Howard League Blog

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

Before Christmas, I wrote about a lad whose mother died whilst he was in custody. He had not been allowed to see his dying mother in hospital.  Read more

Yesterday was a bad day. The Ministry of Justice admitted that 119 people had died by suicide in prisons over the last year. The figures of self-injury and assaults also published yesterday revealed the chaos in the system.  Read more

The ‘super prison’ for over 2,000 men in Wrexham is due to start taking prisoners next month. It will include a bizarre model of keeping men occupied in the prison that will serve the private sector running the ‘workshops’ very well but is not a proper model of employment. It is disappointing that the opportunity to provide real employment for prisoners is being missed in this expensive flagship new prison.  Read more