Political Prisoners' Resistance from Ireland to Gitmo

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Political Prisoners' Resistance from Ireland to Gitmo

Sex And Drugs And Immigration Control – The Double Punishment And Deportation Of Black Prisoners

By Kate McCabe*, May 8, 2006

In a statement to his lawyer, Guantánamo detainee and hunger strike organiser Binyam Mohammed al-Habashi said of his plans to protest his unlawful imprisonment by the United States: "I do not plan to stop until I either die or we are respected. [We] will definitely die. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate treatment of Irishmen without trial. He had the courage of his convictions and he starved himself to death. Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage."

As an Irish American, Mohammed's words resonate with me on many different levels. I was five at the time of the Irish hunger strikes in 1981, and although I don't remember when I first heard the name "Bobby Sands", I do know that it was at a very young age. I grew up with Irish relatives who loved to tell stories about home; my father and his family, the McCabes, immigrated to the US from Tullamore, and the Sloans-on my mother's side-are from Belfast. I was raised on the tales of Irish martyrs like Wolfe Tone, Michael Collins, Terence MacSwiney, and James Connolly; how over centuries brave men and women have fought against British imperialism in Ireland; and how that history-and the impact of partition and systemic discrimination against Catholics in the north-informed the conviction of Bobby Sands and his comrades on the hunger strike.

I had learned the names of many of Ireland's freedom fighters well before I knew about those who had fought for similar goals in the US, the country in which I was raised. Learning about them, and about the rich history of the Irish struggle for independence from Britain, marked the beginning of my politicisation. My early Irish history lessons led to a desire to learn all I could about global struggles against colonialism and oppression, while at the same time giving me perspective on history and current events.

When I first learned of the US interrogation camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the treatment of the internees at Long Kesh (the British internment camp set up for the Irish) and those held at Guantánamo. They both faced internment without trial, rigged courts, torture and coerced confessions. Those with firsthand experience in British prisons in Ireland have made similar connections regarding the "war on terror" and the use of torture by the US and British armies in Iraq.

As Gerry Adams, President of the pro-united Ireland political party Sinn Féin, wrote in the article "I have been in torture photos, too," reports of the abuse of prisoners by British and US soldiers in Iraq and elsewhere do not surprise residents of republican Ireland, many of whom have survived such abuse at the hands of British security forces. Irish republicans have heard it all before, Adams explains, and it appears as though the British never did stop their human rights abuses. "Although these cases ended up in Europe, and the British government paid thousands in compensation, it didn't stop the torture and ill-treatment of detainees. It just made the British government and its military and intelligence agencies more careful about how they carried it out and ensured that they changed the laws to...make it very difficult to expose the guilty."

In a May 2004 article in the Andersonstown News, author Danny Morrison reflected on the irony of Tony Blair's condemnation of the mistreatment of Iraqis after a newspaper published photographs of a British soldier urinating on a hooded prisoner lying in the back of a military truck. In 1977, Morrison recalled (which Blair overlooked or conveniently forgot), the European Commission on Human Rights found the British government guilty of "inhuman and degrading treatment" of Irish prisoners interned without trial. At the time, then-Prime Minister John Callaghan condemned such treatment in the House of Commons and vowed that it would never happen again. "It happened again and again and again. A proud tradition. First in Ireland, now in Iraq," wrote Morrison.

It was in this frame of mind that I first read about the hunger strikes that have occurred since 2002 at the Guantánamo interrogation camp. Information coming out of the prison camp is heavily censored and slow coming; most "new" reports received by lawyers and subsequently released to the media are several weeks old by the time we hear them. At the time of writing, there are about 490 detainees-some as young as 12 or 14 years old. The numbers of those on hunger strike are disputed, with military estimates much lower than those of non-military legal counsel. Numbers exceeding 100 participants have been quoted, but it is generally believed that many have left the strike due to torture and coercion on behalf of prison guards. The US military has manipulated the use of language to reclassify suicide attempts as "self-injurious manipulative behaviour", so as to cover up the true numbers of such attempts. It is suspected that the numbers of hunger strikers are similarly distorted.

The US military continues to force-feed hunger strikers, despite widespread belief that such practices are dangerous, barbaric, and in direct violation of prisoners' rights. Gerry Kelly, an Irish republican ex-prisoner and current Sinn Féin MLA, was force-fed 170 times over a 205-day hunger strike in an English jail in an effort to be transferred to a prison in the north of Ireland. He described the horrors of being force-fed to the North Belfast News in 2004:

They press their knuckles into your jaws and press in hard. The way they finally did force feed me was getting forceps and running them up and down my gums. I opened my mouth, but I was able to resist after that. Then they tried there's a part of your nose, like a membrane and it's very tender and they started on that. It's hard to describe the pain. It's like someone pushing a knitting needle into the side of your eye. As soon as I opened my mouth they put in this wooden bit with a hole in the middle for the tube. They rammed it between my teeth and then tied it with cord around my head. Then they got paraffin and forced it down the tube. The danger is that every time it happens you think you're going to die. The only things that move are your eyes. They get a funnel and put the stuff down.

Other Irish hunger strikers, such as Michael Gaughan in 1974, have died as a direct result of such inhumane treatment.

Belfast-born Dr. David Nicholl recently published a letter signed by 250 medical experts from 7 countries in the medical journal Lancet condemning the practice of force-feeding at Guantánamo, claiming that those doctors who engage in force-feeding are abrogating their medical ethics. Recent reports claim that many of those on hunger strike will eat one meal every three days in an effort to avoid being classified as on hunger strike and risk being force-fed.

What would make a prisoner go on hunger strike, one might wonder-especially if there is a good likelihood that to engage in one will lead to your death? Irish hunger striker Laurence McKeown recently recalled, "After years of being in prison you realise all the many instances that you are stripped of the sort of power you would have, just as a person, if you were on the outside." McKeown was part of the 1981 hunger strike in which Bobby Sands and nine other men died fighting for political status and against the British policy of criminalisation. The strike marked the culmination of years of protest, an escalation proclaiming that "only the loud voice of the Irish people and world opinion can bring them to their senses and only a hunger strike, where lives are laid down as proof of the strength of our political convictions, can rally such opinion", as their statement described.

I met Laurence McKeown in the offices of Coiste na n-Iarchimí, the republican ex-prisoner organisation where he works, in Belfast last December. We discussed his experiences on hunger strike and its effects on his health, the legacy of 1981, the war in Iraq, and briefly, Guantánamo. He spoke of his motivation for participation in the strikes, saying that being involved in the struggle against British colonialism in Ireland "means you've accepted that you would end up dead or in prison, so there was already a commitment there, an element of self-sacrifice or preparedness for it. When you think of the hunger strike, you often might say-maybe in particular if you're American-you're often surprised that there is that level of commitment, but there's a different political and cultural history over here."

Morrison and many others believe that the lack of popular British support enabled Thatcher's intransigence and allowed ten men to die as a result of the Irish hunger strikes in 1981. There is an eerie similarity to the United States government's arrogance regarding Guantánamo, as the Bush administration continues to deny the internees their basic human rights under federal and international law and maintains its position that the "enemy combatants" currently being held are a threat to national security despite rapidly surmounting evidence to the contrary.

McKeown thinks that the corporate media plays one of the biggest roles in the charade, allowing people to turn a blind eye. Referring to the British policy of criminalising the political acts of the republican movement, he says, "the media were there trying to push [the idea that] 'these people are terrorists, these people are criminals, so therefore you can do whatever you want to them’. The first thing is being able to portray them as ‘non-people’ and in America [right now] as far as laws are concerned these are non-people."

This classification as a non-person, in both the legal and social realms, allows the government to manipulate people's fear of terrorism into a calculated dismissal of the conditions of the prisoners at Guantánamo.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1981 Irish hunger strikes. On March 1st, I stood beside Bobby Sands' grave in Belfast's Milltown Cemetery, on the anniversary of the first day that he went without. As I stood there and contemplated his sacrifice and conviction, I thought about the international response and outpouring of support that met the news of Sands' death on May 5, 1981. There were demonstrations all over the world, from Western Europe to Australia to India to Iran. World leaders stood up to condemn the British government for allowing Sands, who had been elected a member of Parliament during the hunger strike, to die. Members of the Senate, including Ted Kennedy, sent Margaret Thatcher a letter in protest of her "inflexible posture which must lead inevitably to more senseless violence and death". There were marches in cities across the US, from New York to Boston to Chicago to San Francisco. State legislatures passed resolutions: New York's resolution expressed sympathy while condemning the British government, Rhode Island declared a day of mourning, and my home state of New Jersey officially honoured Sands' courage and commitment. On the day of Sands' funeral, all British ships were blocked by the Longshoreman's Union.

