Howard League Blog

My second blogpost in a series of commentaries on the political party manifestos looks at the Lib Dems.  Read more

The Green Party manifesto was published this week. At 88 pages it is pretty comprehensive, although most of the crime proposals are entreaties to do things better rather than specific legislative reforms. As we know from long experience, just asking people to do things does not necessary achieve the desired result. Although, it is also true that simply introducing new laws can have no effect or indeed have unintended consequences.  Read more

Magistrates were wrong to imprison a child of 14 and wrong to allow him to be named. The boy's case was heard in a youth court last week and it has been reported widely, but for reasons that I will go on to explain, I am not sharing a link to the coverage.  Read more

This is a guest blog, I am hosting it on my blog site so that people who attended the lecture from the Director of Public Prosecutions and anyone else who may be interested can read the questions posted at the lecture on 14 October and the responses from Max Hill. I am very grateful to the DPP for taking the time to respond so fully to questions.  Read more

This is too shocking not to share. A friend, a police officer, told me he was in a car with three colleagues for the whole day, cruising round aimlessly ‘looking for burglars’. As if this wasn’t a total waste of taxpayers’ money and a total waste of police time, it gets worse.  Read more

I just got a text from our Comms Manager, Rob Preece, because I was out of the office when the safety in prisons statistics were published. He said: “Self-injury among children in custody has almost doubled. It is my job to come up with the words, but there aren’t many that do this justice”.  Read more

The government has been trumpeting its focus on ‘law and order’, but it is not in fact concerned either with promoting the rule of law or in creating a more orderly society.  Read more

While the government is banging the ‘law-and-order’ drum, it is worth remembering that when people go into prison they also come out. The longer they are inside, the more institutionalised they become and the bigger the challenges they face on release.  Read more