Latest news with #PrisonandProbationService
South Wales Argus
30-04-2025
- Business
- South Wales Argus
MS says Welsh businesses should consider hiring ex-offenders
This call comes from Jack Sargeant, the Welsh minister for culture, skills and social partnership, who highlights the potential of this often-overlooked talent pool in alleviating workforce shortages. In a statement, Mr Sargeant said: "Around a quarter of the UK population has a conviction. "That's a significant number of people with valuable skills, experience, and knowledge who can make a positive contribution to society – and potentially to your business or organisation as well." Ex-offenders, many of whom have developed new skills during their time in prison, are seen as a resource to help address challenges such as inflation and rising costs, which are currently hampering Welsh small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Support is available from His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), Working Wales, and the Department for Work and Pensions, offering free access to talent. Prisons across Wales are providing training in areas experiencing skills shortages, such as construction, hospitality, digital technologies, manufacturing, warehousing, and green and net-zero courses. He said research shows that 86 per cent of employers rate ex-offenders as good at their jobs. Businesses are encouraged to contact Business Wales for advice and resources on accessing training and funding opportunities.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Yahoo
Men jailed for prison drone drug drops
Two men have been jailed for attempting to smuggle packages containing illegal goods such as phones and drugs into prisons using drones. Simon Woodall and Josh Morris, both 32 and from Brierley Hill in Dudley, pleaded guilty in November to using unmanned aerial vehicles to fly the packages into prisons in England. Woodall was jailed for 30 months at Peterborough Crown Court on Monday. Morris, who also admitted dangerous driving and driving while disqualified, was jailed for 42 months. Police said that between August 2023 and February 2024, Woodall and Morris attempted to smuggle Class A and B drugs, prescription medications, smartphones, memory cards, data dongles and tobacco into prisons in County Durham, Leicestershire, Cambridgeshire, Greater Manchester, Wiltshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Humber. They transported the goods using drones, alongside flight mapping and control software. Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit (YHROCU) opened an investigation after Morris was arrested near HMP Frankland in County Durham. Police said the investigation involved partners from across the UK and His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service. Det Insp Ollie Scoones said it was "a complex investigation". "The sentencing sends a clear message to those involved in serious organised crime that the YHROCU will continue to dismantle their operations, pursue prosecutions and prevent them from benefitting from the proceeds of criminal activity to protect communities from the harm they cause." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram. Police capture drones near high-security prison Prison drone drops 'threat to national security' West Yorkshire Police HM Courts and Tribunals Service
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Yahoo
I was a prison governor for 10 years. This is why corruption is engulfing our criminal justice system
All is not well inside the last Hermit kingdom in public service. I'm referring to His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), a closed and secretive fiefdom that has acquired a reputation for security scandals and managerial incompetence that even high walls, literal and figurative, can't contain. Behind the austere perimeters of the prison side of business, another disgrace looms – corruption. I was a prison officer and governor for a decade in the 1990s. During this purple patch for the service, the men and women who wore the uniform largely did so with pride and either had years of 'jailcraft' experience to draw on or came to the landings from other walks of life with the requisite emotional maturity to conduct themselves properly. Was it a perfect institution? No. Indeed, the fundamental stressors of the job – working in an environment where anything bad could happen and often did remained. We employed racists and people who caused prisoners and their colleagues no end of difficulty by misusing their immense discretionary power. But these miscreants were in a distinct minority, and staff corruption was either deeply concealed or driven out by an esprit de corps that is so important and so badly missing from today's service. Outside Whitehall, nobody is blind to the multiple lurid stories that have emerged in recent months and years with an uncomfortably common theme: female staff being caught in sexually compromising situations with male prisoners. Jails are places saturated with risk and trauma. Officers and prisoners are locked away in an environment that is far from normal, where sexual predation, conditioning and coercion is baked into the fabric. But I think these recent stories are symptoms of a much larger and more worrying problem than was ever the case when I worked inside. Here is an emblematic example. In June 2024, a female prison officer at HMP Wandsworth (where I was head of security in the 1990s) gained global notoriety after a video filmed inside the prison showed her having sex with an inmate. The footage, which went viral online, led to her arrest. Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed in January having pled guilty to misconduct in a public office. This officer had passed the HMPPS recruitment security vetting process despite having a publicly available OnlyFans account and being previously featured on the Channel 4 series Open House: The Great Sex Experiment. Neither of these activities is illegal, but only an imbecile would say they were compatible with a front-line security role near seasoned and manipulative criminals. Part of the footage was recovered from her body-worn camera. You couldn't make it up. De Sousa Abreu was hired as a result of a rushed process to get boots on wings denuded of staff as a result of utterly destructive Conservative austerity cuts that drove experience out and allowed in people patently unsuitable to the job. HMP Wandsworth, a major London prison, is falling apart in plain sight. Yet, it is a 20-minute cab ride from HMPPS Headquarters, where thousands of bureaucrats labour in roles that seem to make no difference to the abject state of our penal slums. On some occasions, up to 40 per cent of officers at Wandsworth were routinely unavailable for a workplace that was drowning in filth and drugs where staff could not routinely account for the whereabouts of prisoners. This sort of environment, where leadership and even basic supervision are absent, is ideal for illicit relationships to flourish. The state is not in charge at Wandsworth. When I was head of security there, we were the biggest gang in the jail. There was a sense of discipline in the organisation that is now sneered at and deprecated by the cartel of activist groups and academics that have far too much influence on prison operational policy. These long-dead attributes meant it was almost impossible for blatant abuses of power to occur. Order and control are foundational to prison safety and legitimacy. Where this has foundered, and we have hugely inexperienced youngsters badly selected, poorly trained and unsupervised all sorts of corruption will flourish. The rot extends far beyond prison officers too. Female prison psychologists and teachers have all been exposed in illicit affairs with prisoners. Male staff in female prisons have been jailed for relationships with particularly vulnerable women. Prisons without even elementary security screening processes allow both men and women in uniform and other staff corrupted by sophisticated and well-heeled offenders to run drugs and phones into prisons. The quantities of these items delivered to offenders, who should be doing rehabilitation, not lines of coke, simply cannot be explained by drone deliveries alone. The rampant drug economy flourishing in our prisons unopposed is the lubricant or by-product of much of the corruption we are now reading about. Prof John Podmore, who used to run the counter-corruption operation in the prison service, put it like this: 'Serious organised crime is increasingly well organised in prisons. Control over so many jails has been ceded to highly profitable criminal enterprises.' I feel for the thousands of decent and effective female staff who pull on a uniform every morning and who, on top of all the other stresses of the job, must endure the humiliation of being associated with a minority of their colleagues who have brought the service into such disrepute. I do not accept the formula the spinners at the Ministry of Justice increasingly rely on – that the number of staff being detected means that counter-corruption strategies are working. Something else is going on. Over a third of prison officers now have less than one year's experience in uniform. Many of these recruits will learn on the job as I did and become effective officers doing a vital job for society. But they won't have any of the experience and numbers of colleagues I had to lean on. Too many others will be unsuitable for a uniquely complex job and their immaturity will put them at risk to themselves and security. This law enforcement agency has lost its way. Ministers know this and are helpless to act. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
31-03-2025
- Telegraph
I was a prison governor for 10 years. This is why corruption is engulfing our criminal justice system
All is not well inside the last Hermit kingdom in public service. I'm referring to His Majesty's Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), a closed and secretive fiefdom that has acquired a reputation for security scandals and managerial incompetence that even high walls, literal and figurative, can't contain. Behind the austere perimeters of the prison side of business, another disgrace looms – corruption. I was a prison officer and governor for a decade in the 1990s. During this purple patch for the service, the men and women who wore the uniform largely did so with pride and either had years of 'jailcraft' experience to draw on or came to the landings from other walks of life with the requisite emotional maturity to conduct themselves properly. Was it a perfect institution? No. Indeed, the fundamental stressors of the job – working in an environment where anything bad could happen and often did remained. We employed racists and people who caused prisoners and their colleagues no end of difficulty by misusing their immense discretionary power. But these miscreants were in a distinct minority, and staff corruption was either deeply concealed or driven out by an esprit de corps that is so important and so badly missing from today's service. Outside Whitehall, nobody is blind to the multiple lurid stories that have emerged in recent months and years with an uncomfortably common theme: female staff being caught in sexually compromising situations with male prisoners. Jails are places saturated with risk and trauma. Officers and prisoners are locked away in an environment that is far from normal, where sexual predation, conditioning and coercion is baked into the fabric. But I think these recent stories are symptoms of a much larger and more worrying problem than was ever the case when I worked inside. Here is an emblematic example. In June 2024, a female prison officer at HMP Wandsworth (where I was head of security in the 1990s) gained global notoriety after a video filmed inside the prison showed her having sex with an inmate. The footage, which went viral online, led to her arrest. Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed in January having pled guilty to misconduct in a public office. This officer had passed the HMPPS recruitment security vetting process despite having a publicly available OnlyFans account and being previously featured on the Channel 4 series Open House: The Great Sex Experiment. Neither of these activities is illegal, but only an imbecile would say they were compatible with a front-line security role near seasoned and manipulative criminals. Part of the footage was recovered from her body-worn camera. You couldn't make it up. De Sousa Abreu was hired as a result of a rushed process to get boots on wings denuded of staff as a result of utterly destructive Conservative austerity cuts that drove experience out and allowed in people patently unsuitable to the job. HMP Wandsworth, a major London prison, is falling apart in plain sight. Yet, it is a 20-minute cab ride from HMPPS Headquarters, where thousands of bureaucrats labour in roles that seem to make no difference to the abject state of our penal slums. On some occasions, up to 40 per cent of officers at Wandsworth were routinely unavailable for a workplace that was drowning in filth and drugs where staff could not routinely account for the whereabouts of prisoners. This sort of environment, where leadership and even basic supervision are absent, is ideal for illicit relationships to flourish. The state is not in charge at Wandsworth. When I was head of security there, we were the biggest gang in the jail. There was a sense of discipline in the organisation that is now sneered at and deprecated by the cartel of activist groups and academics that have far too much influence on prison operational policy. These long-dead attributes meant it was almost impossible for blatant abuses of power to occur. Order and control are foundational to prison safety and legitimacy. Where this has foundered, and we have hugely inexperienced youngsters badly selected, poorly trained and unsupervised all sorts of corruption will flourish. The rot extends far beyond prison officers too. Female prison psychologists and teachers have all been exposed in illicit affairs with prisoners. Male staff in female prisons have been jailed for relationships with particularly vulnerable women. Prisons without even elementary security screening processes allow both men and women in uniform and other staff corrupted by sophisticated and well-heeled offenders to run drugs and phones into prisons. The quantities of these items delivered to offenders, who should be doing rehabilitation, not lines of coke, simply cannot be explained by drone deliveries alone. The rampant drug economy flourishing in our prisons unopposed is the lubricant or by-product of much of the corruption we are now reading about. Prof John Podmore, who used to run the counter-corruption operation in the prison service, put it like this: 'Serious organised crime is increasingly well organised in prisons. Control over so many jails has been ceded to highly profitable criminal enterprises.' I feel for the thousands of decent and effective female staff who pull on a uniform every morning and who, on top of all the other stresses of the job, must endure the humiliation of being associated with a minority of their colleagues who have brought the service into such disrepute. I do not accept the formula the spinners at the Ministry of Justice increasingly rely on – that the number of staff being detected means that counter-corruption strategies are working. Something else is going on. Over a third of prison officers now have less than one year's experience in uniform. Many of these recruits will learn on the job as I did and become effective officers doing a vital job for society. But they won't have any of the experience and numbers of colleagues I had to lean on. Too many others will be unsuitable for a uniquely complex job and their immaturity will put them at risk to themselves and security. This law enforcement agency has lost its way. Ministers know this and are helpless to act.
The Independent
29-01-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Sweden set to send criminals abroad as prisons overflow
Sweden can send criminals to serve their sentences in prisons in other countries, a government-appointed commission has said. The news comes as the country struggles to handle an influx of new inmates arising from a wave of gang crime. 'There is a need to work with new solutions within the Prison and Probation Service,' Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told a news conference, saying Sweden was already in talks with other countries about renting space in their prisons. Norway, Belgium, and Denmark have been rumoured to be offering space. Estonia has also been mentioned in the past. Sweden has been plagued by gang crime that has escalated over the last two decades and has seen the Nordic nation top the rankings of deadly gun violence per capita in Europe. Armed with new legal tools and increased personnel and funding, Swedish police have made headway against the gangs - there have been fewer deadly shootings and more convictions over the last two years. While that success has been welcomed, it has put a strain on the prison system. In 2023, the latest year for which records are available, Swedish courts handed down prison sentences totalling just under 200,000 months, a 25% increase from the previous year and a doubling compared with 2014. Sweden's jails and prisons are full and the Prison and Probation Service says it will need about 27,000 beds by 2033, up from 11,000 today. Mattias Wahlstedt, head of the commission, said there were no legal obstacles to Sweden renting prison slots abroad but that a proposal to that end would have to pass parliament first. Authorities have also been grappling with an unprecedented spate of bombings, primarily in the Stockholm capital region. In January alone there have been 30 bombings, most of them acts of extortion by gangs against companies and citizens, police said.
