Regular readers will be more familiar than most with the chronic overcrowding in our prison system and the recent emergency measures that the government has had to institute to tackle them. The early release provision and other measures have succeeded in reducing the number of people inside by 424 people… There have been more than 23,000 assaults in the prison system in the 12 months to June last year ...
Last week the Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics published the annual report on Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements for 2022/23. Although MAPPA has only been in existence since 2003 and despite the surge in the prison population in the last year, there remain more people supervised under… There are more offenders being managed under MAPPA arrangements than there are in prison ...
Last Saturday was an important day for anyone with a criminal record looking for work or to change their job. Eighteen months after the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was passed, changes to spending periods finally came into effect on 28 October 2023. In a change, much more profound… For the first time, many prison sentences of four or more years will be able to become spent....
Today’s edition of the MoJ Offender Management Statistics cover the prison population up to the end of September and other prison and probation data until the end of June. They confirm the inexorable rise of the prison population and the fall in the probation caseload. Prison adjudications and licence recalls… On 30 June 2023, there were 238,264 offenders supervised by the Probation Service in England and Wales...
In its report ‘Public opinion and understanding of sentencing’, the House of Commons Justice Committee concluded the persistence of the view among the public that the system is not severe enough, represents a “significant long-term public policy challenge that needs to be addressed”. The Committee’s report recommended that the Government… Only 22% of respondents to a poll identified that Parliament was responsible for setting the maximum sentence in law for a criminal offence....
With the prison population now at an all time-high, new research published last Friday (13 October 2023) shows how prisoners’ families and loved-ones are facing their own hidden sentence of financial hardship and emotional strain. Survey results published by the Prison Advice and Care Trust (Pact) show that many families,… ‘Serving a Hidden Sentence’ finds that prisoners’ families are often hit by a ‘double whammy’ of costs ...
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk was forced to make an emergency announcement yesterday (16 October 2023) introducing new measures to tackle the ever-growing prison population. Mr Chalk addressed the House of Commons and set out two main initiatives to try to tackle the crisis. These focused on: Releasing some “lower level… The average custodial sentence length was 24.3 months last year compared to 17 months a decade earlier...
One line in Justice Secretary Alex Chalk’s speech to the Conservative party conference yesterday caused concern and confusion amongst many penal commentators: “We’re expanding and refurbishing existing prisons and hiring thousands more prison officers…And I can tell you today, conference, that we also intend to look at the Norwegian example… The government will now also enter exploratory discussions with potential partner countries in Europe to rent prison space abroad....
Last week’s (28 September, 2023) Criminal Court statistics covering the state of play to the 30th June this year make from grim reading. The Government has made little progress in reducing the court backlogs since the end of the pandemic but Crown Court backlogs had been reducing very slowly since… The criminal justice system is in reverse according to the latest criminal court statistics ...
The Ministry of Justice has launched a major new advertising campaign to tackle recruitment and retention, by showing the reality of life as prison and probation officers. It’s the first time the MoJ has ever invested in a national campaign which includes both TV and radio – a sure sign… The MoJ admits there is a level of cynicism over the ‘sugar-coating’ and aspirational language of recruitment into prison and probation jobs amongst existing staff....