At last the prime minister himself has signalled the firm intention “shortly” to end the cruel injustice of Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs). David Hanson, Labour MP for Delyn, who was a minister...
Labour’s shadow Justice Secretary, Sadiq Khan, has again attacked Ken Clarke’s humane, courageous and progressive programme of penal reforms designed to reduce our bloated prison population, improve prison conditions by enabling prisoners to work...
More than enough has been written from all parts of the political spectrum about the underlying causes of the recent riots, looting and arson all over England. Most of those causes are too obvious...
I venture to disagree with the view expressed on LabourList by Claude Moraes MEP that there are significant lessons to be learned from the horrific mass murders committed, by his own admission, by Anders...
In my last post on this blog, I celebrated what looked like the impending abolition of the vicious system of IPPs, or Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection. It seems I spoke too soon. Ken...
There are more good things in what’s left of Ken Clarke’s sentencing reform measures than most liberal commentators admit. The biggest and best is the promise to scrap Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection (IPPs). ...
A letter of mine opposing AV (the Alternative Vote electoral system) prompted an exchange with an AV fan which explores some of the arguments, good and (especially) bad, for and (especially) against. This is...
It’s sad to have to record that on 10 February 2011 the house of commons debated and passed a motion[1] that asserted two indefensible propositions: that we should continue to deprive almost all prisoners...
The prime minister’s statement in parliament on 7 February about the report by the Cabinet Secretary (pdf) on the newly released documents in the Megrahi case inexplicably ignored the major unresolved issue revealed by...
Is there no end to the muddle and misrepresentations generated by the controversy over the release by the Scottish government in August 2009 on compassionate grounds of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Libyan...