Brixton Prison to make way for luxury housing?
- Thread starter lang rabbie
- Start date
Haven't you BEEN to Kent?
Hay-ull, ever' tahm ah fergit not ta call ma Momma Sis she done hit me with her banjo. If tha gators don' getcha, tha' Injuns wee-yull.
Just ask hatboy.
I thought the "rednecks" worked at Brixton prison, er, in the past.
I dunno whether it matters if they move the jail elsewhere. I mean if you're locked-up do you really care about the neighbourhood beyond the prison walls? And, as Brixton prison's previous record on racism shows, just because the neighbourhood is tolerant doesn't mean prison service employees are (or the opposite).
Not a subject I know alot about really, but like others here I do think it would be scandalous if all the council or government can think to do with that site is flog it to the highest bidder.
By the way, have a look at Brockwell Gate from the air, its huge. What a terrific site for a City Academy or other type of, er, school that could have been.
http://www2.getmapping.com/printpreview.asp?OsEast=531010&OsNorth=175570&vType=&lps=&dsoption=125mm
(You'll have to use the roam button to navigate south from central Brixton. I couldn't work out how to link to the exact view I wanted).
I dunno whether it matters if they move the jail elsewhere. I mean if you're locked-up do you really care about the neighbourhood beyond the prison walls? And, as Brixton prison's previous record on racism shows, just because the neighbourhood is tolerant doesn't mean prison service employees are (or the opposite).
Not a subject I know alot about really, but like others here I do think it would be scandalous if all the council or government can think to do with that site is flog it to the highest bidder.
By the way, have a look at Brockwell Gate from the air, its huge. What a terrific site for a City Academy or other type of, er, school that could have been.
http://www2.getmapping.com/printpreview.asp?OsEast=531010&OsNorth=175570&vType=&lps=&dsoption=125mm
(You'll have to use the roam button to navigate south from central Brixton. I couldn't work out how to link to the exact view I wanted).
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The *majority* of inmates in Brixton Prison aren't black, for the very good reason that HM Prison Service tries very hard to "balance" the ethnic composition of prisons, mostly to prevent the sort of ethnic self-segregation common in US prisons.
Seems to me you're labouring under a misconception about the nature of local prisons. A cat B prison such as Brixton, although classed as a "local", will accept convicted and remand prisoners from across the region it resides in and will house inmates from other areas who are either on rotation or who are being tried at London courts.
A Lambeth resident is as likely to be remanded and detained in the Scrubs, Wandsworth or Pentonville as he is in Brixton, and is likely to be dispersed anywhere in the UK prison system once convicted. Incarcerating someone near to thier family would indeed be a great benefit for the families, but current and past Home Secretaries have been more concerned with retribution than with easing the social problems of offender's nearest and dearest.
Going back to the luxury flats end of this thread, one of the main problems with situations like HMP Brixton, where potentiallyy redundant public sector land / property becomes available is that current law / regulations mean that most owning public sector bodies - i.e. the Home Office in this case - have to obtain 'best consideration' (that is highest price) when disposing of the land. That means that private developers are automatically advantaged, in that social landlords such as housing associations can't compete in price terms. Hence, you are stuck with trying to squeeze affordable housing developments out of the private sector via the planning system and s. 106 agreements. What is needed is a redefinition (by the Treasury ultimately) of what 'best consideration' is, incorporating community / social factors - such as the development of mixed, sustainable developments rather than gated owner-occupied estates with a few affordable rented homes crowded into one end of the development. Some bodies are starting to make this case.
SlazengerMoss
New Member
The Prison Service tries to "balance the ethnic composition"
Come on, there are more than 400 Jamaican inmates in Wandsworth alone!
Of course some one local could end up somewhere other than Brixton. I know this is the Brixton Forum but I'm not just talking about people from Brixton needing a local prison. I mean that it is needed for Lambeth, Southwark, Wandsworth and so on.
HMP Wandsworth is also on the list for the axe too.
The Goverment has wanted to close these places for a long time and have starved them of cash. Much to the detriment of both the inmates and staff. So after years of cash starvation it then turns round and tells the prison it is failing but nothing more is put on the table to save it. Next thing Blunkett, who is as right-wiing as Howard was, says in so many words it is going to go.
No coincidence of course that the land at both Brixton and Wandsworth is worth a fortune. There are plenty of other Victorian jails in this country, and plenty in a lot worse state that were built in the 60s and 70s, but none of them are going - because surprise, surprise, that land they're on it is worth f*** all in comparison with the greater london jails.
