The Howard League
@TheHowardLeague
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Building a more humane and effective response to crime. Join: Give:
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Joined July 2009
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Last Seen Profiles
Pinned Tweet
🧵 Published today, our briefing ‘Grasping the nettle’ offers the Labour government a range of policy options that could deliver a lasting solution to the prison capacity crisis.
🗎 Download it here:
#LiftTheLidOnPrisons
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Three sensible steps
@RoryStewartUK
would take to change the state of prisons today:
1. Set minimum standards so that overcrowding is illegal,
2. Abolish short sentences,
3. Release any prisoners still serving an IPP sentence.
Listen to the Rest Is Politics to hear Rory
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"My life’s work, my mission, has been at the Howard League."
A blogpost by our Chief Executive,
@francescrook
, who is stepping down later this year:
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We won! Court of Appeal rules that cuts to legal aid for prisoners are unlawful
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We are pleased to welcome
@fergus_mcneill
, who has joined us as our new chair.
Fergus McNeill is Professor of Criminology & Social Work at the University of Glasgow.
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Watch this...
Weather forecaster interrupts live TV knife crime debate – video
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The Howard League needs your help. You may have seen the disturbing
@HMIPrisonsnews
Wetherby report today.
We have started a petition calling on the government to move girls out of this prison immediately.
➡️ Sign it here:
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🧵 Published today,
@HMIPrisonsnews
inspection report on Wetherby prison, which holds boys and girls as young as 15.
Our response:
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Big day tomorrow!
Legal aid will be reinstated for three key areas of prison law, after we and
@PrisonersAdvice
successfully challenged the cuts in court.
Thank you to everyone who supported our legal challenge.
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Published by
@MoJGovUK
, an evidence-based summary of what works - and what doesn't - when trying to get someone to desist from crime.
Worth a read if you work in the charity sector, the criminal justice system or the media (or indeed, if you happen to be running the country).
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Our statement, as we begin the process of taking legal action against Sajid Javid on the death penalty 👉🏾
The Howard League was founded when public executions ended and has more than 150 years’ experience of campaigning against capital punishment.
(1/3)
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"If prisoners are to be employed to work for private companies, then they should have workers’ rights, be paid the same rate for the job as anyone else, and pay tax and national insurance."
@francescrook
in the
@guardian
:
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Morning everyone. Twitter has been particularly awful lately. Who would like to hear a little bit of good news for a change, about a campaign that has helped to give hundreds of children a brighter future? Pull up a chair...
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“Prisons are being used for people who are too poor and too fragile to sort their lives out,"
@neilsonandrew
told
@guardian
. But instead of providing support, we’re spending billions each year policing them, criminalising them and incarcerating them.”
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🧵Is this the week that the penny dropped?
As police continue to search for a man who has escaped from Wandsworth, it seems that journalists, commentators and politicans are beginning to focus on the crisis inside prisons at last.
Pic:
@andyaitchison
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SUCCESS!
@MoJGovUK
withdraws application to appeal CoA ruling that cuts to legal aid for prisoners are unlawful:
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Breaking news: Our legal challenge to stop adult restraint techniques being used routinely on children at Feltham prison has been successful.
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Prisons Minister
@RoryStewartUK
tells
@CommonsJustice
: "The wrong kind of short sentence actually endangers the public because the wrong kind of short sentence increases the chance of reoffending."
Watch the video...
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We're delighted to report that our programme to end the criminalisation of children in residential care has won the Youth Justice award at the
@cypnow
Awards.
@neilsonandrew
has written an update on what we've been up to and what we'll be doing next...
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"We shouldn't be building more prisons because they create crime; they don't solve it."
A busy day of media interviews for our Chief Executive,
@francescrook
, as we respond to the government's flawed plans to build more prisons.
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We have joined more than 70 campaigners, trade unionists, activists, lawyers and civil society representatives, to call for urgent action on IPP reform.
@UNGRIPP
@ActionIpp
@JENGbA
@PRTuk
@CrimeandJustice
#JusticeForIPPs
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The Court of Appeal is to determine whether or not keeping a child in conditions of solitary confinement amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment.
Our case will be heard tomorrow.
Details here:
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Good morning, everyone.
Today we welcome our new Chief Executive, Andrea Coomber, to the Howard League for Penal Reform.
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***NEW***
Judicial review: Howard League and Prison Reform Trust issue government with letter before action over its response to coronavirus in prisons
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Prison sentences of less than a year should be handed down “only as a ‘last resort’ because they fail to stop re-offending, the justice secretary has told
@thetimes
.”
