Today’s inspection report into the state of affairs at Winchester prison makes for dismal reading. The prison is one of our older Victorian ones (built in 1849) and held just under 500 prisoners when the inspectors made their unannounced inspection in February this year. The most worrying finding was that… Work with offenders on an inspection of HMP Winchester...
The government has today published draft legislation which it says will pave the way for the first ever Victims’ Law. Advocates for victims, including the Victims’ Commissioner Dame Vera Baird, have long called for victims’ rights to be enshrined in law, saying that only then will victims’ experiences of the… Work with offenders on today’s draft legislation...
The Ministry of Justice has finally announced the location of the first Residential Women’s Centre. Swansea will be the site of the first centre which is intended to be the centrepiece of the female offender strategy which aims to send fewer women to prison and provide more holistic support in… Work with offenders on long overdue progress with the female offender strategy...
Launched in 2015, Durham’s Checkpoint scheme presented an alternative way of looking at out of court disposals and preventing re-offending. Described as an “adult diversion scheme”, it’s a four-month long offender management programme, which gives those who have committed eligible offences the opportunity to take an alternative to prosecution and… Durham’s Checkpoint scheme has received praise from the government and is beginning to be adopted by other forces. ...
The report from the House of Commons Education Select Committee highlights the cracks in what it calls a “clunky, chaotic, disjointed system” which does not value education as the key to rehabilitation. The MPs highlight the fact that a sub-standard system has recently deteriorated drastically, accelerated by the difficulties of… Work with offenders on last week's MPs’ report...
Yesterday the Ministry of Justice issued a press release praising the effectiveness of the “cutting edge” X-ray body scanners (XRBS) which are now in all 74 closed adult male prisons. XRBS were installed in staggered waves over 15 months, with the first wave beginning in July 2020. 51 sites were… Work with offenders on the latest statistics....
The organisation was started in the early 1990s by two women, Antonia Rubinstein and Polly Freeman, who were studying theatre. They began running community workshops and events using various art techniques They arranged workshops with the former Young Offenders Institute Glen Parva and went on to work in adult prisons… SafeGround is a charity working to help those in prison build and maintain relationships through the use of theatre and art. ...
Today Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons published a routine inspection of HMP Bronzefield, a privately-run (by Sodexo) prison for female adults and young offenders on the outskirts of Ashford in Surrey. The inspection report paints a mixed picture: a better than average response to the challenges of COVID restrictions and… Work with offenders on a problem that won’t go away...
In a project that was initially funded by Devon and Cornwall’s PCC, Alison Hernandez, prisoners are now building environmentally-friendly eco-pod homes and getting paid to do so. Devon and Cornwall’s OPCC initially provided around £100,000 funding for a pilot of the programme which is now looking at expanding across the… Prisoners are now building eco-homes across the South-West in a bid to boost their skillset at the same time as tackling the housing crisis. ...
As regular readers will know, the government recently passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing, Courts Act 2022, a massive piece of legislation containing measures addressing issues across the criminal justice system. One of the measures in the Act of particular interest to criminal justice professionals (and people serving substantial prison sentences)… Work with offenders on the Ministry of Justice’s impact assessment...