Issue 326  30th December 2023

Education, training and rehabilitation need to become the primary focus of jails, the chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales has said. Charlie Taylor told the BBC that a "fundamental reorientation" of the prison system was the only way to reduce reoffending. His intervention comes amid growing concern around overcrowding in jails. The government says its new Prisoner Education Service will improve outcomes for those being released from custody. But Mr Taylor suggested that jails were failing to reduce the risk of prisoners reoffending, and that many inmates were failing to learn to read. Others, he said, were taking part in courses which would not help them get jobs in future. He also argued that the high availability of drugs in some prisons was hindering rehabilitation efforts, as he called for immediate action to give prisoners the skills they need for life in the workplace...

Mr Taylor also called for a "proper" debate over what prisons are trying to achieve, why people are imprisoned, what happens to inmates when they are locked up and what the public want prisoners to be like when they come out...

Thousands of prisoners are being released with tents and sleeping bags into a revolving door of homelessness, reoffending and jail, despite a major scheme to house departing inmates, experts have told The Independent. A crisis in the overstretched prison and probation service means many inmates are not being given any housing help until the day of their release, charities said – an issue some fear is being exacerbated by the government’s emergency move to bring forward release dates to free up space in full-to-bursting jails. Around 600 people leave prison into homelessness every month, the latest official figures up to March show. While two-thirds are likely to reoffend within a year, research suggests, the lack of a stable address can also make prison recalls for breaches of licence conditions more likely, charities warned...

Chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor told The Independent that it’s “not rare” for prisoners to be released with tents and sleeping bags “because they know they’re going to be homeless”, with women at HMP Styal leaving their belongings in the property store “because it’s the safest place to keep it and they knew they were coming back anyway”. Some find prison to be safer than being homeless, he said, recalling meeting a prisoner who had pleaded with magistrates to jail him “because there was a cold snap coming and he was a heroin addict who knew there was a risk he was going to die over Christmas [without] anywhere safe to live. So the reality is that prison becomes, for some of these guys, another social service. Being in Bedford jail is not a great place to be – so the alternative must be pretty hellish,” the chief inspector said.

Police chiefs have been under pressure to improve their response to domestic break-ins. No suspect is identified in three-quarters of all residential break-ins in England and Wales, according to the latest Home Office figures, with someone charged in less than 4% of cases. Shortly after her appointment, in 2022, former home secretary Suella Braverman wrote to all forces telling them the public wanted to know an officer would visit them after a burglary. And now, new national policing guidance says officers should prioritise attending the scene of a domestic break-in within an hour of the report, increasing the chances of solving the case. "Golden hour" enquiries "may make the difference between early identification and arresting a suspect and/or recovering stolen property or not", it says...

"The average number of burglaries that are detected is around about 5%," NPCC burglary lead Deputy Chief Constable Alex Franklin-Smith says. "We don't believe that's good enough. We don't think the public would think that's good enough. So that is very much where our focus is at the moment." A two-year trial of this new approach to burglary has seen Greater Manchester Police raise the proportion resulting in charges from 3% to almost 8%.

British members of parliament are calling for the creation of a new criminal offence of unlawfully entering the field of play during a football match, plus better collaboration between United Kingdom and overseas police to improve safety at sports event at home and abroad. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee report “Safety at major sporting events” released on Friday was made after its inquiry into fan safety during the Euro 2020 final at Wembley and chaotic scenes involving Liverpool supporters at the 2022 Champions League final...

The committee said the lack of a distinct criminal penalty that includes the use of Football Banning Orders is allowing unauthorised entry to continue unchallenged, and it is calling on the government to pass into law the Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill...

A magistrate has been removed from office after she was found to have deliberately withheld ‘important information’ during her application for the role. Sabrina Malik, of the Southern Derbyshire Local Justice area, told a fellow magistrate she had not disclosed information about a close relative during her most recent application to become a magistrate.The Judicial Conduct Investigations Office said Malik had not disclosed the information ‘because she thought that the information had resulted in her previous application being unsuccessful’...