Feltham prisoners tell of abuse

A shocking catalogue of racist abuse and discrimination by officers at Feltham Young Offender Institution is revealed today.

A hitherto secret document shows how prison officers at Feltham — where 19- year- old Zahid Mubarek was bludgeoned to death by his racist cellmate — routinely hurled racist insults at black and Asian inmates and treated them more harshly than white inmates.

The report, the result of surveys at Feltham by race watchdogs following the murder of Mr Mubarek in March 2000, says:

Mr Mubarek, of Walthamstow, was beaten to death with a chair leg by Robert Stewart, a psychopathic skinhead who has been jailed for life. After an official investigation into Mr Mubarek’s death, the Commission for Racial Equality last year found the Prison Service guilty of racial discrimination.

CRE head Trevor Phillips described the murder as a “moment of shame” for the service and said it had been caused by “a lethal combination of racism and systemic neglect.

The investigat ion uncovered 20 failures in prison procedures, with officials failing to appreciate that Stewart was a danger to his cellmate. But the focus group findings — by the Hounslow Racial Equality Council and submitted to the CRE as part of its probe — have remained secret until now. They were made public after being referred to at the inquiry.

“Racial abuse from some of the white prison officers was common practice. Black and other ethnic minority inmates were called ‘monkeys’, ‘black bastards’ and told that ‘they should be sent back to their own country’,” the report said.

Members of the focus groups — 54 ethnic minority inmates — said they felt Somalis and other foreign nationals were more likely to be picked on. “There was a general feeling among the groups that ethnic minority inmates were being pushed by white prison officers to such an extent that they would find it difficult to cope and might attempt suicide,” the report said.

The inmates complained that some ethnic minority prison officers turned a blind eye to racist attitudes and colluded with white colleagues to fit in. Black prisoners-felt they were stereotyped as violent-and were more likely to belabelled as bullies. “We found that three times as many black inmates were placed on ‘Stage 1 Bullying’ [classifications] than white inmates,” the report said.

This was supported by a Prison Service report into Feltham, part of which has been made public. The service’s report said there had been instances of fights between white and ethnic minority prisoners where the white prisoner
had been left on his unit while the ethnic minority prisoner was put in segregation.

It added that ethnic minority prisoners were twice as likely to be subject-to control and restraint procedures — a statistic described as “surprising” given that ethnic minority prisoners only made up half of Feltham’s inmate population.

The inquiry will next week investigate claims that guards at Feltham ran a betting game termed “Gladiator”, in which they allegedly set up fights between
young black and white inmates.