Archive for the ‘probation’ Category
A sorry saga
I have written something for Left Foot Forward on yesterday’s shenanigans on the government’s sentencing reform.
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Discounting reform?
Ken Clarke’s 50% sentencing discount has gone up in smoke. This was always a pretty blunt tool for reform and for getting prison numbers down. It might be more sensible to target reductions in parts of the prison population: women for example, as I said to The Times last week (behind the paywall), or short [...]
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More on payment by results
I’ve blogged for Public Finance on the dangers of introducing payment by results in criminal justice.
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Sadiq Khan
So Sadiq Khan has given support to the broad direction of travel on penal reform, which can be interpreted as everything from tactical repositioning to a full-blown repudiation of Blairism. Khan’s speech even had enough in it for the Daily Mail to get the obligatory boot in on the hated Ken Clarke. Sunder Katwala of [...]
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So here it is, the long awaited green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation from the Ministry of Justice. There will be plenty of time to pick over its contents and there is much to both welcome and be wary of. The undoubted thrust of the green paper, however, is to see a reduction in the [...]
Filed under: crime, government, politics, prison, probation | 3 Comments
Pathways to results
On the day that IDS announces his policies for welfare reform, involving elements of workfare (previously piloted by the last government), here’s a link to some previous musings on this and the strange situation we are moving towards where unemployment is rife but those who are ‘work-shy’ and those on community sentences may be busy [...]
Filed under: government, probation | 1 Comment
Complexity, cherry-picking, cuts
I went to a couple of events this week which circled around the future for criminal justice in England and Wales, and the role of the voluntary sector. The first, a seminar organised by the Third Sector Research Centre and Auril, looked at variety of issues affecting the voluntary sector, including the personalisation agenda, the [...]
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The devil in the detail
Mary Riddell writes in today’s Telegraph on Labour’s response to the comprehensive spending review. You can make your own guess as to the shrewd observer quoted.
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Cuts, with or without results
So the the comprehensive spending review has been announced and the Ministry of Justice, as predicted, is one of the big losers with six per cent budget cuts year on year for the four year period. £1.3 billion may be designated for maintaining the prison estate, but for the first time in many many years [...]
Filed under: crime, government, prison, probation, voluntary sector | 1 Comment
Hello goodbye
I’ve not been blogging much, which isn’t due to summer holidays but general busyness. As of Friday, I will be out of the country for two weeks, so I feel I should post something in the meantime. Here’s two stories, one from last week which quotes me and another from today, which features the legendary [...]
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