Archive for November, 2009

Queen’s Speech debates and faith restored

Last week you would have been forgiven for thinking I had rather lost faith in Parliament as I showed my  disappointment with the latest raft of legislation proposed to separate vulnerable individuals who end up in prison from the rest of society.
However throughout this week’s parliamentary debates on the Queen’s [...]

November 27, 2009  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Prisons  One Comment

A busy affair

Our AGM last night was a busy affair. Around 200 people attended to hear guest speaker Dominic Grieve QC MP, the shadow justice minister, give a comprehensive overview of Conservative party penal policy. He was very straightforward about the challenges they would face in government and overall was pretty well received. He said they had [...]

November 25, 2009   Posted in: Howard League  One Comment

I’m a person, not just a number

Recently staff from the Howard League for Penal Reform held focus groups in a young offender institution (YOI) with boys aged between 16 and 20. As a society, we discuss them, judge them, sentence them, abandon them. We wanted to hear what they had to say.
From the conditions of food in prison to the chances [...]

November 24, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Children and young people  No Comments

A note from a visit to German prisons

I have just returned from a visit to German prisons. 
I spent a day in Tegel prison in Berlin, which is the biggest prison in Germany holding 1,600 adult men. It has a budget of 44 million Euros, approximately double that of a similar prison in the UK, and it showed. The huge difference was the [...]

November 23, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: International, Prisons  No Comments

UNCRC 20 years on

‘No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily. The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.’
Only rarely is it best to let the text [...]

November 20, 2009   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

Another Queen’s Speech another criminal justice bill

For one final time before an election in 2010 the government delivered their legislative agenda in the form of the Queen’s Speech and just like every other before it, the text made reference to yet another piece of justice legislation to clamp down on anti-social behaviour. The proposed Crime and Security Bill will widen the [...]

November 18, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Inside prisons, Prisons  One Comment

Sir John Mortimer’s memorial service

I have just been to Sir John Mortimer’s memorial service held in Southwark Cathedral.  Sir John was our President for a decade. He helped to raise money, he gave us access to his amazing contacts, and he presided over our annual conference dinners. 
There must have been 2,000 people there and we had to push our [...]

November 17, 2009   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

We have not learnt how to deal with our troubled children

Shipping poor children off to the colonies, both Australia and Canada, was common practice in the nineteenth century. It was seen as a way of dealing with troublesome children from the slums.
The 1887 annual report of the Howard Association deals with the problem of juvenile pauperism and crime. William Tallack, the founding Secretary of the [...]

November 16, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Children and young people  No Comments

Armistice day

It is a terrible irony that on the day we announce the establishment of an independent inquiry into why so many former armed service personnel commit crimes and end up in prison, John Allen Muhammad, who had served in the US army for 17 years, was executed after having shot dead ten people.
He enlisted in [...]

November 11, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Uncategorized  3 Comments

Exile or prison.

One of the most important questions of the day is whether Matt Crawford should stay in Costa Rica or return to face a possible ten year prison sentence. For those of you who are not avid Archers fans, Matt Crawford is a fictional character. But the issues raised in the story line are apposite. 
He is [...]

November 9, 2009   Posted in: White collar crime  No Comments