How Labour’s jail strategy could come unstuck
Let’s talk cobblers. The Prime Minister has responded to the jail space crisis by ennobling the nation’s shoe mender-in-chief James Timpson…
There is no quick fix for Britain’s overcrowded prisons
Imagine the scene. It’s Friday morning and the new Secretary of State for Justice, Shabanna Mahmood, has just slipped into…
Can Sinn Fein win the UK’s most marginal constituency again?
It’s Monday afternoon and I’m walking through the estate where I was born on the outskirts of Enniskillen in Northern…
Tougher sentences won’t stop women being killed
Manifestos come and go but women continue to be murdered by men they know in grotesquely high numbers. According to…
Tommy Robinson and the truth about two-tier policing
Tommy Robinson, a self-invented English ‘patriot’, was free to attend yesterday’s St George’s Day event in central London which descended…
Prisons have lost the war on drugs
Aldous Huxley’s dystopian best seller Brave New World, published back in 1934, envisaged a society where stability was enforced by…
Suella Braverman is wrong to call for Mark Rowley to go
Why did Gideon Falter cross the road? Or try to? That is a question that went viral this weekend. A…
Who will take responsibility for our appalling prisons?
We know our prison system is awash with drugs but just what are they smoking at the Ministry of Justice?…
Only radical reform will save our overcrowded prisons
What should we do when there’s no cell space left in our disordered jails? The prison population figures published yesterday…
Have the Tories finally woken up to the extremism problem?
Michael Gove has a reliable track record for sounding the alarm on ideological hatred, so are his latest proposals on…
Does France hold the key to cracking down on Islamist extremism?
Are we being ‘poisoned’ by extremism? The Prime Minister seems to think so. His speech on the steps of Downing…
Why Prevent is still failing to tackle Islamist extremism
What is the core mission of the Government’s ‘Prevent’ strategy? When William Shawcross presented his review of our flagship counter extremism programme…
Should Brianna Ghey’s killers ever be released?
In the wicked murder of poor Brianna Ghey, it’s not hyperbole to say the Devil is in the details. Thousands…
Keeping the peace: the politics of policing protest
Armistice Day is meant to be a moment of solemn national unity. Yet this year it is expected to coincide…
Why hasn’t the UK outlawed the IRGC?
As the scale and barbarity of the Hamas terrorist assault on Israel begins to unfold, to no-one’s surprise Iran has…
Who can blame armed police officers for handing back their guns?
The Metropolitan Police has, for now, staved off a crisis. The force says that enough armed officers have returned to…
Who’s really to blame for the Wandsworth jailbreak?
There’s fevered speculation about inside jobs or state actors involved in the HMP Wandsworth prison break by terror suspect Daniel…
Why Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable had to go
Simon Byrne, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland’s beleaguered police force, has stepped down. It’s about time. The country’s police…
How Sinn Fein captured Northern Ireland’s police force
Policing any part of the United Kingdom is a difficult enough task these days. Policing the part of it where…
The importance of remembering the Omagh bombing
On this day, 25 years ago, not long after the ink had dried on the Good Friday Agreement, a car…
What the stabbing of Ian Watkins says about our prisons
This weekend, armed assailants tortured a prisoner and held him hostage in HMP Wakefield for six hours, before specialist prison…
The Dartmoor appeal win is a victory against wealthy landowners
This evening, activists will gather under Haytor, Dartmoor’s iconic landmark rocks, to celebrate what feels like a rare victory for…
The truth about the Bibby Stockholm migrant barge
The ingloriously-named Bibby Stockholm has weighed anchor in Dorset’s Portland harbour to a storm of protest. The vessel is intended…
Will anyone be held accountable for the Zephaniah McLeod attack?
A report, just published by the NHS, is a stark 171-page indictment of our protective services. The investigation details the…
The Dartmoor prison hostage taking could have been far worse
Taking my son for a walk yesterday, we passed HMP Dartmoor, where I served as a prison governor. Unknown to…
