Good Jobs Project from ReGenerate aims to help ex-prisoners, neurodivergent people, asylum seekers and other groups into work
Unemployed ex-offenders are being overlooked for jobs and could help fill the 1.1 million vacancies in the UK job market, a report has claimed.
Britain is “facing one of the worst labour shortages in its history”, the year-long study said, arguing that the vast numbers of people commonly overlooked for jobs should be targeted.
Continue reading...Hope Street scheme in Southampton aims to keep women in criminal justice system out of jail and with their children
It all started when Edwina Grosvenor spent an hour with two heroin addicts at a drug rehabilitation centre in Liverpool, almost 30 years ago.
Her parents – Natalia and Gerald Grosvenor, who was one the richest men in the UK and the sixth Duke of Westminster – decided to take her to the centre at the age of 12 or 13 to show her that there was a world beyond her privileged bubble. “At that moment I learned about empathy,” Lady Grosvenor said.
Continue reading...Three-times Wimbledon champion describes eight months in jail as ‘very, very different experience to what you see in the movies’
Boris Becker has spoken of his “brutal” prison experience in the UK, adding that during his incarceration he had to surround himself with “tough boys” for protection.
The three-times Wimbledon men’s singles champion served eight months of his two-and-a-half-year sentence for hiding £2.5m of assets and loans in a bankruptcy fraud case. He was released from prison in December and deported from the UK.
Continue reading...Prison specialising in people convicted of violent crimes was changed into a category C training prison in October
A prison which specialised in people convicted of violent crimes has been “thrown into chaos” by a policy change introduced by Dominic Raab’s Ministry of Justice to cope with a national rise in inmate numbers, an official watchdog has found.
HMP Aylesbury was “suddenly and without sufficient consultation, notice or support” changed into a category C training prison in October, the chief inspector of prisons said.
Only four out of every 10 prisoners went into settled accommodation on release from custody.
Just 8% of those available for work went into employment.
Recall rates were high, with 30% on average being returned to custody – four in 10 of these were within 28 days of being released.
There is an 30% shortfall of full-time employed probation officers in post against the required staffing level of 6,160.
Continue reading...New rules also cover transgender women ‘with their male genitalia intact’, says Dominic Raab
Rules barring some transgender women from female prisons in England and Wales are to come into force on Monday, the justice secretary has announced.
Dominic Raab had already announced in October that trans women with male genitalia or who had committed sexual offences would not be allowed in women’s prisons.
Continue reading...Politicians, campaigners and UN special rapporteur concerned by case of Isla Bryson, who offended before she had transitioned
Politicians, campaigners and a UN special rapporteur have all expressed grave concerns that a transgender woman found guilty of raping two women before transitioning is being remanded in a female prison.
Opponents of the Scottish government’s gender recognition reforms – which the UK government has blocked from going for royal assent because of “safety issues for women and children” – said that the case vindicated their concerns about lack of safeguards in the bill.
Continue reading...Growing number of offenders on remand in England and Wales not offered support before being freed, prisons inspector says
Potentially dangerous prisoners are spending years on remand before disappearing into the community after their release without being properly monitored, the prisons watchdog has warned.
Charlie Taylor, HM’s chief inspector of prisons, said a restructuring of probation services last year failed to address the growing number of offenders held on remand who are not offered support before being freed.
Continue reading...Watchdog report uncovers series of failings in supervision of Jordan McSweeney, who murdered the law graduate last year
Ministers and the probation service have been accused of having “blood on their hands” after a watchdog uncovered failings which left a violent, woman-hating racist free to murder the law graduate Zara Aleena.
Jordan McSweeney should have been seen by probation officers as a high-risk offender with a long history of misogynistic and racially aggravated incidents and recalled to prison after missing appointments, the chief inspector of probation, Justin Russell, said.
Continue reading...Offences committed in England and Wales have included murder, kidnap, and child rape, study of data shows
Nearly 900,000 offences including murder, kidnap, and child rape, have been committed by people on bail in England and Wales since the Conservatives came to power, a new analysis has found.
The latest government figures show more than 20,000 offences were committed by those released from custody as they awaited a hearing, equating to 55 offences a day.
Continue reading...Prisons minister writes to police chiefs to establish Operation Safeguard due to lack of space in men’s prisons
Dominic Raab has been accused of presiding over a “foolish and unrealistic” prisons policy after his department was forced to request the emergency use of 400 police cells for inmates for the first time in 14 years.
