While you’ve been busy thinking about your Butler Trust nominations for this year, we’ve been busy finishing work on two new publications: a booklet, #HiddenHeroes: The Prison Officer, and a film: #HiddenHeroes: The Probation Officer.
While the media focus on the negative – and staff face very significant challenges every day – there is much to be proud of in our prison and probation services, too – not least our Prison and Probation Officers. Our publications pay tribute to, and celebrate the work of, the frontline staff who make a real difference to the people in their care and the public at large.
After 102 prisons, 17 months, and 17,210 miles, meeting 2,067 officers, prisoners and managers, the Trust’s Director Simon Shepherd has finished his Good Book of Prisons tour, finding out about the good things going on across the closed estate in England & Wales.
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?”
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!
