Howard League Blog

For the past three years, the Howard League for Penal Reform has been campaigning against archaic legislation which allows courts to send acutely unwell people to prison as a ‘place of safety’ or for their ‘own protection’. Last week, the government published a Draft Mental Health Bill which would finally remove this option.  Read more

Encouraging desistence from crime through diversion and other interventions – that keep people out of the criminal justice system – is more humane, fairer and more effective than the alternatives of custody, fines and imprisonment. This idea underpins the work of the Howard League. It is also the focus of grassroots projects up and down the country.  Read more

Last week, I had the huge privilege of delivering the 2022 Howard League Lecture in honour of Lord Parmoor.  Read more

Last week, the Criminal Justice Joint Inspectorate (CJJI) published a progress report on the impact of Covid-19 on the criminal justice system. It describes a system where fatigued staff are struggling to deliver adequate services, and no agency – least of all prisons – is back to ‘business as usual’. This bleak description will be familiar to anyone who has followed the Howard League’s blogposts about life in prison during the pandemic.  Read more

Earlier this year, we invited Howard League members in prison – and members with a loved one in prison – to share their experiences of imprisonment during the pandemic. In April, we built on this by asking young people on our advice line what the past two years had been like for them.  Read more

This is the third blogpost in a series on Howard League members’ experiences in prison during the pandemic. It focuses on what members told us about the importance of visits, the impact of no longer seeing family members and friends, and how much harder they have found visits with restrictions.  Read more

This blogpost is the second in a series on Howard League members’ experiences in prison during the pandemic.  Read more

In survey responses gathered in February and March 2022, Howard League members who are in prison or have family members in prison told us about their experiences during the pandemic. They also told us what, in their view, the public needs to know.  Read more