31/01/2019 00:01:00
People in prison need meaningful incentives which both motivate and allow them to take responsibility for their behaviour, according to a new report published by the Prison Reform Trust today.
The report, ‘What incentives work in prison?’ is the result of an extensive consultation exercise with over 1,250 people with experience of prison.
It presents the findings from an emerging network of current serving prisoners, ex-prisoners and connected organisations who want to share their expertise and experience with policy makers. The Prisoner Policy Network (PPN) aims to provide solutions to the big challenges currently facing our prisons, and a greater voice for prisoners in influencing the policies that affect them.
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Commenting on the announcement Peter Dawson, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
"The Prison Reform Trust welcomes Jo Farrar as the CEO of HMPPS. We look forward to working closely with her, and in particular making it possible for her to hear from the people who live in the prisons for which she will be responsible. Their insight and willingness to help is vital to achieving the safe, decent and purposeful system to which we all aspire."
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The Prison Reform Trust and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice, along with a coalition of organisations working with children and young people in the criminal justice system, have written a letter published in today’s Times opposing the government’s proposed knife crime prevention orders. A copy of the letter and a list of signatures is below.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence has also criticised the proposals, in an article in the Times which also highlights today’s letter.
The bill is being debated in the House of Lords today. The Prison Reform Trust and the Standing Committee for Youth Justice have published a briefing for Peers urging them to oppose the new orders and highlighting other key amendments.
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Commenting on the Ministry of Justice’s safety in custody statistics, published today, Mark Day, Head of Policy and Communications at the Prison Reform Trust, said:
“These disturbing figures show every indicator of prison safety to be pointing the wrong way, with a rise in numbers of natural and self-inflicted deaths and record levels of self-harm and assaults. The measures the government have put in place to improve prison safety, including increasing staff numbers and the roll out of a new key worker model, have not yet succeeded in reversing this rising trend. Plans to roll out PAVA spray to all prison staff on the closed adult male estate risk making a volatile situation even worse.”
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14/01/2019 15:30:00
We know that in-prison programmes can reduce dependency, and that the most ordered prisons have the busiest prisoners. Hope is a key ingredient of desistance. PRT director Peter Dawson explores how to address drug use in prisons in this article originally published in the Huffington Post.
Another week and another story about drugs in prison. It gets the usual five-minute examination—outrage that any drugs make it into a prison, bemusement that this is allowed to happen, an announcement of a new measure to stop it, and on to the next item.
Getting drugs out of our prisons is a critically important issue, and it deserves a better treatment.
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Photo credit: Andy Aitchison
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