When the state imprisons people, they disappear us. The whole process of becoming a prisoner is designed to strip the person of their personal autonomy. Individuality is something that must be removed and replaced with complete conformity, implemented through the oppressive control and restrictions of the prison environment. From the prison issue clothing, the degrading, routine searching of the person, to the uniform design of the cells, people are transformed by this state dominance into products to be handled within the warehouses that are prisons.
When the prisons disappear people, they segregate us. The restrictions and conditions are so much more severe than anywhere else within the Segregation Units of the High Security Prisons of the men’s prison estate. Deliberately so: intended to break the spirit of the men who, for various reasons, find ourselves detained within these punishment blocks.
These environments inflict solitary confinement upon their victims, often for an indefinite period of time. It can mean more than 22-hours a day locked in a cell in isolation and kept separated from all other prisoners during the brieftime allowed to shower and/or get locked in a cage outside like an animal for ‘exercise’ – and, in my case, it has continued for 13-years so far. Remember how it felt to have to stay at home during the Covid lockdown? Imagine how many more restrictions you could have survived, yet we must endure within segregation daily.
It would not be permissible to keep an animal in places like these, and there would be total outrage if a woman were to suffer such mistreatment, but men are seen culturally as tougher and much more deserving of this brutal inhumanity. From personal experience, I can confirm this differentiation of the sexes that comes through the bad politics of the chauvinistic and anti feminist approach – which portrays women as ‘damsels in distress’ in need of help, and men as warriors capable of toughness only seen in the ‘stronger sex’ – is absolute nonsense (and it is this concept that sets the foundation for the perpetuation of the culture of toxic masculinity and misogyny that this country is drowning in). No human could possibly survive such inhumanity undamaged.
Even those good intentioned supporters of prisoners, and those opposed to the structure and/or existence of prisons, can easily fall into the trap of fighting the battle to release women and/or abolish women’s prisons, which indirectly implies that the concept of prison for men is an acceptable one. Separating the sexes like this to prioritise one over the other will always harm the struggle for those who are left behind. But all prisoners are human and we all feel the pains of imprisonment regardless of whether we are seen to express them in the same, or culturally acceptable, ways. Prison is a political state tool of oppression and all of us who are victims of it are therefore political prisoners, stripped of our ability to live normal lives in freedom.
This dehumanisation and oppression is not caused exclusively by the state and misguided anti-prison campaigners, organisations, and prison reformists, but even by those who seek to bring compassion to the prison experience through making contact with prisoners from outside the walls. Those offering this support can miss the fact that restrictions they impose upon the terms of their communication with the imprisoned can easily replicate both the measures that the state apply and the feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, and powerlessness that they instil within the recipient. Although it is entirely valid to have safety/security concerns when making the initial contact with anyone, including a detained person, especially if you are the first to do so, paranoia over the potential for the prison to become aware of you is not at all helpful or necessary, and to view this potential relationship as some form of good deed, charity, or case work in which you must monitor your ‘capacity’ is extremely harmful and possibly even abusive. Despite being cages, prisons are not zoos, and those of us detained within them are not animals to look at, study, or use to attain an anecdote to tell your social group to boost your standing through your ‘unique experience’ of having communicated with a real-life prisoner.
Being unwilling to trust the person with your real name and/or address, provide photographs so they can see who they are communicating with, give your phone number so they can call you or undergo the visitor approval process that is required prior to an in-person meeting with those held in the most hostile conditions only adds to the trauma that is inherent in the loss of liberty we face. It is common to post personal information on your social media or dating apps and give out your phone number to people you just met, so what indication do you think it gives when you withhold this information from someone inside?
Friends do not impose such limits upon their friendships, but it seems the power imbalance seen in the dynamics of the relationship when only one of them has their freedom can all too easily lead one to a significant oversight of the potential harm they could be recklessly inflicting through these restrictions, which in their mind could appear entirely essential and innocuous but, in reality, is exacerbating the dehumanisation of the imprisoned human. Where I am does not define me, prisoners are human beings who deserve the same consideration as you hope others would give to you.
If silence is violence, then what is concealing your identity, like a faceless bureaucrat within the state apparatus, from someone suffering directly from state physical, sexual, and psychological violence? Oppression must be resisted everywhere, even when its source is within ourselves, to the detriment of others. Empathy and love can transcend prison walls and cages, but can only penetrate your heart if you are alert to the possibility and allow it.
Kevan Thakrar
Source: Dope Mag
Kevan Thakrar was wrongly convicted of murder and attempted murder in 2008 using multiple hearsay evidence under ‘joint enterprise’, the legal rule which means that any member of a group can be convicted of a crime, regardless of whether they played any role in it. Kevan wasn’t present when the murder took place, but he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 35 years in jail. He was aged just 20.
Kevan has been consistently subjected to vengeful abuse and violence from prison guards for speaking out about his and other prisoners treatment. In March 2010 Kevan was charged with assaulting three prison officers in HMP Frankland, but was subsequently found not guilty of the assault in a landmark legal acquittal, where the finger of blame was instead pointed directly back at the Prison Service, whose regime of racism and violence was clearly exposed throughout the four-week trial.
Despite being found not guilty Kevan has been held ever since in solitary confinement in the notorious Close Supervision Centres, the UK equivalent to the F.I.E.S. regime in Spain, and the Supermax in the US. The ‘Prisons within the Prisons’ exist to facilitate the suppression, mental breakdown and murder of those who rebel within the prison system, those who ask too many questions, complain too many times, lash out in frustration, or are irreducible. Despite all this, Kevan continues to speak out about the injustices suffered there by himself and other prisoners around him.
To write to Kev:
Kevan Thakrar – A4907AE
Segregation Unit
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
Thamesmead
London
SE28 0EB
It is also possible to email Kev using emailaprisoner.com
Read more from and about Kev on justiceforkevan.org
For more infomation about Close Supervision Centres, read the following zine:
https://bristolabc.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/cscs-torture-units-in-the-uk-imposed1.pdf