Why there will be more deaths in custody
Published 17 July 2006
Zahid Mubarek, an Asian teenager, was serving a short sentence at Feltham Young Offenders' Institution in south London. He had been found guilty of low-level crime: tampering with a car and petty theft. It was his first time in the nick.
He was due to be released on 21 March 2000. On the previous night, he was bludgeoned to death by his cellmate, Robert Stewart, who announced a message of hatred to the world with the tattoo on his forehead: "RIP". For the six weeks preceding Zahid's death, Stewart had been plonked into Zahid's cell. Poisoned by racial hatred, he murderously attacked Zahid while the latter was asleep. Zahid had carried the sobriquet "Outlawz" - no more than teenage bravado.
Shortly afterwards, the then director general of the prison service, Martin Narey, wrote to Zahid's parents as follows: "You had a right to expect us to look after Zahid safely and we have failed. I am very, very sorry." Two formal inquiries followed. The service itself summoned a senior investigating officer to do the job; his report was critical of the system, particularly for allowing an avowed racist to share a cell with Zahid. The other investigation, by the Commission for Racial Equality, concerned itself with whether or not the prison service had been guilty of racial discrimination.
That the Mubarek family never participated in any meaningful way in either report led the House of Lords to demand that the Home Secretary set up a commission of inquiry into Zahid's death. Enter Mr Justice Keith, whose inquiry findings were published on 29 June.
More than 120 individuals and organisations gave evidence before the learned judge and his chosen associates. Robert Stewart was called and so was a Jamie Barnes, who did time at Feltham and is now a university graduate working with the charity Unlock. But not a single black or Asian prisoner was questioned.
The absence of prisoner input makes the report deeply flawed. Let me state here and now that my observations on this matter are informed by my experience of one of London's notorious prisons. I did time at Pentonville a couple of decades ago. I am an old boy of that institution.
Mr Justice Keith's report assumes that prison officers run the prisons. They don't; prisoners do. Prison officers officiate. Let me explain. I entered Pentonville one Thursday afternoon having been imprisoned by an erratic judge for a first offence of assault. My reception at the prison was a torrent of racial abuse from prison officers. I was told nothing of the rules and regulations that were to govern my life there. It was from other prisoners that I learned what I could do, what I could not do, when, where and how.
For example, beds had to be made in military style. The prisoner with whom I was sharing a cell demonstrated how. No officer had explained, yet by mid-morning on my first day an officer had arrived to inspect my bed. The discipline of my day, what I was entitled to, where in the prison I went, and at what time, were also all explained to me by prisoners.
That there were demonstrations around the prison every day calling for my release gained me some popularity, so I did not have to pay in kind for this information. Cigarettes are invariably used as currency. No cigarettes, no talk. This practice of leaving the prisoner wholly ignorant of necessary details creates a hierarchy with those who know at the top and those who do not scratching around at the bottom.
Those with information have the power. And on any landing of any wing, prison officers have their narks who report everything that takes place behind their backs. "Dog eat dog" accurately describes relationships in jail. So no surprise that Robert Stewart ate Zahid.
Back to the report: there are more than 150 recommendations therein. Ask Sajida Mubarek, Zahid's mum, whose interests the House of Lords sought to uphold, what recommendation number 20 is. She will not know. And I am certain that not a single prisoner in Feltham knows what has been recommended and therefore they will never be able to track the changes.
I am sure, though, that there is an army of consultants who will charge the prison service huge fees for overseeing the implementation of this report. And the prisoners will still be none the wiser, because of their exclusion from the process. Prisoners in Britain still live in a Dickensian world, herded together in places like Feltham, with no rights whatsoever.
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