Why do they do this?

TwoShedsJackson

This is long, but if you're interested in the state of prison administration in Britain, not to mention bone-headed stupidity or sheer lack of interest on the part of the authorities, then read. Also taken from this week's Private Eye:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">The refusal to hold a public inquiry into the murder of Zahid Mubarek by a known racist psychopath in Feltham young offenders' institute comes as no surprise to the parents of Christopher Edwards - a young man who died in almost identical circumstances six years earlier.

Paul and Audrey Edwards are still trying to find out how their son came to be locked up in Chelmsford jail with a known violent paranoid schizophrenic and why attempts at raising the alarm when he was attack went unanswered. Christopher was so badly mutilated he had ot be formally identified by his teeth.

Christopher should not have been in jail in the first place. A gifted child, a brilliant economics student and a Japanese speaker to boot, he had once seem destined for great things. But in his 20s he was struck by mental illness. He withdrew into himself, became obsessed with religion and dropped out.

Christopher had been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, but unwilling to accept his illness he refused to take them. Then one day in November 1994 he suddenly decided he wanted a wife and family. He approached two women and asked them to take him home with them. He was arrested for causing a breach of the peace.

Despite his bizarre behaviour in court and at the police station, magistrates remanded Christopher to Chelmsford prison rather than a psychiatric hospital. He was put in a cell with Richard Linford: a man with a long history of mental illness, hallucinations, and violence, and who should never have been a jail either, let alone sharing an unsupervised cell. Five hours later Christopher was dead. One of his ears was never found. It was presumed eaten.

Though a long inquiry into the murder by the prison service, Essex county council and North Essex health authority catalogued 'disastrous deficiencies on a multitude of issues' by all the agencies serving the mentally ill', the Edwards criticised serious gaps in the investigation - particulary concerning the prison service.

For example, it did not explore the silencing of the cell alarms. It did not thoroughly explore why an initial assessment that Linford 'wasn't fit to go in with other inmates' was ignored, nor why Christopher Edwards was chosen as his cell mate. Crucially, it did not explain in any depth the delay in getting help to Christopher when noises were heard coming from the cell. Six officers saw Linford jumping on him, but they went to ut on riot gear before returning to rescue him.

The investigation was not a public inquiry. It had no official powers to call witnesses and the family was not represented. Official accounts went largely unchallenged.

Mr. Edwards said at the time of the inquiry that while the report gave a lengthy summary of the blunders that led to their son's death 'there was no sense of outrage for such a disgraceful level of fialure'. He said 'the acceptance of the tragic inevitablility of failure is the breeding ground for future tragedies - not for initiatives that will lead to major improvements'.

How right he was. One of the main recommendations was that a risk assessment must always be made every time a decision is taken to place two inmates in a cell together. No such assessment took place before 19 year old Zahid Mubarek was place in a cell at Feltham with Robert Stewart, the man with a known severe personality disorder and hatred for non-whites, who battered him to death.</font>

This disgusts me. How can such incompetents be put in charge of admin positions like this where there decisions literally can mean life or death?

Blitzkrieger

because there's so many incompetents