Whether you see the value in a local prisons or not as the case is, you have to accept that the luxury flats they put there aren't going to benefit anyone. They'll just further increase the spiralling gap between rich and poor in the borough which along with drugs has to be one of the biggest crime generators.
Anyone who thinks they're going to build a school/social housing there needs to go for a quiet walk in Brockwell Park and have a word with themselves!
lang rabbie
Je ne regrette les gazebos
plus ca change
From "Victorian London" visit to the female convict prison Brixton
"The means at our command," add the directors, "for improving, if not actually reforming, female convicts in prison, though carefully designed and faithfully executed, will be insufficient in many instances unless some asylum be found to receive them on their discharge from prison. The difficulties in the way of such women, as the majority of these prisoners, returning to respectability are too notorious to require description or enumeration. They beset them in every direction the moment they are discharged, and drive them back to their former evil ways and bad associates, if they be not rescued through the medium of a refuge from whence they may obtain service."
From "Victorian London" visit to the female convict prison Brixton
"The means at our command," add the directors, "for improving, if not actually reforming, female convicts in prison, though carefully designed and faithfully executed, will be insufficient in many instances unless some asylum be found to receive them on their discharge from prison. The difficulties in the way of such women, as the majority of these prisoners, returning to respectability are too notorious to require description or enumeration. They beset them in every direction the moment they are discharged, and drive them back to their former evil ways and bad associates, if they be not rescued through the medium of a refuge from whence they may obtain service."
SlazengerMoss
New Member
plus ca change
Zip forward a 100 years or so and what is said there still makes sense. People who find themselves in prison are likely to reoffend when they come out into the same difficult circumstances that led them into crime. So you open the prison doors to all of the organisations that can help them prior to and after their release with issues like housing, education, debt, drug problems, mental health problems.
This is exactly what has been done at Brixton in recent years.
This is why I believe it is important that Brixton remains.
Despite what other people have said on this thread, the vast majority of inmates, will end up back on the streets of Lambeth/South London.
If local individuals and groups can go into the prison and help the inmates with there problems they are potentially helping reduce future crime in the borough as well as helping the individual inmates turn their lives around.
Some 150+ different groups/organisations do so at Brixton at the moment.
Tell me that is workable if you ship the inmates off to some new prison in the sticks.
Of course, I make it all sound very simple when in fact it is a rehabilitation is very difficult. But surely now people can understand why we need the prison here?
Zip forward a 100 years or so and what is said there still makes sense. People who find themselves in prison are likely to reoffend when they come out into the same difficult circumstances that led them into crime. So you open the prison doors to all of the organisations that can help them prior to and after their release with issues like housing, education, debt, drug problems, mental health problems.
This is exactly what has been done at Brixton in recent years.
This is why I believe it is important that Brixton remains.
Despite what other people have said on this thread, the vast majority of inmates, will end up back on the streets of Lambeth/South London.
If local individuals and groups can go into the prison and help the inmates with there problems they are potentially helping reduce future crime in the borough as well as helping the individual inmates turn their lives around.
Some 150+ different groups/organisations do so at Brixton at the moment.
Tell me that is workable if you ship the inmates off to some new prison in the sticks.
Of course, I make it all sound very simple when in fact it is a rehabilitation is very difficult. But surely now people can understand why we need the prison here?
Brixton Hatter
Home is south London mate
Agree absolutely that the Govt needs to redefine what "best consideration" is. Monetary value isn't the only thing they should look at.
There is also an argument that we're putting too many people in prison anyway - the population has gone from about 55,000 to about 74,000 under the Labour Govt - more community-type sentances would help.
Hatboy wrote:
There is also an argument that we're putting too many people in prison anyway - the population has gone from about 55,000 to about 74,000 under the Labour Govt - more community-type sentances would help.
Hatboy wrote:
Hmm. I wonder what it was before they turned it into luxury flats???!!!!!!
Exactly. Could you all email the mayor about this "best consideration" thing please? Especially in relation to this huge prison site. I just pasted some comments in am email from this thread. Only takes a minute. [email protected]
corporate whore
oh, thought you were dead
*flippant*
If the prison closed, it would mean the end of one of the time-honoured Brixton Blags
"'Scuse me mate, sorry to bother you, but I've just been let out of prison and..."
