Prisons & Probation – Latest News:
- Wed, 27 Aug 2025 17:06:53 +0000: Prisoners must get the chance to rehabilitate themselves in jail | Letter - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Former prison governor John Podmore says real opportunities for change need to be created for those incarcerated or Labour’s prison reform will just be a sticking plaster
As a former prison governor, I welcome the revival of “time off for good behaviour”, familiar to us in the 1980s (Labour to abolish most short prison sentences in England and Wales, 24 August). But for it to succeed, prisoners must have the chance to show positivity and a will to change.
At present, too many are locked in conditions that amount to solitary confinement, with illicit drugs as their main form of relief. Such a regime means that only those who are already motivated – or organised criminals running their empires from inside – can benefit. For the rest, the system offers little more than stagnation.
Continue reading... - Tue, 26 Aug 2025 05:20:20 +0000: TV tonight: the White House Farm murder case re-examined 40 years on - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
A two-part look at the grisly crime that led to Jeremy Bamber’s conviction for murder. Plus: hit social experiment The Jury returns. Here’s what to watch this evening
10pm, Channel 4
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In 1985, the Bamber family – Nevill and June, their daughter Sheila Caffell and her six-year-old twin sons – were found dead at their Essex home. At first, police believed Caffell was responsible for the murders before turning the gun on herself, but suspicion turned to her brother Jeremy Bamber. He was convicted in 1986 on five counts of murder and has been in prison ever since, but has always insisted he is innocent. The grisly, perplexing case of “the farmhouse of death” is scrutinised here by some of those who responded to and reported on the crime. Hollie Richardson - Sun, 24 Aug 2025 09:57:17 +0000: Labour to abolish most short prison sentences in England and Wales - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Exclusive: Legislation that will include Texas-style scheme to shorten jail time expected to be rolled out this year
Ministers will legislate next month to abolish most short prison sentences, toughen up community punishments and introduce a Texas-inspired system whereby inmates can earn early release as part of an attempt to avert another prison crisis.
Government sources said the legislation, which will bring about the biggest shake-up in sentencing laws in England and Wales for three decades, would be introduced once MPs had returned to the Commons in September.
Continue reading... - Fri, 22 Aug 2025 17:34:04 +0000: Nature, respect and work all help to reduce prisoners’ reoffending | Letters - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Gillian Hamilton salutes the care that participants in the LandWorks project receive, plus letters from Juliana Dart and Heather Penny-Larter
Your article about the prisoner rehabilitation project LandWorks, excellent though it was, arguably placed too much emphasis on nature as the chief factor accounting for the project’s undoubted success (‘A natural antidepressant’: how working with the land is helping ex-prisoners, 16 August).
I have been a keen supporter of the project since it was set up 12 years ago. The remarkably low reoffending rate (5%) seems to me to be due largely to participants being treated with respect, together with the wraparound care they receive while working at LandWorks. This ranges, as the article explains, from help with accommodation to finding work.
Continue reading... - Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:31:41 +0000: Why Shabana Mahmood’s outlook on prisons is wrong | Letter - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
The justice secretary has not understood many of the issues surrounding the prisons crisis, say Deborah Coles, Joe Sim and Steve Tombs
Shabana Mahmood’s tenure as justice secretary is more problematic than your profile suggests (Shabana Mahmood: justice secretary and rising star of the Labour party, 16 August). First, she has endorsed yet another prison-building programme, a policy that has failed so dismally for the past 200 years. If the answer to the current crisis is more prisons, then she, like her predecessors, is asking the wrong question.
Second, she has said prisons should be regarded as being of “national importance”. Why should they be seen as more important than developing welfare-oriented, radical alternatives to custody, or abolishing the structural inequalities that are central to who is criminalised and imprisoned?
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