to be found once one digs below the blandly euphemistic, “home affairs” moniker.

Surely it is simply evil to make money out of imprisoning people, if this absolutely has to be done? How can we give private companies the right to benefit from the numbers of people handed over to their care, when this creates an incentive for them to keep more, rather than fewer people in their facilities? How can a company that makes money out of holding prisoners have any interest in their rehabilitation?

I little suspected, when watching the film Taking Liberties on the flight from Cape Town to London, that I would encounter some evidence of the erosion of a civil society it describes. A civil society does not hide the fact that it takes prisoners, if it has to take them.

I have written to Serco, asking how one can contact prisoners in their care.

Update: There was never any response to my request lodged with Serco.