Longford Prize
The Longford Prize is an annual award presented in the United Kingdom to an organisation or individual working in the field of social or penal reform. The award was established in 2001 in honor of Lord Longford, a penal reform campaigner, and is sponsored by The Independent newspaper and the Prison Reform Trust. It is usually presented at the Trust's annual Longford Lecture.
The prize
The Longford Prize Winner is presented with a cheque for £1,500 while honorable mentions receive £250. All awardees also receive a certificate.
Judges
Judges have included novelist Judith Kazantzis (Lord Longford's daughter), David Ramsbotham (formerly Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons), Juliet Lyon (Director of the Prison Reform Trust), Sir Peter Lloyd (former Minister for Prisons), and Peter Stanford (Director of the Frank Longford Charitable Trust). Former Prize Winners also often sit on the judging panel.
Past winners
The 2007 prize was awarded to Prisoners Abroad, a UK charity which supports Britons who are imprisoned overseas. The judges praised "its courage, persistence and humanity, over almost three decades, sometimes in the face of public and official indifference and even hostility".[1] Special mention was also made to the The Forgiveness Project and Joe Baden and the Open Book Project.
In 2006 The Longford Prize was given to FPWP Hibiscus, a small charity, working with female foreign national prisoners. Special mentions went to Chance UK; Roma Hooper; and Lucie Russell and Smart Justice.
The 2005 prize was awarded to Steven Taylor, Director of the Forum on Prisoner Education for promoting the rehabilitation and re-integration of prisoners into society.
Christopher Morgan was awarded the prize in 2004 for setting up the Shannon Trust in 1997 which trained prisoners to teach their fellow inmates reading and writing.
Barbara Tudor was awarded the Longford Prize in 2003 her work with the Probation Service and restorative justice.
The winner of the first Longford Prize was Audrey Edwards, in 2002. After her mentally-ill son, Christopher, was murdered in Chelmsford Prison, Edwards campaigned to improve mental health care for offenders. she addressed the Parliaments, the Church of England General Synod and the GMC among others and won a landmark judgement in the European Court of Human Rights that her son had been denied his right to life due to improper treatment. She chairs the Essex Restorative Justice Group and is a member of the Churches Criminal Justice Forum.
References
- ↑ "The Longford Prize". Longford Trust. Retrieved 2007-12-03.
External links
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