Demonstration took place in London earlier today to tell the Royal College of Psychiatrists that it's time to stop legitimising solitary confinement in the prison system and to demand Kevan Thakrar's release from the horrendous Close Supervision Centre system.
Today's demonstrate was to mark Kevan Thakrar's 10th year in Close Supervision Centres within the British prison system. Close Supervisions Centres (CSCs) are the most extreme form of imprisonment in the UK, modelled on the ‘supermax’ prisons in the United States. People held in CSCs are often kept apart from others, allowed out of their cells for only a short time each day and denied basic human contact.
Kevan brutally beaten by screws Kevan is regularly held in his cell for 23 hours per day and is prevented from speaking with other prisoners. Numerous studies and papers have pointed out the severe damage solitary confinement can cause for those placed in it. As a 2006 paper in Washington University Journal of Law & Policy put it, it has 'long been known that severe restriction of environmental and social stimulation has a profoundly deleterious effect on mental functioning'. To quote from a paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 'psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture'.
ENABLING REPRESSION Despite all of this the Royal College of Psychiatrists has accredited some Close Supervision Centres as "Enabling Environments", providing legitimacy to these violent units. Kevan’s indefinite isolation clearly contravenes the position of the UN Special Rapporteur on torture. Join us to demand that he is immediately released from the CSC system and that the Royal College of Psychiatrists stops providing a cover for human rights abuses in the prison system. For more information about Kevan's situation and his case, please visit: https://justiceforkevan.org/
WHAT YOU CAN DO
If you can't attend the demonstration, please write to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, 21 Prescot Street, London, E1 8BB to object to their accrediation of CSCs as 'Enabling Environments'. Please also write to the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to express your concern about Kevan's solitary confinement within the CSC and to urge them to respond to his letters. mail@ppo.gov.uk PO Box 70769, London SE1P 4XY
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