
DANNY SHAW
News, analysis and commentary on crime, policing, justice, prisons, immigration - and the media

What Rowley hasn't yet got right at the Met
Charing Cross again. For the second time in three years the police station in the heart of London’s West End is at the centre of a...

Gulp. It's the Home Office
"Gulp". That was the reaction from one of Shabana Mahmood's team when news broke that she was heading to the Home Office. Gulp indeed....

Have Labour set an impossible target?
In March 2023, Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Stoke-On-Trent for a speech that would define Labour’s mission on law and order. At Vale...
The two-tier sentence row must be a one-off
By Danny Shaw Who’s in charge of the Ministry of Justice? Judging by the events of the past few weeks I’d say Robert Jenrick is calling...

An unwanted anniversary...
Seven years ago last weekend, Novlett Williams' life changed forever. Williams, known to her friends and colleagues as Robyn, was then a...

Cooper and the Conference: 5 things you should know
What did we learn from Yvette Cooper's first major speech on policing reform this week? The Home Secretary attended the annual conference...

The Costs of Justice
What does Rachel Reeves' Budget do for policing, justice and immigration? Here's a quick guide to the three Government departments...

How to stop a Riot: what does 2011 tell us?
For five days at the beginning of August 2011, it felt like we were on the brink of anarchy. In towns and cities across England, police...

Justice delayed: why did it take six years to try a man for rape?
A year ago I wrote about a rape trial that had to be postponed because there was no judge available. The delay shocked me because the...

Rwanda - a lesson in 'fake news'
Boris Johnson started it. On 14 April 2022 he said that the deal struck with Rwanda meant that anyone entering the UK illegally may now...

Sorry, IOPC, you've got this decision wrong
"This Inquiry should serve as a loud wake-up call." Those words, directed at the leadership of the Metropolitan Police, are contained in...

The Wandsworth Prison escape: what Ministers aren't telling us
Is the Ministry of Justice making excuses? The most shocking aspect of Daniel Khalife's escape from Wandsworth Prison on September 6 is...

Pushing the envelope
Should police inform a suspect they've been charged with rape by post? I think most of us would expect that kind of news to be delivered...

Immigration - it's time to change the debate
When I started reporting on the crime statistics as a BBC correspondent about 25 years ago the headline figure was invariably the main...

Charles Bronson: a lesson for the Parole Board?
In the next day or so, a prison officer at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes will deliver a brown envelope addressed to “Mr Charles...

The fallacy of falling reoffending rates
“Hugely significant.” That was the description given by Antonia Romeo, the most senior civil servant at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), to...

The Government's open secret...
Last November, when the Prisons Minister, Damian Hinds, told the House of Commons that up to 400 police cells would be used to hold...

A Death at Manston: Questions for the Home Office
The news that a man who died after being held for a week at the Manston migrant processing centre may have had the highly contagious...

Justice: why the delay?
Monday October 31 should have been the day. The day when a crown court jury was sworn in to try a man in his 30s accused of raping a girl...





















