Howard League Blog

The Howard League is working in partnership with Defence for Children International (DCI) Belgium, DCI Italy and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which is based in Poland. This international project is funded by the EU and aims to promote children’s rights by improving detention conditions for children and enhancing the legal protections for children deprived of their liberty.  Read more

I visited a prison holding 160 teenage boys aged 15 to 17 over the Christmas holidays. It was a depressing day. An inspection report, which I have not seen but fully expect will be critical, is due to be published soon, so I am not going to comment on the overall treatment of the children at this stage. I just want to say something about Christmas.  Read more

There was yet another prison disturbance at the weekend. Men in Swaleside prison, a Kent jail intended to be a training establishment, took over a wing for a short time on Sunday and the prison riot squad was called in to sort it out.  Read more

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, was invited to give a lecture at the Howard League’s most important event of the year, our AGM. She used the opportunity to call for more young children, in effect more black boys, to be sent to prison and for longer.  Read more

We held a lively meeting with trustees to review the charity’s strategy this week. We were looking at the work of the Howard League and how we should focus our (quite meagre) resources in future. One of our trustees raised an alarming prospect that could derail all our, and the government’s, best-laid plans.  Read more

I visited a local prison a couple of weeks ago, and as I always do, I chatted to people I met along the way. One conversation stuck with me and the man has since written to me to tell me his story.  Read more

Last week the Howard League hosted an event for lawyers from different disciplines to come together to think about how to work together creatively to reduce the criminalisation of children in care.  Children are being criminalised at excessively high rates in children's homes compared to other children in the community. There's a complex interplay of factors leading to this situation which is likely to include the child's background and vulnerabilities and, most critically, systemic failings.  Read more

Some three years ago the Howard League revealed that some youth offending teams were recommending punitive restrictions on children when they were released from prison, which set them up to fail and put them at risk of being sent back to prison.  Read more