Prisons used to be about punishment and rehabilitation, but now they're about jobs and economic recovery! MoJ press release today:-
New prison to create jobs and boost economy
Hundreds of jobs will be created as construction work on a new £286 million prison in Leicestershire gets underway, Prisons Minister Lucy Frazer announced today (2 September 2020).
Work will now begin on a category C resettlement prison at the shovel-ready site, previously the location of HMP Glen Parva, after the government signed a contract with developers Lendlease. The jail will be built using cutting-edge technology which sees parts of the prison built off site – resulting in speedier, more environmentally friendly construction, which minimises waste and is in line with the government’s commitment to build back greener.
Most of the ground materials will also be recycled, with 75,000m3 of existing material due to be re-used. This will save over 10,000 vehicle journeys going on and off site. Early ecology works have also been carried out to manage vegetation and wildlife, so they are not disturbed by future construction.
The prison, which is expected to be completed by spring 2023, will benefit the local economy by creating around 150 jobs and apprenticeships during construction and around 600 permanent roles once the prison opens. There will also be opportunities for ex-offenders – helping to reduce reoffending before the prison is even built.
Prisons Minister Lucy Frazer QC MP said:
"The new jail at Glen Parva is another milestone in our plan to transform the prison estate, providing the environment needed to steer offenders away from crime. As well as rehabilitating prisoners and keeping the public safer, the prison will be a major boost to the local economy. Hundreds of jobs will be created during and after construction, sending a clear signal that this government is committed to supporting communities and infrastructure across the country."
Simon Gorski, Lendlease’s Managing Director for Construction in Europe, said:
"We have a proven track record of delivering projects that can deliver economic, social and environmental benefits for the communities where we work. Our partners trust that we will deliver long lasting value and we will be entirely focussed on delivering the very highest standard of building. The new prison at Glen Parva is the second prison being built by this Government alongside the new jail at Wellingborough in Northamptonshire."
Both prisons will create 3,360 modern, safe and secure prison places in addition to the government’s £2.5 billion programme to create 10,000 prison places. Plans are already underway to deliver 6,500 of these prison places with four more new prisons, to be built across England over the next 6 years. As category C resettlement prisons, the new jails will provide prisoners with the opportunity to develop their own skills so they can find work and resettle back into the community on release, reducing reoffending.
HMP Wellingborough opened 1963.
ReplyDeleteHMP Glen Pava opened 1974.
Relatively recent institutions in penal terms.
Guess they're not profitable enough sites for developers to build other things on?
'Getafix
It's not just the local economy that might be boosted with the new Glen Pava.
DeleteIt's certainly boosting Lendleases finances even before all the 'hidden costs' that will enivetably be charged are calculated.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-england-leicestershire-53999384
'Getafix
u-turn govt covid-19 pass-the-parcel data 2/9/20
ReplyDeletecases - 1,508 tot this week = 5,924
deaths - 10
no significant change in numbers of lab-confirmed tests
(206k on 31/7 remains Hancock's finest fudge)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/race-to-track-200-people-on-flight-after-officials-fail-to-tell-airline-of-covid-cases
DeleteFranK (sorry, sometimes forget to sign off)
The Boris/Dido/Hancock world-beating test/track/trace fiasco continues:
Delete... teenagers, from Hampshire, were diagnosed after returning to the UK on a Wizz Air flight to London Luton airport on 25 August. The positive tests should have triggered an urgent response to track down the other 204 passengers on board, but Wizz Air said it had not been made aware of the cases until contacted by the Guardian.
Ben Pearce, 18, said he was one of 15 friends who tested positive for coronavirus after returning to the UK from Crete last week. At least eight of the group were on the same Wizz Air flight 8168 from Heraklion, which landed at London-Luton on 4.35pm on 25 August.
Pearce said NHS test and trace call handlers had contacted him multiple times since Friday but none had asked for his flight details. “Even though I’ve filled out my details on three separate phone calls, they always seem to say I’ve got nothing on my file,” he said. “The phone calls never seem to serve any purpose other than they [the call handler] have been told they need to call you.”
FranK
From BBC website:-
ReplyDeleteA catalogue of failings have been found in the way people convicted of terror-related offences are monitored by the authorities in England and Wales.
An independent review found "gaps" in the powers used to check up on such offenders. And it highlighted an "unreliable" flow of information about their behaviour, such as remarks "glorifying" terrorism.
The review was launched after convicted terrorist Usman Khan killed two people in an attack in London in November. Khan had been on licence from prison when he fatally stabbed Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt at Fishmongers' Hall near London Bridge on 29 November last year.
Justice Minister Chris Philp said the government was legislating to require terrorism offenders to take lie detector tests - a measure the report endorses - and said other proposals were being considered.
Jonathan Hall QC, who conducted the review, said the authorities tended to "over-focus" on the impact of restrictions on offenders when they were let out - rather than considering the "overall risk" they posed.
