Race Relations

Race Relations



By: Ben Gunn - HMP Shepton Mallet

Lifer Ben Gunn has learnt from race relations work that it’s very difficult to appreciate what it’s like to be other than who you are.

How could it come about that efforts intended to reduce the weight of imprisonment on some groups can have the effect of causing disillusionment amongst others? Is this merely another sign that the Prison Service couldn’t get their leg over in a brothel?

I have had a varied interest in race relations. I once had my head kicked in for telling a racist joke; my fault; I merely thought the moment was right in an ironic, post modern way - turns out that I’m no Chris Rock. Oddly, at that time, I was the only man on the wing who was fighting for an Asian guy who was being bullied by staff. At the other extreme, I have been a race relations orderly and led a group of others in organising race equality impact assessments, which attempted to tell management the truth about their prison.

All of this varied experience has shown me two things. Firstly, that we are all essentially the same, and colour, origin and religion don’t alter a person’s fundamentals. Either the individual is a muppet or he’s not. Secondly, that some people are affected by imprisonment in different ways because of colour, origin or religion. If you don’t speak English, if your family are a thousand miles away, if you eat a religious diet – all of these things, and more, can increase the weight of imprisonment.

The Prison Service paid lip-service to addressing this problem, with the depth of their commitment illustrated by putting an Asian man into a cell with a homicidal racist. That got the attention of the Commission for Race Equality, who have forced the Prison Service to conduct Race Equality Impact Assessments. This is a continual process of assessing policies and practices to see if they disadvantage minority groups. An obvious example is the Canteen; if it only stocks hair and skin products for white people then obviously it disadvantages black and minority ethnic people. This is a statement of the bleeding obvious and yet it took a murder in Feltham for the Prison Service to begin to catch on.

Of course, the quality of these impact assessments can vary. Having been intimately involved, I am able to say that some managers are more interested in producing good statistics rather than in actually uncovering and resolving poor practices. However, the fact that these efforts are being made at all is a start.

It was during my stint as race relations orderly a few years ago that I first discovered a weird affect that can come from management paying attention to race relations; it pisses off the white guys. ‘Why should they get everything?’ was a question I spent a lot of time answering, sometimes without effect.

Of course ‘they’ don’t get everything. The point of race relations in prison, as I see it, is to ensure that the weight of punishment isn’t unduly placed on minority groups. If you hold to a particular religion, or diet, and the prison denies you these, then you will be suffering more than the man in the next cell. If only one ethnic group gets the good jobs then the others will have a worse prison experience. So while we are all essentially the same (people are people) the way the prison treats some groups may cause them greater grief than the majority. Taking the edge off that seems only right.

As the majority of us are white, vaguely Church of England, then this is the dominant paradigm. All that prison does is based on that premise. If you are an Asian Hindu, of course the prison is going to have to give extra thought to how to meet your needs. This management attention makes it look as if ‘they are getting everything’, when the reality is that they are only getting what the majority already get.

This is illustrated with food. I have heard some people complain that as, for example, the kitchen may lay on a Caribbean meal then they should lay on an English meal. The fact that every meal is an English meal passes them by.

And why, I’ve been asked, do we spend so much effort trying to meet the needs of minorities when ‘in their country’ we wouldn’t get jack. This is the least comprehensible argument; just because we might be treated less well abroad is no argument for us to treat foreign prisoners badly. Treating people decently shouldn’t be a reciprocal deal; it should be done because it is the right thing to do.

Despite management efforts, and despite some people’s belief that minorities are ruling the prison roost, the reality is that if you are not white then your experience of prison is worse. Black & Minority Ethnic prisoners have far less faith in managers; even less faith in the complaints system, and look at the race complaints procedure with cynicism. They feel let down by food and religious discrimination and their view of the canteen seems to be universally poor.

Another thing I’ve learnt during race relations work is that it is very, very difficult to appreciate what it is like to be other than who you are; I’m white, and with the best will in the world I cannot appreciate what it is like to be Muslim or Jamaican. Just because things look acceptable on the surface, even if it looks as if management are bending over backwards, how minority groups experience imprisonment on a daily basis is a complicated business and cannot be taken for granted.

Given the efforts that are apparently being made to meet the needs of minorities, should we worry that this exacerbates the gap between black and white? Yes and no … when it seems that management are giving a lot of attention, then the majority feel ignored and neglected. The answer isn’t to abandon race relations; it is for management to give more attention to prisoners as a whole, recognising that we are not one bland group but that many different needs exist amongst us.

This can only happen when managers start to recognise us as human beings. A radical idea, I know, but at present our concerns are only considered because managers are forced to pay attention by the likes of the Commission for Racial Equality. Why don’t they pay attention solely because it is the right thing to do? This would not only address the needs of minorities but also undercut any perception that if you are white, you have no voice.