Professor Ian Acheson is a former prison governor. He was also Director of Community Safety at the Home Office. His book ‘Screwed: Britain’s prison crisis and how to escape it’ is out now.
The Home Secretary is feeling the collars of our 43 chief constables. Shabana Mahmood has let it be known that she favours a dramatic reduction in police forces in England and Wales to as few as 12. Her comments come ahead of the publication of a white paper on policing in the new year. The
Should cops spy on kids? The revelation that police are including surveillance of young people in their expanding use of live facial recognition (LFR) systems to detect criminals and deter crime has upset the civil liberties lobby and a few MPs. Should we take these concerns seriously? LFR was introduced in south Wales in 2016
So farewell then, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). The government has just announced that this weak and useless experiment in local democracy will be terminated. Few people will notice outside the cottage industry of ineffectual crime busters who will be receiving redundancy notices. That’s part of the problem. Elected PCCs were introduced in 2010 as
Our state counterterrorism strategy ‘Prevent’ is overwhelmed. This is the strand of our national plan, ‘Contest’, to defeat extremism. Prevent is charged with spotting and stopping tomorrow’s terrorists, but the official data on its operation over the last reporting year, released yesterday, paints a picture of mission creep and distraction and an organisation and that
You’d need a heart of stone not to feel sympathy for Alex Davies-Jones. Labour’s minister for victims was on human sandbag duty for the Justice Secretary David Lammy this morning – tasked with explaining to the media why there had been another two accidental releases of convicted prisoners. The fact these blunders came only days
After the very latest mass casualty attack on Saturday night, on a busy London North Eastern Railway train in Huntingdon, police and government quickly told us not to speculate about the motives of the alleged attacker. Eleven people were hospitalised in the attack, with one in a critical condition at the time of writing. It’s
The Southport inquiry into the murderous frenzy of Axel Rudakubana has broken for half term. Officials who have been already damned by their own evidence of incompetence and disarray must be thanking their lucky stars that the accidental release of Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford has stolen the media’s attention. But this is a slow-motion
We desperately need the national inquiry into child grooming gangs to get underway – both for the sake of the many victims and to hold both institutions and individuals to account. After months of backsliding then hopeless dithering by this government we are close to getting an inquiry chair appointed. Two candidates are in the frame,
As a title, Harry Potter and the Potholes of Devon wouldn’t survive the editor’s pen – but sometimes life is more spellbinding than fiction. Just ask the villagers of Lustleigh, a few miles from where I live on Dartmoor, who have J. K. Rowling’s franchise to thank for making one of the lanes of their
Why should we care about a degenerate paedophile allegedly put to death by those locked up with him in prison? Ian Watkins, the former lead singer of the Welsh rock band the Lostprophets, was reportedly stabbed to death in HMP Wakefield yesterday. Watkins was convicted in 2013 of multiple counts of sexual violence against children,
David Norris was convicted of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in April 1993 and now wants to be released from prison. Should he be? That is a question the Parole Board will consider as Norris has now served the minimum custodial term of a life sentence imposed in 2011. This body has the power
A little over two months ago, I stood in the fallow murderscape of the Nir Oz kibbutz facing towards the barbed border fence with Gaza. Once, this village in southern Israel was a thriving community of 400 Jewish people, known for their left-wing ideologies and progressive ideals. But, two years ago on this very day,
Ministers aren’t always the quickest to take accountability in a time of crisis. So, it is easy to see why, after yesterday’s atrocity at a Manchester synagogue, the line being pedalled by the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood this morning was that responsibility for the attack lies with ‘the assailants alone’. Snappy rhetoric, but it won’t
Finally, some good news for the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) – tagging works! Last week, the prisons minister was unleashed to proclaim that the latest data on electronic monitoring (EM) of offenders not in custody shows the concept works. Well, up to a point, Lord Timpson. A study of 3,600 offenders on tagging orders has
If Big Brother is watching you, who is watching Big Brother? A coalition of the willing has come together to challenge the Metropolitan police over plans to use facial recognition technology to prevent disorder at this weekend’s Notting Hill Carnival. Civil liberties and anti-racist groups have written an open letter to the Met Commissioner Sir
Fifteen years ago, at the tail end of Blairism, I was running things for the Home Office in Southwest England. We had well-funded schemes across the region to tackle ‘prolific and other priority offenders’ (PPOs) who were torturing communities with crime. It seems almost quaint in the present context to recall the enthusiasm and effectiveness
Britain’s top cop club has released new guidance to forces in England and Wales on when and how to describe the suspects of serious crimes. It’s a day late and a dollar short. The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), stirred from their deckchairs by nationwide riots of only twelve months ago, are now advising constabularies that
Jonathan Porritt’s arrest under the Terrorism Act 2000 is the apogee of a ‘luxury belief.’ Unlike the dozens of other younger people arrested in Westminster on Saturday for supporting the proscribed organisation Palestine Action (PA), Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet CBE is a longstanding member of the administrative and political boss class. He declared
We’re looking at a busy weekend for the country’s criminal justice system, already permanently running red hot. The activist group Defend our Juries is organising a mass protest in London on 9 August to oppose the government’s ban on Palestine Action (PA), which was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in early July. The stated purpose
Policing and crime commissioners haven’t exactly fired up the public imagination since they were introduced in 2012. PCCs were intended to make police forces more accountable, but you’re more likely to come across one in the headlines for personal misconduct than their crime-fighting zeal. However, there are some signs of change in the air thanks
