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.”
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?”