"Yeah? What were you in for?"
"Err, a crime of passion"
"Shit. How long were you inside?"
"Errrrrr, eight years, mate... anyway, I really need to get to Barnsley and was wondering if you could spare me a quid?"
the preceeding exchange was based on a number of actual events
If the prison closed, it would mean the end of one of the time-honoured Brixton Blags
"'Scuse me mate, sorry to bother you, but I've just been let out of prison and..."
"Yeah? What were you in for?"
"Err, a crime of passion"
"Shit. How long were you inside?"
"Errrrrr, eight years, mate... anyway, I really need to get to Barnsley and was wondering if you could spare me a quid?"
the preceeding exchange was based on a number of actual events
This is the same ploy used by many government entities when they want to get rid of something. It's been done often with railway lines and stations, and hospitals.
Run it down by starving it of cash, then produce statistics that state that it now provides a crap service, so should be closed.
Giles..
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Re: plus ca change
I'm not sure if this is true. I'll find out. But I was under the impression that prisons such as Brixton have a "catchment" area that is not necessarily the local area and that prisoners get moved around the system all the time.
Personally I don't see the problem with demolishing a crumbling Victorian hellhole and building a new facility. I visited Highdown not long ago and its a lot nicer than Brixton.
I'm not sure if this is true. I'll find out. But I was under the impression that prisons such as Brixton have a "catchment" area that is not necessarily the local area and that prisoners get moved around the system all the time.
Personally I don't see the problem with demolishing a crumbling Victorian hellhole and building a new facility. I visited Highdown not long ago and its a lot nicer than Brixton.
Brixton Hatter
Home is south London mate
I have written to the Mayor - but as I think responsibility ultimately rests with the Home Office, I have also written to Blunkett, and Charles Clarke (education, re: a school site) and John Prescott (with responsibility for housing) - let's see how joined up this Govt really is.
David Blunkett: [email protected]
Charles Clarke: [email protected]
John Prescott: [email protected]
David Blunkett: [email protected]
Charles Clarke: [email protected]
John Prescott: [email protected]
Originally posted by ViolentPanda
Looks like the Home Office is using the condition of the prison as a spurious reason for closing it down.
I say spurious because the material condition of Holloway and of Brixton are no better and no worse than Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and a double handful of other Victorian prisons in the South-East. What is unarguably different i that Brixton and Holloway have truly foull reputations (and records) for inmate self-harm (including suicide) and for brutality.
Looks like the Home Office is taking the opportunity to
a) make some serious dosh from land sales, and
b) attempting to engineer a change in it's reputation by a bit of social engineering on the inmates.
The social engineering is only going to work if the new prisons are better than the old, both construction and regime-wise. From past experience I don't hold out much hope.
As for the actual sale. It doesn't surprise me. When the HM Prisons estate was surveyed in the late 1980s (just after the first property crash), the London prisons (or their sites) were valued in 9 figures, not including suburban prison farm land.
Just a shame that the land will be used for private rather than public benefit.
I agree with Violent Panda and others here who are concerned that the site will be used only for luxury housing.
Just a slight correction for VP on one detail though -- they may be keeping the Scrubs open (for now) but according to the Guardian report on this (link further up this thread) they are planning to close Wandsworth too, for pretty similar reasons and purposes as Brixton (shit, underinvested prison/very valuable land).
Long term view
When these prisons were built, they were on the outskirts of London. Now, as the metropolis has expanded, their locations have become more central, more 'trendy' and more valuable. This process is not going to stop (short of a catastrophe). So if they build new prisons on what are now the outskirts of London, in 20, 30, 40 years' time (and the process is also accelerating exponentially) the 'new' jails will also be squeezed by the escalating value of the land they are on.
What will happen when Bexleyheath is the new Hoxton?
When these prisons were built, they were on the outskirts of London. Now, as the metropolis has expanded, their locations have become more central, more 'trendy' and more valuable. This process is not going to stop (short of a catastrophe). So if they build new prisons on what are now the outskirts of London, in 20, 30, 40 years' time (and the process is also accelerating exponentially) the 'new' jails will also be squeezed by the escalating value of the land they are on.
What will happen when Bexleyheath is the new Hoxton?
SlazengerMoss
New Member
Originally posted by corporate whore
*flippant*
If the prison closed, it would mean the end of one of the time-honoured Brixton Blags
"'Scuse me mate, sorry to bother you, but I've just been let out of prison and..."
