#prison agitators

The possible introduction of special security wings into British prisons was first discussed at the time of the trial of the 'Great Train Robbers' in 1963. E-Wing in Durham prison had been set up as a security and punishment block, after a number of escapes in 1961. Conditions there were rumoured to be brutal. Prisoners from E-Wing contributed to the inquiry into allegations of ill-treatment of prisoners in Durham (Home Office, Cmnd 2068, 1963).

The Mounbatten Report (Home Office, 1966), which followed the escape of the spy George Blake, led to prisoners being categorized according to their security risk. By 1970, British prisons held 225 men serving ten years and 218 serving more than ten years, including 159 serving 'life'. Most of these prisoners, along with those otherwise considered to be high security risks, were categorized as 'A' class and, among these, a number of previous and potential escapers were given the status of 'E men' and required to wear appropriately bright prison clothing. Many of these prisoners found their way into the security wings, modelled on Durham, which were phased out in the early 1970s, but not before a spectacular series of well-publicized incidents in many of them. For example, in the Durham security wing 'there were hunger strikes, escape bids, secret transfers, disturbances, protests and a dramatic escape at the end of 1968' (Cohen and Taylor, 1972, p. 18). 

There were also two major incidents - a mass protest on 9 February 1967, known as the 'football mutiny', by prisoners who were playing football and were refused permission to retrieve a ball from a security area, and a protest on 3 March 1968 over related grievances, during which 21 prisoners barricaded themselves into the chapel for just over 24 hours (Cohen and Taylor, 1972, pp. 18-29).

The identification of a category of 'dangerous' prisoners as a minority with disruptive potential provided the rationale for the birth of control units after Mountbatten, their demise in 1974 and replacement by more sophisticated attempts to prevent riots. A comprehensive review of policy and practice concerning the management of prisoners considered difficult is contained elsewhere (Bottoms and Light, 1987; Bottomley and Hay, 1991) and is not attempted here. It is clear that the strategies adopted, from the introduction of segregation units in the late 1960s to the development of special units in the 1980s in Lincoln, Parkhurst and Hull, reflected an assumption that the problems of maintaining order in prisons were generally more due to the maladaptation of individual prisoners than an indication that the system for their control itself was in need of fundamental change (Bottomley, 1991, p. 111). .... After the prisoner disturbances of the early 1970s in British prisons, control units were introduced to handle disruptive prisoners in harsh, punitive regimes which were 'intentionally austere' (Stem, 1989, p. 34). The much-criticized control units were later abandoned and in their place a variety of segregation, security and special units were developed, all one way and another attempting to curb disruption by individual, and groups of, prisoners. Criticisms of the operation of the measures taken by the Department to curb rioting prisoners continued. The two units, opened at Wakefield and Wormwood Scrubs prisons in 1973, came under fire  from professional, media and academic commentators from the outset. The Prison Department responded by emphasizing that they were not for prisoners 'with personality disorder or mental illness', or for 'the merely troublesome prisoner'. 'Control units are for the small hard core of really persistent and serious troublemakers who are reckoned to be capable of mending their ways, and the regime has been framed on that basis' (Home Office, 1975, p. 35).

The recommendations of the most significant official report concerning the treatment of long-term prisoners, the Control Review Committee (Home Office, 1984), were not taken up and implemented fully. The conceptual tension it identified between a perspective which focused on the individual prisoner viewed as difficult and the need to examine the prison regime for features which may contribute to that difficulty (Home Office, 1984, para 44), remained unaddressed subsequently in policy-making. The Special Security Units set up on C Wing at Parkhurst and in Lincoln and Hull prisons specifically to be used for disruptive prisoners, including rioters, were not used for this purpose, but attracted a range of other prisoners considered to need this accommodation.”