Screwed: Britain's Prison Crisis and How To Escape It
By (Author) Ian Acheson
Biteback Publishing
Biteback Publishing
1st February 2020
11th April 2024
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
365.942
Hardback
304
500g
Screwed is the inside story of the collapse of HM Prison Service told from the front line.
Ian Acheson served as both and officer and Governor in a 20-year career that saw him move from the landings to the boardroom. During that time he watched Her Majesty's Prison Service, the uniformed organisation he was proud to serve, collapse into a hopeless and helpless bureaucracy presiding over feral penal dustbins warehousing human failure. This hard-hitting account looks at the politics and the operational decision making which have our prisons to descend into places where extreme violence, indolence and victimisation are normalised. He concludes that the situation is not beyond repair and describes how a new corporate culture and mission can achieve a much-needed revolution in the way the service is run.
Ian Acheson served as both an officer and prison Governor. In 2015 the then Secretary of State for Justice, Michael Gove, asked him to lead an independent review into prison extremism which laid bare a corporate culture of ineptitude, secrecy and arrogance that threatened national security. He now works nationally and internationally advising governments on countering violent extremism and prison reform.