"Yeah? What were you in for?"
"Err, a crime of passion"
"Shit. How long were you inside?"
"Errrrrr, eight years, mate... anyway, I really need to get to Barnsley and was wondering if you could spare me a quid?"
the preceeding exchange was based on a number of actual events
You think that's a blag. I know of cases where people have been released without as much as a bus fare to get to the other side of South London and have ended up robbing someone hours after their release, got nicked and ended up back inside the same day. This is why the help has to come from both inside and outside of the prison walls.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
And your figures come from where? I ask because I made a quick phone call after reading this, and was told that (excluding remand) about 23% of Wandsworth's population are classed as "black".
As I said, any idea that a "local" prison is for local people is pretty much unrealistic given the fact that there is no longer any elasticity in where an inmate is sent. Nowadays you go where there is room, and that could as likely mean Doncaster or Brum as Brixton or Wandsworth.
Hardly surprising. Can you guess why? Go on, have a try!
That's not really the whole story though, is it? For example, Wandsworth had a complete refurb between 1991 and 1996, we're talking the wings being gutted in succession, and rebuilt, and although Brixton hasn't had the same level of refurb the reason is more to do with the inability to close off parts of the prison while work is undertaken (because there is nowhere else to hold the inmates) than because there was no cash in the pot.
Don't get me wrong, I'm against the prisons being closed, but your localism argument, at least to me. misses the point.
Which is true if you're talking about Wakefield or Risley, but not if you're talking about Whitemoor or Albany for example.
Agreed. I've seen so many places that are ostensibly owned by "the public" (schools, wasteland, amenities, housing) over the last 20 or so years that it's depressing. That said, lobbying to keep Brixton Prison open on the strength of keeping out luxury housing will be seen by some elements of the press as class envy rather than social solidarity.
I say close the bugger, flatten it, and build 100% social housing on the site with a strong equal opportunities lettings policy to secure and maintain a 50-50 white/non-white mix.
And have some sort of garden at the centre of the development as a mark of respect for the generations of pain caused by the jail.
And maybe a monument - like a village war memorial - naming the hundreds (thousands?) of inmates who strung themselves up in their cells? Or got stabbed over a packet of Old Holborn.
There's absolutely no reason, except for local politicial will, why the luxury apartment brigade can't be kept out and a model public housing estate built on the site.
I wonder what the Howard League for Penal Reform think about this? I bet people like John Mortimer have something to say.
Three more 14 flat jobbies
SLP Report
Does anyone have a link for the policy re 15 or more requiring a proportion of social housing?
SLP Report
Does anyone have a link for the policy re 15 or more requiring a proportion of social housing?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I agree with you totally. The amount of decently-sized "housing units" you could get on a site that size runs into the hundreds, whereas a "luxury private development" will probably be much lower density.
And to those executed there.
If the closed prisons are replaced by so-called "modern" jails they probably won't say much at all, unless, like a certain private nick in Herts, the cells are so small they actually contravene legal statutes (the good thing being that private nicks can be prosecuted due to not enjoying "crown immunty").
Can't see the current council even considering building social housing, even though if the prison closes it will actually damage some parts of the local economy which a large building programme could help offset.
I wonder what the historic Brixton Prison death toll is? Once you add them all up:
- state killings (hangings)
- inmate suicides
- inmate on inmate killings
- killings of inmates by jailers
The answer, I suspect, is we'll never know. It's the sort of bottom-up history which never gets written. After all, those being killed are not royalty or statesmen or generals or pop stars.
It's probably reasonable to describe Brixton Prison, in historic terms, as a death camp. So the idea of not demolishing it is absurd. And the idea of selling a death camp to property developers to make a profit via a snobby housing project is obscene.
lang rabbie
Je ne regrette les gazebos
I would beg to differ.
Once you start describing places like Brixton Prison as death camps, you lose the ability to accurately distinguish it from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec - names that are already unfamiliar to many Britons, not to mention the locations of more recent genocide in Rwanda.
The preservation of deathcamps (or just their sites) remains a bitterly divisive issue - but IMO what is clear is that demolition is always the preferred option for those who calloborated with the forces of oppression and wish to have all tangible evidence removed.
NB: Has there been a gallows at Brixton Prison since the days of the Surrey House of Correction 1840s - (official) hangings were surely at Wandsworth?
Only if you aren't very bright, surely?
