During the inspection year (September 2008 to August 2009) a total of 93 custodial establishments were inspected. Each establishment is assessed against four healthy prison tests: safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement. 72 per cent of assessments were positive. Full inspection reports made 4,513 recommendations for improvement, of which 96 per cent were accepted, wholly or in principle, by the National Offender Management Service. Unannounced follow-up inspections found that overall 67 per cent of recommendations had been achieved. Open and women's prisons performed best, with training prisons showing the lowest level of achievement. The Inspectorate published 103 reports on a wide range of establishments and topics. The annual report reflects on progress in reducing the women's prison population, contrasting with no discernable progress for young adults in prison who remain a neglected and under-resourced age-group with a high rate of re-offending. The report stresses the continual pressure from an increasing population set against actual and threatened budget cuts. Population pressure affects the whole system - stretching resources and managerial energy, keeping in use buildings that should be condemned, doubling-up prisoners in cramped cells, leading to unnecessary and destabilising prisoner moves. All this compromises successful rehabilitation. In 2009 the Inspectorate became the co-ordinator for the UK's National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) established under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture and Inhuman and Degrading Treatment. The NPM consists of 18 existing bodies which are independent and have the right to inspect all places of detention.

After a year in which prisons held a record number of prisoners, the prison system remains under pressure, and important lessons must be learnt if prisons are to be safe and effective. Despite sustained and chronic pressure, the report recognises progress over the past year. Overall, the Inspectorate's assessments of prisons inspected last year were more positive than those of prisons inspected the previous year, particularly in resettlement work. The number of self-inflicted deaths also decreased last year. The Chief Inspector identifies a number of warning signs, and new concerns: growing concerns about safety, particularly in dispersal prisons and young offender institutions, and rates of self-harm among women; unsuitable, cramped or unhygienic accommodation in some prisons; difficulties in complying with duties under the Disability Discrimination Act, and other equality duties; low activity levels in too many training prisons; the growing problem of alcohol misuse and the limited investment in this in prisons or the community; the potential effect of the recession on prisoners' employment and resettlement prospects. The report also refers to the inspection of immigration detention and the new inspection programme on police custody. Immigration removal centres were, on the whole, less safe and respectful than those inspected last year, though activity and welfare support had improved. The detention of children remains a major concern and is ripe for review. Inspections of police custody, jointly with the Inspectorate of Constabulary, have confirmed much good practice, but also revealed some deficiencies.

This text presents an overview of sentencing and punishment from penological, social policy and legal perspectives. It provides an accessible account of the changing attitudes of the public, policy makers and the judiciary regarding what constitutes 'just' punishment.

Although prison can present a critical opportunity to engage with offenders through interventions and programming, reoffending rates among those released from prison remain stubbornly high. Sport can be a means through which to engage with even the most challenging and complex individuals caught up in a cycle of offending and imprisonment, by offering an alternative means of excitement and risk taking to that gained through engaging in offending behaviour, or by providing an alternative social network and access to positive role models. This is the first book to explore the role of sport in prisons and its subsequent impact on rehabilitation and behavioural change. The book draws on research literature on the beneficial role of sport in community settings and on prison cultures and regimes, across disciplines including criminology, psychology, sociology and sport studies, as well as original qualitative and quantitative data gathered from research in prisons. It unpacks the meanings that prisoners and staff attach to sport participation and interventions in order to understand how to promote behavioural change through sport most effectively, while identifying and tackling the key emerging issues and challenges. Sport in Prison is essential reading for any advanced student, researcher, policy-maker or professional working in the criminal justice system with an interest in prisons, offending behaviour, rehabilitation, sport development, or the wider social significance of sport.

This volume is in part intended to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We are now a generation on from its formulation, and, as this varied collection of articles by leading thinkers in the field reflects, children's rights have come a long way. Yet the aim of this volume is not to look back, but to take stock and look forward. It explores subjects as diverse as socio-economic rights, corporal punishment, language and scientific progress as they relate to children and their rights, and offers new insights and new ideas. Edited by one of the most respected and leading scholars in the field, The Future of Children's Rights constitutes a stimulating and useful resource for academics and practitioners alike.

The second edition of the Handbook on Prisons provides a completely revised and updated collection of essays on a wide range of topics concerning prisons and imprisonment. Bringing together three of the leading prison scholars in the UK as editors, this new volume builds on the success of the first edition and reveals the range and depth of prison scholarship around the world. The Handbook contains chapters written not only by those who have established and developed prison research, but also features contributions from ex-prisoners, prison governors and ex-governors, prison inspectors and others who have worked with prisoners in a wide range of professional capacities. This second edition includes several completely new chapters on topics as diverse as prison design, technology in prisons, the high security estate, therapeutic communities, prisons and desistance, supermax and solitary confinement, plus a brand new section on international perspectives. The Handbook aims to convey the reality of imprisonment, and to reflect the main issues and debates surrounding prisons and prisoners, while also providing novel ways of thinking about familiar penal problems and enhancing our theoretical understanding of imprisonment. The Handbook on Prisons, Second edition is a key text for students taking courses in prisons, penology, criminal justice, criminology and related subjects, and is also an essential reference for academics and practitioners working in the prison service, or in related agencies, who need up-to-date knowledge of thinking on prisons and imprisonment.

