Archive for July, 2009

You can’t build your way out of prison overcrowding

A quarter of prisoners are held two to a cell designed for one person. More than 20,000 men and women are doubled up, including 1,186 who are three people in a cell designed for two.
This over-crowding has hardly changed in the last twenty years despite the biggest prison building programme in history. The government has [...]

July 29, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Government policy, Inside prisons, Overcrowding, Prisons  No Comments

Community justice centres

The Times has a feature on research published by the Ministry of Justice showing no significant difference in re-offending rates between community courts and conventional courts.
Reader beware.  The research only deals with the first year of the community courts and says clearly that it takes time to bed new ideas into services and communities.  And [...]

July 28, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Government policy, Rehabilitation, Sentencing  One Comment

Prison is no place for children

The Telegraph and other papers are carrying stories that Warren Hill prison for children is some sort of holiday camp.  These stories appear from time to time and the only difference this time is that the papers have extracted the juicy titbit that children can, weirdly, pick their own lavatory seat.  All this makes for [...]

July 28, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Children and young people, Headline grabbing, Inside prisons, Prisons  One Comment

Public services funding

There are several stories in the press this morning that caught my attention.
The front page of the Guardian says there is to be a decade of pain for public services.  This will hit the prisons and other parts of the criminal justice system.  And so it should because they are poor value for money .  [...]

July 24, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Police, Prisons, Sentencing  No Comments

Knife crime

Today’s reporting of the knife crime statistics show how this is a complicated issue. While, of course, it is to be welcomed that knife crime as a whole is down, it is deeply sad that so many are still dying. I fear that a police led operation aimed at reducing knife crime amongst teenagers will [...]

July 22, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Government policy  No Comments

Primary justice

The Howard League has been working closely with the all party parliamentary group on local government and the local government information unit that have today published a report called Primary Justice.  I was particularly pleased about this as I have been banging on for several years about how the downward pressure on health services away [...]

July 20, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Government policy  No Comments

Video nasties

Rudi Vis MP tabled a written Parliamentary Question last year at our suggestion about the practice of making a video when children are restrained or forcibly stripped in prisons.   The Ministry of Justice undertook to look into it and more than a year later Rudi Vis has received a letter in response.  The Prison Service [...]

July 18, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Inside prisons  5 Comments

Crime rates down! Read all about it?

The crime statistics just published are really encouraging and do indicate that we are becoming a safer society.  Of course particularly gratifying is the reduction in the homicide rate.  In the last ten years vehicle crime, domestic burglary and crimes of violence have all gone down substantially.  This means fewer victims and should be the [...]

July 17, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Headline grabbing  One Comment

Headline grabbing

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, has been busy.  Today he is talking about extradition laws and the papers this morning are reporting his idea that the police should take mobile phones from young people as a punishment.  I support his scepticism about the effectiveness of anti-social behaviour orders but am concerned that people invent [...]

July 15, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Headline grabbing  One Comment

Prison suicides call for radical change

I have just given a talk on suicide in prisons to MPs and Peers in the all party parliamentary group on suicide prevention.  I talked about Jeffrey Horler, a 15 year old from Great Yarmouth who came from a very poor family and who had a history of minor trouble when he set fire to [...]

July 14, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Campaigns, Inside prisons, Self-injuring  2 Comments