Standing in the republican plot at Milltown that day, I also thought about the men hunger striking in Guantánamo and how the US government does not believe that they deserve to be treated as prisoners of war as defined by the Geneva Conventions. I thought, too, about a story that Sands recounted in his Writings from Prison, called "The Lark and the Freedom Fighter". In the story, Sands recalls a tale told by his grandfather about the lark, whose imprisonment, as the symbol of freedom and happiness, was the greatest cruelty of all. After being locked in a cage, the lark no longer sung. Her spirit of resistance and desire to be free meant that she would rather die than submit to a life lived in a cage controlled by another's whim. Sands compares his plight to that of the lark, and contrasts both with that of the ordinary prisoner. Sands wrote: "I feel something in common with that poor bird. My position is in total contrast to that of an ordinary conforming prisoner: I too am a political prisoner, a freedom fighter. Like the lark, I too have fought for my freedom, not only in captivity, where I now languish, but also while on the outside, where my country is held captive. I have been captured and imprisoned, but, like the lark, I too have seen the outside of the wire cage."

I do not doubt that Binyam Mohammed and his brothers imprisoned at Guantánamo have any less courage than did Sands and his fellow Irish martyrs.

This year, I will attend many hunger strike commemoration events, where I will continue to celebrate the lives of Bobby Sands, Francis Hughes, Patsy O'Hara, Raymond McCreesh, Joe McDonnell, Martin Hurson, Kevin Lynch, Kieran Doherty, Thomas McElwee, and Michael Devine, as well as Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg-while expressing my opposition to what is happening at the US interrogation camp. What better way to honour their memories, to pay tribute to their legacy, than to stand up against the disgrace that is Guantánamo and the war in Iraq.

Sands once said, "We must see our present fight through to the very end. Generations will continue to meet the same fight unless the perennial oppressor is removed." First in Ireland, then in Iraq, now in Guantánamo. "Everyone, Republican or otherwise, has their own particular part to play. No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something."

* Kate McCabe is an editor of Critical Moment magazine and an active member of the Irish American Unity Conference.

The Manifesto of the Campaign against Double Punishment

First published in 1992 by The Campaign Against Double Punishment

Introduction
It is supposed to be a fundamental principle of the criminal law that a person cannot be punished twice for the same offence. However this does not apply to black people. This is because many black people found guilty of a crime are at risk of deportation in addition to any other sentence. Apart from certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens the only people immune from expulsion are British Citizens.1. However since the 1981 Nationality Act it has become increasingly hard to acquire such citizenship.

Deportation of criminal offenders can take place in two ways. Firstly, it can be recommended by a court following conviction 2. Secondly, even where the court makes no recommendation, the Home Office can subsequently intervene and serve a deportation notice on the grounds that the prisoner's presence in the UK is not 'conducive to the public good' 3.

Deportation following conviction can occur irrespective of how long a person has lived in the UK. It can be irrespective of their family ties in this country - which can have two consequences. Either families are split up. Or alternatively, in order to keep together, partners and children will also uproot themselves and go and live abroad often in countries they may have never even visited previously. This amounts to enforced deportation of entire families.

Racism of immigration controls
Double punishment is not simply unjust. It is also racist. It is racist because it primarily affects immigrants, migrants and refugees from the third world and their families.

This is because all immigration restrictions are racist. The only reason they exist is to keep out and control black people. This is why children are denied entry to join parents, husbands to join wives and refugees to claim asylum. And it is why those who do manage to get to the UK can later be removed. In 1989 there were 678 court recommendations to deport and 3214 Home Office notices of deportations - of which 112 were on grounds of public good. To be added to this are the 1820 people removed as being allegedly illegal entrants 4. All this means that every week about 100 people are threatened by expulsion. Hidden from these figures are the families of those threatened. Also hidden are the countless numbers who leave the UK in fear without waiting for expulsion proceedings and therefore losing what limited opportunities there are to challenge such proceedings.

