David Shipley is a former prisoner who writes, speaks and researches on prison and justice issues.
On 10 May this year a 15-year-old girl was with friends near parkland on the outskirts of Leamington Spa. Shortly after 9 p.m. she was separated from those friends and abducted by Jan Jahanzeb, a 17-year-old Afghan asylum seeker who arrived in the UK in January. The victim had the quick thinking to record the
It has now been six weeks since the inquiry into ‘Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse’ fell into chaos. Over the course of several days, numerous survivors quit – claiming that the civil servants running the process were seeking to dilute the inquiry – and the man being considered as chair stood down. Since then there has
It’s now over six weeks since Hadush Kebatu’s ‘release in error’ sparked a two day manhunt, and highlighted our prison system’s disastrous habit of regularly releasing inmates who should remain in jail. Since then we’ve heard about the accidental releases of Kaddour-Cherif, a prolific criminal from Algeria who overstayed a visa six years ago, and
Another week. Another video from within a prison. More words of outrage. This time it’s a video showing a prison officer inside a crowded cell, playing Fifa with a prisoner. Is this a problem? Is prison more of a holiday camp than a punishment? Is this another example of prison officer misconduct, just like the
Just two weeks ago Epping lost its court battle to shut the Bell Hotel and expel unwanted asylum seekers from the town. Now it seems the state has decided to punish the town for its act of rebellion. Eight properties in the town are to be converted to ‘Houses in Multiple Occupation’ (HMOs) and will be
I had hoped I would never have to write about Hamit Coskun again. After the Quran-burner won his appeal in October, it seemed that this particular battle in the free speech wars was over. Unfortunately the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have other ideas. On Friday evening the state prosecutor announced that it was going to appeal Coskun’s
After the pandemic the Boris Johnson government took a fateful and disastrous decision to suppress rising inflation by massively expanding migration. It was one of the worst decisions made by a British government in my lifetime, made all the more appalling because it followed a solemn promise that Brexit would bring a tough, ‘points-based’ migration
‘This is a moral mission for me, because I can see illegal migration is tearing our country apart, it is dividing communities. People can see huge pressure in their communities and they can also see a system that is broken, and where people are able to flout the rules, abuse the system and get away
The Bell Hotel in Epping has hardly been out of the news since the summer. In July, Bell resident Hadush Kebatu’s sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl sparked weeks of protests. And if Epping was forgotten for a short time after he was jailed, it swept back to the headlines when Kebatu was released in
Charlie Taylor, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, has a habit of speaking difficult truths which senior civil servants might wish to keep quiet. He’s done it again, following the publication of a recent inspection at HMP Bullingdon. Taylor tweeted that ‘Bullingdon, like many other jails, is heavily dependent on prison officers recruited from West Africa.
Yesterday His Majesty’s Prison Service released a sex offender by mistake. That would be bad enough on its own, but this particular sex offender was Hadush Kebatu, the Ethiopian migrant whose assault on a 14-year-old girl sparked weeks of protests in Epping. Kebatu was only sentenced last month, receiving a 12-month sentence for two sexual
Quietly, day-by-day, the inquiry into the Southport killings is revealing how disastrous failures of the British state led to Axel Rudakubana murdering young girls in August 2024. Yesterday it was the turn of the killer’s former headteacher, Joanne Hodson, to give evidence. She first met Rudakubana in 2019 when he enrolled at the Acorns School
Should Jess Phillips resign? That’s the demand made by four survivors of the ‘grooming gangs’ in a public letter to the Home Secretary. The letter came after days of chaos which have left the inquiry in disarray. The collapse began on Monday morning when Fiona Goddard, a survivor from Bradford, quit the inquiry. Fiona was
It’s not often the Ministry of Justice gets it absolutely right. But they have today. It has been announced that the Victims and Courts Bill will be amended to stop coercive and controlling fathers from using their parental rights to control their children and former partners even from inside a prison cell. This long-overdue change
Canterbury Cathedral’s ‘Hear Us’ ‘art installation’, in which the heart of English Christianity has been covered in fake graffiti, has caused outcry and anger. The exhibition, which according to the Cathedral involved ‘collaboration with marginalised communities’ covered much of the building’s interior with stickers which they say have been ‘expertly and sensitively affixed to the
Many have celebrated, and perhaps none will have mourned the murder of former Lostprophets frontman and prolific sadistic paedophile Ian Watkins in HMP Wakefield. But his killing in the notionally high-security Category A prison demonstrates just how little control exists in our jails. Indeed, just two weeks ago HM Inspector of Prisons published a report
There are still some good judges left in England. Yesterday, one of them, Sir Joel Nathan Bennathan KC, granted Hamit Coskun’s appeal against his conviction for burning a Koran. Justice Bennathan began his decision with a forthright defence of ancient English liberties stating that ‘there is no offence of blasphemy in our law’. The judge
Failing institutions don’t like challenge, let alone being shown up. Few institutions are failing more tragically than our prisons – and the situation is getting worse. This is because the officials who preside over this debacle are purging the few people who have actually been making a positive difference. The latest organisation to be banned
25 min listen
On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: James Heale says that, for Labour, party conference was a ‘holiday from reality’; William Atkinson argues that the ‘cult of Thatcher’ needs to die; David Shipley examines the luxury of French prisons; Angus Colwell provides his notes on swan eating; and, Aidan Hartley takes listeners on a paleoanthropological tour
Nicolas Sarkozy, former president of the French Republic, has been convicted and sentenced to five years for a ‘criminal conspiracy tied to alleged Libyan funding of his successful 2007 presidential campaign’. For those of us more familiar with Anglo-Saxon criminal law, there’s much to be confused by. France, like many ‘Napoleonic’ legal systems, draws no
