Call out for Submissions: Post-Prison Zine

bristol | policing | press release Sunday October 14, 2012 20:36 by Bristol ABC bristol_abc at riseup dot net

We live in a Prison Society. Last year Her Majesty’s Prison Service incarcerated over 87,000 people in England & Wales alone (not including Scotland and Northern Ireland). Prison has long been used as a tool of oppression against anybody who does not fit in to society’s idea of a “good citizen”. The aim of Prison is to silence those people trapped within it’s walls, they seek to lock them up and throw away the key, effectively removing them from society. Not all Prison sentences are permanent though any many people will eventually return to the outside world.

Many people assume that your sentence ends once you leave Prison. A Prisoner, on average, will serve about 1/3 of their sentence inside Prison. The remainder of their sentence will be spent on probation. A limbo like state where you are neither in Prison nor free. The Prison system uses this as another tool of oppression, limiting people’s freedoms.

Bristol ABC will be publishing a zine of people’s experiences after Prison, dealing with such subjects as: Probation, licenses, MAPPAs, ASBOs, isolation, family reunion, oppression, stigma, health issues and other issues former Prisoners might deal with on their return to the outside.

We are looking for people to contribute to this project. If you have recently been released from Prison or are expecting to be released soon, we would like to hear about your experiences.

Bristol Anarchist Black Cross is a grass-roots collective of people supporting prisoners. We do this through letter writing, prisoner visits, spreading information and publishing literature relating to Prison, organise protests and much more.

If you would like to submit to the zine you can either e-mail your contribution to: bristol_abc@riseup.net or post it to:

Dennis Black
14 Robertson Road
Easton
Bristol
BS5 6JY

Deadline for contributions is January 7th 2013.

We respect people’s privacy, if you would like your contribution to be anonymous please let us know.