Students call for prisons to be BANNED: new president of NUS group says all criminals should be freed
An influential students' group has called for prisons to be abolished because they are 'sexist and racist' in the latest in a series of far-Left interventions by the student movement.
The National Union of Students black students' conference also voted to step up its fight against the Government's anti-extremism agenda.
The controversial votes at the conference in Bradford this weekend came after the current NUS black students' officer, Malia Bouattia, was elected president of the union, defeating the more moderate incumbent.
She has previously argued that it is Islamophobic to oppose ISIS and described one university as a 'Zionist outpost' because it has a large Jewish society.
One of the motions passed at the conference on Saturday was titled 'Prisons are Obsolete! Abolish Them Now!', and resolved to 'call for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex'.
The motion, which pointed to high rates of re-offending and the disproportionate number of black people in jail, concluded: 'Prisons are sexist and racist.'
Students also threatened to deploy 'direct action' to fulfil their aim of disrupting the current prison system.
The vote called for anyone detained under the Mental Health Act to be handed over into NHS care, but was silent on what should happen to other convicted criminals.
Last month the NUS women's conference passed a similar resolution, titled 'Prison Abolition is a Feminist Issue', which called for 'community and transformative justice' to replace incarceration.
In a separate motion on Saturday, the black students' conference voted to campaign against Prevent, the Government's main anti-radicalisation effort, being deployed in further education institutions.
Students compared the official campaign to 'Big Brother' and opposed attempts to teach 'British values' to sixth-formers and other FE students.
The black students' conference is supposed to represent the interests of all ethnic minority university and college students.
It is open to all students who consider themselves 'politically black' - and a motion to confine the definition of black to mean 'of African or Caribbean origin' was voted down by delegates this weekend.