It is not a coincidence that these laws affect mainly black people. Politically, immigration laws are inevitably racist. It is impossible to have non-racist immigration laws. Controls are always aimed at particular groups of people. The very first immigration restrictions were contained in the 1905 Aliens Act (the 1905 Act). This was designed to keep out Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Nowadays supporters of controls argue that immigration laws are somehow 'natural' or 'reasonable'. However a century ago there were no such controls. It required a mass political movement against Jewish immigrants to legitimise control through the 1905 Act. Controls were later used to keep out Jews fleeing Nazism. Since the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 immigration laws have been aimed at keeping out black people.

Immigration laws criminalise black people
The effect of immigration laws is to criminalise all black people. It does not matter if they have committed any criminal offence or not. The Immigration Act 1971 authorises detention and imprisonment where there has been no offence, no charge, no prosecution, no court intervention 5. For example, people refused entry - such as asylum-seekers - can be put in custody. So can anyone against whom the Home Office serves a notice to deport for 'overstaying' or working in breach of the conditions of their entry. Likewise alleged illegal entrants can simply be apprehended and imprisoned. Custody takes place either within prisons or in specially designated immigration detention centres. The latter include Harmondsworth and detention buildings in airports, such as the Beehive in Gatwick and Queens Building at Heathrow. Since 1970 these have been managed by private security organisations. Presently Group 4 has the contract 6. The detention of black immigration prisoners is providing a model for the future privatisation of the prison service.

Immigration controls criminalise black people in other ways. For example the proposed new Asylum Bill will make compulsory the finger-printing of all asylum-seekers. In future refugees will be treated as offenders.

Criminalisation also takes place through the very language of controls. Under immigration law immigrants, migrants and refugees can be defined as being in the UK 'illegally' or 'unlawfully'. In this way black people are defined as non-persons and as being outside the law - as being the modern equivalent of the mediaeval outlaw. Immigration Officers regularly describe third word people as 'illegals' - as having no identity other than as being devoid of status in the UK. All these definitions, all these ways of criminalising black people, are highly political in that immigration laws are not a static given fact but are constantly being redefined - always to the detriment of black people.

There is one instance where this criminalisation takes place for openly political reasons. The Immigration Act 1971 gives the Home Secretary power to deport on conducive to public good grounds 'for reasons of a political nature'. Black people can be expelled without being charged with any offence simply because of their political activity; or political allegiances; or assumed political allegiances. The most recent instance of this was the detention and deportation of some Iraqis and Palestinians after the United States' invasion of Iraq. Their very nationality had been turned into a crime. Their being black was adjudged a political crime.7'

Double punishment
The criminalisation of those who have committed no criminal offence makes, central to the ideology of immigration control the position of those who have been found guilty of such an offence. Black people convicted of a crime are the ultimate scapegoats and victims of immigration law. They are used to justify the idea that controls are necessary. Necessary to keep out the criminal and the so-called 'deviant' which by definition includes everyone from the third world.

Double punishment - that is deportation in addition to any other punishment - is right at the heart of the racism of immigration controls. It should also be right at the heart of opposition to controls. However the reality is that many people who would normally oppose deportation in individual cases think that it is ' reasonable' and 'alright' to support the expulsion of convicted criminals. But it is neither reasonable nor all right. Imagine the outcry if deportation applied to British citizens and thousands of such citizens were deported every year. Why should a criminal penalty relate to a person's immigration status - unless it is thought that a penalty has to be paid for being black?

The political history of double punishment
The fact that criminalisation and double punishment are so important to immigration control can be seen historically. Under the Aliens Act 1905 the only grounds for deportation were where there had been a court recommendation following a criminal conviction - or where a court had certified that an alien was claiming 'parochial relief. Being on the dole and being a criminal have long been seen as identical in immigration law. So, today, having 'recourse to public funds' can lead to deportation in some cases.

The numbers of people deported under the 1905 Act can be seen in the 1908 annual report of the government inspector appointed to oversee the Act. In that year there were 319 expulsion orders made of which 40 were for parochial relief and the rest followed a criminal conviction 8.

Deportations and 'deviancy'
Most of those deported under the Aliens Act 1905 were Jewish. Moreover many of these were deported following offences relating to prostitution. The Jewish Chronicle of 30 April 1909 reported a meeting in Cardiff organised against prostitute women where it was stated that:

'Owing to the leniency of the Cardiff stipendiary magistrate a few years ago, two Jewesses out of thirty seven who had been before him were allowed to remain in Cardiff, the other thirty five having been deported. These two Jewesses had been the means of bringing sixty other Jewesses to Cardiff who were on the streets of the city today and alien men were living on the shame of these poor creatures.'

