Danny Shaw is a crime, justice and policing commentator and former adviser to Yvette Cooper.
More people are being jailed than the justice system can manage. There are only 557 places left across 120 prisons in England and Wales, while prisoner numbers are increasing by 100 to 200 every week. Justice Secretary Alex Chalk had some tough-sounding rhetoric on Monday to deal with the problem: lock up dangerous offenders and
The decision by up to 300 Metropolitan police firearms officers to withdraw from armed duties is a serious and worrying development – the gravest that Sir Mark Rowley has had to face since he took over as Commissioner 12 months ago. It follows last week’s announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to charge a
Twelve months after Sir Mark Rowley embarked on a mission to re-boot the Metropolitan Police following a wave of scandals, the force has revealed that it has suspended or placed work restrictions on a thousand of its officers. More than 200 are currently suspended and 860 are on ‘restricted duties’ while criminal or misconduct allegations are investigated – taken
When a man has spent 17 years in prison for a crime that he didn’t commit, there are many urgent questions about policing and the criminal justice system which need answering. Andrew Malkinson, who will never get back those years after being wrongfully convicted of raping a woman in a violent attack in 2003, certainly
Haven’t we all had that panicky, sinking feeling at one time or another? A realisation that we’ve been the victim of a crime. Perhaps it happened when you couldn’t find the mobile phone in your back pocket. Or after you spotted fragments of glass on the road near your car windscreen. You might have felt
These are busy times for the police watchdog. It’s just started an investigation into serious allegations of misconduct against Devon and Cornwall’s Chief Constable, Will Kerr, who’s been suspended. An inquiry has been announced into missed opportunities to root out the serial rapist, former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick. And this week came an investigation
Huw Edwards is in hospital. That shocking news, in a statement from his wife, Vicky Flind, delivered an icy blast of reality to a news story that had bubbled out of control for six days, dangerously so for the BBC. Although reporters in its News division, where I worked for 31 years, had covered the
‘The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.’ Those are the words of Sir Robert Peel, widely regarded as the founder of modern policing. In 1829, as home secretary, he established the Metropolitan Police in London, the first full-time professional force. It’s estimated that 83 per cent of calls into
‘I am immensely proud of the exceptional work of our officers who prevented criminal disruption, damage and danger destroying such a unique occasion,’ said Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. He was talking of course about the coronation amid the controversy that has swirled around the Met since reports emerged that people were wrongfully
A call from my younger son’s secondary school was not what I was expecting at 11.30 a.m., but as soon as I heard the secretary speak I knew what had happened to him. He’d just got himself a pair of Apple AirPods and was keen to use them – why wouldn’t he be? As he
The letter delivered last week to Mr Charles Salvador, of HMP Woodhill, from the parole board did not bring him the news he wanted – it said his request to be released from prison had been turned down. But the outcome came as no surprise to me, nor I suspect many of the others who had
For the past 12 months, the Metropolitan Police has been in the organisational equivalent of a body scanner. Every vital organ of this 194-year-old beast has been examined in detail by Baroness Louise Casey and her review team enabling them to understand the Met in a way that no one has done before. The results,
For more than 47 years, Dennis McGrory got away with murder. But last week justice was finally delivered: the pensioner was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing 15-year-old Jacqui Montgomery, in Islington, north London. His conviction was in large measure due to the work of Metropolitan police forensic scientists and detectives who never gave up
This week, the charity CrimeStoppers, which receives anonymous tip offs from the public, launched a new hotline – for people to report corruption and abuse by police officers. It’s part of a drive by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, to ‘expose those who have undermined the Met’s integrity’ following a series of scandals
At 2.30 in the afternoon on September 22, 1999, Harry Stanley left the Alexandra pub in Hackney, east London, with a blue plastic bag containing a table leg that had been repaired by his brother. Unbeknown to Stanley, someone in the pub had called the police to report ‘an Irishman with a gun wrapped in
Dressed in full uniform and clutching a clipboard, Mark Rowley walked out of the Royal Courts of Justice in London, down the steps and towards a row of microphones. It was January 2014. An inquest into the fatal police shooting in Tottenham of Mark Duggan had just concluded with a verdict of ‘lawful killing’ and
