MAPPA stands for Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement. It is being applied to the 5% of the most dangerous criminals in the country.
Being registered as MAPPA means that prisons can co-operate with Police, NHS and other agencies more freely than otherwise. Meetings take place, minutes are being taken, reports are being written. In theory, prisoners are to be informed of their special treatment. In practice, it seems to mean controlling 'political' prisoners.
For from the two cases I know of, Maurice Kirk and Joseph Chiwar Musa, MAPPA is being used to ensure that "everybody knows" - except the prisoner.
Why should s/he know how they are being administered / processed? Who cares about prisoners anyway? Why should "justice" be administered to people who defend themselves, so that lawyers can't make a living out of them? Is this the essence of the adversarial system? Or have things only become that badly, because the whole financial system has become so bad? Wikipedia writes that "justice is done when the most effective adversary is able to convince the judge or jury"...
I have this image of a clothes wringer that is being used to 'squeeze' people and wring their lifeblood, their finances and possibly even their fighting spirit out of them. Meanwhile, lawyers and courts are making their living by turning the handles...
Maurice received this letter about not getting 'disclosure' of MAPPA records. First no medical records. Then no MAPPA records. Then "this evidence must not leave the prison". Next week I'll be visiting a prison in Berlin so that I can compare notes...
What's the point of Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts, one wonders?
What's the point of writing about prisoners, if they don't know what is written about them?
What's the difference to those 'expert witnesses' who have never even seen their patients?
I just wish I knew why the Ministry of Justice believes its services are such that they deserve being exported...
Forgive me for applying my Germanic sense of scrutiny and Slavic sense of passion on behalf of prisoners whom I consider seriously badly treated. But there must have been a reason why my mum saved me from the British bombs in Dresden...