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Showing posts with label John Paul Wooton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Paul Wooton. Show all posts
Family Of John Paul Wooton ✒ with an appeal to end what it feels is discrimination against their imprisoned loved one. 


Following recent protest action at Maghaberry Prison, the family of John Paul Wootton are now calling upon the current Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, Ronnie Armour, to intervene to help end the ongoing acts of discrimination against their son, brother, uncle and miscarriage of justice victim, John Paul Wootton.

On behalf of John Paul, the family have launched a letter and email campaign which directly highlights the issues behind the ongoing acts of discrimination he faces on a daily basis, while being held within Maghaberry.

We, the family of John Paul Wootton, ask you to please support our call to demand that Ronnie Armour, Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service, immediately ends all acts of discrimination against John Paul.

Please sign the following letter of protest, email and/or write to:

Director General
Northern Ireland Prison Service
Dundonald House,
Upper Newtownards Road,
Belfast, BT4 3SU
niprisonservice@nics.gov.uk


For the attention to the Director General of the Northern Ireland Prison Service:

It has come to my attention that John Paul Wootton, a person you hold in your custody is being subjected to discriminatory practices.

John Paul has attempted to avail of opportunities open to other prisoners however he has unfortunately been blocked without justification, this is wrong.

For example, he has been applied to take part in peers support and mentoring schemes, requested social activity and asked with regret to the prisons regimes, yet despite meeting appropriate criteria, these have not been facilitated.

Over the years and in an ongoing bases, John Paul has had to deal with harassment such as regular sleep disruption unfair punitive actions both formal and informal, and more recently restrictions on his communications with the outside world. Formal complaints about his treatment have been ignored.

A transfer to Magilligan prison has been identified as a solution to many of these problems, as well as opening up specific educational opportunities. However despite a two year wait, John Paul remains in Maghaberry.

I write to object to this treatment. John Paul should be given equitable access to any opportunities and all harassment should end. A move to Magilligan should be facilitated without delay.

I hope these matters could then be brought to a close.

Yours sincerely

Signed:________________________

Help End Discrimination Against John Paul Wootton

Alex McCrory ✒ lends his support to John Paul Wooton, the republican prisoner seeking an inter prison transfer. 

John Paul Wootton, one of two men wrongly convicted for the killing of a policeman in 2009, is threatening to take Maghaberry Prison to court in order to gain his transfer to Magilligan Prison.

Having had his personal security downgraded once he left Roe House, there should now be nothing standing in the way of his request to be transferred to another jail. However, anyone who has been to jail will be aware of the indifference shown whenever it concerns the needs of prisoners. 

The grounds being cited by Wootton for his transfer relate to issues that go to the heart of personal development such as education and mentoring programmes. He claims he is being discriminated against in these important areas by a vindictive regime. News that does not surprise me at all. 

I have no problem accepting his claims in light of my own personal experience of Maghaberry. I served more than two years on Roe House and witnessed the lack of educational opportunities and vocational activities for political prisoners there. 

During my time on Roe House, I got to know John Paul well. I was reminded of myself as a young teenager in jail all those years ago. He impressed me as an intelligent and thoughtful individual, if somewhat naïve to the ways of the world. 

Despite being the victim of a major miscarriage of justice in the Diplock courts, he has struggled daily to overcome adversity and deprivation in the most difficult conditions. A fair system would acknowledge his personal achievements and seek to encourage him further. 

I wish to lend my support to the campaign to gain a positive outcome to his transfer application. Having taken away his liberty, the least they can do is clear the way for his advancement towards a final release.

Alec McCrory 
is a former blanketman.

Transfer Request

John Paul Wootton on life as a vegan.

I have to start with some honesty: I did not become a Vegan for compassionate reason. That said, it is exactly why I remain one.

I was always vaguely aware of Veganism and slightly more conscious of the idea of animal rights. I’ve always had an underlying sympathy for non-human animals, especially concerning our treatment of them. This mostly manifested itself as support in ‘spirit’ without any real or concrete action. So when I saw or heard about chickens held in battery conditions, or circus animals being mistreated and ‘broken’, I would tut and shake my head. This was the extent of my indignation and if ever this inaction troubled me, I’d reassure myself “sure, I’m in jail, what can I do?”

Then along came the health documentaries and the possibility that those who eat a plant based diet generally live longer and are freer from age-related illnesses. Along with this too was the potential to loose some weight.

I am like a lot of my generation. Body image is something that we are forced to be concerned with. Whatever the reasons this is the reality. Losing weight, then, was regularly on my mind. I tried all sorts of diets and each of them ultimately failed. So I decided that a Vegan diet would be my next attempt.

Once I’d begun the diet I immediately began to reflect on my decision – was it a good decision? How long would I stick it out? Have I done this for the right reasons?

This last question stuck with me and suddenly all the issues around animal welfare came to the fore in my mind. After a while attempting to grapple with this I made a decision: whatever my reason for initially going Vegan, I was making it a permanent part of my life and there was no turning back. It mattered too much to me now.

As part of my reflection a key question was: now that I was out, how could I go back to feeding into a system that causes so much unnecessary suffering and harm when another option exists?

So, although I started off as a ‘health-conscious’ Vegan, I would now say that I’ve begun an ethical evolution. I say evolution because it will be a process, the speed of which will, to a certain degree, be determined by my circumstances.

Nevertheless my journey has started and I hope many more will set off on the same journey.

➽John Paul Wootton is imprisoned in Maghaberry. 

Going Vegan

John Paul Wootton questions the usefulness of prisons.

My impression is that when a lot of people think of justice, they think that if people do something wrong, they should be punished and imprisonment is a natural outthinking of this.

But is it that simple?

A serious lack of understanding on the part of the general public about how justice is dispensed and the realities of prison. If people were actually involved in administering justice themselves, within their own communities, I believe a very different and much more humane system would emerge.

The chances are, many people will know someone who has been to prison. If this applies to you, then you’ll know how difficult it was for that person and the damage it can do, and probably has done already to someone you care about.

Had you been given the opportunity to free your loved one immediately, I’m sure very few would choose to keep them locked away. The question is this – if you could free your brother your partner or your daughter, why would you not free someone else’s?

You might say “Oh, but we have to prevent crime” or “society wouldn’t be safe if we just let everyone go…” And whilst I understand that thinking, we need to ask ourselves, honestly, if imprisonment is actually preventing crime or making society safer because the evidence would suggest that it isn’t.

Criminological study has garnered much evidence on the different factors contributing to the presence of crime in our society. These tend to be socio-economic and include poverty levels, low educational attainment and poor career prospects to name but a few.

Issues with mental health and drug addiction are also hugely important.

The key point to be made is that, not only can all these factors be addressed outside of prison, in the community, but many solutions are actually impeded by imprisonment and some issues are even intensified by its harmful effects.

The approach to formal education offers an example. If the education system outside the prison has failed people already a much more inadequate system within the prison doesn’t stand much of a chance. In prison, people are offered a narrow choice of courses (with large waiting lists) that are uninteresting to most and are available only at levels too low to, on their own, improve people’s opportunities. Also studying in a prison environment is, in itself, a challenge many are unable to overcome.

Instead of wasting so much of our society’s resources on propping up a system of ‘justice’ and imprisonment that has clearly not been successful in improving the situation, we should focus our efforts on addressing those factors that contribute to crime by, for example, improving our education system. Doing this successfully would soon allow us to reduce the harm done in society both to the victims of crime and to those who find themselves imprisoned due to factors outside their immediate control.

➽John Paul Wootton is imprisoned in Maghaberry.

Questioning Imprisonment

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