I wonder if this…
Riot squads called to prisons once a DAY in spiral of ‘escalating violence’ says MPs’ damning report
09:59, 16 MAY 2016 UPDATED 10:02, 16 MAY 2016
BY DAN BLOOM
Prisoners and staff are at risk from rising attacks and self-harm, MPs say – and urgent action is needed before Michael Gove’s reformsRiot squads called to prisons once a DAY in spiral of ‘escalating violence’ says MPs’ damning report
Riot squads are now called to prisons once a day in a spiral of “escalating violence”, a damning report by MPs has revealed.
The Justice Select Committee today warns prisoners and staff are at risk from rising attacks and self-harm in Britain’s jails – and urgent action is needed before Michael Gove’s reforms.
Staff at London’s Wormwood Scrubs prison walked out last month over safety fears, while new figures show there were 20,000 assaults in 12 months to December – a rise of 27% year-on-year.
There were more than and nearly 5,000 attacks on staff – a jump of more than a third compared with 2014 – and the 100 apparent self-inflicted deaths in the year to March were highest for more than a decade.
…has anything to do with this.
“A prisoner has killed himself after allegedly being stopped from smoking in Swansea jail.
Inmate Dean George, 40, was found dead in his cell at one of eight jails trialling the “no smoking” ban on health grounds.
Prison Service chiefs are investigating his death at Swansea prison which started the smoking ban four months ago.
Other prisoners say tensions are running high over the smoking ban – and that George had threatened to kill himself.
A partner of an inmate said: “Dean George was found dead because of the smoking ban. He told the staff he was going to do it.
“It’s human rights – they should be allowed to smoke.”
“Officers said Swansea Prison has been operating normally since going smoke free in January – and denied there has been large unrest over the smoking ban.”
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were connected, despite the first story not mentioning the second, given that…
Statistics from the Department of Health found that 80% of the prison population smoke compared to just 24% of the general population at the time of analysis (2012)1
Frank Davis 
Telegraph
Prisoners could be allowed to spend weekends in jail and live at home the rest of the time under plans for a new generation of satellite tags which will be unveiled by the Government in the Queen’s Speech today.
Satellite tagging will be rolled out for the first time across eight police forces from September, before being extended nationwide as part of the biggest shake up of the justice system since the Victorian era.
The Prime Minister hopes that the move will “revolutionise” sentencing by enabling prisoners to keep full-time jobs during the week and spend their weekends in custody. However it is also likely to lead to a backlash from Conservative MPs over “soft justice”.
I suppose that would mean that prisoners could smoke at home during weekdays, but not at the weekend.
Or their homes could be deemed to be prisons, and they’d not be allowed to smoke at home either.
And then everyone else’s home would be deemed to be a prison too.
It would be interesting to know which prisons this violence is going on in.
Prison smoking ban overturned by court of appeal
8 March 2016
“A compulsory, immediate ban on smoking in prisons has been overturned by the court of appeal, allowing the Ministry of Justice to introduce its own voluntary, phased controls.
Bans affecting three jails in Wales came into effect in January. The MoJ said it still intended to impose restrictions on tobacco but would have greater freedom in implementing its policy.”
“The latest ruling by three court of appeal judges – Lord Dyson, master of the rolls, Lord Justice McCombe and Lord Justice David Richards – concludes that the ban on smoking in public places does not apply to state prisons and other crown premises in England and Wales.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/08/prison-smoking-ban-overturned-by-court-of-appeal
Don’t forget that the Antis probably play some of the same step-by-step games in prisons they’ve played elsewhere: acclimate the prisoners to restrictions by forbidding it in cells, but allowing it during their outdoor recreation breaks or perhaps even in a “smoking room” during work breaks during the day.
Aside from the violence problem there’s another aspect that’s never mentioned in this area of bans: the cost. Antis love to talk about bans being “cost-free” but in prisons prisoners get time off their sentences (“good time”) if they don’t have infractions of rules. Throw in the smoking bans and you inevitably have prisoners who WOULD have been freed, now being kept in jail for the “crime” of smoking.
