“They speak to us like human beings,” says Lucy, when I ask about staff at the Bella Community Unit in Dundee. This isn’t like any prison she’s been in before.
We talk to Mark Day, the Deputy Director at the Prison Reform Trust, and its representative on the Ministry of Justice’s IPP External Stakeholder Challenge Group.
The UN rapporteur for torture has told this programme that Indeterminate prison terms, or IPP Sentences, which were handed down by UK judges up until 11 years ago are an “egregious miscarriage of justice”.
The President of the Prison Governors Association has said a “perverse” government overhaul is to blame for the crisis in jails across England and Wales. In an open letter she said the Prison Service is trying to cope with a “toxic mix” of pressures. The government has said it has taken action to deal with…
In America, the state of Arkansas has carried out the country’s first double execution since the year 2000. Lethal injections were administered to two death row inmates, each separately convicted of rape and murder offences.
The court system punishes ethnic minority defendants more than white suspects. It’s a bold claim, and one made in a review commissioned by the Prime Minister and led by the Labour MP David Lammy.
Channel 4 News can reveal that four prison officers were hospitalised last week after being attacked by an inmate at Woodhill in Milton Keynes.
The father of a man who killed himself while on suicide watch in prison has said his death could and should have been avoided. Mark Saunders was stabbed while preventing his son, Dean, from self-harming. But Dean was remanded in custody in Chelmsford prison, where he later killed himself. An inquest found the prison and…
An inquest has heard how a 25 year old man electrocuted himself in his prison cell.
A former prisons boss has called on the Justice Secretary to apologise for the prison system being brought to the brink of collapse.
A specialist riot squad has been deployed to a privately-run Birmingham jail after a major disturbance spread to four wings. Disorder broke out at HMP Birmingham this morning when inmates managed to get hold of an officer’s keys.
A convicted drug dealer recently released from prison has revealed to Channel 4 News the scale of the destruction brought about inside by psychoactive substances known as NPS. He claims that up to 80 per cent of inmates in some jails are now hooked on ‘Spice’ and says some prisoners are prepared to do anything…
Suicides double in five years, five ambulance calls out a day to a prison in Bristol because of drug use, and a sixth death in one London prison alone in the past year. And if it couldn’t get any worse it does. Today, yet another damning report by the prison inspectorate into a failing prison which will test Liz Truss’s resolve on how quickly she can respond.
The safety of prisons in England and Wales is getting worse, with deaths, self-harm, violence and disorder continuing to rise.
The scale of prison violence has emerged from new figures which show riot squads were called into jails on a daily basis last year.