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"[N]o child living in a children’s home should be criminalised for behaviour that would not concern the police if it happened in a family home" - Children and Families Minister Robert Goodwill
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"If a time traveller from 100 years ago walked into a prison today – whether one of the inner-city Victorian prisons or the new-builds where the majority of men are held – the similarities would trump the differences."
@francescrook
in the
@guardian
:
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The Howard League urges ministers to move girls out of Wetherby prison.
Published today,
@HMIPrisonsnews
' report on Wetherby reveals that children had been forcibly stripped and subjected to pain-inducing restraint by staff without adequate oversight.
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Good news: Our programme to end the criminalisation of children in residential care has received funding to extend its work for another two years. Thank you to everyone who has supported our work so far.
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"Last week, I met a man in a Midlands prison who had been given an IPP with a two-year tariff and was still inside, 17 years later. He was devoid of hope and anxious that he will never be released."
A blogpost by Andrea Coomber on IPP sentences:
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“Personally, I’d rather you shoot me than make me endure this any longer,” an IPP prisoner said. “It would be more humane.”
The IPP sentence has been deemed "irredeemably flawed" and described as a "stain" on the criminal justice system, yet almost 3,000 people are still trapped
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“Each self-inflicted death of a person serving an IPP sentence is a shameful indictment of our justice system, and these figures underline the need for ministers to act decisively to end the suffering of those in prison and their families.”
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Michael Gove has just announced the abolition of the criminal courts charge
#criminalcharge
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Trustees of the Howard League for Penal Reform are delighted to announce the appointment of the charity’s new Chief Executive, Andrea Coomber.
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Good work by our legal team. Our lawyers helped a vulnerable boy with mental health conditions, ensuring that he was transferred from a YOI to a more suitable unit. He called us last week to let us know he was much happier there.
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The treatment of a 15-year-old boy with serious mental health problems, who was kept in solitary confinement in a London prison for 55 days, will be considered today by the highest court in the UK.
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Encouraging to see prisons on the agenda in Sir Keir Starmer’s first press conference as Prime Minister.
We have created a dedicated page on our website to help explain the prison overcrowding crisis and how it can be solved:
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Her Majesty The Queen has approved the appointment of our Chief Executive, Andrea Coomber, as Honorary Queen's Counsel.
Honorary QCs are awarded to those who have made a major contribution to the law of England and Wales, outside practice in the courts.
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Please support our campaign to stop building women’s prisons. Let’s cut crime by investing in women’s centres, housing, work and mental health support instead.
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The prison system is holding the country back. Successive governments have repeated the mistake of trying to tackle crime by growing the prison population, only to find that this makes matters worse.
@HMIPrisonsnews
' inspection report of Pentonville (published today) is yet
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New from
@MoJGovUK
: As of 5pm yesterday...
232 prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19 across 60 prisons;
96 prison staff have tested positive for COVID-19 across 38 prisons;
7 Prisoner Escort and Custody Services (PECS) staff have tested positive for COVID-19.
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"We need to stop this. Money should go to women’s centres and housing and work and mental health support in the community."
Read
@francescrook
's blogpost and join our campaign to
#StopBuildingWomensPrisons
:
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"The prison system we have today blights lives, costs the taxpayers a fortune, fails staff, and creates even more victims. It is only by investing in the community that we’ll succeed in reducing crime." -
@francescrook
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The 'Policing and Children' category is won by
@ThamesVP
for its Drug Diversion scheme. Congratulations!
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Breaking news...
We have been granted permission to challenge the use of adult restraint techniques on children at Feltham prison.
A date for the hearing, which is to be heard at the High Court in London, will be set in due course.
Details here:
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CAMPAIGN:
We understand that the government is deliberating whether to authorise the use of PAVA spray on children in prison.
We are preparing to take whatever steps necessary to challenge it, including potential legal action – and we need your support.
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When a child is in trouble, we should do all that we can to guide them away from crime and help them thrive. Prison does the opposite.
The best way forward is to keep children out of custody and ensure they are given care and support.
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The Howard League has consistently opposed the decision to place girls in Wetherby, and this shocking report spells out why. This is a prison that was already failing boys, and it is even less equipped to meet the specific needs of girls. Some of the findings raise significant
HMYOI Wetherby: Vulnerable children in custody forcibly stripped and inappropriate pain-inducing techniques of restraint used with inadequate oversight.
Read our inspection report:
And our media release:
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Problems in prisons mean that prisoners are still struggling to receive books and visit libraries – five years after we ran a successful
#BooksForPrisoners
campaign to overturn unlawful restrictions imposed by Chris Grayling.
