West Midlands Police want stricter laws on spiking
They continued: "Prosecutors can show that even so-called pranks are meant to upset victims, which is exactly what the law covers."Spiking is a crime which involves giving someone alcohol or drugs without their knowledge or permission through ways such as slipping substances into drinks or injecting them with a needle.The letter has been sent to Home Secretary Yvette Coper, Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones and Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.It states the change would remove any doubt around reckless behaviour and ensure perpetrators cannot try and justify their actions, by claiming it was a prank.
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She knows Nelly knows the truth, but is too young to vocalise her feelings about it. And this visit for Harley, Harris and Nelly mirrors Harley's own childhood experience. She, too, had to visit her dad in prison and reflected on how different it was for her kids. She says when she went in, there was nothing for her to do but sit around a table. She said she was bored. But for her kids, they end up meeting other children during the visits and playing with them, making the experience less scary. In a field where some of the data can be argued over, one element is solid: a parent going into prison for a child is an adverse childhood experience. Shona Minson, a leading researcher in children's experiences within the prison system, says losing a loved one to prison can be more destabilising in a child's mind than a death. She told Sky News: "So death happens, you know the person's gone, you know they're not coming back. 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Back in Oakwood, after a journey that saw us stuck in a traffic jam, the kids are searched, and then we are guided through to meet Kane. We are in a large hall, not unlike a church hall, with a kitchen at one end. Kane enters through a side door and calls out to his kids. The family runs to him - apart from the little boy Harris, who is distracted by a toy. The warm family reunion over, it's time to cook. Kane is making them brown stew chicken - a Jamaican classic. I ask him if he's Jamaican. He says no but adds: "What happens when you're cooking with different people on the wing all the time, you know, you've got different people from different ethnic backgrounds, you've Asian lads cooking curry, teaching us. We all look after each other on the wings." I ask Kane about his family and how seeing them this way makes him feel. He says that without them, he doesn't know where he would be. They are his incentive to behave well and get out of prison. He's due for release in 2029. Daniel Daly runs the visits at the prison. He's a man who admits he got into the work by accident but now feels it's something of a calling. He really believes in what he does and sees the benefits for the prisoner in having that family connection. Mr Daly says that during a visit, there is often a "paradoxical moment". "In that split second," he tells Sky News, "[prisoners] stand still and have a realisation". "The children have just left, they look at you and think, 'I can't come back. I don't want to say goodbye'. "Most people wouldn't say goodbye and say see you later today. But for some of these gents, saying goodbye might be a couple of days, might be about two weeks. That goodbye is too long. "So for me, yeah, it's a paradoxical moment, that split-second where they just think: 'You know what, I need to be a better man.'" After hours of largely unsupervised interaction, Kane and his family sit down for a meal. The four of them sit around a table, talking, eating and being together - maintaining that familial bond. We thank them and say our goodbyes. In his eponymous 2017 review, Lord Michael Farmer - who was recruited by the last Conservative government for a review into family visits - found that prisoners are 39% less likely to reoffend if they see their loved ones. That was a figure he was given by the MoJ to work from, he says, and while his 2017 recommendations were largely listened to by the government, he believes more needs to be done to improve these prison visits. "If there's somebody there on the outside ... who you know cares for you," he says, it can "impart in the prisoner a sense of responsibility". He talked back in 2017 of family visits being a golden thread that ran through a person's rehabilitation. Read more: Men's prisons 'could run out of space in months' Fears drones could be used to lift inmates out of prisons Get Sky News on WhatsApp Follow our channel and never miss an update. Tap here to follow HMP Oakwood is run by G4S and may be exceptional at family visits, but it is certainly the exception when it comes to the prison system. And for Kane, Harley, Harris, and Nelly, it's making all the difference. The hope is that its example can be replicated, where appropriate, in other prisons.
