It was a privilege to be at the launch of this research in the House of Lords last night. It centered around the almost forgotten, unique character of killings during the Troubles in Fermanagh where I'm from: The cruel intimacy of neighbourly, townland assassination by PIRA. 1/ Cillian McGrattan and Ken Funston have assembled a detailed & sorrowful description of how IRA terrorists tried to devastate a minority protestant unionist population on the fringe of the UK with targeted murder of civilians and local security force personnel largely off duty. 2/

🧵Some observations about flags and their meanings:
Growing up in Northern Ireland during the 'Troubles' is not a proxy for what's happening in England but it is a warning from recent history about the creeping sectarianisation of polarised communities not spoken to or for. 1/ When I was growing up, my father put the Union flag on a pole at our house along with all his neighbours for the Twelfth 'fortnight' It was a simple gesture of identity in an overwhelmingly unionist community using the flag of the UK on private property that went up, then down. 2/

The calamity of HMP Dartmoor is emblematic of everything wrong culturally & organisationally with HMPPS. The tax-payer is now in for £25million on a jail that might never open again on a deal made after officials were aware for two years levels of Radon were dangerously high. 1/

https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/1880971081860665604

I left the prison service from HMP Dartmoor after having had enough of a corporate organisation that rewarded incompetence, mendacity & cowardice in return for slavish devotion to the party line. 2/

🧵Racist behaviour in uniform happens. Everyone who has ever worked in uniformed law enforcement knows this. But the answer is not yet more training/awareness which only enables a bloated industry to never move the dial while being well rewarded. It is more straightforward 1/ If you can't treat people with respect and decency at work in 2024, the problem is not alone with your thinking. The scandal is that it has never been, challenged, changed or ultimately sanctioned by your peers and - crucially - by those supervising you day to day. 2/

Little thread: The Youth Custody Service of HMPPS comprise the professionals that lock up children. The size of this group of offenders has been falling steadily over the years so those who must be detained are often highly complex, vulnerable - and *violent* - young people. 1/ Last year 62% of Youth Custody workers who left that work resigned. Average sickness days off per worker is 18.4 days/person/year - the highest of any category. The predominant reason for absence is 'stress.' 15,737 days lost off duty in total. In 4 establishments. 2/

HMP Wandsworth: A thread
Chief Inspector Charlie Taylor has cut short an unannounced inspection of this prison to issue an Urgent Notification to ministers about conditions there. This is his Red Flag warning of a prison in serious danger. The Governor resigned yesterday. 1/ I was once Head of Security at Wandsworth, my office and the command suite was located in the right hand tower in the picture. I care about the place and I am profoundly concerned about its descent into 'chaos' - the Chief Inspectors word - 20 minutes drive from HMPPS HQ. 2/

🧵It's easy to set yourself up as a 'counter terrorism specialist'. 5 minutes on LinkedIn reveals the place is awash with them. But those of us who have been up close & personal with violent extremists (in my case over nearly 30 years) are fewer & outnumbered by theoreticians. 1/ I'm not suggesting for a moment that this makes me or others with personal experience infallible or that we can't benefit from looking at complex threats through models designed by academics. But I am concerned that P/CVE is overwhelmingly a discipline of abstract thinking. 2/

The kids carrying petrol bombs & masonry to attack the police & press in L/Derry yesterday were groomed by people no better than paedophiles. The hate that inspires new generations has to be tackled across the sectarian divide. But the Prevent strategy does not operate in NI. 1/ You can read more about the reasons why and the reasons why it absolutely should here in a piece on @CapX I wrote last year. 2/
capx.co/?p=222030

THREAD: PRISON VIOLENCE. I get an enormous amount of contact from serving prison officers right up to senior managers about just how bad conditions are in some of our prisons. People who feel that to speak out publicly would be career suicide. 1/ The Independent watchdog (IMB) report on HMYOI Cookham Wood (a child prison) confirms this week what I was being told about yet another prison in 'special measures' since Inspectors damned it actually becoming *more* unstable.
2/imb.org.uk/document/cookh…

BREAKING: It's just been announced that Lowdham Grange, a Category B private prison run by Sodexo has been taken back into state control. I knew things were going seriously wrong here on Monday when I was alerted to a serious disturbance unreported elsewhere 🧵1/ Prisoners, who had been locked up the previous weekend due to of insufficient staff refused to go back to their cells after being let out on Monday last wk. Staff withdrew from 1 wing & national mutual aid (Tornado) was activated to restore order. Resources remained on site. 2/

