Safety is a serious concern at HMP Lowdham Grange, for the second year running, with three apparently self-inflicted deaths in three weeks, says the independent monitoring board (IMB) in a report published last week. The IMB took the unusual step of publishing an annex to its 2022-3 report, alerting ministers… Drugs were a continuing problem, both affecting prisoner behaviour and encouraging illicit activity and debt...
The National Association for Probation Officers is “vehemently opposed” to MoJ proposals to absorb specialist sex offender teams into generic Intervention hubs. The Ministry of Justice is currently in a formal consultation period with trade unions on changes which could see the creation of single Interventions Units within each of… The MoJ is looking to create single Interventions Units across the 12 probation regions....
Many of us will remember fondly Norman Stanley Fletcher, Ronnie Barker’s role in the BBC comedy Porridge. His cheeky, stereotypical, older prisoner character enjoyed notoriety, kudos and the ability to make life inside far more manageable. Many members of the public still visualise prison life to be just the same… The RECOOP charity was set up over 8 years ago to specifically support the older prisoner population and meet their differing needs...
Andrea Albutt, President of the Prison Governors’ Association, made it clear in her speech to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Penal Affairs (APPGPA) yesterday that our prisons are rapidly running out of space. As you can see from our graphic below, the prison population has been on an upward… The projected rise to 94,000 is primarily due to an increase in receptions of determinate sentenced offenders....
A new thematic inspection into restricted status children and prisoners held in women’s establishments published today concludes that prison service rules for managing those women and child prisoners who pose the greatest risk of harm to the public are, far from supporting their rehabilitation and reduction of risk, in many… The policy provided instructions on how to manage prisoners whose escape would present a risk of serious harm to the public....
The Ministry of Justice has today published what it calls a “Ad-hoc Statistics Bulletin” on the number of people released from prison who find jobs. The bulletin shows the rate of employment of prison leavers at two points: shortly (6 weeks) after release and after a longer period of resettlement… The numbers of prison leavers finding jobs has increased markedly over the last two years according to the MoJ...
The Ministry of Justice and the Office for National Statistics today published its quarterly criminal justice bulletin covering the main activities in the justice system up to the end of 2022. The figures show rises in the number of people dealt with by the criminal justice system but activity levels… The number of prosecutions for indictable offences fell by 3% compared to last year, which may be attributable to the industrial action taken by barristers last summer....
Today’s HMPPS quarterly workforce figures for March 2023 made for less dismal reading than usual with small increases in the number of frontline prison and probation staff. There are actually more trainee probation officers (PQiPs) than (the considerable number) of probation officer vacancies which may give some hope for those… Given the latest target headcount of 6,158 there is an overall national shortfall of 1,745 probation officers against the required staffing level, a vacancy rate of 29%....
Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) monitor and report on the conditions and treatment of those detained in every prison in England and Wales. Boards in women’s prisons have repeatedly reported on high levels of mental health need and self-harm incidents. This briefing sets out Board findings from seven women’s prisons with… In National Mental Health Awareness week, the Independent Monitoring Boards have again drawn attention to the high level of mental health need and self-harm incidents in women’s prisons...
Today’s report by the National Audit Office “Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending” makes for predictably grim reading. The report not only concludes that the government is not consistently supporting prison leavers in resettling into the community but finds that the quality of services has declined in… The National Audit Office has highlighted that HM Inspectorate of Prisons did not rate any prisons as ‘good’ for rehabilitation and release planning in 2022-23,...