He said meetings involving different public protection agencies, such as the police, the prison service and probation officers, were "dominated by information exchange rather than active management", with a single case taking two hours to discuss.
Mr Hall criticised a risk assessment tool used by the Prison and Probation Service in England and Wales, which he said "seriously minimised" the severity of terrorism offences and "accepted the offender's characterisation (and in some cases denials)" of their crimes.
"It was suggested to me that one possible reason was that [the risk assessment tool] is often completed by a prison psychologist, in a therapeutic context in which the offender's 'buy-in' to the process is deemed to be particularly important," he said.
Among other problems the report found a "significant gap" in the authorities' ability to monitor the risk of terrorism posed by "dangerous" offenders convicted of non-terror related offences. It also said opportunities to reduce the risk offenders posed was "lost" because of an "unreliable" flow of information about their behaviour in prison, such as comments "glorifying" terrorism, overheard by jail staff.
Mr Hall added that there was a "surprisingly limited" circle of knowledge about terrorism offenders in the community, with police borough commanders in London "not always aware" of the identity of such individuals in their area. He called for a "cultural shift" so that information was shared more widely.
The report, which makes 45 recommendations, was completed in May - three months after a second attack involving a released terrorism prisoner.
Sudesh Amman, had recently been freed from prison when he stabbed two people on Streatham High Road, in south London in February.
risk culture/risk averse culture - its all about power. Knowledge is power, so rather than share information the control/command bullies keep it to themselves, its a hierarchical tactic. Nothing is shared with the simple creatures that are probation officers.
DeleteDesperately sad (I heard a report in the R4 midnight news) - I felt we were getting better at managing those who seek to undermine our society by violence when I took part in MAPPA meetings and just before - approx 2002 - was involved as a seconded probation officer at a London Prison in liasion meetings with police about dangerous folk being released.
DeleteOn top of these failings of post release monitoring we have the absolute scandal of the IPPs (abbreviation missing from side blog glossary) - "Imprisonment for Public Protection" - long detaining some at great cost and administrative excercise and almost no enhanced public protection.
The nub of the issue is that Governments need to heed practitioners at the front-line before they give even an ear to the small statists involved in the likes of "Policy Exchange" and other secretly funded - so called Think Tanks.
WE MUST PROTECT THE BBC if we are to prevent the further decimation of the society that has nurtured me since 1948
We need real democratice socialism and our slogan needs to remain For The Many NOT The Few!
I'd prefer to amend the slogan to:
DeleteFor Everyone, not just a few
FranK.
Sounds familiar... From the Guardian running news feed at 09:06 re-Jonathan Hall on R4 Today programme:
Delete"In his report he says he argues that you have to be “very humble” about assessing terrorist risk and always “challenge what you see”.
Hall says that release meetings are often focused on the perspective of the released prisoner and what the impact on them of restrictions was, rather than thinking critically about risk. “Probation officers are used to effectively caring for individuals as they move from prison into the community, which is excellent, because everyone including terror offenders needs to be rehabilitated,” he says.
- But what I particularly found is that quite a lot of the probation officers didn’t have the ‘full fat’ intelligence or understanding of the risk posed by the people they were managing.
His main concern, he says, is that “very powerful” probation officers managing terrorist risk weren’t always in possession of the right information, and that even very sensitive information from police and MI5 needs to be shared more widely."
Re Anon at 09;34.
DeleteI have only heard a news report at midnight on Radio 4.
I just hope amongst the suggestions is one that includes something about continuity of contact with supervisor.
I always found it much easier to write a parole Home Circumstances Report if I had also written the original SER/SIR/PSR and undertaken the THROUGHCARE as the piece of work was termed in the 1970s & 80s that involved building relationships with any family. Things really came good when I was able to also supervise the Parole Licence - I once even did it on three co-defendant post office knife robbers in Essex from start to finish.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/913983/supervision-terrorism-and-terrorism-risk-offenders-review.pdf
ReplyDeleteHall's report is here
Hancock doing his best Clint Eastwood on R4 this morning:
ReplyDelete“You have to ask this question… why is it that cases here are not rising as sharply as elsewhere?”
The answer?
No-one knows the answer. There are a multitude of conflicting views as to what's happening with the virus.
No-one knows.
It is certainly NOT the shambolic testing/failing to trace and it is NOT the UK population being better behaved than anywhere else.
"The UK government is to trial routine weekly Covid testing of the population as part of preparations to head off a possible winter second wave"
DeleteI thought that's what we were striving for from the get-go? I thought that was the whole point of testing?
Oh my, how the u-turn govt revisionists have been kept busy.
FranK.
Daily covid-related Hospitalisation data is hard to locate as everyone seems to record the numbers differently (again).
DeleteFrance for Aug seems to have daily figures of between 300 & 400 admissions
Portugal has admissions of 40-ish daily in August
The UK seems to be hovering around the 100-ish a day mark for now, but the data is incomplete for most days, marked either as not available or just missing.
