The Ministry of Justice to invest £10m into 10 of the most challenging prisons, Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
“The Governors of the 10 prisons will be pleased to have a little more money, wherever it comes from. But we have been here before. In 2016 Michael Gove set up six reform prisons that would pave the way for others to follow."
Nearly 2,000 police officers voluntarily quit the service over the past 12 months – an increase of 31% over the past four years*.
Numbers leaving each year are rising and now a new leavers’ survey by the Police Federation of England and Wales (PFEW) provides greater insight into the reasons why. It showed:
- More than half (52.5%) cited morale as their reason for leaving
- 43.8% said it was the impact of the job on their family/ personal life and 43.3% on their psychological health
- And a staggering 69.4% felt the police service had failed in its obligation to provide pay increases to maintain their standard of living
In addition, 64.5% said they would never consider re-joining the police service after they had left.
John Seddon, an iconoclastic management thinker, offers his insight into policing methods and how the system should be changed to reduce failure demand…
Failure demand is demand caused by a failure to do something or to do something right for the customer* – or in the case of policing, for the citizen. It is not uncommon to find that over 75% of demand into police forces is failure demand. Currently a few forces have clubbed together to fund an academic study into the volumes of failure demand into policing. I’d advise them not to bother. They won’t learn anything useful.
Failure demand is a signal, a signal of ineffectiveness. To remove it – as many large organisations have done – requires understanding the causes of ineffectiveness and, from there, designing a service that works for citizens. To put it another way, failure demand is systemic, you won’t get rid of it until you change the system.
In the year 2017–18 prison inspectors documented some of the most disturbing jail conditions they had ever seen, according to Peter Clarke, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons.
Launching his third annual report, Mr Clarke said these conditions had no place in the prison system in an advanced nation in the 21st century. “Violence, drugs, suicide and self‑harm, squalor and poor access to education are again prominent themes.”
Inspectors at the rat-infested HMP Liverpool could not remember worse conditions and the tragic toll of self-inflicted deaths at HMP Nottingham led Mr Clarke to describe the jail as “fundamentally unsafe.” The iconic Wormwood Scrubs in London suffered from appalling living conditions, violence, poor safety and seemingly intractable problems over repeated inspections.
Gethin Jones is an inspirational speaker, advising prison governors and staff on how to really make an impact on prisoners’ lives. And he should know, as he turned his life around after spending time inside for a string of crimes or, as he puts it, having “a 20-year relationship with the criminal justice system”.
Since making the decision to turn his life around at the age of 34, Gethin has worked for Portsmouth City Council’s public health department and credits a number of prison staff members who believed in him – as they fuelled his need to push himself out of a cell.
Editor Victoria Galligan spoke to Gethin about the work he does now with prison staff and also with young offenders. He describes the impetus to change, his own final straw moment, as a time where he had “hit rock bottom, and was bouncing on the bottom of the floor”. And his experience is exactly what puts Gethin in a position perfect for reflection on the running of a prison – clients value his advice so much because of his past.
The new National Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales has been announced today.
John Apter, former Chair of Hampshire Police Federation, has been confirmed as the first National Chair to be voted in by police officers up and down the country.
Professional breathalysers used by HM Police, Prisons and National Probation services are required to meet today’s MEDACX standards and provide specifically required operational functionality to enable the various organisations to fulfil their duties.
MEDACX has been a supplier to the HM Government operations since 2005. The technology supplied is the AlcoQuant 6020 it has advanced functionality but most importantly it has accuracies that not just meet.
The new Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales says he is “honoured and humbled” to have been elected to the position.
Mr Apter was selected ahead of Phill Matthews, PFEW’s Conduct and Performance lead, who had also challenged for the position.
Despite financial cut-backs, the creative side of prison life always seems to win through. Events such as the annual Koestler Awards are evidence of this.
So is the sterling work of, for example, Birmingham’s Geese Theatre, whose The Geese Theatre Handbook: Drama with Offenders and People at Risk has been a staple manual for trainers of all kinds since we had the privilege of working on it with them at the start of the millennium.