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.
The aim of what’s been a very long journey was to show the world that whatever you might hear in the media, there are good things going on in every prison. While that’s not to say that there aren’t problems, and it’s clear the last few years have been especially challenging, constant negative coverage saps morale and impacts on performance and retention – and that’s something we hope The Good Book of Prisons will help to challenge.
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?”
