24/06/2010 12:11:00
People aged 60 and over are now the fastest growing age group in the prison estate. Good practice exists and can be spread but work with older people in prison is not being properly supported by government and too often depends on the goodwill and enthusiasm of individual staff, according a Prison Reform Trust report.
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10/06/2010 15:05:00
The government has said it will look "afresh" at how to comply with a European judgment on giving prisoners the vote.
On 10 June, justice minister Lord McNally told peers at question time: "The government is considering afresh the best way forward on the issue of prisoner voting rights."
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08/06/2010 14:58:00
"The Prison Reform Trust welcomes this timely report and its recognition of the important work conducted in prisons by Muslim chaplains. Too often Muslim prisoners are seen as potential extremists in the making instead of a diverse population in need of a safe environment, individual supervision and support and proper preparation for release."
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28/05/2010 15:09:00
As many as 73,000 people were unlawfully denied the right to the vote in the UK general and local elections on 6 May, after the government failed to overturn the blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting.
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21/05/2010 12:17:00
When the new justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, was last in charge of prisons and penal policy, as home secretary, the average prison population in England and Wales (1992 – 1993) was 44,628. That figure now stands at over 85,000 – a number Clarke described after his appointment as "extraordinarily high". The political arms race over the criminal justice policy indulged in by successive Conservative and Labour administrations over the past two decades has seen the UK prison population grow from average to the highest in western Europe
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