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The Howard League has consistently opposed the decision to place girls in Wetherby, and
@HMIPrisonsnews
' shocking report spells out why.
We have started a petition, calling on the government to move girls out of Wetherby.
Please join our campaign:
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Tonight
@MoJGovUK
has announced plans to spend millions more on security measures in prisons.
If ministers were serious about tackling crime in prison, they would be taking steps to reduce the number of people behind bars.
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Our programme to reduce arrests of children has taken another step forward.
Today we publish figures showing that arrests of children in England and Wales have been reduced by 74 per cent over the last decade:
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The Victims & Prisoners Bill will give the Justice Secretary a veto in Parole Board decisions.
@EllieReeves
says “allowing a politician power over a release decision will leave them vulnerable to public or party opinion, which can run counter to the actual risk of reoffending.”
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🧵 The government has agreed to pay compensation after accepting that a 15-year-old boy with serious mental health problems, who was kept in solitary confinement in a London prison for weeks on end, was subjected to “inhuman or degrading treatment”.
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Should we relaunch our
#booksforprisoners
campaign?
@francescrook
responds to prison's new rules for sending books:
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"The court of appeal has quashed the prison sentence of a heavily pregnant woman so that she can give birth safely, in a case hailed as a landmark by campaigners."
Pregnant woman’s jail sentence quashed in ‘landmark’ UK ruling
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Read our response to today's
@HMIPrisonsnews
report on the filthy living conditions inside prisons today:
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For the last few months, we have running a programme to end the criminalisation of children in care. We're concerned that children living in children’s homes are being criminalised at excessively high rates compared to other boys and girls, including those in other types of care.
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"Prison wouldn't be good for anyone's mental health, but if you're already in a mental health crisis then it's just about the worst place you could possibly be" -
@neilsonandrew
on
@channel4news
.
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WATCH: Men in Wormwood Scrubs prison are getting as little as an hour out of their cells as chronic overcrowding problems continue.
An important issue raised in Parliament by
@hammersmithandy
.
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Thank you for all the supportive tweets and emails. We are doing all we can to help prevent a public health catastrophe in prisons.
On this page, you will find everything that we have published so far as part of our response to the
#coronavirus
pandemic:
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In the past few weeks our legal team has been working hard to help children & young adults in jail.
We've helped to achieve the release of three children & two young adults, all of whom were in prison during Covid-19 when they clearly did not need to be there for public safety.
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Today, the Victims & Prisoners Bill has been approved.
In the House of Commons,
@neill_bob
highlights again the struggle of people serving IPP sentences, as the recommendation to introduce a resentencing exercise was not taken up in the legislation.
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His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons
@charlie_taylor6
has issued an Urgent Notification for Cookham Wood in Kent, after discovering that "solitary confinement of children had become normalised" in the prison.
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People serving IPP sentences write to us all the time, describing the despair that comes with a sentence with no end.
More must be done to help the almost 3,000 people who remain in prison more than a decade after the IPP sentence was abolished.
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"I am a mother. I have spent a lot of time in prisons and I know prison is no place for mothers. On Mothers’ Day, I am asking you to think about mothers in prison."
A blogpost by
@francescrook
:
Please sign up to our campaign:
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"Why is nearly half of the adult prison population made up of people who were formerly in care?"
Anne-Marie Day considers some big questions in a blogpost for our programme to end the criminalisation of children in residential care:
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"[G]overnments of both colours have sought to punish and imprison their way out of a mental health crisis, a drug addiction crisis, and now the beginnings of a cost-of-living crisis."
The transcript from Andrea Coomber's Howard League Lecture is online:
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.
@Eleanor_SmithMP
: Given no prison is safe for a child, does minister believe it's time to find alternative to sending children to prison?
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Published today,
@HMIPrisonsnews
damning report on Cookham Wood sets out in detail why prison is no place for a child.
Conditions are filthy, equipment is broken, education is virtually non-existent, staff are demoralised and violence is rife
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Everyone wants to see less crime, but even the Ministry of Justice's own research has shown that this will not be achieved by making sentences longer.
Any serious plan to make communities safer would start with investment in housing, employment and health services.
A justice minister has admitted there is little evidence that longer sentences help to cut crime, despite his own department introducing laws yesterday to increase jail terms
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Sir Quentin Blake has produced a series of posters for display in prison visits halls, celebrating the importance of family ties.
Take a closer look over on
@InsideTimeUK
:
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🧵Broken promises. Embarrassing delays. Spiralling costs. A colossal planning failure that will hold the country back.
Most
#CPC2023
headlines have been about HS2, but these criticisms better describe the mess that the government has got itself into with prison overcrowding.
