During a year in which prisons again made negative headlines, the Butler Trust’s Director, Simon Shepherd, has been quietly exploring the opposite: what’s positive about our prisons? In an ambitious undertaking, he’s visiting every closed prison in England and Wales to ask individual groups of prisoners, officers, and managers, an unusual question: “What’s good about this prison?”
Simon has, so far, travelled over 9,000 miles and held 186 forums, involving over 1000 people, across 62 prisons. Results from each visit are posted online, along with a running total of prisons visited, days spent on the road, miles travelled, and forums held, at GoodBookofPrisons.com. In due course there will be a more detailed narrative report to accompany the full set of results and the Butler Trust will publish a book.
After a summer spent reviewing and rating the 350+ nominations received for this year’s Award Scheme, our volunteer Sifting Panel met at the end of September to agree the shortlist to go through to the final stage of judging for the 2018-19 Butler Trust Awards.
Although Spring took her time turning up, she arrived in some style – with the early-May Bank Holiday the warmest since the holiday began in 1978. With the World Cup getting closer, temperatures climbing, and long Midsummer nights, we started to wonder if the famous – in our office, anyway – last minute rush of nominations would happen this year. England were headed for the Round of 16 by the time our deadline was reached and once more, you did us proud: cheering along the best and brightest people working around you, from all four corners of the kingdom, you only went and broke the record for the most nominations ever – 383 in total!
Do you know someone who goes ‘above and beyond’? There’s still time to nominate them for a Butler Trust Award, but you’ll need to get a wiggle on because nominations close on 30 June.
