Members' Section

Campaigns

Everything we do, whether it be our ground-breaking research, our varied events programme or our parliamentary work, is focused on achieving our core campaign objectivities.

Our members and supporters get involved to raise the issues and promote our work. You can request materials to display or hand out to friends, colleagues or family.

How you can get involved and request campaign resources

Take Action 2010

The Howard League wants to stop the cycle of crime where prisoners are shut up, forgotten and then released with no help to resettle back into society. We need more investment in communities to tackle the underlying causes of crime. We need your support now for less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.

Find out how you can take action

Lost Daughters

Lost Daughters campaign aims:

preventing the deaths of women in prison
implementing the recommendation of The Corston Report: a review of women with particular vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system
raising awareness of our concerns and views on women and girls in the penal system.

Community Sentences Cut Crime Campaign

The campaign aim is to encourage public and government support for successful community sentences. You can find our more about the campaign and the Community Programmes Awards here.

Real Work in Prison

Finding a job after custody is hard enough, but imagine explaining to an employer that your only work experience while inside has been counting screws into packets or sticking labels onto tubs.

Following an extensive investigatation into work opportunities available to prisoner the Howard League established Barbed, a graphic design studio inside a prison and ran it as a proper buisness. A design studio inside a prison is unusual - in fact it’s unique. It’s hard to believe this actually worked, but it did - extremely well. Barbed produced work as varied as business cards, annual reports, posters and exhibition banners plus many more items. The studio had a very positive vibe and there was a real team spirit. This was reflected in the quality of the work. It flourished and the prisoners/employees paid tax and NI until the Prison Service decided that prisoner could not pay tax or National Insurance.

Suicide and self-injury prevention

In 2005 there were 78 suicides in prison. This included four women and 12 prisoners under 21 years old. The proportion of suicides by black and minority ethnic prisoners has risen from one in ten of all prison suicides in the last five years to over one in five during 2005.

The Howard League for Penal Reform has been at the forefront of the campaign to reduce the incidence of suicide and self-injury in prisons for more than a decade. We have published a series of reports looking at suicide and self-injury and organised conferences to share positive practice.

Following our research and campaign the Probation Service took responsibility for suicide prevention following release from prison. We surveyed prisoners in Northern Ireland and assisted the NI Prison Service in developing their strategy for suicide and self-injury prevention.

Prison overcrowding

There are currently over 80,000 men, women and children in prison in England and Wales, The prison population has been rising steadily since 1993, increasing from 42,000 to todays unprecedented levels. This means that there are now a higher percentage of people in prison here than in any other country in western Europe.

Our campaign has included:

highlighting the appalling increase in our prison population in the national press
parliamentary work to inform politicians about the reality of prison conditions
working to encourage greater use of community sentences in the courts

The Howard League online