The 2019-20 Butler Trust Award Winners and Commendees have just been announced. The Awards once again reflect some of the best – and often very moving – examples of the dedication, skill, and creativity found throughout the criminal justice system. Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Patron of the Trust, will present our Winners with their Awards and Commendations at our Award Ceremony, to be held later in the year.
Butler Trust News
Christmas Message from The Butler Trust
2019 saw lots happening at The Butler Trust – and 2020 will bring more…
After the traditional New Year’s announcement of our 2018-2019 winners, in March our Royal Patron, HRH The Princess Royal, presented the Awards and Commendations at the annual Award Ceremony, which was held in St. James’s Palace.
The Princess also made a number of Royal visits throughout the year, meeting our winners and seeing the work happening across various criminal justice settings. These included visits to Karen Laws and Laura Smillie at HMP & YOI Low Newton, Angela Auty and Chris Munn at Plymouth National Probation Service, the National Tactical Response Group HQ in Oxfordshire, Sue Pearson at the Leeds Youth Offending Team, and Mark Coleman at HMP & YOI Woodhill.
Shortlist Announced for 2019-20 Butler Trust Awards
After a summer spent reviewing and rating the 335 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 2019-20 Butler Trust Awards.
The standard was as high as ever and the decision-making as difficult as always – but after much deliberation, the Sifting Panel agreed to put through a final shortlist of 40 nominations.
Congratulations to all of the following – and good luck in the next stage of the process (our final Judging Panel will meet in November and we will announce the names of this year’s Award Winners and Commendees in the New Year):
The Butler Trust Publishes ‘The Good Book Of Prisons’
The Butler Trust is pleased to announce the publication of the overall findings, and updated detailed reports on each jail, from Simon Shepherd’s tour of all 102 closed adult prisons in England & Wales, in a free downloadable e-book and online at The Good Book of Prisons.
After thirty years in the criminal justice sector, including working as a prison psychologist and as Director of the Butler Trust since 2008, Simon explains that he was inspired to write the book because of his frustration at the media focus on negative stories:
“Over the years – and especially in the hundreds of nominations we get for the Butler Trust Awards each year – we’ve come across so many stories about outstanding work happening in our prisons. And behind all of those stories are the many thousands of people who work, on our behalf, in the prison system.”
2019-20 nominations highlight our #HiddenHeroes
Hundreds of nominations for the 35th Annual Butler Trust Awards have now arrived (with the usual deadline rush!). As always, they shine a light on the impressive work everyone in the sector knows about – but which the wider public rarely gets to see.
This year the Trust is pleased to see some wider and long overdue recognition of the amazing stuff people bring to their work every day in the sector. For instance, Channel 4’s award winning documentary series Prison showed prison officers at HMP Durham doing their best in a range of tough circumstances. We reported some of the public’s heartfelt and positive responses to the show in our new booklet #HiddenHeroes: The Prison Officer (now being distributed to all uniformed officers). We’ve also highlighted the impact of probation in our #HiddenHeroes: The Probation Officer video.