Prison Segregation: The Limits of Law explores the use of segregation in English prisons by examining how law is used and experienced, and how human rights are upheld. It draws on empirical research, through interviews with staff and prisoners, to understand how law ‘works’ (or not) in a site of the prison, which is traditionally characterised by real imbalances of power. The book draws on one of the first research studies of its kind: an in-depth ethnographic study of law, culture and norms within the segregation unit. It adopts a socio-legal perspective to explore: (i) how segregation is and should be used in prisons, and how the law sets the parameters of that usage (in theory); (ii) the complex web of laws and rules, as applies to segregation, and their relationship with the actors responsible for their implementation; (iii) how laws and rules can be undermined by the culture and context within which they are implemented. It relies on the voices of prisoners and staff, as well as observations and descriptions, to bring experiences to life. The accounts from staff and prisoners – sometimes joyous, sometimes harrowing – provide a rich and rare insight into the segregation unit. It provides access to, and insights into, parts of our criminal justice system which are typically impenetrable. Whilst it is an academic study of law and power in segregation units (and prison more broadly), it is also a very human account of lived experiences. The book is multi-disciplinary in nature and will appeal to those with an interest in law, sociology, criminology and psychology. It will also appeal to those seeking to understand socio-legal research methods in the field of criminal justice. However, the book is also pragmatic and has a number of recommendations which would be of interest to practitioners, lawyers, prison managers and policy-makers.

When is it fair to hold young people criminally responsible? If young people lack the capacity to make a meaningful choice and to control their impulses, should they be held criminally culpable for their behaviour? In what ways is the immaturity of young offenders relevant to their blameworthiness? Should youth offending behaviour be proscribed by criminal law? These are just some of the questions asked in this thoughtful and provocative book. In The Moral Foundations of the Youth Justice System, Raymond Arthur explores international and historical evidence on how societies regulate criminal behaviour by young people, and undertakes a careful examination of the developmental capacities and processes that are relevant to young people’s criminal choices. He argues that the youth justice response needs to be reconceptualised in a context where one of the central objectives of institutions regulating children and young people’s behaviour is to support the interests and welfare of those children. This timely book advocates a revolutionary transformation of the structure and process of contemporary youth justice law: a synthesised and integrated approach that is clearly distinct from that used for dealing with adults. This book is a key resource for students, academics and practitioners across fields including criminal law, youth justice, probation and social work.

The growing body of work on imprisonment, desistance and rehabilitation has mainly focused on policies and treatment programmes and how they are delivered. Experiencing Imprisonment reflects recent developments in research that focus on the active role of the offender in the process of justice. Bringing together experts from around the world and presenting a range of comparative critical research relating to key themes of the pains of imprisonment, stigma, power and vulnerability, this book explores the various ways in which offenders relate to the justice systems and how these relationships impact the nature and effectiveness of their efforts to reduce offending. Experiencing Imprisonment showcases cutting-edge international and comparative critical research on how imprisonment is experienced by those people living and working within imprisonment institutions in North America and Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Scandinavia. The research explores the subjective experience of imprisonment from the perspective of a variety of staff and prisoner groups, including juveniles, adult female and male prisoners, older prisoners, sex offenders, wrongfully convicted offenders and newly released prisoners. Offering a unique view of what it is like to be a prisoner or a prison officer, the chapters in this book argue for a prioritisation of understanding the subjective experiences of imprisonment as essential to developing effective and humane systems of punishment. This is essential reading for academics and students involved in the study of criminology, penology and the sociology of imprisonment. It will also be of interest to Criminal Justice practitioners and policymakers around the globe.

Winner of the 2018 Inner Temple New Authors Book Prize and the 2016 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship. Damages and Human Rights is a major work on awards of damages for violations of human rights that will be of compelling interest to practitioners, judges and academics alike. Damages for breaches of human rights is emerging as an important and practically significant field of law, yet the rules and principles governing such awards and their theoretical foundations remain underexplored, while courts continue to struggle to articulate a coherent law of human rights damages. The book's focus is English law, but it draws heavily on comparative material from a range of common law jurisdictions, as well as the jurisprudence of international courts. The current law on when damages can be obtained and how they are assessed is set out in detail and analysed comprehensively. The theoretical foundations of human rights damages are examined with a view to enhancing our understanding of the remedy and resolving the currently troubled state of human rights damages jurisprudence. The book argues that in awarding damages in human rights cases the courts should adopt a vindicatory approach, modelled on those rules and principles applied in tort cases when basic rights are violated. Other approaches are considered in detail, including the current 'mirror' approach which ties the domestic approach to damages to the European Court of Human Rights' approach to monetary compensation; an interest-balancing approach where the damages are dependent on a judicial balancing of individual and public interests; and approaches drawn from the law of state liability in EU law and United States constitutional law. The analysis has important implications for our understanding of fundamental issues including the interrelationship between public law and private law, the theoretical and conceptual foundations of human rights law and the law of torts, the nature and functions of the damages remedy, the connection between rights and remedies, the intersection of domestic and international law, and the impact of damages liability on public funds and public administration. The book was the winner of the 2016 SLS Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship and the 2018 Inner Temple New Authors Book Prize.