A WEEK of prayer for prisoners, and those working to support
them, begins on Sunday, marked by a special edition of BBC TV's
Songs of Praise. Prisons Week organisers ask for prayer,
and provide resources for offenders, victims, chaplains, and prison
officers (prisonsweek.org).
The latest figures published by the Howard League for Penal
Reform showed that, this month, the prison system in the UK was
holding 6166 men and women above capacity. Many prisoners are now
held in private prisons, and the Government has announced that four
more prisons in the north of England are to be privatised.
The director of the League, Frances Crook, said: "The Government
will seek to deflect criticism of its prison-privatisation
programme by excluding G4S from the next stage of the bidding
process; but the principle of awarding lucrative contracts to
private companies running prisons on the cheap remains
unchallenged. This is still a mistake of Olympic proportions.
"Something as important as taking away someone's freedom should
only be done by the state, answerable to taxpayers, rather than by
international private security firms, answerable only to their
shareholders."
Prisons Week is now recognised globally. The charity African
Prisons Project is using the week to highlight its work in Ugandan
prisons, which, it says, are some of the most overcrowded in the
world.
Curate visits George Blake. The Revd Patrick
Butler, an Assistant Curate from Emmanuel Church, Stoughton, in
Guildford, flew out last week to meet his father in Moscow - the
spy George Blake. It was Mr Blake's 90th birthday. Mr Blake has
lived in Russia since he escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966. Mr
Butler has been in touch with his father for the past 25 years. He
told The Sunday Telegraph that he and his brothers have a
good relationship with Mr Blake.