Police leaders have welcomed news of Home Office funding which will be used develop an accelerated national detective training programme.
Police Now will deliver the training within 12 weeks, which means that forces will be able to boost the number of detectives nationally by up to 1,000 in the next five years.
Police Now, the award-winning police graduate recruitment programme, will develop the scheme alongside the Home Office, which is providing £2.8million to support Police Now in 2018/19 and will provide an additional £350,000 seed funding for the detective entry programme.
The programme will include digital training to ensure that recruits are equipped to deal with the changing nature of modern crime. It will also focus on problem solving, crime prevention and safeguarding so that detectives on the scheme meet the needs of forces and communities.
Technologist Emil Eifrem tells The Custodial Review that a combination of graph databases and the Person, Object, Location, Event data model could really help lawmakers – and social care teams too…
Graph database technology is a powerful way of both recognising and leveraging connections in large quantities of otherwise random data. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists used it to detect fraud and corruption in its recent famous Panama and Paradise Papers global probes, for instance, while Google uses a graph-based way of representing knowledge to enhance its search engine and map the Web.
Whether it’s more effectively guarding borders, spotting possible terrorist activity, detecting welfare fraud or helping uncover scams and hacker attacks, graph databases are a powerful enabler for getting ‘big picture’ connected analysis. But unlocking useful insights based on connections, graph technology may also offer a way to support the Police, social services and other government agencies.
A visit to The Emergency Services Show gives anyone working in a custody setting access to the very best solutions providers and support networks to protect them at work and carry out their role to the best of their ability.
Last year’s event attracted a record number of 7,599 visitors, with a significant 30 per cent increase in visitors from the prison service
In accordance with the Protocol between HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Ministry of Justice dated 30 November 2017, I am writing to you to invoke the Urgent Notification (UN) process in respect of HM Prison Exeter.
An unannounced inspection of HM Prison Exeter took place between 14 and 24 May 2018. This inspection identified a number of significant concerns with regard to the treatment and conditions of prisoners.
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons has put the Justice Secretary publicly on notice that he must explain how conditions at HMP Exeter will be improved as a matter of urgency. Inspectors found disturbingly high levels of violence and self-harm and a serious failure to tackle safety issues.
Peter Clarke told David Gauke safety at HMP Exeter was “unequivocally poor”, prompting him to invoke the Urgent Notification (UN) protocol, under which the Justice Secretary agrees to take personal responsibility for driving improvements at a prison identified by the Chief Inspector as suffering from significant problems, particularly relating to safety.
Each year there are nearly 6000 reported incidents of assaults on prison officers within English and Welsh prisons, 700 of which resulted in serious injury last year. With figures of incidents rising by a third in 2016, the protection of staff and prisoners is high on the government’s agenda.
Statistics from the Ministry of Justice indicate that prisoner-on-prisoner assaults have, too, risen by a third in the last year, prompting comments from past Justice Secretary Liz Truss around prison safety and reform, and from the Prison Reform Trust who printed that “people in prison, prisoners and staff, are less safe than they have been at any other point since records began.”
As part of its forthcoming employment strategy for prisoners, the government should introduce a radical approach to using release on temporary licence (ROTL) at scale across the prison estate.
This would be a huge incentive to good behaviour in prison as well as an effective aid to resettlement, the briefing suggests.
by Bryan Gibson
There are of many films about prisons and prisoners, from Shawshank Redemption to Scum. Criminologist Professor David Wilson once wrote a book about this phenomenon for us, Images of Incarceration, which was launched at the British Film Theatre. But it is encouraging when the wider world takes an interest in work initially published for a completely specialist niche, when an unsung author suddenly finds himself or herself in the limelight.
This has happened several at Waterside Press. Most recently with Justin Rollins’ book The Lost Boyz: The Dark Side of Graffiti. First published in 2011, it has been optioned by No Dog Films who are now working with the author to put his life story on the big screen. This same book has also, quite remarkably, become required reading for students at both Birmingham City and Aberdeen universities. Justin grew up in south London as one of life’s "throwaways", his time spent on the streets, rarely going home. He ended up in Feltham Young Offender Institution. His book turned his life around and his graffiti that once adorned the London Underground is now sought after as free-standing artwork. His advice on gang culture has been published by various media organizations.
Calum Macleod, Chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, speaks at the PolFed annual conference:
When I first became a police officer more than 22 years ago in Strathclyde, I never imagined I’d be sat here, as chair of the organisation that represents the backbone of British policing the Home Secretary.
Yet here I am, on the eve of my first conference as chair, reflecting on a situation where we have welcomed another newcomer to the political stage, the new Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
Prison governors should be encouraged to empty prison wings during the day, using release on temporary licence (ROTL) and get far more prisoners out on temporary release to engage in work, training and education in the community, a new briefing by the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) says.
As part of its forthcoming employment strategy for prisoners, the government should introduce a radical approach to using release on temporary licence (ROTL) at scale across the prison estate. This would be a huge incentive to good behaviour in prison as well as an effective aid to resettlement, the briefing suggests.