The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) was founded in 1981 in London by a small group of prison reform campaigners who were unhappy with the direction in which the Howard League for Penal Reform was heading, concentrating more on community punishments than on traditional prison reform issues. Founding members included Sir… This is the third in our occasional series on key independent organisations operating within the criminal justice sector....
There has been plenty of media attention paid to how prisons have coped with the threat of coronavirus. Overall, most commentators agree that the prison system has done quite a good job in containing the virus, although this has been at the expense of very restrictive regimes with the vast… Work with Offenders finds out how the parole board has made changes to its working practices in the wake of coronavirus...
Like every other business in the country, prison inspectors are unable to work in their usual manner during the coronavirus outbreak. On 17 March Peter Clarke, the Chief Inspector, announced that he was suspending full inspection visits until the end of May in order to reflect government public health guidance… Work with offenders looks at the most recent inspection report....
Earlier this week new research was published into the relationship between drugs and crime from the perspective of young people in contact with criminal justice systems in six European countries including the UK (the others were Austria, Denmark, Germany, Italy and Poland). As the research team, led by Sara Rolando,… Work with Offenders examines new European research...
The House of Commons Justice Committee is currently conducting an enquiry into our ageing prison population, so we thought it was timely to take a closer look at how our prison population has changed over recent years. The latest figures are quite startling: One in six (17%) of the prison… Work with offenders investigates our ageing prison population...
The announcement by the Ministry of Justice that it is investing in services for women offenders was some very welcome news during a particularly bleak time. The issue of women’s offending is possibly unique in the criminal justice system. Unique because, unlike so many other justice issues where “liberals” and… Work with offenders heralds long awaited investment in services for women offenders...
Last week the Ministry of Justice published its quarterly offender management statistics; the latest quarter in focus was October to December 2019 which means that we have a full data set for last year. Careful reading revealed a number of interesting trends which we hope readers will find of interest.… Work with offenders takes a deep dive into the latest offender management statistics...
This is the second in our occasional series on key independent organisations operating within the criminal justice sector. The Howard League is named after John Howard, the founder of the penal reform movement. Between 1775 and 1790 John Howard made seven journeys across Europe in search of a humane prison… Work with Offenders profiles the UK’s oldest penal reform organisation....
A new report from the Institute for Government says that the UK criminal justice system is facing unprecedented court case backlogs and record prisoner numbers. These joint pressures will be the result of delays to court hearings caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and the government’s plan to recruit an extra… Work with Offenders digs into the detail of an important new report on the future for the justice system...
As readers will know, some weeks ago the government announced that it would be releasing prisoners early in order to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on prisoners and staff living in our overcrowded prisons and “to protect the NHS and save lives”. The MoJ announced that early release would be… Work with Offenders looks at the now public criteria for the early release scheme designed to contain the spread of coronavirus in our prisons....