Selected Daily admission figures:
1 Apr = 3,563
1 May = 1,263
1 Jun = 604
1Jul = 269
1 Aug = 126
8 Aug = 138
15 Aug = 96
22 Aug = 65
29 Aug = 105
2 Sept = 109
This still means covid-19 is resulting in 700 or so people admitted to hospital every day in the UK
FranK.
u-tun govt covid-19 hide-&-seek data 3/9/20
Deletecases: 1,735 tot this week so far: 7,659
deaths: 13
hospitalised: 124
14-day cases per 100,000:
uk = 26.4
spain = 231.6
greece = 28.7
portugal = 38.3
france = 101.4
germany = 21.1
italy = 26.9
malta = 89.1
FranK.
Lord Agnew plays Find-The-Lady:
ReplyDelete"A Cabinet Office minister has relinquished control of shares worth £90,000 in an artificial intelligence firm after criticism that his ownership of the shares potentially clashed with his official duties.
Lord Agnew had faced criticism over his shares in Faculty, a firm that has gained extensive work in government since it was hired by Dominic Cummings to work for the Vote Leave campaign.
Agnew has stopped short of selling his shares in Faculty, as he has transferred control of them to a blind trust. This means that the trustees control the shares while he theoretically has no knowledge of how they manage them. He still gets any financial reward from the shares"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/03/minister-lord-agnew-relinquishes-control-of-shares-in-firm-awarded-uk-government-contracts
Another of Cummings weirdos and misfits bites the dust.
Deletehttps://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-whitehall-official-sacked-black-lives-matter-will-o-shea-a9701661.html%3famp
Glen Parva prison re-build jumps from 170m to 186m full story here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.building.co.uk/news/cost-of-lendlease-prison-balloons-by-116m/5107770.article
It's realestate that's publically owned, being sold off to privateers and Tory donors for far less then market value, and nobody bat's an eyelid because its a prison or a court house, but it's selling off what the public owns, paid for, and dosen't belong to any Government, of any colour to take it out of public ownwrship, without the share/stake holders permission.
DeleteReading gaol, where Oscar Wilde once saw 'the little patch of blue that prisoners call the sky' couldn't be bought by the local as a heritage project, it had to go to the private sector. BUT! We never get anything back.
Blood boils!!
'Getafix
said it before , will say it again:
Deletein the last 40 years this country has been plundered - assets stripped, silver gone, granny's sold. Now they're selling off any hope we might have been clinging on to.
But "they" are laughing til they shit because they have all of our assets locked away in their offshore vaults.
Tories handed out fulough monies because what choice did they have. The sold all the utilities gas electric water rail steel coal part NHS care homes social services probation prison part police postal services and huge land deals. The can because Britain put them there. Labours Blair too stupid to renationslise while Corbyn takes a kicking for being the only leader likely to take back real control of Britain's assets for us the people. Now Brexit will kill many and cost us all a new terrible price. The Tories have the cash but no control had public still owned the UK services we would have seen mass war footing national mobilisation and waivered all domestic bills. Mortgages held and rents and food distribution . Closedown would have been cheap and bills to pay privatised industries to hold open jobs would not have been at our expense. Johnson is worse for this country than anything we can imagine as all Tories but worse is yet to come.
DeleteNothing to see here - move along now!
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/dominic-cummings-allys-pr-firm-hanbury-strategy-given-covid-19-contracts-without-tenders
"A lobbying and PR firm co-founded by an ally of Dominic Cummings has been given government contracts worth nearly £1m without competitive tenders during the pandemic."
sitting here, drifting miles away, & wanted to share that frankie Boyle made me laugh when i saw him discussing boris johnson with his guests (i paraphrase as i haven't got a good memory):
ReplyDelete"when you look at his soft blonde lockdown hair you could imagine blowing at them and telling the time in cuntland."
blog administrator may delete if she/he sees fit.
thought some post-watershed levity might help tame the nightmare that is the uk.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/victims-abuse-medomsley-detention-centre-18873822.amp
ReplyDeleteVery interesting article, I'm still of the opinion there is a failure of rehabilitation resulting in increased re-offending
ReplyDeleteuk govt covid-19 data 4/9/20
ReplyDelete* cases - "N/A" - but possibly 1,940 using other data
If correct, week-to-date will be 9,599
* deaths - possibly 10
Notice how the otherwise 'efficient' data publication becomes increasingly sketchy when the data is proving the govt's claims wrong.
The UK's measurement of 'cases per 100K population' is now 27.2 acording to ECDC.
Does this mean the UK will ban non-essential travel to the UK by UK citizens? Will we all have to quarantine for 14 days as soon as we leave the house?
FranK.
Nothing to see here either - come on, move along!!
Delete"Coronavirus tests run out in north-east England as cases surge
Officials criticise ‘diabolical’ system as scientists warn against government rationing"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/04/covid-tests-running-out-in-north-east-england-gateshead-as-cases-surge