Frankly, as its former Chief Operating Officer, I think the time has come for serious consideration of the EHRC to be seperated again into its 3 prior constituent legal enforcement bodies for sex, race and disability discrimination. It was a shotgun marriage that never worked. 1/ These successful organisations were involved in a forced amalgamation that consumed EHRC for years. The principle of defending the rights of people subsumed into internecine warfare as cultures/staff failed to gel. 2/

🧵Gov't crackdown on jail RADICALISATION (again).
Worth reminding you that in 2016 I led an independent review for government into Islamist extremism in prisons. A principal recommendation (rejected by MoJ) was about corporate worship (Friday Prayers) 1/

gov.uk/government/new… I highlighted the subversion of corporate worship by radicalised prisoners who had almost free reign to oppose Imams and preach hateful ideologies unimpeded as well as try to undermine/intimidate supervising officers. That continued. 2/

I often tweet about staff retention in HM Prison and Probation service. Sometimes graphics speak louder than words. A thread @BrandonLewis : 1/ In any other uniformed law enforcement agency the steepness of the increase in people leaving what was once a secure & relatively well paid job would wave the most enormous red flag. As would a 50% increase in sickness absence days since 2017 the majority attributed to stress. 2/

I was both director of community safety for the Home Office in SW England and a Special Constable the last time targets were imposed on policing. So I had a rather unique perspective on the rhetoric and reality of target policing. 1/
thetimes.co.uk/article/df8d86… Targets that ignore the demographics & operational realities of policing 43 markedly different force areas are fraught with difficulty. But so too is the idea of strict 'operational independence' for Chiefs, some of whom have risen without trace and are failing communities 2/

This story illustrates the fundamental flaw in public sector cost cutting for the last 20 years. An annoyed thread from a sun lounger. 1/
telegraph.co.uk/business/2022/… Asking senior civil servants to 'model' cost cutting across different scenarios is like asking arsonists to model fire safety. In the history of this process it *never* produces outcomes that reduce bureaucratic control. 2/

The IRA were by a huge margin the cardinal industrial human rights abusers of the Troubles. The leader of the political party at the time that did & continues to endorse & venerate the terrorists who left thousands of victims dead, maimed, bereft without justice is being sued. 1/ He is Gerry Adams. The party is Sinn Fein, a 'democratic' party alone in western Europe that argues the wholesale murder of Irish men, women and children in some of the most squalid and cruel ways imaginable was 'justified.' 2/

THREAD:It's important that people are allowed to protest peacefully especially outside the PMs residence. What ordinary people watching will find inexplicable though is how individuals who attend purely for the purpose of assaulting police officers are not dealt with robustly. 1/ Yes, understand resource implications, yes understand tactical and UOF/HRA constraints. But the optics, everywhere on social media, are awful and the present doctrine of passive containment gives two dangerous viral impressions - weakness and impunity 2/

A short THREAD on North Shropshire from a cross party member:
Last night's tactical disaster in the by-election is the product of a moral & strategic failure that extends at least as far back & arguably beyond the Patterson affair. It needs addressing and not by its authors. 1/ People like me can cope with a little realpolitik, we understand the tribal instinct but there are limits. The wholly foreseeable & preventable events of the past few weeks - partygate to sleaze have covered us in shit. Post-poll rationalisation is the worst possible response. 2/

A short thread on the difference between justice and vengeance. In the late 90s I was Head of Security at HMP Wandsworth. It had a large sex offender population housed in a separate vulnerable prisoners unit (VPU). A notorious child killer was en route from court. 1/ VPUs house offenders who have committed acts of sexual violence against women and children that sometimes defy belief. But every day men and women with their own kids put on a uniform and ensure justice is served. On this particular day however, the details broke them. 2/

On Newsnight last night, @JimGamble_INEQE nails it. 'Disguised compliance' where manipulative predators deceive naïve practitioners is a huge system wide problem in our risk management capability from terrorists to child abusers. We can, must to better. 1/
bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0b… As Jim says we won't need yet another serious case review to work this out. I do hope the Coroner exercises his right to continue Arthur's inquest as surely he must. It has proven the best way to expose failures in this area. 2/

A short thread on Legacy:
We all have our dead in Northern Ireland. We hold them close. They may be buried, but those in the ground as a result of the moral insanity of the Troubles won't be quiet. Those merely maimed - robbed of limbs, sight, sanity, dignity stagger on. 1/ Can those left ever find justice? Can the silent majority of tens of thousands of people wrecked by terrorist atrocities, endlessly side-lined as they & their loved ones are turned from victims into collateral damage, be bought by some vague future promise of 'truth recovery?' 2/