This morning Peter Clarke, the outgoing Chief Inspector of Prisons laid his fifth and final annual report before parliament. The report covers all the full inspections of places of detention in 2019–20 – some positive and some deeply troubling – as well as scrutiny of the enormous impact of COVID-19… Work with Offenders on today’s Chief Inspector of Prisons annual report...
In June 2020, the Government published the Harm Review, an expert-led review into how the family courts handle domestic abuse and other serious offences. The review found that the adversarial process in the family courts often worsened conflict between parents, which could re-traumatise victims and their children. In its response… Work with offenders looks at a new briefing from the Centre for Justice Innovation....
Over the weekend the Centre for Social Justice (a Think Tank created by Iain Duncan Smith in 2004) published a controversial new report. “Sentencing in the Dock: The case for a new sentence in the criminal courts of England and Wales”. The report calls for a radical new custodial sentence… Work with Offenders looks at a new report from the Centre for Social Justice ...
The Home Office has published its annual statistical bulletin on Hate Crime. The bulletin contains statistics about hate crime offences in England and Wales for the year 2019/20. Unusually, the Home Office has also published an annex to the statistical bulletin which provides provisional data for racially or religiously aggravated… Work with Offenders looks at the detail of yesterday’s hate crime statistics....
The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) has published the second briefing from its new CAPPTIVE initiative. The Covid-19 Action Prisons Project: Tracking Innovation, Valuing Experience (CAPPTIVE) builds on PRT’s Prisoner Policy Network (PPN). CAPPTIVE aims to listen to prisoners, their families, prison staff, and others to build a picture of how… Work with Offenders on the latest Prison Reform Trust report exploring the experience of lockdown in prison...
Yesterday the Prisons and Probation Minister Lucy Frazer QC, announced that the initial 10-year contract to run the newly built prison in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire was being awarded to G4S. This was a very controversial decision because the MoJ took the the contract for running HMP Birmingham away from G4S… Work with Offenders assesses yesterday’s controversial announcement...
Earlier this week the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System and The Howard League published the second briefing from the APPG’s inquiry into women offenders. Entitled “Arresting the entry of women into the criminal justice system”, the report concluded that: “Thousands of women in distress are… Work with Offenders looks at the inappropriate use of police resources....
The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (IAP) has today published the second part of an intriguing report which gives a unique insight into the experiences of those detained in prisons during the Covid-19 crisis. Drawing on radio messages from over 200 prisoners across 55 prisons, almost half the… The Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody gives a unique insight into the experiences of those detained in prisons during the Covid-19 crisis....
The Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA) evolved from the Penal Affairs Consortium which was set up as a loose coalition of charities concerned about government plans to introduce harsher sentencing and more punitive prison regimes in the early 1990s. The CJA was founded in 2007 and became a charity in 2011.… Work with Offenders profiles a coalition of charities fighting for a fairer justice system....
Last week the Youth Justice Board published its annual report and accounts for the financial year 2019/20. For readers who don’t know the YJB is the “independent non-departmental public body” responsible for overseeing the operation of the youth justice system and the provision of youth justice services. Its budget for… Work with Offenders looks at the detail of the YJB’s annual report....