10/10/2019 00:01:00
Jane Hutt AM, Deputy Minister for the Welsh Government, will set out plans today (10 October) on working in partnership to reduce the number of women in Wales in prison.
The Cardiff summit, jointly hosted by Prison Reform Trust, Clinks, Community Justice Cymru and the Welsh Government, will bring together ministers, government officials, organisations supporting women in the justice system and women with lived experience, to support the delivery of the Female Offending Blueprint, published by the Welsh Government earlier this year.
The event is being delivered as part of the Prison Reform Trust’s UK wide Transforming Lives programme to reduce women's imprisonment, and to encourage implementation and investment in better responses to reducing crime committed by women.
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Photo credit: Welsh Government
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01/10/2019 14:30:00
We’re pleased to launch our new series of podcasts with Straightline and National Prison Radio.
Presented by Phil Maguire OBE, Chief Executive of the Prison Radio Association, and Head of Prisoner Engagement at Prison Reform Trust Paula Harriott, each episode of The Secret Life of Prisons takes on a theme related to the prison experience, and features a range of guests with personal experience and insight on each topic.
Through the series listeners will be hear personal testimony from people who have been there, as you are guided out from court and arrival to prison, all the way through to release.
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Photo credit: Andy Aitchison
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01/10/2019 00:01:00
Commenting on today's (1 October) announcement by Robert Buckland that he will legislate to increase the custodial period served for some sentences, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust said:
“This is no way to make sentencing policy. There has been no review worthy of the name. In cases where the risk to the public is high, judges already have the power to do everything the Lord Chancellor says he wants. And sentencing for serious crime has already become dramatically more severe under every government this century. Yet despite all of that, the research evidence is that the public thinks sentencing is softer than it really is.
“But telling the truth about what’s actually happened on sentencing, and leaving judges free to consider the facts of the individual case, doesn’t win votes. This is the worst sort of politics—one day in the limelight paid for by decades of injustice to come.”
Photo credit: Andy Aitchison
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19/09/2019 00:01:00
Commenting on the report published today (19 September) by HM Inspectorate of Probation, Service user involvement in the review and improvement of probation services, Paula Harriott, Head of Prisoner Engagement at the Prison Reform Trust, said:
“This important research shows the immense value of involving the people who know most about what works to reduce re-offending. That’s the people under supervision who have to navigate a system that sometimes seems designed to make it difficult to succeed. Whatever else the next re-organisation of probation does, it must build in a requirement to use the expertise that comes from lived experience. The report gives many examples of the benefits that will bring in terms of safer communities and lives put back on track. The Inspectorate deserves congratulations for highlighting the issue and for its promise to use lived experience much more fully in its own way of working.”
Photo credit: Andy Aitchison
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16/09/2019 14:50:00
Following the Prime Minister’s announcements about prisons in mid-August, we wrote three letters seeking clarification, to Permanent Secretary Richard Heaton, to the Secretary of State, Robert Buckland and to the CEO of HMPPS, Jo Farrar. To their collective credit, they have replied only three weeks later, and with some detail.
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Photo credit: Andy Aitchison
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