This article will tell an extraordinary and damning true story of the continuous underhanded betrayal and abandonment of Britain’s combat veterans, by both the Ministry of Defence and the Criminal Justice System. It will expose how these Governmental departments have knowingly and deliberately falsified statistics and hidden the truth behind the embarrassingly high numbers of combat veterans in the prison population since the early 1970s.
Astonishingly, as a result of the many other conflicts involving British troops since the start of the conflict in Northern Ireland – such as the Falklands, Bosnia, the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been numerous thousands of combat veterans incarcerated in the Criminal Justice System, simply because they have become too violent to be around normal people. This has over the years resulted in great numbers of them serving terms of imprisonment for violence, or predominantly serving ‘life sentences’ for murder.
In 1998 Dr Morgan O’Connell, an ex-Royal Navy consultant psychiatrist who treated the psychological wounded during the Falklands conflict, said in a subsequent interview in the Belfast Telegraph, “A separate prison should be established to deal with the needs of increasing numbers of former servicemen now behind bars”.
The article concluded: Dr O’Connell, who was attached to the Royal Navy and was with the Forces in the Falklands war, claims there are a disproportionate number of ex-servicemen in the prison system suffering from mental disorders like PTSD. He had set up a PTSD management programme Holy Cross Hospital in Haslemere, Surrey, and was struck by the number of ex-servicemen attending fresh from prison. Dr O’Connell, says there needs to be a special therapeutic community established to deal with the problems of ex-servicemen: “I’m not trying to say that they should not be in prison but that their misbehaviour reflects a traumatic experience they endure while serving their country and that condition needs to be examined. PTSD is syndrome arising out of an unusual experience – the experience that created the condition is trapped by the victim’s memory and can be triggered at any time. When the event involves extreme violence, failure to treat the condition means that the victim is in effect a walking time-bomb waiting to go off at any time.” {Belfast Telegraph, 16th March 1998}.
In 2007, I contacted other combat veterans in the prison population throughout the country, asking them to carry out head counts of prisoners in total and then the combat veterans on their prison wings. In the prisons where tests were carried out, the results consistently showed that 6% to 9% of prisoners were ex-Army combat veterans, many of whom were serving ‘life sentences’ for murder, while less than 1% were either ex-Royal Navy, ex-RAF or non-combatant Army veterans. For example: During the VIP survey of the prison population, my own headcount of ex-servicemen on the prison wing I was serving my sentence, was 12 out of 120 inmates (10%), of which only 1 was Royal Navy and had not served in a conflict (0.8%), the other 11 were ex-soldiers (9%). Apart from 1 who was a non-combatant, the other 10 ex-soldiers had all served in conflicts (8% of the wing population), and all 10 were serving ‘life sentences’ for murder!
Tragically, there is no group of people in the entire prison population of England Wales, other than combat veterans, who are so significantly over represented for committing the crime of murder. The proportion of prisoners in England and Wales serving life sentences is 9.9%, which is around 8,000 inmates, and without doubt the largest particular group of these are combat veterans. This is a most serious issue which the public should be most concerned about, especially when you consider that in the early 1970’s, the numbers of ex-soldiers in prison populations were very low. Nowadays however, there’s a yawning gap between the likelihood of combat veterans and normal inmates serving prison sentences for extreme violence.
Obviously, the Ministry of Defence and the Criminal Justice System have kept these figures under wraps, because they know that the reality of these huge numbers of murders committed by combat veterans will be too difficult for the general public to accept or understand. There is also the disastrous effect this long running tragedy would have on the Army’s Recruiting figures, as it could become known that there’s a significant chance of ending one’s days in prison serving a ‘life sentence’ for murder because of their military service in conflicts.
In September 2009, the National Association of Probation Officers (NAPPO), were getting increasingly concerned about the number of veterans their members were coming into contact with, and seemingly Domestic Violence was by far the most common conviction. Accordingly, the General Secretary of NAPO Mr Harry Fletcher, with the help of Veterans in Prison (VIP), published a briefing paper that concluded that 8.5% of the prison population, nearly 8000, were ex-military and that 6% of those on probation and parole, about 12,000, were also veterans – in total around 20,000 former military personnel in the Criminal Justice System. {Daily Mail article ’20,000 Neglected ex-servicemen in jail on probation’ September 2009}
Undeniably, there is evidence of a clear pattern of a high number of combat veterans serving life sentences for murder in the Criminal Justice System, when compared with the Royal Navy, RAF or non-combatant Army veterans. It is also noteworthy that the figures of all three of our Armed Forces who are ‘not on the ground’ combat troops, run parallel and on par with the Emergency Services personnel, of whom there is also only a small number who have served ‘life sentences’ for murder in the prison system. We know that Emergency Services personnel suffer from PTSD because of the traumatic scenes they come across daily, but it is also clear that they do not commit violent killing on anywhere near the same scale as combat veterans.
