Speaker Biographies

Chair for the day - Paul McDowell

Paul McDowell, Nacro Chief Executive, joined the organisation in October 2009.  Governor of HMP Brixton from 2006, Paul joined the Prison Service in 1990 as a Prison Officer at HMYOI Stoke Heath. Transferred to HMP Woodhill in 1992, Paul was amongst the first group of staff tasked with preparing the prison for its opening. He subsequently worked at HMP Wellingborough, the Prison Service training college at Newbold Revel, HMP Gartree and HMYOI Feltham.

In 2000 Paul was seconded to the Home Office where he worked in the Prison Minister’s Private Office. He returned to HMYOI Feltham as Deputy Governor in 2001, followed by a successful period in charge at HMP Coldingley from 2004, culminating in a full HMCIP inspection report published in early 2006.

Paul is currently an advisory panel member of Make Justice Work, a media campaign designed to raise public awareness of the costliness of locking up low-level offenders and Special Adviser to the Prison Radio Association.

Alison Liebling

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Director of the Prisons Research Centre at the University of Cambridge. She has carried out research on young offender throughcare, suicides in prison, staff-prisoner relationships, the work of prison officers, small units for difficult prisoners, incentives and earned privileges, prison privatization, secure training centres, and measuring the quality of prison life. She has published several books, including Suicides in Prison (1992), Prisons and their Moral Performance (2004) and (with Shadd Maruna) (2005) The Effects of Imprisonment. She is currently completing a repeat of the study of staff prisoner relationships at Whitemoor prison she first conducted in 1998. She has published widely in criminological journals, and is currently co-editor in chief (with Dirk van Zyl Smit) of Punishment and Society: the International Journal of Penology.

Juliet Lyon

Juliet Lyon CBE is director of the Prison Reform Trust, secretary general of Penal Reform International and vice president of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). Juliet acted as an independent member of Baroness Corston’s review of vulnerable women and Lord Bradleys review of people with mental health problems and learning disabilities in the justice system. Previously she worked in education, mental health and justice.

The Prison Reform Trust is a leading independent charity working to create a just, humane and effective penal system. It produces information, conducts applied research and effects policy leverage. It provides the secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group. The Prison Reform Trust’s advice and information service responds to over 6000 prisoners and their families each year.

 

Colin Moses

Colin Moses joined the Prison Service and POA in 1986. He has served at HMP Castington, Holme House, Feltham Young Offenders Institute, and Low Newton Prison in Brasside, Durham. He was elected onto the National Executive Committee of the Prison Officers Association in 1996, and became National Chairman in August 2002.

During his period as a National Executive Committee member, he Chaired the POA’s Race Relations Committee, was an inaugural member of the Director General’s Race Relations Advisory Committee, a founding member of RESPECT, Chaired both the POA High Security Committee and Young Offenders Committee, as well as being a member on various Whitley Committees dealing with Prison Service affairs.

Colin has also been a member of the Advisory Team for the Social Exclusion Unit dealing with matters on short-term sentencing, and a member of the TUC Stephen Lawrence Task Group and TUC Race Relations Committee.

In 2002, Colin received a Man of Merit Award from the E.P.N. This award is given to those from ethnic minorities who have achieved recognition in their chosen professions.

In 2005 Colin was re-elected (unopposed) as National Chairman for a further five year commencing in 2006.

Colin Moses remains the only black elected Trade Union Leader in Britain.

 

 

Michael Spurr

Michael Spurr is currently the Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service Agency.

Michael joined the Civil Service as a Prison Officer at HMP Leeds in 1983 and worked in the Prison Service for 25 years at various establishments and at Headquarters.  He was a Governing Governor at HMYOI Aylesbury, HMP Wayland and HMP/YOI Norwich.

Michael joined the HMPS Agency Board as Director of Operations in 2003 becoming Deputy Director General in 2007.

In April 2008, Michael was appointed as the Chief Operating Officer in the newly formed NOMS Agency, taking responsibility for the operational management of Probation and Prisons, leading the work to improve ‘joined-up working’ and to create Probation Trusts.  He became Chief Executive in June 2010.