In solidarity with global Black Lives Matter uprisings against white supremacy, with recognition of the connections between the prison industrial complex, racial capitalism and the racist killer cops murdering black people around the world, add your name or organisation name to this petition that demands the Ministry of “Justice” defund its mass incarceration project, The Prison Estates Transformation Programme.
Halt prison building now! Defund the Prison Estate Transformation Programme!
Target: Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Robert Buckland, Secretary of State for Justice
In solidarity with global Black Lives Matter uprisings against white supremacy, with recognition of the connections between the prison industrial complex, racial capitalism and the racist killer cops murdering black people around the world, add your name or organization name to this petition that demands the Ministry of “Justice” defund its mass incarceration project, The Prison Estate Transformation Programme.
Sponsored by
Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE)
To: Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Robert Buckland, Secretary of State for Justice
From: [Your Name]
We demand an immediate moratorium on prison expansion both because building prisons is a violent use of government money and because it is inhumane to direct public expenditure towards a mega prison expansion plan during a global pandemic.
Boris Johnson is forcing more people back to work amidst the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, putting the interests of capital above peoples’ lives as always, while simultaneously pushing ahead with his billion pound plan to create 10,000 new prison spots. Meanwhile, government inaction to Covid-19 has created dire conditions inside prisons across England and Wales, and killed at least 21 people.
On top of these murders, the government is careering ahead with the Prison Estate Transformation Programme (PETP). The project would astronomically expand the prison system across the UK, extending the reach of a criminal “justice” system, and its designed private profiteering from prisons at the expense of Black people and other people of colour. PETP is part of a long tradition of politicians pushing prison expansion to boost their electoral chances.
In recent years, the brutality of criminalisation has spiralled out of control with deaths and self-harm in custody at record highs. Survivors of violence are more likely to be punished by the criminal “justice” system than receive redress: 29% of adults in prison were victims of abuse as children, 24% were taken into care and 70% of people held in the women’s prison estate report being victims of domestic violence.
The criminal “justice” system disproportionately targets and punishes victims of violence, poor people, racialised communities and people with disabilities and mental health support needs. The vulnerability of these groups to criminalisation has intensified after a decade of austerity and the destruction of already limited community-based services. The pandemic has further heightened this marginalisation, and politicians continue to scapegoat the most oppressed.
We are calling for an immediate moratorium on prison construction and prison expansion. This must include:
1. An immediate end to the already delayed and costly “Prison Estate Transformation Program”, stopping any plans to develop mega-prisons in Wigan and Rochester, halting any further development at Glen Parva and Wellingborough, and committing not to tender contracts for Full Sutton or Glasgow
2. A commitment to end the development and contracting of secure schools, mega detention centres and women’s residential centres or community custody units, or incarceration by any other name
3. An end to any other plans for internal expansion within existing prisons.
We demand that the billions proposed to increase incarceration – intended to harm racialised and marginalised people – are instead invested in communities. People desperately need holistic and community-based healing resources, education, health care, and other infrastructure, not mass incarceration.