Immigration laws are not based just on the notion that those who are to be excluded (that is the entire third world) are simply criminals. Rather, immigration laws construct and reinforce the most racist images of the alien as deviant. One of the myths most frequently used against Jews to justify immigration controls was the myth of Jewish sexual promiscuity - Jewish women being defined as prostitutes and Jewish men as pimps. W H Wilkins, an active campaigner for controls, wrote in 1892 in his book The Alien Invasion that:

'Many of the immigrants are young women, Jewesses of considerable personal attraction. Mensharks and female harpies are on the look out for them as soon as they disembark.'

In a very similar way in the 1950s the myth of a supposed sexual deviancy by black people was used as a way of justifying control. The 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act was very much a response and concession to racist attacks in the summer of 1958 in Notting Hill and Nottingham. The Times of 27 August 1958 sought to explain the violence against black people as being based on an alleged 'misbehaviour, especially sexual' and the fact that 'there is also sexual jealously - the sight of coloured men walking along with white women'. The Guardian of 9 September 1958 ran an article reinforcing the stereotype of the black man as pimp. It described the sighting of a woman of 'mixed-marriage' in Notting Hill and that:

'A coloured man called for her in a large black Humber and I followed in my own car. They swung left at Holland Park and ten minutes later she was put out on her 'pitch' on the pavement in Bayswater Road.'

When the government was introducing the present 1981 Nationality Act one of its Ministers, Timothy Raison, announced that British Citizenship would, not be granted to anyone involved in 'scandalous sexual misbehaviour'.9

Sex and drugs and immigration control
These images of 'alien' sexuality were a very significant force throughout this century in the enactment, development and enforcement of immigration controls. This was because they brought together both English racism and English sexual prurience - a powerful combination.

However nowadays the dominant myth used to justify controls has switched from sex to drugs. For instance black people convicted of a drugs offence, especially of supplying or importing, are a very high risk group indeed - the high risk being double punishment and deportation. In 1988, of all deportation orders made following a court recommendation, 80 per cent (531) followed convictions for a drug offence. In the same year 55 per cent (58) of deportation orders made on conducive to public good grounds followed a drugs offence.10

These figures have little, if anything, to do with the protection of the public. They have everything to do with the portrayal of all black people as supposedly degenerate and vice-ridden -and of drug 'abuse' as being the result of third world supply and corrupting influence rather than of demand within the UK. If the issue really were one of protection then it would not only be foreign nationals who are singled out for longer prison sentences and deportation. However as the Court of Appeal said in R v Nazari [198013 All ER 880, the leading legal judgment on deportation following a drugs offence, 'The United Kingdom has no use for criminals of other nations'11

The police
The existence of double punishment gives the police a vital role in the enforcement of immigration control and the criminalisation and monitoring of black people. This can be seen from the Home Office's own Circulars to Chief Constables.

Firstly, a court cannot make a recommendation to deport unless the accused has been given seven days warning in advance that he or she is liable to deportation and is served with the appropriate form. The form presently has the Home Office reference number IM3. Circular 38/1988 states that 'responsibility for serving Form IM3 rests with the police'. A recommendation is part of a sentence on conviction. The giving of the responsibility to the police to decide whether or not to serve the IM3 offends another basic principle of criminal law - namely that neither the prosecution nor the police in particular should have any influence in sentence after the verdict. However the Home Office is actively encouraging the police to be pressing courts to make recommendations to deport. Circular 68/1990 states:

'Experience has shown that a court recommendation provides the most efficient and effective means of securing the deportation of those subject to immigration control who commit criminal offences and forces should bear this firmly in mind when dealing with offenders subject to immigration control.'

Secondly, the Home Office has given the police the responsibility to report on, spy on, black people even in cases where there has been no court recommendation. Circular 6811990 asks police forces to report to the Immigration and Nationality Department of the Home Office on other convictions, particularly those involving 'drugs or violence against the person'. This is to allow the Home Office to make deportation orders on conducive to public good grounds. One of the most demoralising aspects of double punishment is that black prisoners are often taken completely by surprise when the Home Office decides in mid-sentence to deport 12.

