Probation race equality remains 'a work in progress'

HM Inspectorate of Probation has today (7 September 2023) published a report re-inspecting the work undertaken and progress made, by the Probation Service, to promote race equality for people on probation and staff. The Inspectorate last looked at this area of practice in 2021. The findings from that report were… Inspectors found no evidence of any disproportionality in the use of enforcement or breach of probation conditions, and most people on probation inspectors interviewed did not feel discriminated against....

History of probation exhibition

Probation is a service that is rarely in the public consciousness apart from when things go wrong. So it is heartening to see a new exhibition on the history of the service just launched. ‘Root & Branch – How five shillings, faith and belief inspired the beginning of the Probation… The exhibition traces the origins of the service from the early work of police court missionaries ...

Prison holding serious offenders issued with urgent notification

Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector of Prisons wrote to the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor on Wednesday 30 August to issue an Urgent Notification for improvement at HMP Woodhill after an unannounced inspection found the prison was fundamentally unsafe. Mr Taylor published that Urgent Notification today. The… There were high levels of violence and drug use at the jail, which holds category A prisoners in addition to its role as a category B trainer. ...

Home Affairs Committee calls for drug law reform

The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has todaypublished a report simply entitled “Drugs”. The report makes a wide ranging set of recommendations. These include a call for reform of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and Misuse of Drugs regulations to support greater use of public health based drug… Enforcement needs to be bolstered by a stronger public health response that helps people escape drug addiction and related criminality according to a new report ...

Good probation supervision does reduce reoffending

Ground-breaking new research by HM Inspectorate of Probation published today has found that higher-quality probation supervision leads to significantly better sentence completion rates and reduced reoffending. The Inspectorate’s latest Research and Analysis Bulletins – compiled by the organisation’s own specialist research team – looked at what progress has been made… For cases getting high-quality probation supervision, the sentence completion rate was 24 percentage points higher, and the reoffending rate was 14 percentage points lower...

Prison and probation staffing picture causes concern

Last quarter’s HMPPS workforce quarterly statistics showed some hope that the chronic staff shortages in our prison and probation systems were starting to improve.  Yesterday’s edition of the figures (which covers prison and probation staffing numbers to the end of June this year) paints a much more dismal picture. Full… Sickness rates remain a concern with probation staff off sick for an average of 12.1 work days per year with probation officers off sick an average of 15.1 days or three weeks. ...

Lowdham prison 'in a state of turmoil'

Today’s report from HM Inspectorate of Prisons said that when Inspectors visited HMP Lowdham Grange in May this year, they found a prison in a state of turmoil following the handover from one private provider to another, the first transition of its kind. The fallout from this was affecting almost… The prison is operated by the private contractor Sodexo who took over the running of the prison from another private operator, Serco...

The growing number of prison recalls

The proportion of people in prison because they have been recalled has been steadily rising over recent years. The most recent (27 July, 2023) MoJ Offender Management Statistics revealed that the number of people recalled to prison jumped 23% to 6,824 in just the first quarter of this year compared… The number of people recalled to prison has risen dramatically following changes introduced by the Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014...

MoJ rights long-standing wrong for people wrongly convicted

This practice was based on the (perhaps dubious) basis that while people were wrongfully imprisoned, they were saving on their rent or mortgage costs. The Malkinson case It was in response to the case of Andrew Malkinson who served seventeen years in prison for a crime he did not commit… Yesterday, the Ministry of Justice announced that people wrongly convicted of criminal offences who spend time in prison will no longer have their prison “living costs” deducted from the compensation to which they are entitled. ...

Young Offender Institutions are increasingly "unsafe"

What are Independent Monitoring Boards? Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) exist for every prison and immigration removal centre. They are made up of ordinary members of the public who are independent, unpaid and make an average of 3-4 visits to their local institution per month. Their role is to monitor the… The new National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs), Elisabeth Davies has hit the ground running. In post for less than a month, she has already written to the Prisons Minister Damian Hinds to urge him take urgent action to improve the conditions in which children are held across young offender institutions (YOIs) in England....