Blog

Kevin Wong is Reader in Community Justice and Associate Director, Criminal Justice at the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU), Manchester Metropolitan University. He is responsible for leading the unit’s work on criminal and community justice and voluntary sector delivery of justice services. He has over 25 years' experience in criminal justice as a researcher, policy adviser, commissioner and practitioner. Kevin is Co-Editor of the British Journal of Community Justice a member of the Advisory Panel on Probation Learning, Chair of the Criminal Justice Alliance and a trustee of Manchester based charity Back on Track

Charlie Taylor was initially appointed as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in 2020 and was reappointed in 2023.

Nic Smith is an innovation and creativity professional in the MoJ's learning and development function. He is currently researching the effect of art in shared corporate spaces for idea generation and problem solving.

Speaker Professor David Best PhD, and HMPPS Insights Lead Sarah Bridgland talk us through what strengths-based practice means for HMPPS and invite HMPPS and MoJ staff to register for their Insights25 event on 20 November, which delves deeper into the issues, supporting evidence and recent research.

Dominic Herrington, HMPPS Executive Director for Transforming Delivery Directorate (TDD) outlines how you can learn more about what HMPPS is doing to transform delivery at Insights25

Sam Clifton, Head of Professional Standards and Behaviour (PSB) Group in HMPPS talks about why professional standards and behaviour is important and how you can learn more about it at Insights25

Peter McIntyre is the General Manager at the 3Pillars project and a qualified psychotherapist and armed forces veteran with a particular interest in reaching out to people with compassion and empathy to assist, advise, counsel and mentor them so they can see themselves from a new perspective.  

Vincent Kelly is a custodial manager at HMP Wormwood Scrubs with over 25 years of experience of working in the closed estate. Here he describes a visit to the Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC- formerly known as “The Glasshouse”) where he cast an expert eye across some of the excellent work taking place there, built some bridges and used this to benefit learning in HMPPS.

Reflections of an 18-year HMPPS staff member on how attending an Insights Festival event shaped and developed a career.

Following up on the previous blog, Dr Rachel Gibson talks us through working with two prisons to develop their culture, using a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach, and what this research suggests for prisons wanting to use PAR to develop their culture.