Ministers blamed the recent barristers’ strike for an “acute and sudden increase in the prison population” of 800 in the last two months – a claim that was challenged by charities, MPs and unions.
Continue reading...Former inmate, who claimed to be only man to escape from Strangeways, joined paper at 60 and worked to expose cruelty of prison system
Eric Allison, who became the Guardian’s prison correspondent aged 60 after spending much of his life in jail, has died. He had been recently diagnosed with secondary bone cancer and was 79.
Allison, who claimed to be the only man to ever escape from Strangeways prison in Manchester, joined the Guardian in 2003 after serving multiple jail terms for fraud, theft and burglary.
Continue reading...Former Wimbledon champion trains at Huntercombe prison where he is serving time for hiding assets, German tabloid reports
Boris Becker is reported to have lost weight and won friends in the UK prison where he is serving a sentence related to his 2017 bankruptcy, according to a German newspaper.
The former Wimbledon champion was transferred from Wandsworth prison to Huntercombe prison near Nuffield, Oxfordshire, in May. In April he was jailed for two and a half years for concealing £2.5m of assets to avoid paying money he owed after his bankruptcy.
Continue reading...Inmates in England and Wales still held under ‘imprisonment for public protection’ scheme scrapped 10 years ago
Almost 3,000 prisoners in England and Wales stuck behind bars under an abolished “irredeemably flawed” indefinite sentencing scheme should be re-sentenced, MPs and peers have said.
The indefinite nature of jail terms under the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) scheme has contributed to feelings of hopelessness and despair that has resulted in high levels of self-harm and some suicides among prisoners, according to the justice select committee.
Continue reading...Justice secretary criticised by senior officials after board is ‘last to hear’ about important policy changes
Dominic Raab was accused by a senior Parole Board official of making a “difficult job next to impossible” after making big policy changes without notice, newly uncovered documents show.
Members of the Parole Board also said the justice secretary would have to increase the number of prison places by 800 every year if he was to force through major changes.
Continue reading...Justice committee says little progress made on developing alternatives to custodial sentences as female prison population predicted to rise by a third
Ministers have made little progress developing alternatives to custodial sentences for women, MPs have concluded, amid official predictions that the female prison population may rise by a third in the next three years.
The Conservative-led justice select committee said “there is yet to be any clear evidence” that women are being diverted away from jail despite promises to develop other methods of punishment and rehabilitation.
Continue reading...Under new rules, panels will rarely receive psychologists’ and probation officers’ recommendations
Dominic Raab has been accused of a “catastrophic” decision that experts say profoundly undermines public safety by allowing prisoners to abscond and others to commit serious offences while on parole.
In a strongly worded letter to the justice secretary, three unions castigate a “momentous and dangerous” move by Raab to ban psychologists, prison staff and probation officers from informing the Parole Board whether they believe prisoners should be released.
Continue reading...Data says more than 11% of women who give birth behind bars do so before 37 weeks, compared with 6.5% in community
Female prisoners are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women in the general population, leaving them and their babies at risk, research has revealed.
More than one in 10 (11%) women who have a child while behind bars do so before 37 weeks of their pregnancy, compared with 6.5% of mothers in the community, the Nuffield Trust found.
Continue reading...Report says failings mean ministers still do not know if tagging criminals is helping to cut reoffending
A failed government plan to transform the system for electronically tagging offenders wasted £98m of taxpayers’ money, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has found.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said attempts to upgrade HM Prison & Probation Service’s (HMPPS) tagging system were abandoned in March after 11 years and a net spend of £153m.
Continue reading...Head of Howard League urges party to abandon ‘cheap politics’ and develop evidence-based position
The Labour party is indulging in “cheap politics” by accusing the Conservatives repeatedly of being soft on crime, the head of a leading prison reform charity has claimed.
Andrea Coomber QC, the chief executive of the Howard League, said the opposition is trying to outflank Boris Johnson’s government on law and order instead of developing evidence-based policies to solve a crisis within the criminal justice system.
Continue reading...Justice secretary says safeguarding concerns must be addressed, and criticises Human Rights Act
Granting Levi Bellfield’s request to get married in prison is “inconceivable” unless serious safeguarding concerns are addressed, Dominic Raab has said.
Bellfield, who murdered Marsha McDonnell, Amelie Delagrange and Milly Dowler, is engaged and has requested a prison wedding, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.
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