Prison Rules: A Working Guide, The Millenium Edition

Prison Rules: A Working GuidevFOREWORD TO THEMILLENNIUM EDITIONThis Millennium edition marks the fourth time the Prison Reform Trust hasissued a new version of the book Prison Rules: A Working Guide. The book isone of PRT’s initiatives of which we are most proud and which has provedmost successful. In detailing and explaining prison regulations, prison law,and prison administration. Prison Rules: A Working Guide has beenrecognised as an invaluable aid to prison and probation staff, members ofboards of Visitors, lawyers, and all students of penal policy. It has alsoproved a unique self-help guide for prisoners, their friends and relatives.As will be apparent to those in possession of earlier editions, the text hasbeen comprehensively revised to take account of changes both in PrisonService policy and in the climate within which that policy is interpreted injails up and down the country. I have in mind the shift in policy fromWoolf’s justice model in the early ‘90s to the ‘prison works’ ethos of MichaelHoward; the creation of the office of Prisons Ombudsman; the fall-out fromthe highly publicised escapes from HMPs Parkhurst and Whitemoor andthe consequent emphasis on security in the Woodcock and Learmontreports; and most recently the redrafting of the Prison Rules 1964,andimpending implementation of the Human Rights Act 1998. All havesweeping implications for the interpretation and application of the PrisonRules.The Prison Reform Trust is greatly indebted to Nancy Loucks, editor ofthe third edition, for returning to the fray some seven years later. Nancy hasshown extraordinary diligence and commitment to the project, and thisnew edition is worthy testament to her skills as a criminal justice researcher.Thanks too to Nicola Padfield for her continuing contribution to theprocess.PRT also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Trusteesof the Robert Gavron Charitable Trust in helping meet the costs of thispublication.Juliet LyonDirector, Prison Reform Trust February 2000