Frank, re the two stories w/ one not mentioning the other…. It *could* be that the prisons are different ones, or (more likely) that the news source is controlled by the prisons and was specfically forbidden to mention the bans as a factor.
Prisoners are a great population for social engineering lab rat experimentation because their lives are so totally controlled. The Geneva Conventions prohibit denying tobacco to POWs, but domestic prisoners in barbaric nations can be abused with impunity.
– MJM
MJM, have you read this book?
Like their ‘War on Tobacco’, it’s a bit pricey ;)
Thanks for the heads up, but nope, never even heard of it. 21 pounds for a KINDLE edition? And only 240 pages??? I wonder if they’d be liable for criminal charges. That sort of pricing would cause me to speculate that they’re not looking to sell to the general pubic at all, but are instead planning to have thousands of copies bought with public tax funds — funds that the authors may well have some connection to — and thus bringing those dollars home to nest comfortably in their already bulging Tobacco Control pockets.
*IF* my speculation is true, their plan doesn’t seem to be working out yet: a Kindle rank of 1.5 million is pretty poor: probably indicates they’re selling well under a dozen per month.
– MJM
I bought Richard White’s “Smokescreens” 3/4 years ago on Kindle dirt cheap, and it’s still available at £2.99 on amazon.co.uk & $4.13 on amazon.com. “Tobakkonacht!” on Kindle is still very affordable (£2.23 & $3.37) on both plaforms too.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The TobakkoNacht on Kindle is not “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame” but is simply the introductory “Story” along with some additional excerpts from “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains.”
The bulk of the story that opens my main TobakkoNacht book was actually written in the mid to late 1990s. It seems far too radical to include, even as fiction, in my 2003 “Brains” — I was already getting enough flak from a few supportive friends who thought that even touching upon the word “Denormalization” (It’s mentioned just three times in the book in minor ways.) that I was being too “crazy” for the mainstream of that era.
However, by 2008 I was feeling that “TobakkoNacht — The Story” was liable to become “TobakkoNacht — The History” before it would ever actually get published, so I decided to put it out as a Kindle.
If you have a Kindle and don’t have either Brains or TobakkoNacht it will serve as a good introduction to my style and thinking, but “The Story” takes up only about 40 out of “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame”‘s 530 pages… the great bulk of which are by no means fictional. I make that clear in the Introduction/Overview on Amazon, but I always worry that some folks might get confused.
– MJM
Prisoners are a great population for social engineering lab rat experimentation because their lives are so totally controlled.
Well, exactly. If they can get prisoners to stop smoking, the rest of us should be no problem at all.
“the news source is controlled by the prisons and was specfically forbidden to mention the bans as a factor.”
That very thought came to my mind when I heard the reports of escalating violence being reported as reaching critical levels. It’s all getting blamed on drugs and overcrowding both of which have been problems for years in prisons.
Worth a look. And, perhaps, commenting on.
Mostly about weed and heroin. No specific mention of tobacco, but cannabis and tobacco use are obviously very closely linked.
http://prisonerben.blogspot.co.uk/
Suzanne Evans and Chris Snowdon – The Treasury’s War on the Poor
http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-treasurys-war-on-poor.html
That is a superb video and the policy document looks good too. The UKIP policy forum, including the relevant paper, can be found here: http://ukippolicyforum.com/papers
Yes, goes a long way to simply explain the ever increasing gulf between the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have Nots’. Not that those responsible give a fuck.
The New Empire starts with the World Bank. Read this essay:
Click to access artwelfarewb.pdf
This is a 2003 report on tobacco workers worldwide:
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/features/WCMS_071230/lang–en/index.htm
NHS claims that it costs 4 billion a year to treat tobacco related illnesses. At the same time, they collect 11 billion in taxes.
Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
—Aaron Levenstein
https://books.google.ca/books?id=q78ACwC9xYwC&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=junk+science+statistics&source=bl&ots=40S0eioQqq&sig=Mc-li4V71XJcE5LHaEj_DlTORts&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPycHp3ePMAhVk04MKHXlJDJ4Q6AEIRDAH#v=onepage&q=junk%20science%20statistics&f=false
You would think that these ‘experts’ would have noticed.
Govt(CDC) data proves that SHS exposure protects never-smokers from lung cancer.
Never-smokers exposed to SHS are almost 3 times less likely to die from lung cancer than those not exposed to SHS!
There are about 136 million never-smoker adults in the USA.
58 million of them were exposed to SHS and 78 million were not.
Never-smokers account for about 20% of lung cancer deaths or about 33,000 such deaths.
Anti-smokers claim that 7,300 of those death are caused by SHS exposure and the other 25,700 are not.
7,300/58 million = 1 per 8,000
25,700/78 million = 1 per 3,000
1/3,000 is 2.67 times a higher rate than 1/8,000.
Never-smokers exposed to SHS are almost 3 times less likely to die from lung cancer than those not exposed to SHS!
Govt(CDC) data proves that SHS exposure protects never-smokers from lung cancer.
Many People in the United States Are Still Exposed to Secondhand Smoke
During 2011–2012, about 58 million nonsmokers in the United States were exposed to secondhand smoke.8
Health Effects in Adults
In adults who have never smoked, secondhand smoke can cause:
Secondhand smoke exposure caused more than 7,300 lung cancer deaths each year during 2005–2009 among adult nonsmokers in the United States.1
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm
EUGENICS AND THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
Many early progresssives advocated eugenics, or human engineering, to purge society’s gene pool of undesirable traits. In Looking Backward, socialist author Edward Bellamy mused about “race purification,” a fantasy shared by many utopian novelists. Indiana’s state government in 1907 became the first in the modern world to codify eugenic principles, and more than two dozen additional American states soon followed suit. These states did not dictate the coupling of ideal mates, which could be called “positive eugenics.” Rather, they advocated “negative eugenics” – i.e., the sterilization of those harboring undesirable genetic makeups, precisely as Bellamy had advocated.
Eugenics was wholly compatible with the progressive era’s faith in science, the future, the regulatory potential of the state, and human perfectibility. The Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institution helped bankroll organizations that sought to advance eugenics. Among the more notable progressives to embrace the practice were the anarco-communist Emma Goldman, NAACP founder W.E.B. Dubois, author H.G. Wells, political scientist Harold Laski, socialist reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, biology instructor/atheist Edward Aveling, economist John Maynard Keynes, playwright George Bernard Shaw, World Wildlife Fund founder Julian Huxley, sex theorist Havelock Ellis, and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. Sanger, taking issue with the Church’s view that eugenics was immoral because the souls of all people were equally valuable in the eyes of God, said:
“My own position is that the Catholic doctrine is illogical, not in accord with science, and definitely against the social welfare and race improvement. Assuming that God does want an increasing number of worshipers of the Catholic faith, does he also wantan increasing number of feeble-minded, insane, criminal, and diseased worshipers?”
In 1913, Brown University’s progressive sociologist Lester Ward endorsed eugenics as a means of fighting “that modern scientific fatalism known as laissez-faire,” and of facilitating “the betterment of the human race.” “The end and the aim of the eugenicists cannot be reproached,” he expanded. “The race is far from perfect. Its condition is deplorable. Its improvement is entirely feasible, and in the highest degree desirable.”
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1220
“Just 24% of the general population,” as if that’s not an absolute shitload of people. In any other field, any other aspect of life but smoking, 24% of THE ENTIRE POPULATION would be treated as a huge and important constituency and would be positively kowtowed to.
But we’re just ‘smokers’ so it’s state-authorised hatred and oppression we get instead. Sheer madness.
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