Martin Wright obituary

The Guardian

25-04-2025

My father, Martin Wright, who has died aged 94, spent much of his working life advocating for changes to the UK's prison system.
As director of the Howard League for Penal Reform from 1971 to 1984 he put pressure on successive governments to improve prison conditions and find alternatives to incarceration. He was also a pioneer in the field of restorative justice, and wrote influential books on the subject, including Justice for Victims and Offenders (1996), as well as many articles for magazines and journals that brought the concept to countries where it was previously unheard of.
Later he worked for the Victim Support charity as a policy officer until his retirement in 1994.
Martin was born in Stoke Newington, north London, to Clifford, a town clerk, and Rosalie (nee Mackenzie), a librarian, and was educated at Repton school in Derbyshire, after which he went to Jesus College, Oxford University.
In 1953 he met Lisa Nicholls, a vicar's daughter, at a party thrown by a mutual friend in Oxford. His hand was bandaged, and when Lisa asked why, he explained that he had been trying to milk a deer in the University Parks in an attempt to make cheese, and it had bitten him. They were married in 1957 and had six children, of whom two – George and Sophie – died young. Lisa later became head of drama at Tulse Hill school in London.
Martin began his working life as a librarian at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, before setting up a translation service for the Iron and Steel Institute, editing and distributing articles from technical journals. While in London he became a prison visitor at Wormwood Scrubs, and in 1962, after moving to Aylesbury to become information officer at a research centre established by the iron and steel making company Richard Thomas and Baldwins Ltd, he became a visitor at Aylesbury prison.
In 1964 Martin accepted a post as librarian at the Institute of Criminology, working there until 1971. While in Cambridge he started a Simon Community branch in the city, and homeless people would often turn up at our house asking for him: we children would happily invite them into our living room for a cuppa, until he or our mum arrived home from work.
After his 13 years as head of the Howard League in London, Martin became policy officer at Victim Support in 1984 while working as an occasional freelance researcher for the BBC TV programme Rough Justice, highlighting miscarriages of justice. He also studied for a PhD at the London School of Economics, carrying out research into victim offender mediation.
Outside his work, Martin was a founding member of the Lambeth Mediation Service in south London, which was set up in the early 1980s to foster dialogue between local communities in Lambeth and local authorities. He was also a prolific letter writer for campaigning causes, including tree preservation, the Bhopal disaster, Romanian zoo conditions, vegetarianism, anti-smoking, solar energy and traffic pollution. He was still cycling around London aged 90 on his electric bike.
He is survived by Lisa, his children, Edward, me, William and Ellie, and his sister Vivian.