Howard League Blog

I am not pleased about the general election as it will be a bad thing for the justice system. Goodness knows, things could hardly get worse, but the election means that nothing will happen for weeks and then a new justice secretary will want to have a think.  Read more

Yesterday I attended a roundtable meeting to discuss prison safety convened by the prisons minister, Sam Gyimah. It brought together the key experts in prison safety, from NHS to voluntary groups, from the Ministry of Justice officials to academics.  Read more

The Secretary of State for Justice, Liz Truss, is coming under increasing pressure from the media and commentators. Some of it is personal. The question that needs answering is whether she is achieving all she can to reform the failing prison system and if not, why not.  Read more

Today the local council in Wellingborough will consider an application from the Ministry of Justice to construct a mega-jail on the site of a much smaller prison that was closed five years ago.  Read more

A year ago, the Home Office and the Department of Education produced a draft concordat to prevent the detention of children in police stations following charge. It was never published, but it has been implemented.  Read more

The sentencing council published its revised guidance on sentencing children today.  For the first time, the guidance refers to children as children.  Read more

I gave evidence to Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights on 22 February as part of its inquiry into mental health and deaths in prisons. We had already submitted written evidence setting out our concern, but I raised an additional issue in my oral evidence.  Read more

Almost ten years after the event, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) has completed his investigation into the use of force by staff on a 15 year old child with learning difficulties at Hassockfield secure training centre (STC) in 2007.  Read more