CrimeTalk

An educational resource at the heart of public debate, criminological research and professional practice......

Russell Webster

Russell Webster
Drugs, crime & digital innovation
  • How drug treatment is following drug dealing onto the internet
    The internet has revolutionised the way that drugs are created and sold. There is an increasing number of online drug dealing sites and now treatment is getting in on the online act with a proliferation of computer assisted therapies.
  • The lessons from justice reinvestment
    Earlier this week, the MoJ published the findings from the first evaluation of the justice reinvestment project conducted by Kevin Wong and his colleagues from Sheffield Hallam University. The pilot operates a payment by results approach which means that if the pilot areas succeed in reducing demand on criminal justice services (by 5% for adults and 10% for young offenders), they receive additional funds generated by the savings to invest in further reducing re-offending initiatives.
  • Crossing the probation Rubicon
    The publication of the MoJ's response to Transforming Rehabilitation last Thursday 9 May has made it almost certain that the plans to overhaul the reducing reoffending system will take place. By bringing the timeline even further forward, the Secretary of State has built in 6 months' slippage before next general election. Even if the Labour Party wins the next election, there is no sign that @SadiqKhan would undo the changes.
  • Payment by results across public services
    Sitra, the housing support training and consultancy organisation, produced a short but interesting report this week which compared payment by results across public services and in housing related support. Summary of PbR across public services The report features a helpful summary of the different PbR schemes to which I would add the Youth Justice Board pathfinder pilots (about preventing nights in custody) and the UK Border Agency contract with Capita to find and remove illegal immigrants.     The report

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  • The Transforming Rehabilitation Timeline
    Timeline for the government's "Transforming Rehabilitation" project which involves the most radical change ever to, and significant privatisation of, the probation service and new focus on short term prisoners.
  • Police Inspector @SimonJGuilfoyle says Twitter proves men can multi-task
    Police Inspector @SimonJGuilfoyle says Twitter proves men can multi-task. One thing I particularly like about twitter is that it affords the previously unheard of opportunity to interact with people at all levels in police forces, as well as those from totally different backgrounds, locations and viewpoints. I’ve had some great debates with a range of extremely interesting people, without the formalities inherent in hierarchies or social constructs.
  • Police and public combine on social media to find missing persons
    Social media - and Twitter in particular - is becoming the mainstream way of locating missing people. I was slightly surprised when I reviewed five UK police Facebook pages recently and found that a third of the most popular posts related to missing persons. It's no surprise that police use social media for this purpose though. I've come across two successful outcomes in the last month.
  • Probation Service Mutuals must get through the phoney war
    The dramatic changes proposed for the probation service have yet to receive any detailed planning. Indeed, we still don’t know how many probation trust areas there will be, how many Contract Package Areas and the nature of the relationship between the future statutory probation service with its responsibility for risk and the new providers who will be delivering interventions to reduce re-offending. We are expecting some answers to these questions in the middle of May but ...
  • A detailed look at police use of Twitter
    A detailed look at police use of Twitter. A great infographic from BrightPlanet harvesting information from the recent 1st Global Police Tweetathon which used the #poltwt hashtag.
  • Politician and activist @dorsetrachel loves the serendipity of Twitter
    Rachel Rogers was a deputy governor in the prison service and the Labour PCC candidate for Dorset. She is a qualified teacher who now works in the field of children’s rights, as well as being a Weymouth and Portland Borough Councillor. She is also an active blogger.     Getting started  It’s all the fault of @dbremz, my young and SM-savvy sidekick, who told me “You need a website and you need to tweet”. I suspect he would happily take

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Monday, May 20, 2013
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