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"But no matter how well prisons work, they cannot compensate for what happens upstream and downstream. Just investing in prisons in order to improve public safety is like investing only in accident and emergency services to improve public health."
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“Even a few weeks in custody can be enough to cause a woman to lose her job, her home and her children.” -
@francescrook
BBC News asks: ‘Why doesn’t prison work for women?’
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"Once filled, prisons are with us for generations. These new cells could house many thousands of women for the next hundred years – women who don’t need to be in prison in the first place."
#StopBuildingWomensPrisons
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A statement from
@neilsonandrew
, Director of Campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform:
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"It is time to consign privatised probation to history and do what works" -
@francescrook
Our response to today's
@MoJGovUK
announcement about the future of
#probation
:
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“Now that the lockdown is being eased in other spheres of life, prisoners and their families are entitled to know that there is a plan for them to return to something closer to normality.”
@guardian
editorial:
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No public service in England and Wales has deteriorated more dramatically and more profoundly in recent years than the prison system.”
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This was a nice letter to receive - from a boy who was helped by our legal team.
Find out more about the work we do:
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🧵 Since the escape from Wandsworth, we have seen a surge in interest in what goes on inside prisons.
We have taken many media calls and questions from the public, but we have also seen more politicians in Westminster raising concerns about the crisis behind bars.
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The prison population in England and Wales stands at 87,347. There are 63 more people in prison today than there were last week.
By the prison service's own measure of safe and decent accommodation, there is room for only 79,698 people in the prison estate. The population is
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Never again: Our government and the
#DeathPenalty
Now is the time to uphold our principles, not walk away from them.
Our fundraising page is now live. Please RT:
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"More than half (58%) of prison sentences given to women in 2022 were for less than six months.
"Short sentences can derail people’s lives, with jobs and houses lost and mums separated from their kids..
"They are also seen as largely ineffective with reoffending rates high."
Exclusive: Women's prisons could be shut and converted to house male inmates to ease overcrowding
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The Howard League was founded when public executions ended and has more than 150 years’ experience of campaigning against capital punishment.
(1/3)
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"In one prison, a small number of symptomatic prisoners had been isolated in their cells without any opportunity to come out for a shower or exercise for up to 14 days.”
Published today: our short scrutiny vists report on local prisons.
Read the report:
Read the media release:
Read more about our short scrutiny visit methodology:
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This is the highest annual death toll recorded in prisons in England and Wales since current recording practices began in 1978.
Official figures published this morning reveal that 371 people died in prison custody in England and Wales in 2021 - a 17 per cent rise on the previous year.
They include 86 people who lost their lives through suicide.
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Today is the 100th day of lockdown in prisons in England and Wales.
We are calling on the government to provide a decent and purposeful regime and redouble efforts to create additional ways for prisoners to have contact with families:
#100DaysOfSolitude
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🧵 Prisons are often said to be out of sight and out of mind, but the problems in the system in England and Wales are now becoming impossible to ignore.
The misery caused by overcrowding and staff shortages has catapulted this beleaguered public service to the front pages.
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NEW: The Howard League and
@PRTuk
have called on the government to take further action to reduce the prison population in order to protect prisoners, staff and the wider public from coronavirus.
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Growing consensus that young adults should be treated differently to older adults, because they are still maturing.
Which is why, in January, we set out five principles that should be taken into account when sentencing young adults:
People don't become fully "adult" until they're in their 30s, according to brain scientists.
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“We have excessively long prison sentences already and it doesn’t seem to be keeping us safe.
“What’s coming out of Number 10 is politics. It’s not going to deal with real-life crimes and victims. It’s a lot of hot air."
@francescrook
spoke to
@PA
:
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We have heard a lot about prison overcrowding, but there is overcrowding in probation too. And that matters, because the probation service is going to be asked to do more in the future.
Read 'What to do about probation?' by
@neilsonandrew
here:
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The annual report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Probation is a sober, sensible and quietly devastating verdict on the Transforming Rehabilitation programme. It is also a large and rusty nail in its coffin.
Our statement:
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The prison population in England and Wales stands at 87,973. There are 37 more people in prison today than there were last week, and 4,129 more than this time last year.
The prison estate should not hold more than 79,507 people, there are currently 8,466 men and women held above
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Congratulations to Sofia Buncy
@MWIPproject
, who has also won a 'Criminal Justice Champion' award!
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Amazing
#shelfie
. Books returned undelivered to online bookstore as prisons won't accept them.
#booksforprisoners
http://t.co/YhW2fA5cWN
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