Comments & Speeches

The Woolf Report (1991) was commissioned in the aftermath of the disturbances at HMP Strangeways between 1 – 25 April 1990. The Strangeways disturbances were the longest in UK penal history and sparked riots in twenty-five further institutions, including Glen Parva, Dartmoor, Cardiff, Bristol and Pucklechurch. On publication the Woolf Report was acclaimed as the blueprint for prison policy for the next three decades.

The torch of truth that 2020 has allowed to shine brighter than ever before is now turning to the dark and hidden corners of the prison system. Despite the decades-long campaigns of many organisations and countless exposé documentaries, America’s criminal justice system has now finally been pushed to the forefront of the global conversation on racism.

It shows that between March and June 2020, the first three months of the pandemic, there were 81 deaths in prisons. That's an increase of 29 per cent on the previous three months. We should be careful, however, about reading trends from data for just one quarter, as figures can be volatile over such short periods and experience seasonal fluctuations.

Thousands go to prison each year for a mere few weeks.

Until last year's General Election, reform of so-called short prison sentences was very much on the cards. The then Justice Secretary, David Gauke, argued that they were wasteful, ineffective, and the cause of chaos in the prison estate.

“We are witnessing”, she wrote, “the decriminalisation of rape. In some cases, we are enabling persistent predatory sex offenders to go on to reoffend in the knowledge that they are highly unlikely to be held to account”.