Thirdly, because only non-British black people can be deported then the police's role in securing deportations means they inevitably inquire into an accused person's immigration and nationality status. They act as agents of the Immigration Service and liaise with that Service. Circular 10411981 instructs the police to 'make further inquiries' where they doubt if someone is a British Citizen and in particular where they 'believe that a false place of birth has been given'.

Imprisonment and home leave
Double punishment affects the rights and liberties of black people even before any deportation takes place. Two significant issues for all prisoners are the chances of temporary home leave and of parole. However for prisoners in the course of a custodial court sentence there is little chance of either where there exists a threat of deportation.

When reaching their parole eligibility date most prisoners are eligible to apply to the prison Governor for home leave.... The Home Office though has issued instructions to Governors which makes this eligibility useless for foreign nationals. A Home Office Amendment to Circular Instruction 9/1988 (issued February 1991) states:

'Particular care should be exercised in releasing prisoners against whom a deportation order has been signed or who are approaching the end of their sentence. Before releasing any prisoner liable to deportation, Governors should take account of the stage deportation proceedings have reached (for example whether a deportation order has been signed or is about to be signed). They should bear in mind that in some cases the likelihood of deportation at the end of the sentence may provide a powerful disincentive to returning from the period of release.'

It is simply unjust that a possible deportation should prejudice the chances of home leave. Riots would ensue if all prisoners were to be deprived of the possibility of home leave. When does any prisoner have anything except a 'powerful disincentive' to return to prison? The issue here is one of black prisoners being singled out and discriminated against because of their immigration status.

Parole
Likewise the possibility of some future deportation is often used as a reason to refuse parole itself. The Home Office denies this but it happens in practice. It is also completely unjust. A person's 'suitability' to be released back into the community cannot be determined by the possibility of some future expulsion from the UK.

Conversely some parole boards would apparently prefer to grant parole not as a way of granting freedom but as a way of helping the Home Office speed up the expulsion process. This itself is of dubious legality - as expulsion makes compliance with parole conditions impossible. Moreover at least one Tory MP has objected to such a practice on the grounds that it is too lenient. Chris Butler MP said in the House of Commons (9 June 1989):

'Many drug couriers and dealers imprisoned in Britain are foreign. Local Review Committees are tempted to deport them before they complete their sentence. The motivation is clear -to get rid of the scum and lessen the burden on the British taxpayer ... A premature return to their country of origin would give the message that Britain is a soft touch.’13

The Criminal Justice Act
The 1991 Criminal Justice Act will actually legalise more rapid expulsions through the new parole or 'licence' system. This will enable the early release of prisoners subject, usually, to conditions- in particular to the condition of compulsory supervision by a probation officer. The scheme will come into operation in October 1992. Under the new system all prisoners serving a sentence of less than twelve months must be released unconditionally after half the sentence. 14 A prisoner serving between one and four years must be released after half sentence but subject to licence conditions.15 A prisoner serving four years or more (a 'long-term' prisoner) must be released on licence after two-thirds of the sentence. 16 Also a long-term prisoner may after half sentence be released on licence by the Home Secretary if recommended by the parole board.17 All this seems beneficial for prisoners under threat of expulsion in that a lot of early release dates will be automatic and cannot be blocked by the parole board. Indeed section 46(18) of the Act allows the Home Secretary to release after half-sentence without even referral to the parole board those long-term prisoners 'liable to removal from the United Kingdom'. Those liable to removal are defined as deportees, persons refused leave to enter or alleged illegal entrants. However there is a big sting in the tail in all of this for immigration prisoners. Early release will not mean release into the community. But release on to a plane. This is because section 46 also states that prisoners liable to removal from the UK will not be subject to licence conditions on their release.19 This allows the Home Secretary to expel someone without being responsible for a breach of licence conditions. In other words as far as black prisoners are concerned this whole scheme is simply a front for more rapid removals 20.

The trap for immigration prisoners
Prisoners threatened with expulsion are in a trap. On the one hand just like every prisoner they all want to get out of custody as quickly as possible. On the other hand most want to remain in this country and not be speedily removed. Of course a minority of such prisoners may genuinely want a quick return to their country of origin. The majority of black prisoners though are in a 'catch 22' situation. At the moment the situation is that the more a prisoner challenges the removal process, through the law and through campaigning, then the longer he or she is likely to be kept in custody. In fact many prisoners are detained long after the completion of their sentence. This is done under Immigration Act 1971 powers and is done as a deterrent to stop expulsions being in any way contested. Many prisoners understandably opt not to resist deportation but to leave prison as quickly as possible even if this means having to leave the country. The new Criminal Justice Act is going to make this trap even worse for black prisoners by speeding up expulsion via early release whilst at the same time the Home Secretary will retain Immigration Act 1971 powers for continued detention on completion of the criminal sentence.

