Archive for the ‘Inside prisons’ Category

Violent Offender Orders

The government is introducing Violent Offender Orders (VOOs) today.  This means that people who have served their time in prison and have completed any parole or supervision requirements in the community will be subjected to years of surveillance and bureaucratic procedures.  If they fail to report to police they could be sent back to prison, [...]

August 5, 2009  Tags:   Posted in: Government policy, Inside prisons, Prisons, Sentencing  One Comment

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

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

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

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

Women dying in custody

We launched a campaign to prevent women dying in custody today and had a bit of a run about with the figures.  So some explanation might be helpful.  The main focus of our work over years has been how we could work to reduce the use of prison for women (and men) and prevent deaths.
I [...]

July 13, 2009  Tags: ,   Posted in: Campaigns, Government policy, Howard League, Inside prisons, Self-injuring, Women in custody  One Comment

Ford prison well done

Sometimes there are little nuggets of good news.  I was contacted by a concerned member of the public last month saying how distressing he found it to watch young children and women with buggies trudging from the station to Ford prison to visit their fathers, a round trip of more than two miles.  He suggested [...]

June 12, 2009   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

Bored children won’t become responsible citizens

A third of children in prisons have felt unsafe, particularly in communal areas and during activities, and a quarter have been victims inside prison. Most boys don’t trust the staff to take this seriously.
In some prisons less than half of the children were in education or gaining skills and even those who were involved, many [...]

April 29, 2009   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

Holloway prison getting worse?

The ITV programme about Holloway prison last night was really distressing.  It was incredible the way that Chloe was treated.  The voiceover saying how important it was not to talk to her after she had yet again tied a ligature round her neck and several prison officers had piled in to remove it.  The staff [...]

March 18, 2009   Posted in: Inside prisons  No Comments

Coldingley social enterprise closed

Our social enterprise in Coldingley prison closed down on Friday.  After two years of producing high quality graphic design for a wide range of
clients, we had to give in and close it down.
We had a useful meeting with the Minister, David Hanson, last week to explain the insurmountable problems that made it impossible to run [...]

December 22, 2008   Posted in: Howard League, Inside prisons  No Comments