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Tag: prisonreform

Good Behaviour, Bad Policy: Why Sentence Reductions Handed to Prison Staff Risk Injustice and Corruption

The government’s Sentencing Bill, currently progressing through Parliament, proposes reducing prison sentences for “good behaviour.” On the surface, this sounds like a progressive reform, rewarding rehabilitation and incentivising positive conduct. In reality, without rigorous safeguards, training, and oversight, it risks embedding corruption, inequality, and arbitrariness deep into the prison system. Under the proposals, offender managers…

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When Complaints Vanish and Punishment Replaces Care: The Abuse of IEPs at Eastwood Park

The Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) scheme was introduced to encourage “good behaviour” in prisons. But in practice, “good behaviour” is a vague, patronising and fundamentally subjective concept, one that gives frontline staff enormous discretionary power. What counts as “good” too often depends not on clear rules, but on the personal attitudes, frustrations or prejudices…

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Trauma and Hope

Science increasingly shows that hope is one of the most powerful emotions we possess. It shapes wellbeing, strengthens resilience, and buffers the long-term effects of trauma. But new research raises a crucial question: what if a traumatised brain can no longer access hope at all? Groundbreaking studies at Yale University reveal that PTSD alters the…

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Lord Timpson and the Push to Rethink Women’s Imprisonment: The Women’s Justice Board

The launch of the Women’s Justice Board on 21 January 2025 marks a significant moment in rethinking how the UK treats women in the criminal justice system. Campaigners have stressed that women’s offending is often rooted in trauma, domestic abuse, poverty and addiction. Prisons rarely address these issues and often deepen the harm. Chaired by…

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Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars: Why HMP Bronzefield Is Failing Vulnerable Women

A new IMB (Independent Monitoring Board) report on HMP/YOI Bronzefield, published on 10 December 2025, reveals a devastating reality: women in acute mental distress are still being sent to prison because secure psychiatric beds simply don’t exist. Despite warnings in the 2023 IMB thematic report, Bronzefield’s 2024-25 annual review shows that almost nothing has changed,…

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Literature That Transforms: How Stories Illuminate the Realities of Imprisonment

What can a metamorphosing beetle and a kidnapped art student teach us about the lived experience of incarceration? In this powerful literary essay, El Jamieson explores how two classic works – Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and John Fowles’ The Collector – reveal uncomfortable truths about isolation, gender, and the dehumanising nature of imprisonment. At first…

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