The Campaign against Double Punishment
The Campaign against Double Punishment has been set up to publicise and campaign against double punishment. We are against it. It offends all rules of natural justice and is a central feature of the racism of immigration controls. It is based on the premise that all black people are a corrupting and criminal force. It has nothing to do with concepts of the punishment fitting the crime. It has everything to do with punishment pandering to the basest prejudices of the British state and fitting up black people accordingly.

NOTES

1. For that diminishing group of Commonwealth citizens who have retained the right of abode during their lifetime and so cannot be deported see the Immigration Act 1971 s 2 as amended by the British Nationality Act 1981 s 39(2). In addition those Commonwealth and Irish citizens ordinarily resident in the UK when the Immigration Act came into force (1 January 1973) are exempt from deportation if they were also ordinarily resident for five years prior to any conviction and recommendation by the court or prior to notice of deportation by the Home Office on conducive to public good grounds [Immigration Act 1971, s 71.

2. Immigration Act 1971, s 3(6).

3. Immigration Act 1971, s 3(5)(b).

4. Figures taken from the Home Office Statistical Bulletin, 27 September 1990.

5. See the Immigration Act 1971, 2, 3 Sch for powers of detention.

6. See Dr Penny Green, Private Sector Involvement in the Immigration Detention Centres (The Howard League for Penal Reform).

7. Immigration Act 1971, s 15(3) takes away appeal entitlements in such cases. See R v Secretary of State ex p Cheblack [1991] 2 All ER 319.

8. Jewish Chronicle 18 June 1909.

9. HC Official Report (5th series) 19 March 1981, col 692.

10. In correspondence from the Home Office to Keith Bradley, MP, on behalf of the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit.

11. 71 Cr App R 87.

12. Previously responsibility was given to prison Governors to take the initiative and report to the Home Office those foreign nationals they considered should be deported Circular Instruction 2311986.

13. Quoted in Dr Penny Green, Drug Couriers (Howard League for Penal Reform). Amongst other important issues this pamphlet also deals with the 'triple jeopardy' of Nigerian drug couriers. With the introduction of Decree 33, effective from 10 October 1990, Nigerian couriers arrested and convicted abroad are now liable for immediate re-prosecution upon completion of their sentence abroad and deportation to Nigeria.

14. Criminal Justice Act 1991, ss 33 (1)(a), 33(5). Section 33(5) defines who is a 'short-term prisoner' - a person serving a sentence of imprisonment for a term of less than four years and who is a 'long-term prisoner' - a person serving a sentence of imprisonment for a term of four years or more.

15. Criminal Justice Act 1991, s 33(1)(b).

16. Criminal Justice Act 1991, s 33(2).

17. Criminal Justice Act 1991, s 35(1).

18. Criminal Justice Act 1991, s 46(1). Section 46(3) states

'A person is liable to removal from the United Kingdom for the purposes of this section if (a) he is liable to deportation under section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971 and has been notified of a decision to make a deportation order against him:

(b) he is liable to deportation, under section 3(6) of that Act;

(c) he has been notified of a decision to refuse him leave to

enter the United Kingdom; or

(d) he is an illegal entrant within the meaning of section

33(1) of that Act.'

19. Criminal Justice Act 1991, s 46(2).

20. Under the present law, as found in s 60 of the Criminal Justice Act 1967, the Home Secretary does already have a general power on the recommendation of the parole board to grant parole without there being any condition and in particular without any condition as to probation supervision. According to a letter from the Prison Service Parole Unit to Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit of 30 December 1991 this power has been used in cases of 'prisoners who are subject of deportation orders' - and is not otherwise used. The Unit is endeavouring to obtain details and statistics on this. However s 46 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 differs from the present law in that in future release on licence will not have to be considered by the parole board and also in that there is a definition of prisoners 'liable to removal from the United Kingdom'. In addition s 46 avoids the legally dubious situation under the existing law where a deportation order is made subsequent to a release subject to supervision conditions and therefore any actual removal is in breach of the conditions.