David Shipley is a former prisoner who writes, speaks and researches on prison and justice issues.
From our UK edition
Labour’s new Representation of the People Bill, introduced to Parliament last week, has drawn attention because it will give around 1.6 million 16- and 17-year-olds the vote. But hidden within the bill is an innocuous term – ‘automatic registration’ – that will also usher in a far more significant and controversial change. Governments should be chosen
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On 22 July last year, in Nuneaton, a 12-year-old girl was playing on the swings. There she was spotted by Ahmad Mulakhil, an Afghan asylum seeker who had arrived in the UK four months previously. At the time, Mulakhil was staying in a taxpayer-funded House of Multiple Occupation (HMO). The Afghan followed the girl, and
From our UK edition
Nathan Bennett was employed at a nursery, caring for toddlers, when he committed 21 sexual offences against five of them. These include two rapes, two sexual assaults by penetration, 12 sexual assaults, four incidents of causing a child to engage in sexual activity and one count of ‘engaging in sexual activity in the presence of
From our UK edition
There’s so much bad news about our prisons that it’s easy to become fatigued by it. Another failing jail, another prison awash with drugs, another inmate released in error. As a result, often it’s only the most extreme or shocking examples which hit the headlines. But there is one particular kind of prison news story
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Ever since Labour was elected, every time there has been another disaster in our jails, or another set of terrible data, it has been briefed that ‘this government inherited prisons in crisis’. To be fair to the government, the Tories did leave our jails broken, overcrowded and crumbling, but this line has also been a
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In July 2024, a Sudanese man named Deng Chol Majek entered the UK illegally, crossing the Channel in a small boat. Majek travelled through Libya and Italy before arriving in Germany. There he claimed asylum, which was refused. So he made his way to Britain. Majek claimed to be 18, and applied for asylum here.
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This government knows that if it doesn’t turn the tide on migration it is destined for electoral oblivion. The Home Secretary has said that ‘illegal migration has been placing immense pressure on communities’, and that ‘asylum hotels…are blighting communities’. This is why the government is determined to close the asylum hotels. But its ‘solution’ is
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Even as he resigned, Craig Guildford couldn’t do the decent thing. Perhaps that’s no surprise. We have learned in recent weeks that the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police has been habitually obfuscating over the circumstances under which Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were banned from Birmingham, and even misled parliament when he failed to disclose
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Keir Starmer is, in many ways, a remarkable prime minister. He is remarkably uncharismatic and remarkably unable to discern the mood of the nation he governs. He is remarkable in his unpopularity, with the British public now even preferring Nicolas Maduro to Our Man From Islington. He is remarkable in his number of U-turns, digital
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Mark Rowley, the head of the Metropolitan Police, has been discussing London’s crime rates. Rowley it seems, is eager to talk about London’s homicide rate – which fell last year. During one interview he told listeners that he ‘is about facts and evidence cos I’m a copper’, before going on to provide some highly selective statistics
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There’s a strange pattern in how the UK discusses policy, and once you notice it you realise it’s everywhere. What happens is that there’s a problem, often something which makes us less safe. The problem will be fundamentally a result of policy, and often something we’re ‘forced’ to endure because of laws we have created.
From our UK edition
It’s a difficult Monday for the Prime Minister. Shortly after Keir Starmer expressed his ‘delight’ that Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah had arrived in the UK, it emerged that the PM’s ‘top priority’ apparently hates Jews, white people and the English most of all, if his past tweet are anything to go by. As a
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British civil servants have almost never faced real consequences for their failures. If Reform come to power, that might change. Nigel Farage’s party has announced yesterday that they will introduce a new criminal offence of ‘dishonestly determining an asylum claim’. They will use this law to prosecute civil servants who have knowingly put British women
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Shabana Mahmood’s plans to reduce migration hit a setback yesterday. It emerged that around 2,500 foreign national prison officers who no longer qualified to remain in the UK will have their visas extended. The officers, most of whom are from West Africa, were going to have to leave their jobs because the new skilled worker
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Perhaps because it’s the week before Christmas, the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC) latest annual report has attracted little attention. Many people can’t have read it, because it is full of incendiary details which demolish the case for mass migration. The MAC is ‘an advisory non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office’. It is not
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After a long wait, the government’s Islamophobia definition has finally taken form. There has been plenty of criticism of the idea, and many warnings of the dangers it would pose to freedom and our ability to fight crime. But fear not, the state has come up with a brilliant solution: rebranding. Instead of ‘Islamophobia’ we are
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On 10 May this year a 15-year-old girl was with friends near parkland on the outskirts of Leamington Spa. Shortly after 9 p.m. she was separated from those friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who arrived in the UK in January. The victim had the quick thinking to record the
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It has now been six weeks since the inquiry into ‘Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ fell into chaos. Over the course of several days, numerous survivors quit – claiming that the civil servants running the process were seeking to dilute the inquiry – and the man being considered as chair stood down. Since then there has
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It’s now over six weeks since Hadush Kebatu’s ‘release in error’ sparked a two day manhunt, and highlighted our prison system’s disastrous habit of regularly releasing inmates who should remain in jail. Since then we’ve heard about the accidental releases of Kaddour-Cherif, a prolific criminal from Algeria who overstayed a visa six years ago, and
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Another week. Another video from within a prison. More words of outrage. This time it’s a video showing a prison officer inside a crowded cell, playing Fifa with a prisoner. Is this a problem? Is prison more of a holiday camp than a punishment? Is this another example of prison officer misconduct, just like the
