Qualla: HM Prison Service https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: HM Prison Service https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service HM Prison Service: Introduction https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Minky69, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1777, a Bedfordshire high sheriff named John Howard published a book that catalogued, in patient prose, the conditions inside several hundred prisons he had visited across England and Europe. He had found men confined despite being acquitted because they could not pay the jailer's fees. He had found women crammed into rooms with men, debtors with murderers, children with hardened criminals. Two hundred and fifty years later, the institution that traces its modern descent from his reforms occupies eight floors of an office block at 102 Petty France in Westminster, a few minutes' walk from Buckingham Palace.

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full HM Prison Service: Petty France https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Minky69, CC BY-SA 4.0. The headquarters does not look like a prison. It looks like an insurance company - a sober slab of postwar concrete and glass, set back from a quiet Westminster street between the Ministry of Justice and St James's Park. The two Director Generals who run His Majesty's Prison and ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-petty-france.mp3 0:06 2 full HM Prison Service: Howard's Book https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Julian von Bredow, CC BY-SA 4.0. John Howard's State of the Prisons changed how the country thought about confinement. He proposed separate cells, separate sections for women and young offenders, an end to the fee system that kept innocent people locked up. The Penitentiary Act of 1779 followed his agitation - s...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-howards-book.mp3 0:06 3 full HM Prison Service: Churchill the Prisoner's Friend https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Glyn Baker, CC BY-SA 2.0. Among the many strange details of Winston Churchill's career is that the most ardent prison reformer of the twentieth century was a man who had himself been a prisoner of war. Captured by the Boers in 1899, Churchill escaped after twenty-eight days and made his name as a national...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-churchill-the-prisoners-friend.mp3 0:06 4 full HM Prison Service: The Borstal Movement https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Timothy Titus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1902 the central government opened an experimental institution for young offenders in a Kent village called Borstal. The idea, championed by Herbert Gladstone, was that the cycle of teenage offending could be broken by an English public school inside a prison: housemasters, na...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-the-borstal-movement.mp3 0:06 5 full HM Prison Service: The Modern Estate https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Colin Edgar, CC BY-SA 2.0. There are around 122 prisons in England and Wales today, holding roughly 88,000 people, the great majority of them men. Eleven are run by private contractors - G4S, Serco, Sodexo. The imprisonment rate is the highest in western Europe and sits at the worldwide midpoint, neither S...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-the-modern-estate.mp3 0:06 6 full HM Prison Service: The Officers on the Landing https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit KeysAMX, CC BY-SA 4.0. About 18,000 uniformed officers work the landings of those 122 prisons, down from 25,000 in 2010. They wear a white shirt and black tie, black trousers, black boots, a black NATO jumper for the cold corridors. They carry a Monadnock AutoLock baton, a radio, and increasingly PAVA ...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-the-officers-on-the-landing.mp3 0:06 7 full HM Prison Service: The Petty France View https://qualla.com/hm-prison-service/ Photo credit Minky69, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the upper floors of 102 Petty France, on a clear morning, you can see across the rooftops to St James's Park and the back of Horse Guards. The walk to the Ministry of Justice next door takes ninety seconds. The Galleries of Justice Museum in Nottingham holds the official pri...

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]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/u/hm-prison-service-wp/gcpu-hm-prison-service-the-petty-france-view.mp3 0:06 8 full