Everyone knows that, after a home, finding a job is the most important factor for most people trying to put a life of crime behind them. We have plenty of research evidence to back up this commonsense assumption. The literature highlights four key reasons why employment helps people move away… Work with offenders investigates the latest data showing just how few offenders are in work....
1,000 new probation officers The Ministry of Justice announced today that frontline probation services will be boosted by a major new recruitment campaign looking to have a thousand extra probation officers in training by the end of the financial year. The announcement was made by Prisons and Probation Minister Lucy… Work with offenders looks at the detail of the new probation workforce strategy...
A big rise in the number of older people in prison Yesterday the House of Commons Justice Committee published a new report with recommendations from their inquiry into the challenges of managing an ageing inmate population. Older prisoners are the fastest growing group in the prison population. The number of… Work with offenders examines a new Justice Committee report....
The MoJ has published its evaluation of digital technology in prisons. Authored by a team of researchers at the University of Leicester (where there is an accumulation of international expertise in the subject), the evaluation looked at the impact of: in-cell telephony, whereby PIN telephones are installed within prisoner cells,… Work with offenders looks at the Ministry ofJustice’s new evaluation of digital technology in prisons....
Like most government agencies, the parole board is required to be transparent and accountable in its actions and publishes a formal annual report and set of accounts every year. This year’s annual report was published on Monday and, it is fair to say, makes for much more interesting reading than… Work with offenders does a deep dive into the parole board’s annual report....
The Justice Select Committee has just released a report on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Her Majesty’s Probation Service. The report, ‘Coronavirus (Covid-19): The impact on the probation system in England and Wales’ sets out how the pandemic has profoundly affected the way probation services are delivered. The… Work with Offenders looks at a new report from the Justice Committee...
Yesterday (Sunday 19 July), the Ministry of Justice announced the locations for 10 new “Nightingale Courts”. We all know about Nightingale Hospitals (the seven critical care temporary hospitals established by NHS England to ensure that the NHS wasn’t overrun by patients with coronavirus), but what exactly are Nightingale Courts? Although… Work with Offenders details the concept of nightingale courts announced by the MoJ...
Tomorrow sees the launch of a major new report from the Youth Violence Commission. The Commission was established by Vicky Foxcroft, the Labour MP for Lewisham Deptford in 2016 after seeing several young people from her constituency lose their lives to youth violence in her first few months as an… Work with Offenders examines a major new report from a three year inquiry...
More than one in nine people in our prisons at any one time are on remand. Despite these high numbers, a substantial proportion of people remanded in custody are not ultimately imprisoned − in 2018 10% people remanded into custody by Magistrates’ Courts were subsequently acquitted and a further 13%… Work with Offenders explores why we are so keen to lock up people who are innocent until proved guilty...
Everyone who works in the criminal justice system knows that there is a long-standing problem with offender homelessness and that things have been getting worse over recent years. Nevertheless, many people will have been surprised by the scale of the problem revealed by yesterday’s thematic report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate… Work with Offenders looks as a damning new report from the probation inspectorate...