News Digest – 8th November 2005

Founding principle called into question
8th November 2005

The government cannot admit it, but more and more voices in France are being raised to say that the country’s worst urban unrest since the student uprising of 1968 reflects the failure of a whole model. “The crisis is total,” one leading sociologist, Michel Wievorka, said yesterday. “This is a structural problem that neither the right nor the left have dealt with for 25 years. France cannot cope with the shortcomings of its republican model. The whole system needs to be rethought.”
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Restraints policy puts lives in danger
6th November 2005

The memory of David ‘Rocky’ Bennett, a black mental health patient who died after being restrained face down by nurses for nearly half an hour, will be invoked this week in an attack on the government’s failure to learn key lessons from his death.

Dr Richard Stone, a member of the independent inquiry set up by the Department of Health after Bennett’s death, told The Observer he was angry the government had ignored its recommendation that mental health patients should no longer be ‘restrained in a prone position for more than three minutes’.
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Top cop says sorry to Sylvester family
27th September 2005

Met police chief Sir Ian Blair has issued a guarded apology to the family of Tottenham man Roger Sylvester, who died in police custody.
In an unprecedented move, Sir Ian said sorry’ to the Sylvester’s as he made a special appearance at the Haringey Community and Police Consultative Group’s general meeting in Wood Green.
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News Digest – 26th October 2005

Racist PC abused Asian motorists
26th October 2005
An off-duty policeman shouted racial abuse at Asian drivers as he clamped their cars, a court has heard
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Prisons chief hits at ‘gross’ overcrowding
23rd October 2005
The departing head of the prison and probation service has launched a scathing attack on Britain’s penal system, expressing his deep concern that a record number of prisoners are behind bars when the crime rate is falling
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Holding the state to account for the deaths of vulnerable asylum seekers
20th October 2005
A recent meeting on deaths in immigration detention centre’s called for the state to be held accountable for the deaths of vulnerable asylum seekers
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Launch of European Civil Liberties Network
19th October 2005
An online network of groups concerned with civil liberties, democracy and equality has been launched to counter unprecedented attacks on freedoms in Europe
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