By Eve Tailor and Dan Jones

Numerous prisons, charities, and prison education providers deliver peer mentoring schemes relating to education, skills, and work (ESW). Where successful, these schemes are viewed as significant in the delivery of ESW and have been highly praised by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and Ofsted. However, practice is inconsistent and there is limited evidence about which delivery models are most successful. The rationale for undertaking this research was to understand effective practice in ESW peer mentoring in more detail, including the functioning of these schemes. The findings from this study will be used by the HMPPS Prisoner Education Service team to inform ESW peer mentoring policy development.

Findings are based on 48 qualitative interviews with mentees, mentors and ESW staff members across 5 male prisons in England in April and May 2023.

1.2 Key Findings

A variety of mentoring schemes operate in ESW within men’s prisons. The setting, structure, purpose, and formality of schemes explored in this study vary significantly. For example, formalised schemes had structured mentor/mentee relationships and clear staff oversight. These schemes tended to focus on skill development, such as reading. Less formalised schemes often had flexible and less structured operation, with mentors supporting multiple mentees. These less formalised schemes often involved supporting staff to deliver ESW services. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to peer mentoring in ESW, allowing individual sites to tailor their provision to the learners at their site.

Some of the enablers of effective practice identified by participants in this study included:

• mentors having previous experience as a mentee or mentor in other custodial and non-custodial settings,

• approachable mentors helping to facilitate mentee recruitment and effective running of schemes,

• privileges and low-risk status enabling greater access to the prison site and recognition of the hard work of mentors.

Some of the barriers to effective practice identified by participants in this study included:

• regime and restricted movement preventing access to mentoring,

• limited awareness from operational staff about the purpose of peer mentoring,

• lack of appropriate space on wings to provide support,

• recruitment issues arising from stigma and lack of awareness, and

• a lack of a ‘pipeline’ for new mentors which made some schemes unsustainable.

Participants identified a range of benefits and drawbacks associated with ESW peer mentoring. Benefits included improved staff-prisoner relationships and the development of soft skills such as communication and learning new skills.

Drawbacks identified by participants included mentors having to deliver mentoring during association and losing their ‘down time’, becoming demoralised by the lack of engagement, and previous poor experiences of mentoring being “off-putting” for future participation in schemes.

Ministry of Justice Analytical Series, London: UK Ministry of Justice, 2024. 41p.

By Catherine Cox and Hilary Marland

"Now regarding the prisoner as a moral patient, the paramount object is to render him as amenable as possible to the reformatory process.... The isolation that depresses the animal nature of the prisoner, and lowers the whole tone of the nervous system, produces a corresponding effect upon the mind... In consequence of the lowering of the vital energies, the brain becomes more feeble, and, therefore, more susceptible. The chaplain can then make the brawny navvy in the cell cry like a child; he can work on his feelings in almost any way he pleases; he can so to speak, photograph his own thoughts, wishes, and opinions, on his patient's mind, and fill his mouth with his own phrases and language"

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2022.

By Stella Botchway and Seena Fazel

In England and Wales, there has been considerable work over recent years to reduce the numbers of deaths in custody. Currently, there is no standard,internationally agreed definition of a death in custody, which limits compar-isons. In addition, rates of death in custody are often reported per country or region inhabitants, but it would be more useful to report per number of detainees. In this short communication, we present data on deaths in indivi-duals who have been detained in England and Wales between 2016 to 2019. Wealso present a method to calculate rates of death per custodial population in key settings using routine data, allowing for more consistent comparisons across time and different settings. Most deaths in custody between 2016–2019 occurred in prisons (56% of all deaths in custody over 2016–19; Table 1). However, when rates are considered, those detained under the Mental HealthAct had the highest rate of deaths, which ranged from 1103–1334/100,000 per-sons detained. Around one in five deaths were self-inflicted. The data presented highlights the need to maintain focus on improving the physical health and mental health of all those detained in custody, both whilst in detention and after release

THE JOURNAL OF FORENSIC PSYCHIATRY & PSYCHOLOGY2022, VOL. 33, NO. 1, 1–13

Rachel E. Bennett

Should pregnant women be sent to prison? Is prison a place for the birth and care of babies? Can it ever be? This book is the first extensive historical examination of how the modern prison system sought to answer these perennial questions. The book takes the reader through the prison gates to demonstrate that, although a common feature of everyday life in women’s prisons, pregnancy, birth and motherhood were rarely fully considered at policy level. Instead, the experiences of mothers and children were shaped by a myriad of factors including debates about reconciling the management of institutional discipline with the maintenance of health and issues of gender and class. Lamented as an inalienable heritage of woe but also as an opportunity for the closer supervision of mothers, prison births evoked intense debate and required the negotiation of obdurate regimes. The book reveals how oscillating debates about the purpose of prisons shaped the punitive, reformatory and medical treatment of confined mothers. It also challenges scholarly debates about institutional discipline by delving further into the role of prisoners and prison staff in shaping the terms of their incarceration.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2024. 217p.

 By Jacqueline Beard

The Parole Board. The Parole Board is an executive non-departmental public body, responsible for the parole system. The Parole Board carries out risk assessments on these prisoners to determine whether they can be safely released into the community. It is governed by the Parole Board Rules, secondary legislation that sets out the procedures that must be followed when determining parole cases.

Reforms 2018-19: transparency and reconsideration. In 2018-2019 there were reforms to Parole Board procedures, partly in response to the case of John Warboys (now known as John Radford). Rule 25 of the Parole Board Rules was amended in 2018 to allow summaries of Parole Board decisions to be provided to victims and other interested parties. Previously Rule 25 had prohibited any release of information about parole proceedings.

Root and branch review 2022. In March 2022 the Government published a root and branch review with plans for further reforms, some of which require legislation. The Government has said it will legislate for those changes which require it as soon as possible.

Most comment regarding the root and branch review focused on the proposal for a Minister to review release decisions where the Parole Board directs the release of a person who is serving a sentence for a ‘top tier’ offence. Organisations such as Justice, the Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust have raised concerns about political interference in legal processes and the possibility of ‘political grandstanding’.....

London: House of Commons Library 2023. 31p.

By David Downes

From chapter 1. Comparative criminology is nothing new. In their broadest sense, of contrasting institutional arrangements and/or forms of conduct between whole societies, comparative studies have long been an invaluable, though under-used, resourcein historical and socio-economic studies. Travels abroad can be as influential as journeyings at home in the realm of criminal and penal policies. It is difficult otherwise to account for such phenomena as the rapid rise of the penitentiary across the continents of Europe and North America in the first few decades oft h e nineteenth century. More recently, the appeal ofvictim-related measures has, from relatively small beginnings in the United States in the late 1960s, fanned out to most liberal democratic societies around the globe. From time to time, Britain has attracted streams of enquirers into the workings of the latest penal or reformative innovation. The Borstal system in the interwar period was much admired abroad.

Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1988. 236p. CONTAINS MARK-UP