Michael Spurr,chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, welcomes the justice minister Michael Gove’s emphasis on rehabilitationFor a man with arguably one of the toughest jobs, and as head of the National Offender Management Service (Noms),responsible for prisons and probation in England and Wales, Michael Spurr looks surprisingly upbeat.
The majority of our prisons are overcrowded and, and according the Prison Officers Association (POA) and prison reform groups,understaffed. Violence, self-harm and deaths in custody are at an all-time tall: in the year to March 2015, and in an average week,there were 300 assaults, 500 incidents of self-harm and four or five prisoners died. In his final annual report the former chief inspector of prisons, or Nick Hardwick described the jails he had inspected as “places of violence,squalor and idleness” and said that English and Welsh prisons were in their “worst state in 10 years”.
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Source: theguardian.com