The fact that large numbers of combat veterans are or have served ‘life sentence’ for murder in the Criminal Justice System will shock and horrify the public at large, particularly the unsuspecting families of their innocently murdered victims. The report by Dr O’Connell rightly mentioned that many in the prison population are combat veterans suffering from combat related PTSD. This however applies to those in prison for all types of crimes. What is hugely significant is that of those combat veterans who are serving or have already served ‘life sentences’ specifically for murder, most do not actually have PTSD!
The key factor of most relevance to these combat veterans not suffering PTSD but serving prison sentences for extreme violence and something everyone misses – is the fact that none was ever deprogrammed from the brainwashing in violence prior to their deployment in conflicts. This implanting of excessive violence is purely to ensure they will kill other human beings without any thought or hesitation – and the whole reason why this extreme violence has followed them home. As these are the real ‘ticking time bombs’ which the authorities have purposely kept hidden in the Criminal Justice system for over the past 6 decades.
So why is it that if we add together all these ‘not on the ground’ non-combatants from our three-Armed Forces, plus Emergency Services personnel, the number serving or having served ‘life sentences’ for murder since the early 1970s, is still very low when compared to the extraordinary high numbers of combat veterans? The answer is absolutely and unquestionably because Emergency Services personnel are trained to ‘care, look after and empathise’ with people – whereas combat veterans have their subconscious minds implanted with extreme violence into killing people, as confirmed by these prison statistics of combat veterans serving ‘life sentences’ for murder!
Statistically, when you compare an average number of say 120,000 soldiers who were serving in the Army in the early 1970’s to the present-day figures of 80,000, and then equate an average figure of 100,000 to the UK population of around 60 million over the past 50 years – it works out to roughly 0.15%. Yet this same percentage of combat veterans in the prison population is around 10%, which is a phenomenal number and way off the wall chart for any other group of people. But the reality is that these combat veterans are the only people in the country who have been effectively brainwashed and dehumanised by the brutal and violent military training programmes that actually make them kill people!
The problems of high numbers of combat veterans in the prison population is so serious that Politicians and Ministry of Defence officials now typically quote: “The vast majority of veterans make hugely positive contributions to our country – or go on to live normal productive lives once they leave the Armed Forces.” Yes, these statements are technically correct, but the truth is that these quotes are cunningly hiding the huge mountain of combat veterans in the Criminal Justice System. Critically, this vast majority that they are referring to includes many Royal Navy, RAF or non-combatant Army Veterans.
However, the double whammy for combat veterans who finished up in the Criminal Justice System is that they are supposed to be rehabilitated and returned to society without risk of reoffending, and yet the Offending Behaviour Programmes in the Criminal Justice System which are supposedly a reflection of the root cause of inmates offending behaviour – are not fit for purpose. These courses do not even address the needs of normal inmates – never mind combat veterans serving sentences for extreme violence!
For example: ‘Courses make little difference to re-offending rate’ – Study.
Offending behaviour courses in prison make little difference to participants chances of re-offending after release, an analysis has concluded. Researchers at Oxford and York universities examined the results of large-scale experimental studies from around the world which compared the reoffending rates of prisoners who participated in courses and those who did not. They found that courses led to a reduction in reoffending which was too small to be significant. They concluded: “We report modest effects, at best, for psychological interventions delivered in prison.”
Findings of the analysis, which the researchers claimed was first of its kind, were published in August in Lancet Psychiatry. Some previous research had found that prisoners who take courses are significantly less likely to reoffend. However, the authors of the Lancet paper dismissed most previous studies because they were too small or insignificantly thorough. ‘Out of 6.345 previous studies, only 14 were judged reliable enough to include in the final analysis’.
{Insidetime newspaper October 2021}
We know that all combat veterans in the prison system have been through intensified training for conflicts, and this is triggered when flare-ups of violence occur during tours of duty. Yet incredibly, this has not been removed from their subconscious minds and, as every Psychiatrist/Psychologist knows, this implanted violence can easily be re-activated in stressful situations in Civvy Street. Hence the main reason why combat veterans in the prison population are mainly charged with crimes of violence on their return home from conflicts.
Nevertheless, Veterans in Prison have created a deprogramming plan which all combat veterans will be able to relate to and understand. The programme is in two parts and is called ‘Break Off’. The first section is ‘The Cause and Prevention of Extreme violence for Combat Veterans’ – showing combat veterans how their extreme violence was initially implanted in their subconscious prior to their service in conflicts. The second part of the de-programming is the therapy for combat veterans implanted violence – ‘Focus Meditation and Visualisation’. This shows combat veterans how they have to learn to ‘Break Off’ from the implanted violence during arguments well before it explodes into an extreme violent reaction.
There is no doubt that numerous thousands of combat veterans would have been helped by the ‘Break Off’ programme had it existed years ago, but it is clear that all combat veterans who have served in the many conflicts since the early 1970s will still be able to benefit greatly by being properly de-programmed from this implanted violence. The vast majority will have lived normal peaceful lives for many years, but worryingly no-one knows what is going on in their subconscious, waiting to be triggered at any point in the future by what they may in some way perceive to be a threat.
