Archive for October, 2007

Horrific mental health issues in prisons

There was a right old furore about foreign national prisoners yesterday. I spent much of the day doing media interviews. We said that specialist prisons for foreign nationals was not a problem (and was not new) if it helped to deliver a better service to them. There are around 11,000 foreign nationals in jail and [...]

October 25, 2007   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

The benefits of real prison work

Some good news. Two of our designers in Barbed have been given category D and so have moved on to open prisons. But, of course the bad news is that we have lost two wonderful members of staff. However, we have recruited two talented new designers and are starting a training programme for them.
These are [...]

October 24, 2007   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

Physical restraint against children must be a sackable offence

I was really pleased to see that both the CEO of the Youth Justice Board and the prisons minister gave very strong promises to Parliament that if any staff use physical restraint against a child in custody as a punishment then that is a sacking offence. The evidence given to Lord Carlile for his investigation [...]

October 18, 2007   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

Disbanding respect team is good news

It sort of slipped out without anyone noticing. Probably because the entire media was just obsessed with whether there was going to be an election. The respect team has been disbanded. And a good thing too. Maybe I am being too optimistic, but the annoucement the the new children and family ministry has taken over [...]

October 12, 2007   Posted in: Government policy  No Comments

Inquiry needed into physical restraint on children

On 12 July the prisons minister agreed to hold an inquiry into the use of physical restraint on children in custody. Now, three months later, nothing has happened. I dont care if there is a general election or not, but if there is, lots of things like this will get delayed even more.I wrote to [...]

October 3, 2007   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments