Ian Acheson

Ian Acheson

Professor Ian Acheson is a former prison governor. He was also Director of Community Safety at the Home Office. His book ‘Screwed: Britain’s prison crisis and how to escape it’ is out now.

Are our jails unfixable?

The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, published today, addresses the prison cell crisis in the UK, highlighting huge government and organisational failures in managing prison capacity. We may be wary of the term, but it is yet another description of a system in crisis, with many prisoners stuffed into ‘inhumane conditions’, looked after by

Britain is not prepared for car ramming terrorist attacks

At least two people have died and several injured after a car was driven down a busy shopping street yesterday in Mannheim, in western Germany. A 40-year-old man has been arrested. It is not clear yet if this attack was ideologically motivated. But car attacks like this are becoming horrifyingly common in Germany. In Magdeburg

Gentler stop and search tactics won’t keep Britain safe

What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime

Prevent is not solely to blame for Southport failings

The assailant in the Southport massacre has pleaded guilty to the murders of three children in the town last year. Keir Starmer has leapt with unusual speed to authorise a public inquiry into what drove Axel Rudakubana into his frenzy of killing and if it could have been prevented. We now know that the state’s

Empty pledges won’t solve the knife crime epidemic

On 23 September last year at 6.30 p.m. in the evening in a street in Woolwich, London, Daejaun Campbell cried out, ‘I’m 15, don’t let me die’ as he bled out on a pavement after being stabbed. You probably won’t remember Deajaun but he was a one of nine children murdered by knives in London

How front-line police were failed in the summer riots

The police establishment has delivered its initial verdict on this summer’s rioting, following the massacre of children at Southport. Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary and a former chief constable for Merseyside, yesterday published the first part of a report ordered by the Home Secretary to examine the policing response and make recommendations. The review

Why Labour’s policing targets won’t work

This week, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper plans to announce new police performance targets. Perhaps the government has been stung by the growing perception that Labour’s stance on law and order consists mainly of hurty words overreach and emptying jails. But as the legacy of well-meaning but dumb crime policies introduced by the last Labour

Is Airbnb to blame for rising crime in London?

Does Airbnb drive up crime in London? That’s the question posed of the world’s most successful short-term rental service in new research by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology. The UK’s holiday rental market is enormous, projected to reach £3.5 billion this year. Airbnb eats up a sizeable chunk of that revenue; millions on the move

Mass prisoner releases aren’t working

Today, over a thousand offenders will walk out of jail early as part of the government’s ongoing emergency scheme to ease the pressure on our crippled prison system. This time at least officials have dropped the pretence that no dangerous criminals will walk free earlier than a judge decided they should serve. Goodbye just deserts,

Texas-style reforms won’t save our prisons

Texas. Big country, big ideas. The new Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has become enamoured with an intriguing idea from the Lone Star state – letting prisoners out early for good behaviour. Those of you who still watch reruns of Porridge on BritBox will be having déjà vu. Back before the Criminal Justice

How long can our prison system carry on like this?

Can the Ministry of Justice carry on without our failing prison system seizing up altogether? Today we learned that Magistrates are being urged by the Chief Judge not to send convicted offenders to prison until room can be made for them in prison cells. After the riots last month, there are only a few hundred

Why the police have lost the public’s trust

The Home Secretary has admitted a thing that has long been known to those of us without close protection officers: that in many communities, people often feel that ‘crime has no consequences’.  Her remarks this morning also acknowledged another pretty obvious fact: that the country has lost respect for the police. Yvette Cooper’s words are strikingly

Can our prisons take these ‘thugs’?

16 min listen

Keir Starmer will be chairing his first Cobra meeting, as the government continues to grapple with the rioting that has broken out across the country. The weekend saw numerous examples of violence, including at hotels thought to be hosting asylum seekers. We had a statement from the prime minister condemning the ‘right wing thuggery’, but

Ian Acheson

Can our prisons take these thugs?

The last comparable period of civil disorder in this country happened in 2011. Then as now, the courts acted with speed and severity to try to quell five days of rioting in multiple locations, which traumatised the nation, caused hundreds of millions in damage and injured more than three hundred officers. The head of the

The ‘community cohesion’ concept explains confusing police tactics

Merseyside police were very keen to rule out the Southport attack as ‘terrorism-related’. This was despite subsequent remarks from the Home Office that counter-terrorism police were still assisting the investigation. That muddled explanation will fall on deaf ears. Whether this turns out to be an act encompassed within the dry legalistic definition of terrorism, the

Of course whole-life prisoners should be banned from marrying

Is there any point in rehabilitating prisoners sentenced to ‘whole life’ tariffs, who will die in custody? Today’s announcement banning such prisoners from a fundamental human right – to get married – would suggest the state thinks there isn’t. This act, contained in an innocuous statutory instrument is a rare example of retribution in action. We don’t

Can Labour solve our prisons crisis?

16 min listen

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has acknowledged that ‘our prisons are on the point of collapse’. She has announced that, from September, most prisoners serving sentences of less than four years will be released 40 per cent of the way through their sentences instead of the halfway point, which is currently the case. The policy will