Prisons & Probation – Latest News:
- Sat, 21 Dec 2024 13:04:32 +0000: Elderly activist to spend Christmas in prison because tag does not fit - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Woman jailed for M25 protest not allowed to continue home detention because electronic tags are too big
A 77-year-old environmental activist will spend Christmas in prison despite having been released on an electronic tag, because the authorities cannot find an electronic device small enough to fit her wrists.
Gaie Delap, a retired teacher and a Quaker from Bristol, was jailed in August, along with four co-defendants, for her part in a campaign of disruptive Just Stop Oil protests on the M25 in November 2022.
Continue reading... - Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:00:50 +0000: ‘You won’t find the real criminals here’: a Just Stop Oil activist in jail at Christmas - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Protester Anna Holland says their shock at being behind bars was quickly followed by a stronger feeling of power
Anna Holland, 22, was one of two young people from Just Stop Oil who threw tomato soup over a sunflowers painting by Vincent van Gogh – one of the highest-profile climate protests of recent years. The painting was not damaged, although there was damage to the frame. Holland was sentenced to 20 months in prison. They sent this letter to the Guardian about their experience behind bars.
It was a shock at first that the judge had gone to the extreme of our sentence. The first few days and nights in prison were hard but also such an education. So many of the women I have met here are in prison because they were not properly protected by the state, so they have taken me under their wing. I have been looked after, taught the ways of prison, not by the staff but by the other prisoners. It is like nothing I had expected and it is completely overwhelming – but also surprising how quickly I found myself falling into the daily routine.
Continue reading... - Fri, 20 Dec 2024 12:00:49 +0000: Record number of protesters will be in UK prisons this Christmas - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Forty people, aged 22 to 58, incarcerated for direct actions on climate and Gaza actions amid crackdown on dissent
• ‘You won’t find the real criminals here’: a Just Stop Oil activist in jail at Christmas
A record number of people who have taken part in protests will be in prison in the UK this Christmas, raising concern about the ongoing crackdown on dissent.
Forty people, aged from 22 to 58, will be behind bars on Christmas Day for planning or taking part in a variety of protests relating to the climate crisis or the war in Gaza. Several of them are facing years in prison after courts handed down the most severe sentences on record for direct action protests.
Continue reading... - Wed, 18 Dec 2024 10:15:37 +0000: Delays and neglect led to death of prisoner serving IPP sentence, jury finds - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Inquest concludes that Haydar Jefferies took his own life after prison’s ‘serious failure’ to put him in place of safety
A prisoner serving an indeterminate sentence killed himself after delays to a parole hearing contributed to psychosis, and prison staff neglected to seek medical help as his condition deteriorated, an inquest jury has found.
Haydar Jefferies, a 50-year-old publican serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, died in March 2023 knowing that the allegations that had recalled him to prison had been dropped.
Continue reading... - Wed, 18 Dec 2024 10:00:37 +0000: Life inside a therapeutic prison: ‘Look, we’ve done some terrible things ...’ - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
At HMP Grendon, psychology professionals aim to ‘re-child’ a group of Britain’s most serious offenders in relatively relaxed conditions. Does the treatment work?
As you go through the gates of Grendon prison in Buckinghamshire, past the raised garden – whose intricacy is still discernible in November – towards the main block, there’s a foundation stone laid by Rab Butler from when building commenced in 1960. “As home secretary, he wanted two things: to improve understanding of crime, and its treatment,” Simon Shepherd, head of the Butler Trust, a charity celebrating exemplary work by prison staff, tells me. “So he got the funding for the Cambridge Institute of Criminology. And he also got the funding for Grendon, the world’s first dedicated psychotherapeutic prison.”
The idea, radical in the 60s, and still radical when it’s applied to criminals, is that you re-child people, re-educate them. “Childhood is where you learn the skills to manage life. If you have a personality disorder, that is essentially because you didn’t get those skills in childhood. So you put somebody into a really intensive environment where they learn how to manage themselves and deal with people,” Shepherd says. The NHS reports that 60 to 70% of prisoners in the UK have a personality disorder; I’ve heard numerous forensic professionals put the figure as high as 80%.
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